OCCUPIED MINDS
LINKTV LOGO (00:01:03)
"An Original Production of LinkTV"
CAMERA PANS CITY OF JERUSALEM (00:01:07)
DAVID & JAMAL WALK IN MARKET (00:01:13)
Jamal [looking at soldiers]: "There, symbol of occupation, this is the symbol of occupation..."
"and up there on the wall so they keep an eye on you, you see in the States Uncle Sam keeps and eye on you, here Uncle Sharon keeps and eye on you with an M-16."
DAVID AND JAMAL WALK ALONG THE WALL (00:01:46)
TITLE FRAME (00:01:55)
JAMAL IN PARK IN S.F., CA (00:02:02)
Jamal (voiceover): I lived in the United States since 1975, and every time I've returned home to Jerusalem things have gotten worse and worse. Four years ago I met David Michaelis at LinkTV, [Jamal sits down on a bench where David is reading a newspaper] and he comes from West Jerusalem, and I come from East Jerusalem. We come from the same city, but in reality, two different worlds.
PHOTO OF DAVID AS A CHILD (00:02:24)
David (voiceover): I was born in Jerusalem and I have been living there all my life since 1945,...
DAVID AT HIS DESK AT LINKTV (00:02:30)
...five years ago I came to the US to launch a TV channel, and that's how I met Jamal Dajani...
JAMAL & DAVID SITTING TOGETHER AT DESK (00:02:37)
...Jamal challenged me to think about solutions that hadn't been discussed until now. And one day we said "Well, we should test it in the ground, the reality there is very harsh, but why don't we go over there and do it?"
JAMAL & DAVID SITTING AT MEETING ROOM TABLE (00:02:54)
David: "Here we're not on ground zero we are here in a bubble...
GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE (00:02:57)
...and, after some time of working here with Jamal, I said definitely Jews and Arabs can co-exist in California...
S.F. STREET W/CABLE CAR (00:03:02)
...In San Francisco, the neighborhood where you only have to choose what kind of latte you want to have in the mornings.."
MARKET & VARIOUS SHOTS OF PEOPLE IN JERUSALEM (00:03:09)
Jamal: "When I go there, I'm always eager to go to my people, to my neighborhood. I want to just have the least interaction with Israelis as possible."
David: "Many Israelis don't want to know about Palestinians, they don't want to reach out, they don't want to cross into streets and neighborhoods where the Palestinians live, because of a mixture of fear, suspicion, stereotypes, and so on."
MORE SHOTS OF PEOPLE, CITY (00:03:33)
Jamal (voiceover): So we decided to go together to visit each other's neighborhoods and I would talk to Israelis and David would talk to Palestinians. And together we would face the hard realities of our shared land.
JAMAL & DAVID WALKING ALONG THE WALL (00:03:52)
DAVID (00:04:02)
David: "Growing up in the 60's, the Palestinians just weren't in the head of anyone."
OLD PHOTOS OF HOUSES IN JERUSALEM (00:04:05)
Jamal: "For us it was different. We knew we had property there and it was taken away from us by force. I remember distinctly knowing that this is the wall that separated the East and West Jerusalem...
JAMAL POINTING A STREET OUT TO DAVID (00:04:20)
...and this was the no-man's land here...
OLD PHOTOS OF JAMAL'S FAMILY & HOME (00:04:23)
....My family lived in Jerusalem for centuries. In 1948, the state of Israel was founded, and for Palestinians this time was called the Nakbah, or the "catastrophe". Like many Palestinians, my father and his whole family, were pushed out of their ancestral home. They moved to a small apartment in East Jerusalem because the city was divided into a Jewish and an Arab city. And in 1967, the Six Day War happened, when the Israelis invaded Jerusalem and conquered it. We have lived under the Israelis occupation ever since, always longing to go back to our ancestral home.
JAMAL AND DAVID WALKING (00:05:10)
Text: Dajani Family Compound
East Jerusalem
JAMAL & DAVID ON ROOF OF OLD DAJANI HOUSE (00:05:19)
Jamal (voiceover continued): And my father's story that he lost the home that he was born in, and his father etc. always was with us.
Jamal: "Ancestors, when ever I walk here I feel as if they are walking in...in...like a shiver in my body like I feel their souls...They used to have the stables down there, and actually this is my father's room, right there."
JAMAL INSIDE THE HOUSE & IN COURTYARD (00:05:50)
Jamal [points at a sign]: "It is a Yeshiva school now."
Jamal (voiceover):So these trees, I would say, easily 50 year old trees, because my father, when he came here, he said he remembers, when he left here, they were a little bit taller then him. I was born, the first generation to be born outside our house."
JAMAL BACK ON ROOF (00:06:20)
Jamal (Voiceover continued): To take some one's home is like worse then ripping their heart away from their body."
JAMAL, DAVID, KHALIL IN STREET, DENTIST OFFICE (00:06:30)
Jamal (voiceover): I took David to meet Khalil Harb, my childhood friend. He and I went to the same school. I went afterwards to the United States and he went to Greece to study dentistry, but he returned to Jerusalem. He's been living there ever since.
JAMAL, DAVID, KHALIL, AND OTHERS IN STREET (00:06:50)
[Khalil jokes with friends in the street]
Jamal: "Maybe half the people he meets here, he did a root canal for them
Jamal (voiceover): He's seen the situation deteriorating. Since the Intifada, half of his patients cannot even afford to pay him, but he never turns any one away.
THE THREE MEN SIT IN KHALIL'S GARDEN (00:07:11)
Khalil: "And you see some guy coming from Russia and he takes your land which you have been there for thousands and thousands of years and some body comes here only a month ago and says ‘this is my land'...‘why? Because God gave it to me.' You start not believing in God. I am a Christian; I start not believing in God maybe. Imagine if Communism falls in China, and you find some Jews in China my god. The number would be about maybe ten million, where would we put them? Look at the country, in seven years you have brought in about one million and something from Falsha, I don't know, Americans from Argentina, I don't know from where. These people are the worst because they don't know the Arabs, they don't know the Palestinians, they don't know the people of the land. So these are the extremists and they are becoming more and more. One third of the nation are newcomers, newcomers who came during the Intifada and during fighting."
DAVID & JAMAL WALKING ON GARDEN PATH, MICHAELIS PHOTOS (00:08:13)
Text: Michaelis family home
West Jerusalem
David (voiceover): My family lived for many centuries in Germany and in the 1920's when the atmosphere became impossible for the Jews, my mother left for Palestine to begin working as a gymnastics teacher in a youth village. She was thinking about her identity as a Jew, and she came to her parents and said to them: "I don't think the Germans want us here, I am looking for another place where we can do something totally from the beginning." So she came here. I think her organization saved from the Nazis about fifteen thousand, twenty thousand children, and I think it's good that you hear that I didn't land from Mars or Berlin but I have some roots here."
DAVID AND JAMAL WALKING IN STREET (00:09:00)
David: "So this is my home since '46, and I love the neighborhood. Up there on the corner there is a castle convent with a huge courtyard where it was very easy to learn to go on bikes. This house, in 1946, '47 was the last joint Palestinian-Jewish house. We had a very good relationship with our (neighbors) the Ayoubs and then the war started, the '47 Independence War started..."
Jamal: "And then the Ayoubs were pushed out, all the Arabs were pushed out..."
David: "they were pushed out."
Jamal: "Do you feel guilty? That you are living here?"
David: "No."
Jamal: "You don't feel guilty that this is a home belonging to a Palestinian family and they got pushed out and you are the recipient, the beneficiary of their blood and sweat and tears?"
David: "I feel that the Israelis government owes them, because the Israelis government is the one who made the laws about people who are not here. And the question is if people are ready to take compensation instead of coming back."
JAMAL IN CAR, SHOTS OF GAZA (00:10:13)
Jamal (voiceover): The next day, David and I separated so that I could go alone into Gaza. Along with the West Bank, Gaza is one of the two territories that had been taken by Israel in 1967, it has been an occupied territory ever since. While I was in Gaza, David attended an Israeli right-wing rally in Jerusalem.
DAVID, SHOTS OF RALLY (00:10:44)
David (voiceover): A large movement of religious Israelis believes that rather than returning this land, it should be annexed by the state of Israel. These people, called settlers, were creating villages in the occupied territories in order to create this reality. The rally was one of many demonstrations, held by the settlers, to convince the Israeli government not to withdraw from the occupied territories.
CELL PHONE CONVERSATION BETWEEN DAVID & JAMAL (00:11:19)
Jamal: "If you have not seen an earthquake, the devastation of an earthquake, all you have to do is go see Rafah. The water here is salty so some EU government has set up these desalination plants. They cannot just get fresh water at home. It looks like someone is handing candy, or they are playing a game, in fact this is their daily routine."
David: "They are having a gathering here of hundreds of thousands of people here who don't want to get out of Gaza, they want to keep the soldiers in Gaza, and the Palestinian nation is just not something that they want to relate to. I am sorry that I can't be with you there, but I don't know where the fate of Gaza will be decided, here on the streets, or on the streets in Gaza."
GAZA (00:12:20)
Jamal (voiceover): This is where the Israelis have been coming through Rafah wrecking havoc through the entire area. You could look around here and see these homes, they were totally destroyed."
JAMAL INTERVIEWS A UN EMPLOYEE & RAFAH RESIDENT (00:12:35)
Subtitles:
Rafah resident: The tanks and bulldozers came in on the pretext that there was a tunnel. They began demolishing our homes so of course, people ran away. When they were satisfied...only 3 homes remained out of 96.
Jamal: Where did the most of the people living here come from?
Rafah resident: Some came from Yibna, Agil, Ashdod, Jaffa, & Bir Sheva. They came from all over.
Jamal: They all came here after the devastation in 1948?
Rafah Resident: Yes. The UN first erected tents for them; then built them homes.
Jamal: Then they were made refugees again?
Rafah Resident: Yes, again. For some people this is the fourth time!
Rafah Resident: It's over
Jamal: What's over?
Rafah Resident: This neighborhood is finished
ISRAELIS RIGHT-WING RALLY (00:13:30)
Israeli youth singing, Subtitles:
The whole world is against us,
But this is not terrible, because we will still triumph...
The whole world is against us,
But this is not terrible, because we will still triumph...
...and we just don't give a damn!
Text: Right Wing Israeli rally
Jerusalem
DAVID INTERVIEWS ISRAELI SETTLER AT RALLY (00:14:05)
Subtitles:
David: What would you offer to the Palestinians who would leave Gaza?
Settler: The solution to the Palestinian problem has to be a regional one. Next to Gaza, there are large regions in the Sinai [in Egypt]. And I think the Arab Nation can create a large, regional Marshall Plan to help the Palestinian people who are refugees, especially in Gaza. By going to Jordan and Sinai, they will help themselves and the Arab world, and especially the Jews living in the land of Israel.
DAVID'S THOUGHTS ON THE OCCUPATION (00:15:03)
David (voiceover): For me, the 1967 war was a turning point in my life. I was in the army at the time, and when Israel first conquered Gaza and the West Bank I was relieved because we all believed that we were under siege. But, unlike most Israelis, I soon realized that Israel's victory and occupation were a trap and a curse. Soon after, I joined a minority, left-wing movement opposing the occupation. At today's rally I was surrounded by the people that I had fought against for the last 35 years.
JAMAL AT THE BORDER (00:15:45)
Jamal (voiceover): Gaza, with its 1.3 million Palestinians, is considered to be the most densely populated place on earth. It is a total prison. They cannot cross into Israel for work or to go to the West Bank and the only exit is through Egypt, where people spend days at the border.
Subtitles:
Jamal: How long have you been here?
Woman #1: A month. We spend nights at people's houses
Man #1: We plead with the world, and with the Palestinian Authority to put an end to this farce.
Woman #2: I'm a bride, going to my fiancé in Saudi Arabia. My wedding is on Tuesday, and they're not willing to let us through.
Man #2: I've been sleeping at this crossing for seven days!
Song lyrics:
I was stopped at the border
They wanted my I.D.
I told them it's in Jaffa.
My grandmother hid it away
I was stopped at the border
They wanted my I.D.
I told them it's in Jaffa.
My grandmother hid it away.
JAMAL & DAVID MEET AT THE BORDER (00:17:14)
David: It's a family reunion of our...
Jamal: [laughs] I felt like I went to another country...
David: You did go to another country.
JAMAL & DAVID IN CAR (00:17:45)
David: So, you think I did the right thing? If an Israelis would come with you...
Jamal: Ah, forget it!
David: Forget it?...yeah...
Jamal: They'll lynch you, you know? But they don't have too many trees so I don't know where they'll hang you from. [laughs]
DAVID & JAMAL DISCUSS THE PROBLEM (00:18:14)
Jamal: I'm always eager to come here, because this is my home. And then, when I go back, I take with me a load of guilt, leaving these people behind. When are we going to get to the humane level? People should be incensed, not just Palestinians, we should fight, Arabs and Jews, to preserve that.
David: I don't know, my feeling is that on both sides people are tired, fatigued, and brainwashed, and have become pawns. And they will not rebel in the way that they would march in the streets, at least on the Israeli side, people say "I care about my four corners and my little garden. And outside its so terrible, it's out of my control." And I don't see this revolution happening.
JAMAL IN CAR (00:19:08)
Jamal (voiceover): Clearly I'm the optimist of the two of us. And in fact, I believe that rather then creating two separate states, one Israeli and one Palestinian, we should have a one state solution, where everyone shares in the same land and has equal rights. I know that I am in the minority with this idea. Still, the situation in the West Bank and in Israel is so complicated right now that you have a scrambled egg situation where the Israelis are living amongst the Palestinians and the Palestinians are living amongst the Israelis, and the question, really, is how to separate the two peoples? One of the Israelis intellectuals that dealt with this bi-national situation which we are in, is the former deputy-mayor of Jerusalem, Meron Benvenisti.
DAVID & JAMAL INTERVIEW MR. BENVENISTI (00:20:03)
Meron: We are in a bi-national situation. It is not that one day we proclaimed a bi-national condition...
Jamal: But, I mean, the bi-national condition that you are talking about is the condition of the haves and the have-nots.
Meron: Absolutely
Jamal: We are here, yes, and everything is intermingled, but you've got one side that controls everything, has the right, and the other side...it's almost like a master and slave relationship.
Meron: You force me to say to you: "don't discuss this with me. You didn't come here to say "master and slave" and I say, "Yes, master and slave". I am not in this business of labeling people, I am a social scientist.
Jamal: If I cannot sit across the table from you and be honest, be honest, just be honest, talk to you man to man, and then you be honest with me, what's wrong with that?
Meron: Well I'll tell you, because you...because that is the problem always with Palestinians. Palestinians always want, first of all-
Jamal: See, you're judging me now, you're judging me. The same thing you're accusing me of...
Meron: Because you provoke the worst out of me already! This interview is ruined!
Jamal: One can't sit down and discuss, and disagree or agree...
Meron: Not with me, not with me.
Jamal: Why?
Meron: Because I dictate the rules of the game, not you.
Jamal: You see, here is the master and slave relationship. We've been here for thousands of years, you and me, so we have time to talk about it.
Meron: I don't, you might have time, I don't. You don't dictate to me what time I have and what I don't. You came to interview me in my house, at least be polite! Okay? Thank you very much. [gets up and leaves]
Jamal: I'm sorry...
DAVID & JAMAL IN CAR (00:21:33)
David: Okay, that...uh...went rather well.
Jamal: Well, do you think I blew it? Do you think he will see me again? I think we should really go back and see him. What do you think about that?
David: I think that we have to give it some time, and come back and call him again.
Jamal: But I definitely don't want to go inside his home so we better arrange that somewhere neutral.
JAMAL & DAVID RE-INTERVIEW MERON IN A PARK (00:21:57)
Jamal: There is also an ongoing myth from the Israelis of their own narration. It started, you know, coming here to an empty land, a land with no people and all of these things. And now, is there a...recognition, from the Israelis side, of their mistakes?
Meron: Most believe in the justice of the cause. They've told themselves enough myths to put all of the blame on the others. So we are always right, we are for peace, and the whole attempt is to destroy us. And, if we are faced with annihilation, we can invoke all the memories of the Jewish being persecuted for the last 2000 years. Then the Palestinians become a different kind of gentiles. Now you can blame the Israelis, but you can also blame Palestinians for allowing enough justifications for the creation of that myth. Maybe they were misled, maybe they had no other choice. But this is what you have, you have enough building blocks to create the myth of Israel fighting for its soul.
DAVID & JAMAL INTERVIEW WAFA RAHMAN (00:23:30)
David (voiceover): Were the Palestinians misled during the four years of the Intifada and how are they coping with their fears? We went to Ramallah to visit Wafa Rahman, one of the few women peace activists who fought against the Palestinian perception of themselves as victims without a future.
Wafa: Just five days before the New Years Eve, I had my cousin killed by the Israelis. And we were supposed to have a party here. We lit candles for all those who passed away to give us life. So we lit candles, we cried there, we sang with the people, and then we came back home, we danced, we also cried again. And for us, that was the resistance.
David: The regression in the last few years has been incredible in the relationship between Israelis and Palestinians. Is there any way that you have found a root into the heart of Israelis and tell them "Don't be afraid of me."
Wafa: I don't believe in this fear. We are the people who are afraid of them. They are the occupiers, we are the occupied. So the discourse that was played in the media and played in their minds by their leaders-I don't accept it. They talk about their security but they never thought about my security.
DAVID WALKING IN DOWNTOWN JERUSALEM (00:25:00)
David (voiceover): More then any other time that I went back to Jerusalem, I found people living in fear and in suspicion of everyone who went onto a bus or entered a coffee shop. This insecurity was the result of Jerusalem becoming the world capital of suicide bombings.
JAMAL INTERVIEWS DOCTOR YERUFES (00:25:46)
Jamal (voiceover): One of the victims of suicide bombings is Doctor Shmuel Yerufes, who in May of 2003 was standing behind a Palestinian girl in a super market who blew herself up, causing him multiple injuries. And he lost sight in one of his eyes. I was the first Palestinian that he had agreed to talk to and to discuss with me his feelings, his own fear, and to tell his story.
Dr. Yerufes: I remember her, I remember her standing with her long hair, her blue dress, sweated hair on it. But I couldn't imagine that someone was coming to kill herself and to kill as many people as possible. And as I always said, that kind of person I really don't forgive.
Jamal: Do you really see that big a difference between a general or a commander deciding to drop a 2000 pound bomb at a neighborhood to assassinate one person, knowing that this is residential neighborhood and that the likelihood of killing, maiming civilians is almost guaranteed.
Dr. Yerufes: The answer should be: forbidden. But if I kill, not you...I kill something, and I hide always where there are ten kids around, and then I go and kill you there and I come and put the ten kids in the neighborhood, and then I kill you again and I put ten kids around me. What would you expect me to do?
Jamal: So you justify that?
Dr. Yerufes: The answer is no. Because you know I love...you know what I've done for, even for Palestinian terrorists, knowing that they were terrorists, as a doctor, as a person, I did my best. And now there are two terrorists. And if it was necessary to do again to terrorists, I would do it. She's twenty years old, nothing she's seen in life, and then she's sent to kill. You see it as a part of a struggle?
Jamal: No. I said, for me killing is wrong. I mean, I've heard all kinds of justifications. I can tell you, as a journalist and somebody who knows something about politics, I can tell you what people say: "Suicide bombing," this is what they say, "is the poor man's weapon." They say that Israel can send the Arrow missile or something like this, they have that, and instead of the missile, they use the human being.
Dr. Yerufes: One thing its military time, its courageous, its not when I'm told that I'm going to fuck seventy virgins...you don't agree with what I'm saying, I can see it, so say it Jamal.
Jamal: No, don't worry. Jamal says always what...[laughs]
Dr. Yerufes: Jamal is not happy. [laughs] You know what, I'm going to be a psychiatrist now.
Jamal: For me now the only solution is a one state solution, I mean...
Dr. Yerufes: How one state?
Jamal: One state solution. One person, one vote. Because...
Dr. Yerufes: Where?
Jamal: All over the land.
Dr. Yerufes: Jamal, you don't differentiate between what is needed and what we have. What is needed is love and peace, but that's not for us, we are not so good.
DAVID & JAMAL WALK IN JERUSALEM (00:29:37)
Text: Jerusalem
[David and Jamal try and talk but there is a loud musician on the corner]
Jamal: I think I'm going to come back and crash that guitar, that would bring a moment of comedy to the film.
KALANDIA CHECKPOINT (00:30:17)
Text: Kalandia Checkpoint
West Bank
Jamal (voiceover): Israel has set up hundreds of checkpoints throughout the occupied territories to make the Israelis feel safer. The Palestinians on the other hand, see these checkpoints as a method for the Israelis to humiliate them and control their lives.
DRIVING (00:31:00)
David (voiceover): When we traveled, Jamal and I had to cross many roadblocks, overpasses, and tunnels that could only be accessed by Israelis, mainly the army and the settlers. The clear separation through the by-pass road system underscored the limited freedom of the movement of the Palestinians versus the unlimited access of the Israelis.
JAMAL & DAVID INTERVIEW PALESTINAIN GUNMAN (00:31:29)
David: Do you think that Israelis and Palestinians can live together?
David (voiceover): We thought that it would be important to meet one of the leading gunmen of the Palestinian Intifada. Zacharia Zubedieh, who was a leader of the Al Aqsa brigade in Jenin, agreed to see us in an area that saw some of the worst fighting between Palestinian resistance and the Israeli army. We met him in one of his many hideaways, which made the Israelis on our crew very nervous. As I don't understand Arabic, he talked to us in Hebrew.
Subtitles:
Zachria: We struggled with Israelis for 7 years to get our state-from Oslo until now. But nothing has happened. We fought very hard; we formed a theater group in our home, with Israelis who were in the camp. We worked together with the Israelis children. We spent time together in Givat Haviva [Israel] and here in Jenin. But during the Intifada, we learned that they were all liars. Everyone on the left. During that crucial week of the raid in Jenin, not one person came-not one person called to find out what happened to he Zubedieh family. We'd eaten together from one plate, shared food, slept together. And when Mrs. Zubedieh-my mother-was killed, who had prepared meals for them-not one person called. And no one cared what happened when the camp was destroyed. Before we ask why there was an explosion, we should ask why these people exploded themselves? Although I was angered by many things the Israelis did-the killing of my mother, my brother, my friends...with all that happened, I still have not decided to do it myself. A person is burned from the inside, and his life closes in on him. And he takes responsibility for himself. Still, that person can only see one thing-only that he would destroy himself. He doesn't care what becomes of him. And not Al Aqsa, and not Hamas, and not Islamic Jihad can stop him. All he wants is to explode. And because of this, no one can stop him. No one.
JAMAL & DAVID INTERVIEW A SETTLER (00:34:34)
Jamal (voiceover): People always talk about Palestinian extremists like Zubedieh, but what about Israelis extremists? I've never been inside these settlements that the Israelis have been building all over the territories. So we decided to visit Adi Minz, leader of the settlement movement and somebody that David interviewed at the right-wing rally in Jerusalem.
Adi: In the time since we arrived here, 28 years, the majority of the people in the West Benjamin are now Jewish. And this was our goal. We are so desperate for peace, but the first step is to stop the terror. Only after stopping the terror, of course, the roadblocks, the Mahsooms, we will remove, of course. And then we will have the opportunity to sit together and look for the solution.
Jamal: See they say, I'm just telling you what they say: remove the occupation, stop the occupation...
David:...Stop the settling movement and...part of the thinking in the box is that everyone says, like children, "You be first", "You be first".
Adi: My answer for this is: let's try together. When the Palestinian will stop the terror, I will be the pioneer and the fighter to give the Palestinian the human rights. But you are making a comparison between life and death. Because terror is making death, and what is doing my settlement here? Making life.
Jamal: Is it possible for you to think that, one day, we can have a bi-national state? Because I know you talk about a Jewish state, and this is the core of Zionism. But I am not part of the core of Zionism.
Adi: I have a suggestion for you. And my suggestion is-and this is a great compromise that I am giving up-on the other side of Jordan.
Jamal: But you don't have Jordan.
Adi: Yes, but no. We are giving it up because this is, originally, part of the land of Israel. And we are giving up on this part. And I am telling you that your national aspiration can be accomplished there. But you can live here, and you will get here all of the human rights, but not the national aspiration.
DAVID & JAMAL VISIT HEBRON (00:37:37)
Text: Hebron, West Bank
Jamal: So it took us three hours just to get through the checkpoint letting us into Al Khalil, Hebron. This neighborhood has been taken over by Jewish settlers and they are protected by this checkpoint here, this Israelis checkpoint, 24 hours a day. I don't know man, how people do it on a day to day basis, but I am getting very frustrated.
David (voiceover): Adi Minz had told us that the settlements made life, but was this the whole story? We decided to go to Hebron, a Palestinian city in which the settlements have taken over a whole neighborhood and pushed out the Palestinian majority. There we visited the home of Amer Algabra, a long time resident and one of the few home owners who has resisted a take-over by the settlers.
Subtitles:
Jamal: Do the settlers mark all of the homes like this?
Amer: Yes, of course. You can see-they put their insignias on it. And they cut off the water from the home, too.
Jamal: They cut off the water to this house?
Amer: Not just this house. They cut the water off from all [Arab] homes.
Jamal: Can we get up to the roof from here?
Amer: Of course these houses between us, these are all settlers. In the past Arabs used to live there. But since the 1980's and the Dabuneh Operation, they kicked out the Arabs. And now it is a settlement known as Beit Hadasa.
DAVID, JAMAL, & AMER TRY TO CROSS BORDER (00:39:41)
Subtitles:
David: What's the matter?
Soldier: He's from this area, no?
David: Yes, he lives here. He's a local. What are you asking?
Soldier: Arabs are not allowed to walk through here.
DAVID & JAMAL INTERVIEW AN EX-ISRAELIS SOLDIER (00:40:08)
Graffiti on wall: Translation--"Hebrew Hebron"
Jamal (voiceover): Yehuda, an Israeli soldier who had served in Hebron, defending this very settlement, is one of the founding members of Shovrim Shtika, or Breaking the Silence. [Graffiti on wall: Translation-"Death to Arabs! Revenge!] They are a group of Israelis who have served in the military and have decided to become witnesses to the injustices that take place there. They seek to educate the Israeli public through lectures, art, and photography.
Graffiti on wall: Arabs to the gas chambers!
Patch on an Israelis' bag: Kill ‘m all, let god sort ‘em out
Subtitles:
Yehuda: My first day in Hebron brought me to an army post called "The School." I was in shock because I saw that I had 500 grenades to shoot! But at 2:00, when the order came to shoot, I went to my position and shot. The grenade shooter is not a precise weapon-you shoot, and you correct while you're shooting. Your hand is on the trigger, and you try not to shoot too much; and you just hope that you don't hit people. And everything seems okay. When you are in the service, you can't understand the reality of things. It eludes you. And there's not a specific moment when you suddenly get it. It is in looking back that you start to understand. You look in the mirror, and you are ashamed."
[David talks with a Dutch Reporter in the Breaking the Silence Photo Gallery]
David: "You know, I served in the Israelis army for 25 years, and this is not something I know from my own army. This is why the soldiers are talking, it's so dehumanizing for both sides, you know? It's not just the people who sit here [points at a photograph of Palestinian captives], it's this here [points at a photograph of Israelis soldiers]...
Man: How do you feel about this [points]-"Arabs to the gas chambers!"?
Reporter: This is like, you know, I don't have to add any words...this is like, debasement of anything that Judaism would stand for, this is like rock bottom.
Subtitles:
Yehuda: You enter as a good guy, and come out like a monster. I thought I was a moral person who had red lines that I wouldn't cross. When I went to bed on Wednesday, I realized that I'd crossed my redline on Sunday. On the first day, you search a home and you really clean up. But after 2 days-you're not interested. You don't do it anymore. There's an 18 year old child who for 3 years holds a gun. And he is taught about the "purity of the weapon." And he doesn't understand what any of this is about. But for 3 years, he is in control of peoples' lives. These are the stories we tell. What happens to the child during the 3 years."
Song lyrics:
A land that devours its inhabitants
A land of honey and milk and blue;
Sometimes it robs the inheritance of the poor.
JAMAL & DAVID INTERVIEW A PALESTINIAN YOUTH (00:44:03)
Jamal: How do you feel when you have to go through a checkpoint and someone your age is ordering you around? "Do this & Do that...Don't enter" How do you feel?
Text: Kalandia, West Bank
Youth: I'd go to the checkpoint and they'd turn me back to the refugee camp. When a soldier stops me at the checkpoint at 5am, and detains me until 6pm...Will I have good thoughts about him? Absolutely not! I'll have bad thoughts. I'll think of all the ways to fight him. A young man of 24 blows himself up on a bus. Doesn't he have a father, siblings, or a family worth living for? He does! But the humiliation, the strangulation-that's what pushes him to do this.
INTERVIEW WITH DR. IYAD SARAJ (00:44:50)
Text: Dr. Iyad Saraj
Director, Gaza Mental Health Center
Iyad: The suicide bombers of today are the children of the first Intifada.
Text: Shrine to the martyrs
Kalkilia, West Bank
Iyad: We asked a group of children: "What is the best thing for you when you become 18?" 36% of the boys said: "To die as a martyr." Why? In the first Intifada 45% of them witnessed the beating and the humiliation of their fathers. They immediately switch their identification from the helpless father, who could not protect them, to somebody who is more powerful. A popular game is "Arabs & Jews" which is meant for children: Jews who are powerful, armed with machine guns and little jeeps; Arabs who are armless and victimized. So, when we allow the children to play this game as part of the therapy, many of the children prefer to play the role of the Jew in the game because that is power.
INTERVIEW WITN MANUELA DIVIRI (00:46:12)
Text: Tel Aviv
David (voiceover): Under the deep strains of the current Intifada, very few Israelis went on examining how to make co-existence happen. Manueal Diviri was one of the few who was determined enough to turn her pain into positive action.
Manuela: After my son was killed, I asked to speak with Prime Minister Netanyahu, and he never answered my letters. I wrote to him five times. And then I understood; he doesn't want to speak with me. In the letters I wrote: "I want you to look me in the eye and tell me that my son died for a reason. I want you to look at me." He never had the courage to do it.
Manuela (voiceover): I feel the responsibility for my son's death, and so I feel the responsibility to save someone else's life, to save Palestinian, sick children.
Manuela: I am a kind of pilgrim who goes around and says: "Look, this has to be stopped." When you live here you can forget that you are in the Middle East, you can think that you are in New York, Milan, or Paris. Most of the people who live in Tel Aviv have not seen the wall, and if I had not driven on purpose to see it, I wouldn't have seen it because they do not leave Tel Aviv.
Jamal: have you watched Polanski's movie The Pianist? Does that draw any parallel to you with the ghetto-ization? How, at some point, the Nazis came and just built this wall and locked the Jewish population in there?
Manuela: Let's not look for who is more guilty, who did worse things. I really don't care. I don't even think that all of the people who were killed in the Holocaust were all good people. They were just victims-not good and not bad, victims. And the Palestinians at this moment are victims, they are not better then me, they are just victims. And I don't want them to be victims, but why compare it?
Jamal: I don't compare it. My problem is that, if you've gone as a generation with such a suffering. Why do you not sympathize with the new victim?
Manuela: I do!
Jamal: Not you personally, not you personally. But I am just saying that to me this is very troubling because you meet people all the time who tell you: "Oh, my grandfather died here, my aunt died there." And I'm like: "Are you blind? Do you see that when they build a wall, the Germans also built a wall and created ghettos-
Manuela: Listen, listen Jamal. You know, there is a father who hits his son, the son knows it hurts, but most of the children that have been hit by their parents hit their children. Most of the men that have seen their fathers hitting their wives then hit their wives as well. They have been victims and then they are the ones to make someone else a victim. So, you don't learn from suffering.
DAVID & JAMAL VISIT THE WALL (00:50:05)
Jamal (voiceover): Before ending our trip we knew we had to go to the wall itself in order to understand the latest phase in of this on-going separation. We went to Abu-Dis, a suburb of Jerusalem, where the wall cut though that village and divided it into two halves, separating family members from each other, preventing people from going to their places of work, and children from going to their schools.
[Jamal & David climb over a part of the wall with a Palestinian woman]
Subtitles:
Palestinian woman: Oh God, oh God, May you break Israel and the Arab Kings.
Jamal: Put your foot down.
Woman: It's very difficult...very difficult.
David (voiceover): I think it's amazing how arbitrarily you can slice a neighborhood into two and believe that you can stop people from going to prayer or shopping. And just barbed wire and cement are going to create more hatred
Subtitles:
Woman: My leg! My leg!
Jamal: You're almost there, just put your weight on me.
Woman: Thank you. May God send the Jews a catastrophe. Oh, they're filming me. Thank you.
David (voiceover): The wall that Manuela spoke to us about it part of Israel's largest national project since the beginning of the occupation four decades ago. Israel maintains that it is building this wall to prevent suicide bombing and it is supported by 85% of Israel's population. Everyone in Israel understands that it is bound to become a future border.
Jamal (voiceover): The problem with the wall is that it does not really follow the 1967 border, it cuts deep into Palestinian territory and what would become the future Palestinian state.
INTERVIEW WITH AMIR HATIAN (00:52:12)
Jamal (voiceover): Amir Khatian, a Jerusalem city planner, took us on a tour to explain to us the thinking behind the building of these walls.
Amir: The problem today, between left and right, is that security is mixed with politics. A guy from the neighborhood was sitting right here at the bus stop, waiting for the bus, and he was stabbed to death. And I can assure you that the one who stabbed him to death did not come from this Arab neighborhood, he came from somewhere in the West Bank or in the East Bank. But the fact that he was stabbed by an Arab, for the people who live here, they couldn't care less if the Arab is yellow, green, comes from Syria, Lebanon, or from South Africa. For them an Arab is an Arab.
In September of 2000 the Palestinians started to shoot the Tanzim. They started to shoot from Beit Jala towards Gilo, the Jewish neighborhood. And the authorities had to protect the kindergarten over here. And they put these concrete walls, painted very beautifully by the local neighborhood authorities, the neighborhood counsel. But nevertheless it is quite ugly. But if they shoot from the other side towards the kindergarten, what other measure can you take in order to protect the children?
INTERVIEW WITH FARMER, OMAR JAYOUS (00:53:44)
David (voiceover): Before returning home, we went to visit Omar Jayous, a Palestinian farmer whose life was devastated when half of his land was taken by the Israeli army to accommodate the building of the wall.
Subtitles:
Omar: Would anyone with mercy in his heart or fear of God do something like this? Look what they removed. The first time I planted it downhill, and then I replanted it there. The last time they totally destroyed it and threw it in this pile. They drove over the small plants with bulldozers.
[looking at a Jeep on the road]
Watch-now they'll stop. They also shout: "Oh, poor people of Jayous!" Come and see...Come see how the soldiers enjoy watching people in agony...thinking about how to humiliate them. He enjoys watching our pain. Every ten minutes he calls you over with his finger like this. He asks: "Where are you coming from? Where are you going?" I am going to my land. He doesn't have the right to ask me this, if there is any justice. I should be asking him what he is doing here. Things are upside down. He has become the owner of the land, asking the questions.
Jamal: The majority of his land, and the better part of his land, is beyond that fence. All these walls he built by breaking the stone with his wife and his children, and now all his hard work is gone. He cannot, you know, tend to his trees or cultivate it.
DAVID & JAMAL TALK IN A PARK (00:56:33)
David: I fear we haven't found yet the anchor for any kind of light at the end of the tunnel. Where do we give people any kind of chance to believe that there is something else?"
Jamal: I used to have this teacher who always used to say: "The darkest spot is under the candle." You're looking, you're looking and the solution could be somewhere you totally don't foresee.
David: Yeah, well that's what I tell my wife, the wall of Berlin came down, South Africa turned upside down, and unimagined things can happen. But we have this saying about driving in Israel: don't be right, be clever. Because if you enter into an intersection and you say "I'm right, I drive in!" you get into such a collision. This is like almost the second Nakbah the Palestinians. It's about time, not only to be right all of the time, but to have a strategy, but to be clever. What do you do when you enter this next intersection?
Jamal: Well I still do believe that the solution is in the Israeli side. Always the solution is with the person with the power and the control.
CREDITS ROLL, SMALL PICTURE CONTINUES ON RIGHT (00:58:00)
Subtitles:
Zacharia: I have a little child who is one year old. I want to be in a situation where he can go to school safely, and I can sleep peacefully.
Manuela: The way I have found is this project which is called Saving Children, saving Palestinian children that have every right to live, but since no medical aid is able to arrive to them, they die. We have cured almost 600 children. Israelis and Palestinian doctors have worked on it. It's not reconciliation, it's working together. I don't think we need reconciliation. I think we work and do things, as if there was already peace.
Wafa: I am very optimistic. Things could change. And I always believe that the power is always in the people's soul and mind-they can make the change.
Dr. Yerufes: It depends on us. I think that if we live on separate walls. If then, I educate my children not to hate my neighbors, it can take 20 years, if we are good neighbors one day we will dance together.