movie reviews by Dr. John Ruhland

FILMS ON ISRAEL AND THE ARAB COUNTRIES

The escalation of the violence demands a closer look at the Israeli occupation of Palestine. The little-known film Hanna K., directed by Costa-Gavras and produced by Franco Solinas, gives a lot of fine background. The protagonist, Israeli Hanna Kaufmann, played by Jill Clayburg, is a young woman assigned her first case as a court-appointed defense attorney.

The Palestinian she is asked to defend, Selim, is a handsome man whose family estate was confiscated and turned into a tourist attraction outside a Zionist housing community in the occupied territory. Hanna is pregnant, and the father of Hanna's child is a condescending, male chauvinistic, and self-righteous prosecuting attorney in her court, opposing her in her first case. He sarcastically talks about Aryan specialists who could perform an abortion for Hanna. After the trial attracts national and international attention, the prosecution becomes preoccupied with stopping the publicity and legal precedent the trial affords Palestinians. Selim is the only male in the film that appears to have much respect for Hanna as a woman and as a lawyer, and then as a mother.

An Israeli professor tells Hanna: "Now that we have a country, an identity, we must defend it." Hanna replies: "By refusing the same thing to others, professor?" The professor responds: "Yes, if its necessary, yes." One can feel the pressure coming to bear upon Hanna. When the flames of nationalist hysteria are being fanned, few are strong enough to resist the pressure to conform to the party line. Other films giving a background of the history of the region from an Israel perspective include Exodus, which depicts British imperialist oppression of Israel. The House on Chelouche Street (1973), directed by Moshe Mizrahi, depicts an Israeli family during British occupation in 1946.

Part of being an occupied country is the suppression of history and culture. It is difficult to find a film on the region produced by Palestinians. I have thus far been unable to find one notable film entitled Red Army-PLO Declaration of Global War, a documentary directed by Koji Wakamatsu.

My favorite film on Arab-Israeli relations is the 1987 Wedding in Galilee (in Hebrew and Arabic), directed by Michel Khleifi. It tells of a young Palestinian couple who get married despite tensions with Israeli occupying forces. It is a beautiful film in which one sees how Israel today uses the same techniques against Palestinians that the British used against the Israelis during the British colonial control of the region. In the 1970 Siege, Israeli working people are used as cannon fodder to kill Arab working people in order to promote Zionist ambitions. In the 1983 Hamsin (in Hebrew) directed by Daniel Wachsmann, Jewish worker is pitted against Arab, while rich, unseen enemies stir up hatred.