Reel Gender: Palestinian and Israeli Cinema 9781501394218, 9781501394249, 9781501394232

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title
Copyright
Contents
Figures
Introduction: Film and the Gender Lens
Part 1 Feminist Perspectives
1 The Religious Feminism of Rama Burshtein’s Romances (Karen E. H. Skinazi)
2 Silence … No More …: Palestinian Cinema of Transgression (Lema M. Salem)
3 Families on the Edge: Interstitial Relations in Recent Palestinian Women’s Cinema (Anna Ball)
Part 2 Approaching Masculinities
4 Disappearances and Remains: Masculinity in the Cinema of Elia Suleiman (Kamran Rastegar)
5 “Queer as Can Be”: On Masculinity in Jumana Manna’s Blessed, Blessed Oblivion (Gil Hochberg)
Part 3 Israeli-Palestinian Intersections
6 Our African Palestine: Intersectional Specters in the House of Zion (Greg Burris)
7 Write Down, I Am a Woman (Shai Ginsburg)
8 Identity (Ex)Changes, Gender, and Family Ties: Cinematic Representations of Israeli Jews and Palestinians (Yael Zerubave
Filmography
Contributors
Index

Citation preview

Reel Gender

ii

Reel Gender Palestinian and Israeli Cinema Edited by Sa’ed Atshan and Katharina Galor

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Inc 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in the United States of America 2023 Volume Editor’s Part of the Work © Sa’ed Atshan and Katharina Galor Each chapter © of Contributors Cover design: Eleanor Rose Cover image © Alamy All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Inc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Atshan, Sa’ed, editor. | Galor, Katharina, editor. Title: Reel gender : Palestinian and Israeli cinema / edited by Sa’ed Atshan and Katharina Galor. Description: New York, NY : Bloomsbury Academic, 2022. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “Both the Palestinian and Israeli film categories-despite obvious overlaps and relatedness and while keeping in mind the inherent asymmetry of power dynamics-are at the forefront of engaging gender and sexuality”– Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2022009685 (print) | LCCN 2022009686 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501394218 (hardback) | ISBN 9781501394256 (paperback) | ISBN 9781501394225 (epub) | ISBN 9781501394232 (pdf) | ISBN 9781501394249 Subjects: LCSH: Feminism and motion pictures–Palestine. | Feminism and motion pictures–Israel. | Gender identity in motion pictures. | Motion pictures–Palestine. | Motion pictures–Israel. Classification: LCC PN1995.9.W6 R4535 2022 (print) | LCC PN1995.9.W6 (ebook) | DDC 791.43/653–dc23/eng/20220621 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022009685 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022009686 ISBN: HB: 978-1-5013-9421-8 ePDF: 978-1-5013-9423-2 eBook: 978-1-5013-9422-5 Typeset by Newgen KnowledgeWorks Pvt. Ltd., Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters. ​ ​

Contents List of Figures  Introduction: Film and the Gender Lens  Katharina Galor and Sa’ed Atshan

vii 1

Part 1  Feminist Perspectives 1

The Religious Feminism of Rama Burshtein’s Romances  Karen E. H. Skinazi

29

2

Silence … No More …: Palestinian Cinema of Transgression  Lema M. Salem

57

3

Families on the Edge: Interstitial Relations in Recent Palestinian Women’s Cinema  Anna Ball

83

Part 2  Approaching Masculinities 4

5

Disappearances and Remains: Masculinity in the Cinema of Elia Suleiman  Kamran Rastegar

109

“Queer as Can Be”: On Masculinity in Jumana Manna’s Blessed, Blessed Oblivion  Gil Hochberg

127

Part 3 Israeli-Palestinian Intersections 6

Our African Palestine: Intersectional Specters in the House of Zion  147 Greg Burris

7

Write Down, I Am a Woman  Shai Ginsburg

173

vi Contents

8

Identity (Ex)Changes, Gender, and Family Ties: Cinematic Representations of Israeli Jews and Palestinians  Yael Zerubavel

Filmography  Notes on Contributors  Index 

197

231 234 235

Figures 0.1 Three Palestinian women share an apartment in Tel Aviv in In Between  2 0.2 The daughter supports the mother and tries to prevent her from prostitution in Or My Treasure  7 0.3 A unit of female Israeli soldiers are desperate to return to civilian life to escape boring army duty in Zero Motivation  8 0.4 The bride and groom try to consummate their marriage as guests wait outside the room in Wedding in Galilee  9 0.5 Three unmarried aristocratic Christian sisters and their orphan niece, Badia, live together in their home in Ramallah in Villa Touma  10 0.6 A mother and daughter in a high-security Israeli prison in 3000 Nights  11 1.1 Michal and her eccentric girl gang in The Wedding Plan  31 1.2 The women’s gazes in Fill the Void  32 1.3 Still without a groom, Michal chooses her wedding dress in The Wedding Plan  36 1.4 Powerful emotion in Fill the Void  38 1.5 The bride cornered (literally): a picture of fear and trembling in Fill the Void  40 1.6 Shira and her mother checking out a potential groom at the grocery store in Fill the Void  46 2.1 Amal at work in Separation  70 2.2 A wide shot of Madleen at sea in Madleen  73 2.3 Madleen with her family after work in Madleen  73 2.4 A scene from Five Cups and a Cup  74 3.1 Shadi and Abu Shadi on the road together, fulfilling the tradition of wajib, in Wajib  87 3.2 The Touma family performing a parodic aristocratic femininity in Villa Touma  93 4.1 ‘Adan orders Israeli police to withdraw from Jerusalem in Chronicle of a Disappearance  110

viii Figures

4.2 Israeli police take away a mannequin instead of ‘Adan in Chronicle of a Disappearance  4.3 ES watches as Israeli police raid his house, ignoring him, in Chronicle of a Disappearance  4.4 Fuad rushes to save an Israeli soldier from a burning truck in The Time That Remains  4.5 ES’s standoff with an Israeli driver in Divine Intervention  4.6 The Israeli driver’s standoff with ES in Divine Intervention  5.1 At the gym in Blessed, Blessed Oblivion  5.2 An intimate shot of men’s hair in Blessed, Blessed Oblivion  5.3 Car ejaculation in Blessed, Blessed Oblivion  5.4 A close-up of the male body in Scorpio  5.5 A man repairing his motorbike in Scorpio  6.1 A Hotline representative being confronted by Mizrahi protesters in Hotline  6.2 Politicians calling for the deportation of “infiltrators” in Hotline  6.3 Director Avi Mograbi alongside the African performers in Between Fences  6.4 An African refugee behind a fence in Between Fences  7.1 Fureidis, in Paradise Lost  7.2 Ebtisam Mara’ana-Menuhin’s father, in Paradise Lost  7.3 Um-Wajih, Abdallah, and his (unnamed) bride, in Badal  7.4 Hitam at the Shari’a Court in Beersheba, in Three Times Divorced  7.5 Ebtisam Mara’ana-Menuhin and her mother in 77 Steps  8.1 Eyad taking care of Yonatan in A Borrowed Identity  8.2 Yassin and Joseph, after having discovered that their identities were exchanged at birth, in The Other Son  8.3 Nimr and Roy start a relationship in Out in the Dark  8.4 Nadine in Self Made, working in a factory  8.5 Nadine and Michal being held at the checkpoint in Self Made 

110 117 120 122 123 130 132 133 135 135 155 155 157 157 174 174 181 183 190 203 209 210 212 214

Introduction: Film and the Gender Lens Katharina Galor and Sa’ed Atshan

In 2016, Palestinian filmmaker Maysaloun Hamoud released her groundbreaking film In Between (Arabic: ‫ ;بَر بَ َحر‬Hebrew: ‫ לא שם‬, ‫)לא פה‬. The movie (Figure 0.1) received wide acclaim, with Vogue Magazine calling it “a Palestinian feminist revenge fantasy.”1 The narrative follows the lives of three Palestinian-Israeli women who share an apartment in Tel Aviv. It was daring, addressing taboo topics such as premarital sex, lesbianism, domestic violence, and patriarchy in a visually bold manner. Female filmmakers in Israel/Palestine, like Hamoud, have been invaluable to the increased representation of critical issues of gender and sexuality in Palestinian and Israeli societies. Yet the proliferation of these films has also raised questions about whether a work such as In Between should be classified as Palestinian, Israeli, or both. Although the director is Palestinian, the producer, Shlomi Elkabetz, is Israeli, and while the protagonists are Palestinians, they are also Israeli citizens based in Israel. The film speaks to the overlapping experiences of Palestinians and Israelis. Alongside its widespread and successful reception, In Between has received significant criticism from within Palestinian society, both from conservatives who disapprove of its representation of gender and sexuality taboos and from progressives who reject the filmmakers’ collaboration with Israeli institutions for funding and support.2 In this volume, our authors account for how and why Palestinian and Israeli film production has arrived at a point such that films like In Between have become a reality. We demonstrate how both film categories—despite obvious overlaps and similarities and while keeping in mind the inherent asymmetry of power dynamics—are at the forefront of engaging gender and sexuality. Despite a relatively short history and modest beginnings with regard to funding, as well as educational and technological opportunities, a rapidly and internationally successful developing subgenre that focuses on gender and sexuality has

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Figure 0.1  Three Palestinian women share an apartment in Tel Aviv in In Between. Screen grab by author.

emerged in this domain in recent years. Although numerous overlapping themes and inquiries within Palestinian and Israeli film explore and portray genderrelated questions, scholars have largely continued to focus on either Palestinian or Israeli repertoires separately. This book, co-edited by a Palestinian scholar and an Israeli scholar, provides an opportunity to bring together the work of researchers who address these social realities and their filmic representations. At the same time, we remain mindful that comparisons and similarities need to be anchored within structural asymmetries at the levels of production, reception, and general political-social context. Eight chapters by leading scholars in their respective fields construct and deconstruct still and moving images, characters, and stories that together create an entanglement of Palestinian and Israeli fiction and reality. Together, they portray the region’s diverse but unexpectedly intermingled ethnic, religious, and national communities framed or countered by various societal norms, laws, and expectations and defined by geopolitical boundaries, while drawing methodologically from the fields of media and cultural studies, critical and postcolonial theory, feminism, post-feminism, masculinity studies, and queer theory. Thus, we advance the case for the exploration of Israeli-Palestinian society and their politics through the lens of film. We also engage gender and sexuality portrayals, norms, and conventions in an intersectional fashion. This volume, therefore, brings academics from separate but overlapping and interrelated fields into dialogue. Highlighting the difference in film categories (Israeli vs.

Introduction

3

Palestinian), we establish the fact that their histories and societies, and thus cinematic representations, are interlinked. We emphasize the political asymmetry between the Israeli state and the stateless and occupied positioning of Palestinian society and its impact on cinematic representations and interpretations. We also argue that both film categories have been at the forefront of cinematic explorations of gender and sexuality and are thus ahead of numerous Western film traditions. The theoretical heart of this book’s primary intervention is related to the question of normalization. Normalization is a central concern emanating from Palestinian civil society about initiatives in which Israelis and Palestinians come together without addressing the reality of oppression, thereby obfuscating that oppression and even normalizing it. We believe that Palestinian film and Israeli film are inherently intertwined and that it is possible—in fact, essential—to study feminist and queer films from Israel and Palestine in conversation with one another without normalizing occupation or overlooking power disparities. Our analysis of gender reveals how attention to power and inequality is a fundamental part of gender theory and approaches. We connect this to the need for film studies—and cultural studies more broadly—to do the same. Cultural production is mired in dynamics of power and inequality, such as when considering disparities in resources and larger contexts of oppression. We see this clearly when juxtaposing how gender is addressed in Palestinian and Israeli films. At the same time, Palestinian Israelis (Arab citizens of Israel), as both the makers and subjects of films, are at the nexus of Palestinian and Israeli cultural production. Film becomes a central platform to engage identity struggles and the politics of nationalism and social marginalization for Israelis and Palestinians alike. Furthermore, the disproportionately high number of Palestinian and Israeli women filmmakers has contributed to a robust representation of gender, sexuality, and power in the Israel/Palestine cultural sphere. Reel Gender: Palestinian and Israeli Cinema engages voices, texts, still and moving images, opinions, debates, discourses of practitioners and scholars, and agreements as well as disagreements, specifically as these pertain to the fields of Palestinian and Israeli film and their gender configurations and explorations. Palestinian cinema and Israeli cinema have a relatively short history— for different reasons—with modest beginnings and increasing international exposure.3 In recent decades, a rapidly developing and internationally successful subgenre that focuses explicitly or implicitly on gender and sexuality has emerged in both film categories. And this interest in gendered topics and perspectives

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Reel Gender

has, of course, shaped the debates surrounding film: in the media, in public discourse, and among scholars. These debates, and the discourse on gender— which draws from interdisciplinary fields—affect the way film and its associated industries are developing. In other words, Israeli and Palestinian cinema impact the debates, and the debates impact the direction of cinema. And this is true for all categories of film, including fiction, documentary, shorts, docu-fiction, docu-drama, video art, and animation. Even more important than how film and debates inform each other, however, is the issue of cinema’s agency in the world and the question of how film can shape society, movements, and indeed history. The power of film cannot be underestimated. In the context of Israel/Palestine, perhaps the most evident manifestations of film’s agency are the significant national funding sources that the Israeli government has made available—a noteworthy trend, particularly if we think of the early years of Israeli cinema.4 This has led to recent public statements by Israeli politicians regarding films. For instance, former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and culture minister Miri Regev have pushed for Israeli legislation and censorship more generally with regard to film content.5 Bringing Palestinian and Israeli film into conversation is a complicated task. Gathering a group of scholars to engage Palestinian and Israeli film in one volume—exploring parallels, differences, overlaps, trends, novelties, changes, challenges, achievements—is even more complex, specifically in the context of the drastic decline of engagement between the parties, a situation that has increasingly impacted the worlds of culture and academia.6 Yet, these two categories share a common history and, indeed, a common origin. French movie pioneers the Lumière brothers, Auguste Marie Louis Nicolas, and Louis Jean, provide us with the first film footage of Palestine from 1896.7 And although we can trace the beginnings of the first woman to direct a film to that same year—that is, Alice Guy-Blaché, one of the very first artists to make a narrative fiction film—it would take decades, and perhaps, some would argue, up to the present in some contexts, before women stopped standing in the shadow of male film directors.8 Though we can certainly use a gender lens to explore, reexamine, and deconstruct the perspective, narrative, framing, focus, projection, and gaze for these early creations, it was not until the 1970s that feminist film theory, and gender inquiries more generally, would bring those new angles of observation and analysis to the fore. Although some of the tools and approaches developed in gender and sexuality studies, in particular in the context of third- and fourth-wave feminist discourses, are helpful when exploring Palestinian and Israeli film, the limitations and, indeed, problems

Introduction

5

that arise when mapping Western feminist film theories onto discussions of Palestinian and Israeli societies—with all the internal complexities and varieties—are substantial. We will certainly address some of the difficulties of using various categories of East-West, or colonial and postcolonial debates, as we examine both the stereotypical and also less conventional constructions of individual and collective identity portrayals. Despite common roots, such as the first film of Palestine, by the Lumière brothers, and a shared history, Israeli cinema and Palestinian cinema have their own unique trajectories. Social, religious, and political realities have shaped different memory narratives and identity constructions, producing distinct audiovisual portrayals and experiences. Not surprisingly, the great majority of scholars choose to specialize in either one or the other category of film and rarely venture into engaging the two.9

Gendering Israeli Film The beginnings of Israeli film followed the early waves of Zionist visions and ideologies. Only a few scenes of ‫( יהודה המשוחררת‬Yehuda Ha-Meshuchreret; Judea Liberated), Ya’acov Ben-Dov’s first motion picture from 1918, have survived, and they were incorporated into other films made by him. Ben-Dov was born in Ukraine, trained as a photographer, and then, soon after arriving in Palestine in 1907, started to make films. A pioneer of Jewish cinematography, he is often referred to as the father of Hebrew film.10 Gendered scholarly explorations usually begin with a critical analysis of representations of the so-called New Jew, informed by Christian-European ideals of manhood and the more general Eurocentric orientation of early Zionism.”11 A good example can be seen in 1955’s ‫ אינה עונה‬24 ‫( גבעה‬Giv’a EssrimVe-Arbah Eina Ona; Hill 24 Doesn’t Answer), one of the early feature films made in Israel; produced by Thorold Dickinson, it includes predominantly English dialogue.12 The “hypermasculine” qualities of the Israeli soldier are highlighted through their contrast with the portrayal of Esther, a figure characterized as simply serving as a “helpmate for male heroism.”13 Equally evocative is the contrast with the Diasporic Jew, a Holocaust survivor, also a common juxtaposition we find in many early cinematic presentations.14 Virtually all categories of Israeli film have undergone gender analyses: the so-called group movies and Bourekas films and comedies, exemplified by Menahem Golan’s

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1973 musical comedy ‫( קזבלן‬Casablan), which explores the popular theme of a love story between a Mizrahi Jew from Morocco who falls in love with an Ashkenazi Jew from Europe.15 Another category is the so-called New Sensibility cinema of the 1960s and 1970s, which adopted the avant-garde aesthetics of the French New Wave, Italian neorealism, and American New Hollywood cinema. By questioning the very principles of conventional cinematic representations, Uri Zohar, for instance, in his 1965 ‫( חור בלבנה‬Hor B-Levanah; Hole in the Moon), challenges stereotypical gender representations, such as in the male fantasy of a pioneer who is transformed into a sensual young woman, who is wearing a lace gown that blows in the desert wind or, in another scene, a pioneer man who becomes pregnant.16 By the 1980s, numerous film genres were already beginning to revise mainstream ideologies and challenge the grand narratives and the fluidity of boundaries between national and global, masculine and feminine, real and virtual, a tendency that shattered additional hopes and illusions of better times. As a result of the radical shift that took place in Israeli gay cultural visibility in the 1980s and early 1990s, filmmakers began to explore gay relationships onscreen.17 These queer visions of primarily gay Ashkenazi filmmakers, however, appeared insensitive to ethnic realities, had less interest in bisexual and transgender relationships, and largely excluded lesbian couples.18 This tendency to question established norms of early Zionist and Israeli society continued to shape cinema productions after the failed Oslo Peace Accords of 1993 and throughout the periods of the First and Second Intifadas, the 2006 Lebanon War, and the 2014 Gaza War. In the words of Miri Talmon and Yuval Peleg, Israeli cinema after 1993 was represented “by film noir-like dystopias reflecting Israelis’ broken sense of place and control. The masculine paradigm, which had sustained the Zionist-national discourse, was replaced by a shift to the feminine aspects of mundane experiences within the private sphere and the legitimization of a personal pursuit of happiness and self-realization.”19 However, alongside these more critically aware feature movies, an attachment to stereotypical gendered character explorations persisted in the Israeli film industry. Common cliché representations included binary portrayals of Ashkenazi and Mizrahi men and women, including the common trope of the female Mizrahi prostitute, such as in Keren Yedaya’s 2004 ‫( אור האוצר שלי‬Or Ha-Ozar Sheli; Or My Treasure; Figure 0.2); contrasting representations of Jewish gay men involved with Palestinian gay men, such in Eytan Fox’s 2006 movie ‫( הבועה‬Ha-Buah; The Bubble); Patriarchal forces within Israel’s Orthodox and ultraorthodox communities, specifically exemplified by Haredi cinema, where

Introduction

7

Figure 0.2  The daughter supports the mother and tries to prevent her from prostitution in Or My Treasure. Screen grab by author.

male rabbis define the content of and access to films exclusively made for female audiences, as, for example, in Ra’anan Ziv’s 2007 ‫( לב טהור‬Lev Tahor; Pure Heart); or, finally, the male authorities in the army, where women, as in Talya Lavie’s 2014 comedy ‫( אפס ביחסי אנוש‬Efes Beyahasei Enosh; Zero Motivation; Figure 0.3), remain trapped within the gendered hierarchies of Israeli society.20 These latter, countless other movies, along with virtually all genres of Israeli cinema—whether challenging or highlighting, questioning or endorsing, deconstructing or empowering various established gendered roles—have produced rich and critical debates and scholarship, with an increasing focus on questions of gender. Although much of the published work on Israeli cinema incorporates gender-sensitive questions and analyses, in recent years several scholars have focused their research exclusively on these very specific categories of gender, queer, and sexuality studies.21

Gendering Palestinian Film Concisely summarizing the history of Israeli cinema through a gender lens is clearly a challenge. Providing a succinct chronicle of Palestinian cinema is basically impossible. Though valid and somewhat successful attempts have been made to structure the history of Palestinian film, one should not be led to believe

8

Reel Gender

Figure 0.3  A unit of female Israeli soldiers are desperate to return to civilian life to escape boring army duty in Zero Motivation. Screen grab by author.

that there is a chronologically coherent development. The fragmentation, disruptions, and struggles that Palestinian cinematic productions have faced mirror, in many ways, the reality of the history of the Palestinian existence and national movements. In their co-authored study Palestinian Cinema, Nurith Gertz and George Khleifi divide the history into four distinct phases, beginning with a short silent film in 1935 made by Ibrahim Hassan Sirhan that documented the visit of a Saudi king to Jaffa and Jerusalem.22 Sirhan later founded the first Palestinian film production studio, Studio Palestine. This early period of Palestinian cinema was brought to a halt with the Nakba, and for the next two decades, there was virtually no Palestinian film production, a period some call the “epoch of silence.”23 After the Arab-Israeli War of June 1967, a third, more active period began, often referred to as Palestinian Third Cinema, when more than sixty documentaries were produced—most of which have or were disappeared—as well as one dramatic feature, ‫( عائد إلى حيفا‬A-Idula-Haifa; Return(ing) to Haifa), which came out in 1981 and was directed by Kassem Hawa. A-Idula-Haifa may, in fact, be considered the first Palestinian feature narrative film.24 The renaissance of Palestinian cinema, referred to by various titles— “Fourth Phase,” “Independent Cinema,” “Palestinian Cinema from the Occupied Lands,” “Post-Revolution Cinema,” “Individualistic Cinema,” “Palestinian New Wave”—began in the 1980s, with the pioneering work of Michel Khleifi.25 His

Introduction

9

Figure 0.4  The bride and groom try to consummate their marriage as guests wait outside the room in Wedding in Galilee. Screen grab by author.

films, specifically ‫( الذاكرة الخصبة‬Al-Dhakira Al-Khasiba; Fertile Memory), from 1980, and ‫( عرس الجليل‬Urs Al-Jalil; Wedding in Galilee; Figure 0.4), from 1987, can be considered as marking the starting point for bringing gender to the focus of the cinematic narrative and, soon after, to the center of debates and scholarship engaging Palestinian film.26 Ella Shohat and Robert Stam suggest that the women in Khleifi’s early films foreshadow processes that were to become essentially more apparent in the reality of the First Intifada, when women went out into the streets and played active roles in the uprising, which led toward symbolic liberation and a change in the society’s traditional female roles.27 While numerous other films continued to focus on women—such as, for instance, in Nizar Hassan’s second film, 1996’s ‫( ياسمين‬Jasmine), which also deals with the position of women in Palestinian family and society—the narrative, focus, and gaze started to change as female filmmakers began to take the reins. In this context, it is noteworthy to mention the unusually high proportion of female Palestinian directors, in comparison to European and North American cinema. In the United States, only about 5 percent of directors are women, and in Europe the number is about 12 percent, but in Palestine and Lebanon, the figure is almost 50 percent.28 Among the many noteworthy examples of

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Reel Gender

Figure 0.5  Three unmarried aristocratic Christian sisters and their orphan niece, Badia, live together in their home in Ramallah in Villa Touma. Screen grab by author.

female-directed or written Palestinian feature films are Liana Badr’s 2002 ‫زفاف‬ ‫( رنا‬Zifaf Rana; Rana’s Wedding), Suha Arraf ’s 2014 ‫( فيال توما‬Fila Tuma; Villa Touma: Figure 0.5), May Masri’s 2015 ‫ ليلة‬3000 (Thalat Alaf Layla; 3000 Nights; Figure 0.6), and Maysaloun Hamoud’s 2016 Bar Bahar.29 These films, and much of the recent scholarship on Palestinian cinema, have engaged the cinematic culture and its agency to shape history. This history is based on a collective identity, national unity, resistance, and solidarity in the face of struggles against discrimination, racism, occupation, and, more recently, patriarchy, through the lens of gender.30

The Palestinian-Israeli Film Nexus There is clearly a distinct Palestinian cinema and Israeli cinema. Each has its own particular context, history, genres, and circumstances of production, circulation, presentation, and reception, not to mention narratives, memories, and, of course, unique gender lenses. So why do we want to bring scholars and film practitioners from these different categories into conversation? What are the virtues of intersectional explorations of these different film genres? Some of the reasons are straightforward, if not obvious. There is no Israeli film, and there is no Israeli history, society, culture without the reality of Palestine as a

Introduction

11

Figure 0.6  A mother and daughter in a high-security Israeli prison in 3000 Nights. Screen grab by author.

country, nation, and/or identity; whether “Palestine” or “Palestinians” appear onscreen or in the frame, are incorporated into the narrative, and are the focus of the story line; or, instead, whether Palestinians are marginalized, reduced, ignored, or excluded. It is probably not a coincidence that the thirteenth Tel Aviv International Colloquium on Cinema and Television Studies, in 2020, focused on “Blind Spots of the Cinematic.”31 Palestine is an integral part of Israel as a country—its history, society, identity—and thus Israeli film as a cultural phenomenon. And the same can be said of Palestinian history, nationhood, and film as a reflection and interlocutor of reality. Palestinian cinema and Israeli cinema, despite their distinct qualities, are intertwined, interdependent, overlapping. This fact goes beyond explorations of Israeli-Palestinian politics and oppression, or portrayals of friendships, relationships, sexual encounters, and love stories that bring Palestinians and Israelis together onscreen. It is not only a matter of Palestinian-Israeli co-productions, of mixed film casts and crews, or of the passing of characters, Israelis for Palestinians, Palestinians for Israelis, Ashkenazim for Sephardim, dark-skinned for light-skinned, and other configurations.32 It is the reality of Zionism, the creation of the State of Israel, the Israeli military occupation, policies of segregation, discrimination, the Palestinian Nakba, displacement, destruction, exile, and the Palestinian liberation movement that have linked these histories, national memories, traumas, and narratives and have thus inextricably tied together Palestinian and

12

Reel Gender

Israeli cinema. Engaging Israeli film without engaging Palestinian film, and vice versa, is a way of accepting or succumbing to physical, political, and artificial boundaries. Without devaluing their qualities, nationhood and identities are constructs, after all. In the end, human traits such as love, hate, suffering, pleasure, hope, fear, faith, and, of course, gender and sexual subjectivities unite rather than separate—or, at least, they should in an ideal world. As artists, scholars, filmmakers, and film critics, our goal in this volume is to thus both construct and deconstruct these still and moving images, characters, and stories that together create an entanglement of Palestinian and Israeli fiction and reality. After making the case for integrating gender in Palestinian and Israeli film, we find it imperative to stress the inherent asymmetries. This introduction cannot provide a complete historical survey or political manifesto that lays out the disproportionate power structure of the Israeli state versus Palestinian statelessness or a description of the economic, educational, social, and humanitarian consequences of the occupation. Yet it is important to emphasize the repercussions of the political context on cinema as an aesthetic art form; as a social and cultural medium; as a means to reflect individual, collective, or national identities; as an educational forum; as a tool to shape public opinion and consciousness; as a commercial product and economic stimulator; and as an instrument to enhance social and political change, resistance, or revolution. Israel currently has twenty-seven programs, departments, or centers in film studies at various institutions throughout the country, including twelve film and television schools; it has a national yearly budget of 80 million shekels (or about 22 million US dollars) as well as several important non-governmental sources of funding dedicated to support film, including the Israel Film Fund, the New Fund for Cinema and Television, the Makor Foundation, the Gesher Fund, and the Yehoshua Rabinovich Foundation for the Arts—all of which are overseen by the Israel Film Council, which advises the ministry of culture.33 There is a minister of culture, Yehiel Tropper, who dedicates himself to overseeing content, production, and distribution. There is also a national Cinema Law, which was originally passed by the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, in 2001 and which is continuously updated to adjust to the shifting political landscape of the Israeli government.34 In stark contrast to the situation of Israeli cinema, there is only one modest program of film studies in the West Bank; there is no funding available from a Palestinian ministry of culture, for obvious reasons. Palestinians who are citizens of Israel and who want to take advantage of Israeli funding sources such as the

Introduction

13

Israel Film Fund, for instance, have to obey restrictive rules that include the recent directive that films may not be presented as Palestinian at various festivals or media outlets.35 Palestinians from the territories depend on international funding sources and collaborations, opportunities that are increasingly difficult to access. Finally, one of the most vital missing components are actual cinemas and movie theaters. Once popular during the 1960s through 1980s, most were shut down by Israeli authorities during the First Intifada.36 Israel/Palestine is a tiny piece of land. Palestinian cinema and Israeli cinema have relatively short histories and work overall under the cloud of trauma, tension, and violence. Yet, both categories have produced extraordinary results, in terms of both quantity and quality; the impressively high numbers of international awards on both sides are impressive, and with our gaze focused on gender, Israeli and Palestinian films have been extraordinarily productive, progressive, and at the forefront of “breaking the glass ceiling.” Perhaps we should coin here a new term for the occasion of the publication of this volume and a collection of scholarly contributions: gender in Palestinian and Israeli film is “breaking through the lens”!37 This breaking through the lens was evident at the conference we hosted on gender in Palestinian and Israeli films at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, in February 2020. The event was co-organized by Najat Abdulhaq, a Palestinian German of the Arab Film Festival Berlin, and Katharina Galor, a German Israeli from Brown University. All of the contributors in this volume, including Sa’ed Atshan, a Palestinian American from Emory University, presented drafts of their papers at the conference. The rich exchanges we had with one another sharpened analyses and led to many new insights. A highlight of the conference was the screening of two films and the productive discussions that ensued about each of them. We first screened Michael Mayer’s 2012 film ‫( עלטה‬Alatah; Out in the Dark), which explores the love affair between two young men, one Israeli and the other Palestinian. Mayer was physically present with us to discuss his positionality as an Israeli filmmaker, to share his perspectives on the film, and to field questions from the audience. The following day, we screened Maha Haj’s 2016 film ‫( أُمور شخصيَّة‬Omor Shakhsiya; Personal Affairs), which explores the intimate relations of a Palestinian family that lives scattered across Israel, the West Bank, and Europe. Haj, who was ultimately unable to join the conference, was represented by her colleague, Rami Younis, a Palestinian film director and author who shared facts and insights about the film production and fielded questions from the audience. The

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presence of both film practitioners and researchers provided the opportunity to engage emerging scholarship and practices from various professional and methodological angles. The discussions focused on the politics of nomenclature in the context of determining whether a film can be considered Israeli or Palestinian or both, on how gender and sexuality have become salient themes, on the intersectionality of identity portrayals, and on various debates surrounding normalization. Out in the Dark was contextualized within a nascent queer Palestinian film genre and a long-established Israeli queer film genre.38 The Israeli-Palestinian love affair repeats a salient theme in Israeli cinema that emerged in the early 1980s but has achieved more international acclaim than any other film of this category.39 Personal Affairs, instead, placed the position of Palestinian women, and how they negotiate family dynamics and political realities, at the center of the plot. The film revealed the agency of women from three different generations who oscillate back and forth between obeying and defying traditional norms. Beyond the questions of gender, participants engaged the controversies surrounding the production’s acceptance of financial support from the Israel Film Fund and explored how this has impacted the reception of Haj’s film within Israeli, Palestinian, and international circles as well as questions related to normalization.40 As a collective, the eight chapters of this book provide a mosaic of how gender shapes Palestinian and Israeli film production, consumption, and discussion, and also becomes a living testament to how Palestinian, Israeli, and international scholars can achieve this without falling into the trap of normalization. In Part 1 (“Feminist Perspectives”), Karen Skinazi’s chapter foregrounds overlapping regimes of power and the intersections between the conservative societies that Israeli women inhabit. This comparison does not compromise the recognition of social differences and power disparities between Israelis and Palestinians as well. Lema Malek Salem’s contribution highlights the presence of Palestinian and Palestinian-Israeli women filmmakers at the nexus of Palestinian and Israeli societies. Furthermore, the commitment of female Palestinian filmmakers to grappling with power inequalities is fundamental to their cultural production, making space for cinematic representations of stigmatized individuals, including queer Palestinians. Anna Ball’s chapter then foregrounds films that are based in Nazareth, a Palestinian city in Israel. The representation of gender and sexuality here cannot be divorced from the larger context of Israeli-Palestinian relations, the realities of military occupation in the West Bank, and the oppression of

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15

Palestinians in Israel. We contextualize these three papers under the umbrella of “The Question of Feminism” instead of as “feminist films.” This is to be cognizant of the contested nature of what constitutes a feminist film.41 All of these chapters highlight the logic that undergirds feminist approaches to film production and representations of gender. In Part 2 (“Approaching Masculinities”), Kamran Rastegar focuses on the work of Elia Suleiman, a Palestinian citizen of Israel. Suleiman’s films are mainly set in Israel and capture the Palestinian experience there. Rastegar analyzes gender and masculinity in these films while also demonstrating how contestations over power between Israelis and Palestinians are omnipresent in Palestinian society and cultural production more broadly. Gil Hochberg’s chapter then connects queerness and masculinity in Palestinian film as necessarily linked to the power struggles between Palestinian and Israeli nationalism. She shows how queer films highlight the tension between individual characters and stories, on one hand, and collective identities, on the other. They also destabilize the normalization of inequities in Israeli and Palestinian societies. These two chapters can be placed in conversation with each other as they relate to how masculinity is approached by filmmakers in Israel and Palestine.42 Here, masculinity cannot be divorced from the larger political context in which it manifests.43 The characters onscreen, through their particular forms of masculinity, both reify and challenge hegemonic forms of local masculinity as they simultaneously navigate hegemonic power from the Israeli state. Finally, in Part Three (“Israeli-Palestinian Intersections”), Greg Burris expands the analysis of power asymmetries between Israelis and Palestinians to Israel’s other “others,” namely Black subjects. By introducing race as an analytical category within the study of gender and Israeli film, this exploration is a contribution toward the representation of consciousness on oppression and liberation in cultural production. Shai Ginsburg’s chapter explores how the context of gender and film in Israel/Palestine reveals the conjoining of Israeli and Palestinian subject positions. Furthermore, inequalities at the levels of gender, nationality, and religion are intimately linked. Yael Zerubavel concludes with attention to the cultural exchange between Israelis and Palestinians that is so fundamental to the analysis of gender and family in these cinematic explorations. Zerubavel demonstrates how the recognition of power asymmetries can allow us to transcend structural differences in the service of a larger emancipatory human project. These three chapters reinforce one of our central themes: the inextricably linked nature of Palestinian and Israeli films and Palestinian and

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Israeli subject positions more broadly. Although these connections can often be subconscious and yet omnipresent, all three authors consciously and explicitly address Israeli-Palestinian intersections. In their own volume on Israeli cinema, published in 2011, editors Miri Talmon and Yaron Peleg assert, “The central role of gender formations in the cinematic negotiations of collective Israeli identity and the national history cannot be underestimated.”44 Certainly, the same can be said for Palestinian cinema. Our book recognizes the salience of gender in Palestinian and Israeli films; while understanding these cinemas in conversation with each other, we are aware of the sociopolitical, cultural, and existential asymmetries. One cannot contextualize gender and film without considerations of power inequalities, just as one cannot contextualize the intersections of Palestinian and Israeli cultural production without considerations of power asymmetries.

Notes 1 Julia Felsenthal, “Maysaloun Hamoud’s In Between Is a Palestinian Feminist Revenge Fantasy,” Vogue Magazine, January 5, 2018. 2 See, for instance, Emma Jones, “The Female Director Who Was Issued a Fatwa for Her First Film,” BBC News, September 3, 2017; and Mark Kermode, “In Between Review—the Struggle of Free Spirits Trying to Fly,” Guardian, September 24, 2017. 3 The first comprehensive survey of the history of the Zionist pre-state and early Israeli film was compiled by Ella Shohat. See Ella Shohat, Israeli Cinema: East/ West and the Politics of Representation (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989). More recent developments are covered in the extensive postscript of a new edition. See Shohat, Israeli Cinema: East/West and the Politics of Representation (London: I. B. Tauris, 2010), 249–325. A concise but useful summary appears in the co-edited volume of Miri Talmon and Yaron Peleg. See Miri Talmon and Yaron Peleg, eds., Israeli Cinema: Identities in Motion (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011), ix–xvii; and, more recently, Dan Chyutin and Yael Mazor, “Israeli Cinema Studies: Mapping Out a Field,” Shofar 38, no. 1 (2020): 167–217. A general and still largely relevant overview was written jointly by Nurith Gertz and George Khleifi. See Nurith Gertz and George Khleifi, Palestinian Cinema: Landscape, Trauma, and Memory (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008). An up-to-date summary is included in Greg Burris’s recent work. See Gregory Burris, The Palestinian Idea: Film, Media, and the Radical Imagination (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2019), 33–40. For more recent trends, specifically the period that began

Introduction

4 5

6

7

8

17

during the Al-Aqsa Intifada and leading up to the 2014 Gaza War, Terri Ginsberg’s work provides a good overview. See Terri Ginsberg, Visualizing the Palestinian Struggle: Towards a Critical Analytic of Palestine Solidarity Film, Global Cinema (Heidelberg: Springer Nature, 2016). On the modest start of Israeli productions and the increasingly ambitious films and budgets after 1967, see Shohat, Israeli Cinema, 53–104, 1989. Noteworthy examples include Netanyahu’s call to boycott the Israeli producers of Our Boys, a co-production of Israel’s Channel 12 and HBO. See Itay Stern, “HBO’s ‘Our Boys’ Is ‘Anti-Semitic,’ Netanyahu Says, Calls to Boycott Israeli Producers,” Haaretz, August 31, 2019. See also Nirit Anderman, “Culture Minister Slams Award-Winning Documentary on Israeli Lawyer Who Defends Palestinians,” Haaretz, June 4, 2019. On how the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement has impacted the dialogue with Israeli scholars who are affiliated with Israeli cultural and academic institutions who support the occupation, see, for instance, “Academic Boycott of Israel: The American Studies Association Endorsement and Backlash,” Journal of Palestine Studies 43, no. 3 (2014): 56–71. On their contribution to the invention of film, see Jacques Aumont and Ben Brewster, “Lumière Revisited,” Film History 8, no. 4 (1996): 416–30. On their role in the category of expedition filmmaking, see Katherine Groo, “The Maison and Its Minor: Lumière(s), Film History, and the Early Archive,” Cinema Journal 52, no. 4 (2013): 25–48. More specifically on their filming in Palestine, see Haim Bresheeth, “Telling the Stories of Heim and Heimat, Home and Exile: Recent Palestinian Films and the Iconic Parable of the Invisible Palestine,” New Cinemas Journal of Contemporary Film (2002): 25. For a detailed study on her contribution to early film, see Alison McMahan, Alice Guy Blaché: Lost Visionary of the Cinema (New York: Continuum, 2002). On whether she can be considered a feminist, see Kimberly Tomadjoglou, “Alice Guy’s Great Cinematic Adventure,” in Doing Women’s Film History: Reframing Cinemas, Past and Future, ed. Julia Knight and Christine Gledhill (Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2015), 95–109. For a history of women in film, see Gwendolyn A. Foster, Women Film Directors: An International Bio-Critical Dictionary (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995). On the perspectives of contemporary female feature and documentary directors, see Melissa Silverstein, In Her Voice: Women Directors Talk Directing (New York: Open Road Integrated Media, 2015). On female directors in Israeli film, see Tom Grater, “Women Directors on the Rise in Israel,” Screen Daily, July 14, 2017; and Amy Kronish, “Filmmakers, Israeli,” Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia 27 (2009), Jewish Women’s Archive. https://jwa.org/encyc​lope​dia/arti​cle/fil​mmak​ers-isra​eli.

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9 Among the few scholars who have engaged Israeli and Palestinian film are Carol Bardenstein, Nurith Gertz, and Dorit Naaman. See, for instance, Bardenstein, “Cross/Cast: Passing in Israeli and Palestinian Cinema,” in Palestine, Israel, and the Politics of Popular Culture, ed. Rebecca L. Stein and Ted Swedenburg (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005), 99–125; Gertz, “Space and Gender in the New Israeli and Palestinian Cinema,” Prooftexts 22, nos. 1–22, Special Issue: The Cinema of Jewish Experience (2002): 157–85; Naaman, “Elusive Frontiers: Borders in Israeli and Palestinian Cinemas,” Third Text 20, nos. 3/4 (2006) 511–21. 10 See, for instance, Menahem Levin, “Ya’acov Ben-Dov: Pioneer of the Jewish Film Industry in Palestine, 1912–1924,” Cathedra: For the History of Eretz Israel and Its Yishuv (1985): 127–36 [In Hebrew]; or Shohat, Israeli Cinema, 16, 20–1, 2010. 11 On how the representation of the New Jew is influenced by Christian-European ideals of manhood, see Daniel Boyarin, Unheroic Conduct (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 302. On the New Jew in Jewish film, see Nathan Abrams, The New Jew in Film: Exploring Jewishness and Judaism in Contemporary Cinema (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2012). On how early film was influenced by a Eurocentric Zionism, see Raz Yosef, Beyond Flesh: Queer Masculinities and Nationalism in Israeli Cinema (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004), 31–9. 12 For a review of the film, see L. Quart, “Hill 24 Doesn’t Answer by Thorold Dickinson,” Cinéaste 16, no. 3 (1988): 55, 57. For a comparative analysis of the representation of war scenes within Israeli cinema, see Ariel Feldestein, “Filming War: The 1948 War in ‘Hill 24 Doesn’t Answer’ and ‘Kedma,’ ” Zmanim: A Historical Quarterly 113 (2011): 58–67. [In Hebrew] 13 On hypermasculinity, see Yosef, Beyond Flesh, 33, 87, 91, 137. On the contrast between the soldier and Esther, see Rachel Harris, Warriors, Witches, Whores: Women in Israeli Cinema (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2017), 2. 14 On the representation of the typical Diasporic Jew and Holocaust survivors in contrast to the New Jew in early Israeli film, see, for instance, Ilan Avisar, “The Holocaust in Israeli Cinema as a Conflict between Survival and Morality,” in Israeli Cinema, ed. Talmon and Peleg, 151–8; and L. Steir-Livny, “Near and Far: The Representation of Holocaust Survivors in Israeli Feature Films,” in Israeli Cinema, ed. Talmon and Peleg, 168–73. 15 On Bourekas films, see Dorit Naaman, “Orientalism as Alterity in Israeli Cinema,” Cinema Journal 40, no. 4 (2001): 37–41; and Shohat, Israeli Cinema, 113–26, 2010. Specifically on the movie Casablan, see aedem., 5, 116–17, 119–20, 120–3; and Yosef, Beyond Flesh, 91, 98–103. See Yaron Shemer, “Trajectories of Mizrachi Cinema,” in Israeli Cinema. Identities in Motion, ed. M. Talmon and Y. Peleg (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011), 121.

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16 See Judd Ne’eman, “The Death Mask of the Moderns: A Genealogy of ‘New Sensibility’ Cinema in Israel,” Israel Studies 1 (1999): 113–14. 17 On how Israeli queer culture began to change in the public sphere, see Lee Walzer, Between Sodom and Eden: A Gay Journey through Today’s Changing Israel (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000). See also Yosef, Beyond Flesh, 142–3. 18 On the Israeli gay and lesbian consciousness and its impact on film, see Yosef, Beyond Flesh, 142–71. 19 Talmon and Peleg, Israeli Cinema, xvi–xvii; and Gilad Padva, “Discursive Identities in the (R)evolution of the New Israeli Queer Cinema,” in Israeli Cinema, ed. Talmon and Peleg (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011), 313–25. 20 On the portrayal of Mizrahi prostitutes in Israeli film, see Harris, Warriors, Witches, Whores, 158–71. On the representation of Ashkenazi and Mizrahi characters more generally, see Yaron Peleg, “From Black to White: Changing Images of Mizrahim in Israeli Cinema,” Israel Studies 13, no. 2 (2008): 122–45. On the movie The Bubble, see C. Jankovic, “ ‘You Can’t Film Here’: Queer Political Fantasy and Thin Critique of Israeli Occupation in ‘The Bubble,’ ” Revue Canadienne d’Études cinématographiques / Canadian Journal of Film Studies 22, no. 2 (2013): 97–119. Alongside numerous critical portrayals of Israel’s Orthodox and ultraorthodox patriarchal society, many films reinforce the conventional gender norms. On critical portrayals, see, among others, D. Chyutin, “The Spiritual Style of My Father, My Lord,” in Israeli Cinema, ed. Talmon and Peleg, 201–12; Nava Dushi, “Seeking the Local, Engaging the Global: Women and Religious Oppression in a Minor Film,” in Israeli Cinema, ed. Talmon and Peleg, 213–24. For a description of gendered hierarchies in Haredi society, see Marlyn Vinig, Haredi Cinema (Tel Aviv: Resling, 2011); and Karen Skinazi, Women of Valor: Orthodox Jewish Troll Fighters, Crime Writers, and Rock Stars in Contemporary Literature and Culture (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2018). On interracial sex between Israeli and Palestinian men, see Yosef, Beyond Flesh, 118–41. On representations of female soldiers in Israeli film, see Harris, Warriors, Witches, Whores, 65–184. 21 Nurith Gertz and Orly Lubin are considered pioneers among scholars who have explored gender in Israeli cinema. See, for instance, Gertz, “Space and Gender,” and Lubin, “The Woman as Other in Israeli Cinema,” in Israeli Women’s Studies: A Reader, ed. Esther Fuchs (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005), 301–16. Examples of gender-sensitive scholarship are Nir Cohen’s, Raz Yosef ’s, and Rachel Harris’s work. See Cohen, Soldiers, Rebels, and Drifters: Gay Representation in Israeli Cinema (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2011); Yosef, Beyond Flesh; and Harris, Warriors, Witches, Whores.

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22 On the twenty-minute movie, see Gertz and Khleifi, Palestinian Cinema, 11. For a summary of the four distinct phases of Palestinian cinema, see Gertz and Khleifi, 11–37. More recently, this distinction has been absorbed in Greg Burris’s study. See Burris, The Palestinian Idea, 34–5. 23 Gertz and Khleifi, Palestinian Cinema, 11. 24 On Return(ing) to Haifa, see Kassem Hawa, 68–70, 126–8. On the Palestinian Film Archive that went missing during the Israeli siege of Beirut in 1982, see Hend Alawadhi, “On What Was, and What Remains: Palestinian Cinema and the Film Archive,” Journal of Media, Communication and Film 1, no. 1 (2013): 17–26. On Palestinian Third Cinema, see Nadia Yaqub, Palestinian Cinema in the Days of Revolution (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2018), 48–118. 25 On the different names referring to the fourth wave of Palestinian cinema, see Gertz and Khleifi, Palestinian Cinema, 33; Adnan Mdanat, History of the Speaking Arab Film (Cairo: United Arab Artists/Cairo Film Festival, 1993) [In Arabic]; V. Shafik, “Cinema in Palestine,” in Middle Eastern and North African Film, ed. Oliver Leaman (New York: Routledge, 2001), 509–32. 26 On gender-sensitive discussions of Khleifi’s films, specifically Fertile Memory, see Gertz and Khleifi, Palestinian Cinema, 32, 39–40, 76–7, 86–7, 147. On the latter’s analysis of Wedding in Galilee, see Gertz and Khleifi, 88–99, 123, 147–9, 162. 27 Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media (London: Routledge, 1994), 277. 28 Kaleem Aftab, “Why a Large Proportion of the Arab World’s Best Filmmakers Are Women,” Arts & Culture, December 3, 2018. 29 On Liana Badr’s films, specifically Rana’s Wedding, see Nadia Yaqub, “The Palestinian Cinematic Wedding,” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 3, no. 2 (2007): 56–85. On Suha Arraf and her film Villa Touma, see John Anderson, “The Hand that Feeds Bites Back,” New York Times, October 16, 2014. On May Masri and her movie 3000 Nights, see Selma Dabbagh, “3000 Nights,” Electronic Intifada, December 30, 2015. On the encounter between a Palestinian subject and a colonial modern city, see Amal Eqeiq’s analysis of Maysaloun Hamoud’s film In Between. See Amal Eqeiq, “From Haifa to Ramallah (and Back): New/Old Palestinian Literary Topography,” Journal of Palestine Studies 48, no. 3 (2019): 29. 30 Noteworthy publications that focus partially or exclusively on gender include the work of Nadia Awad, Anna Ball, Paula Fernández Franco, Nurith Gertz, Terri Ginsberg, Colleen Jankovic, Lina Khatib, and Kamran Rastegar. See specifically Anna Ball, Palestinian Literature and Film in Postcolonial Feminist Perspective (New York: Routledge, 2012); Fernández Franco, “Shashat and Cinema under Occupation. Palestinian Women in Struggle,” Africana Studia 26, no. 1 (2016): 35– 44; Gertz and Khleifi, Palestinian Cinema; Ginsberg, Visualizing the Palestinian

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32 33

34

35 36

37

38

39 40

21

Struggle; Colleen Jankovic, “Houses Without Foundations: On Belonging in Palestinian Women’s Cinema,” E-cadernos ces 22 (2014); Colleen Jankovic and Nadia Awad, “Queer/Palestinian Cinema: A Critical Conversation on Palestinian Queer and Women’s Filmmaker,” Camera Obscura 27, no. 2 (2012): 135–43; Lina Khatib, Filming the Modern Middle East: Politics in the Cinemas of Hollywood and the Arab World (London: I. B. Tauris, 2006); Kamran Rastegar, Surviving Images: Cinema, War, and Cultural Memory in the Middle East (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). See the homepage of the conference, organized by the Steve Tisch School of Film and Television at Tel Aviv University: www.tau.ac.il/~cinec​onf/. On the marginalized role of Arabs and their orientalizing portrayal in early Israeli film, see Shohat, Israeli Cinema, 13–51, 2010. On the passing of characters, see, for instance, Yosef, Beyond Flesh, 119, 133. On various data related to the Israeli film and television industry in 2017, see www. yu.edu/sites/defa​ult/files/inl​ine-files/Facts%20and%20Figures%202​017.pdf. On the Israel Film Council, see www.gov.il/he/Depa​rtme​nts/Units/film_​coun​cil. On the Israel Film Fund, see www.filmf​und.org.il/. On the Israeli Cinema Law, see Hannah Brown, “Knesset Marks Decade Since Passage of Cinema Law,” Jerusalem Post, November 16, 2011; and, more recently, Or Kashti and Itay Stern, “Israel Increases Oversight of Film Industry, Prompting Cries of McCarthyism, Blacklisting,” Haaretz, March 28, 2017; Terrance J. Mintner, “Cinema Politics: Israel Passes Controversial ‘Film Law,’ ” The Medialine, October 17, 2018; and Terri Ginsberg, Visualizing the Palestinian Struggle, 86–8. This regulation was instituted following the screening of Suha Arraf ’s film Villa Touma at the Venice Film Festival in 2014. See Anderson, “The Hand that Feeds.” On the limited financial funding sources for Palestinian film, see Gertz and Khleifi, Palestinian Cinema, 33–4. On the limited access to Palestinian films and the closing of cinemas, seeGertz and Khleifi, 34–7. In 2017, an initiative called “Breaking through the Lens” was launched at the Cannes Film Festival to promote emerging female directors. On the initiative, see Elsa Keslassy, “Breaking through the Lens Unveils Shortlist for Pitching Platform at Cannes,” Variety, February 25, 2020. The first film was Dan Wolman’s 1980 film Machboim (Hide and Seek). Raz Yosef defines these queer relations as “biracial” or “interracial.” See Yosef, Beyond Flesh, 120–41. See, for instance, Susan King, “ ‘Out in the Dark’ Director Brings Palestinian-Israeli Affair to Light,” Los Angeles Times, September 26, 2013. See, for instance, Anne Joseph, “Film-maker Maha Haj: A Director’s Dilemma,” Jewish Chronicle, May 11, 2017.

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41 On this distinction, see specifically Ball, Palestinian Literature and Film, 8–11; and Susan J. Douglas, Keywords for Media Studies (New York: New York University Press, 2017), 68–72. 42 On masculinity in Israeli film, see Gertz, “Space and Gender,” 157–85; and Yosef, Beyond Flesh. On masculinity in the context of Palestinian nationalism, see Joseph Massad, “Conceiving the Masculine: Gender and Palestinian Nationalism,” Middle East Journal 49, no. 3 (1995): 467–83. More specifically in the context of film, see Kenza Oumlil, “Re-Writing History on Screen: Annemarie Jacir’s Salt of This Sea,” Arab Studies Quarterly 38, no. 3 (2016): 586–600. 43 See Sa’ed Atshan, Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2020). 44 Talmon and Peleg, Israeli Cinema, xvi.

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Boyarin, Daniel. Unheroic Conduct. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Bresheeth, Haim. “Telling the Stories of Heim and Heimat, Home and Exile: Recent Palestinian Films and the Iconic Parable of the Invisible Palestine.” New Cinemas Journal of Contemporary Film 1, no. 1 (2002): 24–39. Brown, Hannah. “Knesset Marks Decade since Passage of Cinema Law.” Jerusalem Post, November 16, 2011. Burris, Gregory A. The Palestinian Idea: Film, Media, and the Radical Imagination. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2019. Chyutin, Dan. “The Spiritual Style of My Father, My Lord.” In Israeli Cinema: Identities in Motion (Jewish Life, History, and Culture), edited by Miri Talmon and Yaron Peleg, 201–12. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011. Chyutin, Dan, and Yael Mazor. “Israeli Cinema Studies: Mapping Out a Field.” Shofar 38, no. 1 (2020): 167–217. Cohen, Nir. Soldiers, Rebels, and Drifters: Gay Representation in Israeli Cinema. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2011. Dabashi, Hamid, ed. Dreams of a Nation: On Palestinian Cinema. New York: Verso, 2006. Dabbagh, Selma. “3000 Nights.” Electronic Intifada. December 30, 2015. Douglas, Susan J. Keywords for Media Studies. New York: New York University Press, 2017. Dushi, Nava. “Seeking the Local, Engaging the Global: Women and Religious Oppression in a Minor Film.” In Israeli Cinema: Identities in Motion (Jewish Life, History, and Culture), edited by Miri Talmon and Yaron Peleg, 213–24. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011. Eqeiq, Amal. “From Haifa to Ramallah (and Back): New/Old Palestinian Literary Topography.” Journal of Palestine Studies 48, no. 3 (2019): 26–42. Feldestein, Ariel. “Filming War: The 1948 War in ‘Hill 24 Doesn’t Answer’ and ‘Kedma.’ ” Zmanim: A Historical Quarterly 113 (2011): 58–67. [In Hebrew] Felsenthal, Julia. “Maysaloun Hamoud’s In Between Is a Palestinian Feminist Revenge Fantasy.” Vogue Magazine, January 5, 2018. Fernández Franco, Paula. “Shashat and Cinema under Occupation. Palestinian Women in Struggle.” Africana Studia 26, no. 1 (2016): 35–44. Foster, Gwendolyn A. Women Film Directors: An International Bio-Critical Dictionary. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995. Gertz, Nurith. “Space and Gender in the New Israeli and Palestinian Cinema.” Prooftexts 22, no. 1–22, Special Issue: The Cinema of Jewish Experience (2002): 157–85. Gertz, Nurith, and George Khleifi. Palestinian Cinema: Landscape, Trauma, and Memory. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008. Ginsberg, Terri. Visualizing the Palestinian Struggle: Towards a Critical Analytic of Palestine Solidarity Film. Global Cinema. Heidelberg: Springer Nature, 2016.

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Grater, Tom. “Women Directors on the Rise in Israel.” Screen Daily, July 14, 2017. Groo, Katherine. “The Maison and Its Minor: Lumière(s), Film History, and the Early Archive.” Cinema Journal 52, no. 4 (2013): 25–48. Harris, Rachel S. Warriors, Witches, Whores: Women in Israeli Cinema. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2017. Jankovic, Colleen. “Houses without Foundations: On Belonging in Palestinian Women’s Cinema.” E-Cadernos CES 22 (2014): 9–33. Jankovic, Colleen. “ ‘You Can’t Film Here’: Queer Political Fantasy and Thin Critique of Israeli Occupation in ‘The Bubble.’ ” Revue Canadienne d’Études cinématographiques / Canadian Journal of Film Studies 22, no. 2 (2013): 97–119. Jankovic, Colleen, and Nadia Awad. “Queer/Palestinian Cinema: A Critical Conversation on Palestinian Queer and Women’s Filmmaker.” Camera Obscura 27, no. 2 (2012): 135–43. Jones, Emma. “The Female Director Who Was Issued a Fatwa for Her First Film.” BBC News, September 3, 2017. Joseph, Anne. “Film-Maker Maha Haj: A Director’s Dilemma.” Jewish Chronicle, May 11, 2017. Kashti, Or, and Itay Stern. “Israel Increases Oversight of Film Industry, Prompting Cries of McCarthyism, Blacklisting.” Haaretz, March 28, 2017. Kermode, Mark. “In Between Review—the Struggle of Free Spirits Trying to Fly.” Guardian, September 24, 2017. Keslassy, Elsa. “Breaking through the Lens Unveils Shortlist for Pitching Platform at Cannes.” Variety, February 25, 2020. Khatib, Lina. Filming the Modern Middle East: Politics in the Cinemas of Hollywood and the Arab World. London: I. B. Tauris, 2006. King, Susan. “ ‘Out in the Dark’ Director Brings Palestinian-Israeli Affair to Light.” Los Angeles Times, September 26, 2013. Kronish, Amy. “Filmmakers, Israeli.” Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia 27 (2009), Jewish Women’s Archive. Available online: https://jwa.org/ encyc​lope​dia/arti​cle/fil​mmak​ers-isra​eli (accessed April 3, 2022). Levin, Menahem. “Ya’acov Ben-Dov: Pioneer of the Jewish Film Industry in Palestine, 1912–1924.” Cathedra: For the History of Eretz Israel and Its Yishuv 38 (1985): 127– 36. [In Hebrew] Lubin, Orly. “The Woman as Other in Israeli Cinema.” In Israeli Women’s Studies: A Reader, edited by Esther Fuchs, 301–16. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005. Massad, Joseph. “Conceiving the Masculine: Gender and Palestinian Nationalism.” Middle East Journal 49, no. 3 (1995): 467–83. McMahan, Alison. Alice Guy Blaché: Lost Visionary of the Cinema. New York: Continuum, 2002.

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Mdanat, Adnan. History of the Speaking Arab Film. Cairo: United Arab Artists/Cairo Film Festival, 1993. [In Arabic] Mintner, Terrance J. “Cinema Politics: Israel Passes Controversial ‘Film Law.’ ” The Medialine, October 17, 2018. Naaman, Dorit. “Elusive Frontiers: Borders in Israeli and Palestinian Cinemas.” Third Text 20, nos. 3/4 (2006): 511–21. Naaman, Dorit. “Orientalism as Alterity in Israeli Cinema.” Cinema Journal 40, no. 4 (2001): 36–54. Ne’eman, Judd. “The Death Mask of the Moderns: A Genealogy of ‘New Sensibility’ Cinema in Israel.” Israel Studies 1 (1999): 100–28. Oumlil, Kenza. “Re-Writing History on Screen: Annemarie Jacir’s Salt of This Sea.” Arab Studies Quarterly 38, no. 3 (2016): 586–600. Padva, Gilad. “Discursive Identities in the (R)evolution of the New Israeli Queer Cinema.” In Israeli Cinema: Identities in Motion (Jewish Life, History, and Culture), edited by Miri Talmon and Yaron Peleg, 313–25. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011. Peleg, Yaron. “From Black to White: Changing Images of Mizrahim in Israeli Cinema.” Israel Studies 13, no. 2 (2008): 122–45. Quart, Leonard. “Hill 24 Doesn’t Answer by Thorold Dickinson.” Cinéaste 16, no. 3 (1988): 55, 57. Rastegar, Kamran. Surviving Images: Cinema, War, and Cultural Memory in the Middle East. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Shafik, Viola. “Cinema in Palestine.” In Middle Eastern and North African Film, edited by Oliver Leaman, 509–32. New York: Routledge, 2001. Shemer, Yaron, “Trajectories of Mizrachi Cinema.” In Israeli Cinema. Identities in Motion, edited by M. Talmon and Y. Peleg, 120–33. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011. Shohat, Ella. Israeli Cinema: East/West and the Politics of Representation. Austin: University of Texas Press, first edition, 1989. Shohat, Ella. Israeli Cinema: East/West and the Politics of Representation. London: I. B. Tauris, revised edition, 2010. Shohat, Ella, and Robert Stam. Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media. London: Routledge, 1994. Silverstein, Melissa. In Her Voice: Women Directors Talk Directing. New York: Open Road Integrated Media, 2015. Skinazi, Karen E. Women of Valor: Orthodox Jewish Troll Fighters, Crime Writers, and Rock Stars in Contemporary Literature and Culture. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2018. Steir-Livny, Liat. “Near and Far: The Representation of Holocaust Survivors in Israeli Feature Films.” In Israeli Cinema: Identities in Motion (Jewish Life, History, and

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Culture), edited by Miri Talmon and Yaron Peleg, 168–80. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011. Stern, Itay. “HBO’s ‘Our Boys’ Is ‘Anti-Semitic,’ Netanyahu Says, Calls to Boycott Israeli Producers.” Haaretz, August 31, 2019. Talmon, Miri, and Yaron Peleg, eds. Israeli Cinema: Identities in Motion (Jewish Life, History, and Culture). Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011. Tomadjoglou, Kimberly. “Alice Guy’s Great Cinematic Adventure.” In Doing Women’s Film History: Reframing Cinemas, Past and Future, ed. Julia Knight and Christine Gledhill, 95–109. Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2015. Vinig, Marlyn. Haredi Cinema. Tel Aviv: Resling, 2011. Walzer, Lee. Between Sodom and Eden: A Gay Journey through Today’s Changing Israel. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000. Yaqub, Nadia. “The Palestinian Cinematic Wedding.” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 3, no. 2 (2007): 56–85. Yaqub, Nadia. Palestinian Cinema in the Days of Revolution. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2018. Yosef, Raz. Beyond Flesh: Queer Masculinities and Nationalism in Israeli Cinema. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004.

Part 1

Feminist Perspectives

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1

The Religious Feminism of Rama Burshtein’s Romances Karen E. H. Skinazi

If a man or woman is not loved by someone from the opposite sex, they are not whole … Marriage isn’t secondary to life. It is life. It’s not a side dish. It’s a main dish. —Rama Burshtein in an interview with Curt Shleier, “Rama Burshtein Has a Fundamental Belief in Marriage” What has God been doing since the creation of the world? He sits and makes matches, assigning this man to that woman, and this woman to that man. —Bereshit Rabbah 68:4

Introduction In 2012, for the first time in history, a Haredi woman made a feature film for wide distribution. The hitherto unknown filmmaker, Rama Burshtein, is an American-born Israeli Jewish woman who was raised in a secular family and graduated from the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School in Jerusalem before joining the Breslov sect of Hasidism. Burshtein’s feature film debut ‫למלא את החלל‬ (Le-Maleh et Ha-Halal; Fill the Void, 2012) tells the story of a young Haredi woman torn between behaving as an obedient Daughter of Israel and satisfying her own burgeoning desires; the dilemma is neatly resolved as the heroine realizes she is in love with the man who promises to keep both family and community intact. This “glimpse into a world that has never before been seen” was hailed as “one of Venice [Film Festival]’s most exotic competition entries.”1 Remarkably, the film proved a critical success in the Anglophone non-Jewish

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world, with reviewers’ repeated comparisons between the filmmaker and Jane Austen turning the Regency-era author into a kind of cultural Rosetta Stone for viewers unfamiliar with Haredi norms.2 Four years after Fill the Void, Burshtein followed up with ‫( לעבור את הקיר‬La-Avor et Ha-Kir; The Wedding Plan; 2016), a clunkier film that diverges from the quiet style of drama that critics praised in Fill the Void, while still fixing a spotlight on the interior life of a Haredi woman. The Wedding Plan draws on stock elements of the popular contemporary AngloAmerican genre of the “chick flick” as it charts a single woman’s spiritual journey to love and marriage, setting the heroine among close female friends to confide in, proffering a series of obstacles and near disaster, and closing with a “happily ever after”—all with a splash of “girl power.” Despite their generic differences, both of Burshtein’s films focus almost exclusively on the heterosexual marriages of their heroines, or “the marriage plot,” suggesting Burshtein’s fundamental belief in marriage as the primary objective in a woman’s life, a point the director makes when she tells an interviewer that for her, marriage is a “main dish.”3 As we shall see, Burshtein’s investment in the marriage plot is arguably the result of not only a deep understanding of mainstream romantic genres—which, as a woman not born into a Haredi community, she would have had years to study— but also of a very traditional Jewish outlook.4 In fact, it is precisely Burshtein’s ability to straddle the two worlds and find their point of intersection that allows her to adopt and adapt the popular form for the cinematic production of a Haredi worldview. By mastering a genre full of gendered clichés for her “exotic” stories of women whose representations have long been steeped in ignorance, Burshtein destabilizes the contemporary (and oft-derided) romantic film, giving it new life: the hybrid form shatters stereotypes of religiously observant women in traditional communities. As such, Burshtein acts as a feminist trailblazer, charting a path for many women filmmakers, particularly those in the region—even if she chooses not to explore the similarities she shares with these peers. Haifaa Al-Mansour, who wrote and directed ‫( وجدة‬Wadjda, 2012), the first feature-length film by a woman in Saudi Arabia, expressed her admiration for Burshtein after the success of Fill the Void, a sentiment that might have come as a surprise to many. Upon Wadjda’s submission to the Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film, journalist Debra Kamin wrote in Variety, “For Al-Mansour, female filmmakers are also building connections in a region that is known to many only by its borders. Among the women directors she admires, she says, is Burstein—an ultra-Orthodox Jew from Israel, a country with which Saudi Arabia has no



Religious Feminism of Burshtein’s Romances

31

diplomatic relations.”5 Kamin also noted that Al-Mansour’s Oscar hopeful came on the heels of both Burshtein’s and Palestinian filmmaker Annemarie Jacir’s, for her 2012 film ‫( لما شفتك‬Lamma Shoftak; When I Saw You). Wadjda, like Fill the Void, centers on a girl’s ability to choose for herself in a society where men make the rules. Al-Mansour’s title character rebels against community constraints in a number of small and rather sweet ways; chiefly, she wants a bicycle so she can race her friend. As such, Wadjda acts as a soft vehicle for female agency. Al-Mansour’s follow-up film, ‫( المرشحة المثالية‬Al-Murashahat Al-Mathalia; The Perfect Candidate, 2019), however, featuring a woman who is both a doctor and a political candidate (albeit one who fell into her candidacy accidentally), takes a stronger stance on women’s roles. This shift can be seen in the content as well as the director’s cinematic trope of fixing the camera just behind the shoulder of the protagonist as she drives her immaculate car, the seats still plastic-wrapped (a reminder to viewers of Saudi Arabian women’s very newly earned right to drive), giving the audience the sublime sense of emerging possibilities in Saudi Arabia with women at the wheel (both literally and, to some extent, figuratively). The woman at the wheel is also a recurring image in The Wedding Plan, and Burshtein has fun with Haredi norms for women here: her protagonist drives an outlandish mobile petting zoo, defying ideas of female decorum. Michal is often depicted in her vehicle with her eccentric Jewish friends (Figure 1.1), nicely mirroring the convivial group of Palestinian women driving around Tel Aviv in

Figure 1.1  Michal and her eccentric girl gang in The Wedding Plan. Screen grab by author.

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Palestinian filmmaker Maysaloun Hamoud’s “chick flick” ‫( بَر بَ َحر‬Bar Bahar; In Between, 2016), which was made the same year. Driving is not a new privilege for Israeli Jewish or Palestinian women as it is for Saudi women, but the image still communicates the message of women taking charge in traditional communities in which they once were, and are still often thought to be, in the back seat of meaningful action. In Between has other significant resonances with Burshtein’s films, as it interrogates women’s life choices, arranged marriages, hair coverings, and other overt signs of female modesty, and men’s expectations of women. That said, Hamoud’s In Between is notably more feminist in plot—or at least, more recognizably feminist—than Burshtein’s. Hinging on modes of female resistance, Hamoud’s film features three main women characters—a Christian lesbian bartender, a devout Muslim student, and a rebellious Muslim lawyer— who push the boundaries of their patriarchal communities. The film concludes, pointedly, with the women united not with male romantic partners but with one another. Still, Burshtein offers much for women, with and without similar worldviews, to admire: her camerawork not only rejects the male gaze but, moreover, exalts in the power of the female gaze (Figure 1.2). Her plots and subplots demonstrate women’s sexuality and agency, even within the confines of patriarchal communities that dictate female modesty; she furthermore de-emphasizes male authority in these same communities. She retains a traditionally gendered

Figure 1.2  The women’s gazes in Fill the Void. Screen grab by author.



Religious Feminism of Burshtein’s Romances

33

binary of emotion and intellect, but in her hierarchy, feeling always towers above thinking. Finally, Burshtein gestures toward a (limited) kind of inclusivity, populating her films with a range of women who are not well represented in Haredi culture. In short, not despite but because of their religious outlooks, Fill the Void and The Wedding Plan inaugurate advances in feminist filmmaking. Yet Burshtein herself chooses not to wear the badge of feminism. “I don’t believe in it. I’m feminine, not a feminist,” she has declared, and, perhaps more ambiguously (because of her use of the conditional “if ”), “My film world is a very feminine world, if not a feminist one.”6 Her rejection of the term suggests its lack of place within the Haredi worldview. Unlike Hamoud, Burshtein highlights women’s agency that is not grounded in resistance to patriarchal norms or religious authorities. There is a “dichotomization of subordination and subversion [that] equates agency with resistance,” as Orit Avishai has argued in her sociological study of Orthodox Jewish women “doing” religion; with small exceptions, however, Burshtein’s films are about agency but not resistance.7 In fact, they are about claiming existing agency for women in Orthodox communities (even as the claiming itself sometimes creates the existence!). Lacking an account of resistance, Burshtein is not alone in failing to see her films about pious women eagerly participating in (what some might argue is an exaggeratedly patriarchal version of) the heterosexual marriage economy as feminist. To begin with, feminist critiques of the institution of marriage are long-standing.8 Moreover, feminism, or, more specifically, liberal feminism, with its strong strains of the second wave still present today, is an ideology whose adherents typically reject religious devotion at large as submission to the patriarchy. Israeli film critic Avner Shavit, for instance, wrote an almost rave review of The Wedding Plan when the film hit the cinemas but stopped short of endorsing it. According to Shavit, there is a “big problem” that ultimately proves insurmountable in admiring the film: “The one-sided conservative attitude that [Orthodoxy] has toward life in general and women in particular.” For Shavit, no element of the film itself could overcome the fact that, from his perspective, Burshtein’s worldview is simply incommensurable with modern feminist thinking (so much so that, despite his own praise of The Wedding Plan, he wonders in his conclusion if the secular appreciation of the film has arisen from patronizingly low expectations of a religious female filmmaker).9 This essay thus argues the need to acknowledge Burshtein’s films as not only feminist but, crucially, as participating in broadening the tent of feminism. Religious women’s feminisms comprise ideologies and forms of activism that

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are often unrecognizable as feminist because the women are understood as upholding (or even amplifying), rather than challenging, the religious power structures that situate men in commanding positions (rabbis, imams, judges). Yet looking only for challenges to male religious authorities ignores the incredible changes that women are effecting in religious communities as they emerge as leaders in many arenas that are peripheral to (and therefore uncontrolled by) religious hierarchies, from politics to art and literature—and film.10 Feminisms come in many forms, a point Saba Mahmood makes in her pioneering study Politics of Piety. “If there is one lesson we have learned from the machinations of colonial feminism and the politics of ‘global sisterhood,’ ” Mahmood writes, channeling Lila Abu-Lughod, Leila Ahmed, Marnia Lazreg, and Gayatri Spivak, “it is that any social and political transformation is always a function of local, contingent, and emplaced struggles whose blueprint cannot be worked out in advance.”11 There are many differences across these locally, politically, culturally, religiously situated feminisms, but there are also commonalities, at the forefront of which are women’s desires to make their own meaning of their society’s gendered beliefs and thus take control of their personhood. This essay will focus on Burshtein’s specific, local, religious expression of feminism rendered through and created by her films. However, I realize, particularly in the context of this volume, that the reading I perform on her films might—and, in fact, should—beg two follow-up questions: How do we understand Burshtein’s representations of Israeli Haredi Jewish women in relation to other (in the case of Palestinian women’s, more robust) cinematic histories without losing sight of the power disparities between and among the women? Moreover, if we fail to engage both the shared and antagonistic struggles of Haredi and other women in adjacent geographic and religious communities, particularly Palestinian women in Israel, what opportunities for insights into the power of intersectional feminism do we lose? Although the essay will not offer satisfying answers to these questions, I hope that by situating it within this volume at large, readers may come to some conclusions of their own.

Burshtein’s Marriage Plot Yochay, the brooding widower in Fill the Void, will flutter vulnerable hearts like a Mr. Darcy in side curls. —Michael Medved, “A Haredi Masterpiece”



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35

The Austenesque marriage plot might seem an unusual place for a female Haredi filmmaker to locate women’s agency. As a rule, the marriage plot has required many sacrifices from women. Looking at the marriage plot through a feminist lens, it is impossible not to see it as punishing to women, even when works are penned by women writers. Throughout the bulk of Pride and Prejudice (1813), Austen’s romantic hero Mr. Darcy is brusque, arrogant, and snobbish. Rational readers would be wise to be wary of his transformation, which occurs awfully late in the novel. To this day, similar romances on the page and the screen favor the reformed rake, with readers and viewers never knowing quite how reformed he is. There is, of course, resistance to this dominant narrative, particularly in twenty-first-century iterations.12 In the Israeli context, Ayelet Dekel’s stylized feminist documentary ‫( ביי ביי לאהאבה‬Bye Bye Le-Ahava; Bye Bye Le-Ahava, 2006), revises the happily ever after (“HEA,” in romance circles) through its stories of seven women who discover their own agency through divorce— marking divorce, and not marriage, as the ultimate HEA. The popular Israeli television series, ‫( ׁשטיסל‬Shtisel; by Ori Elon and Yehonatan Indursky, 2013), with writing contributions from ex-Haredi and ex-Religious Zionist Jews, and a (nominally Muslim) Palestinian, offers a different twist on the classic romantic tale. It makes the sweet, idealistic, sensitive soul searching for love and marriage, commiserating with friends, and overcoming life’s obstacles a man. For Burshtein, however, the Austenesque marriage plot retains its basic (sexist) setup: a man has a practical use for a wife (“It is a truth universally acknowledged”), while a woman feels she can have no happiness without a husband. For Burshtein, it appears, there is no hesitation, no resistance, no challenge to this structure. In fact, she does not even bother to give her heroine, or her viewers, a sparkling Edward or Mr. Darcy’s grand estate of Pemberley. If the traditional marriage plot can easily be read as anti-women, Burshtein’s adaptations seem to take this idea even further: in both of her films, in order for women to fulfill the societal obligation of marriage, they must be willing to accept a shocking amount of potential self-sacrifice. The premise of The Wedding Plan is that Michal, who is past her prime (which is to say about thirty), unusual, and newly religious—in other words, wholly defective in a Haredi worldview— will marry anyone who will have her. Throughout the film, she plans her wedding: she rents a hall, chooses the food, buys a wedding dress (Figure 1.3), decorates her car, designs the invitations, and tells everyone she knows that she is getting married on the eighth night of Chanukah—and that, whoever the man

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Figure 1.3  Still without a groom, Michal chooses her wedding dress in The Wedding Plan. Screen grab by author.

happens to be (and she and the audience have no idea until the final ten minutes of the film), he is the one to whom she will presumably devote the rest of her life and with whom she will find happiness. There is, to be fair, little question that the filmmaker, whose faith in God illuminates every shot of the film, will reward her pious heroine with a kind, moral, devout husband; this conclusion is a given. But the threat that hangs over Michal for the duration of the film is very real. As Michal would marry any man—cruel, abusive, neglectful—viewers must gird themselves for the possibility that she will. The “happily ever after” trumps all else—even happiness itself. And at least in this film, viewers feel certain of the heroine’s readiness to marry, regardless of her near indifference to her life partner’s spiritual or material reality. In Burshtein’s first film, Fill the Void, the heroine is so young, so innocent, so unsure of her own emotional range and sexuality that, throughout, the potential groom appears to inspire in Shira more fear than love. On the surface, Fill the Void has a clean plot structure, with all loose ends gathered up in the ultimate tying of the knot. At the start of the film, Yochay is married to Shira’s sister. Meanwhile, Shira, newly of a marriageable age, is set up with a dull, pious man from an appropriate family. But things fall apart: Shira’s sister dies in childbirth, leaving Yochay a widower with a newborn baby. Shira’s shidduch, her match, whom she accepted, rejects her. A new match for Yochay is found: the woman is in Belgium, and he is expected to join her there. Shira’s



Religious Feminism of Burshtein’s Romances

37

family, as a result, will lose contact with the baby, the only child of their deceased daughter. Shira’s mother is devastated, and she urges Yochay and Shira to consider each other. However, Shira knows that Yochay loved her sister, and she wants her groom to love her first and foremost. Yochay is older. He is daunting. He stands so close to her when he speaks that she has to tell him to step back. Shira thinks she wants a companionate marriage, a marriage to a man who is her equal, not her superior—not a man who can compare her to other women, not a man who is so comfortable with his own passion that he seems almost willing to transgress the halakhic prohibition of negiah, or touch. The yeshiva bocher offered to Shira at the start of the film presented himself as, more than anything, harmless. Yet, after deep prayer, a consorting with the divine, where the words of the rebbe, her spiritual leader—“what does the daughter think about this marriage?”—are surely echoing in her heart, Shira realizes what the daughter thinks about it. She wants it. She wants to fill the void of her sexuality, that which scares her the most. Thus, the wedding ought to be the culminating moment of the film: not only the “happily ever after” endemic to romance but also the moment when all practical problems the filmmaker has established are resolved with one deft act. Yochay needed a bride, and now he has one; Shira needed a groom, and now she has one; the baby needed a mother, and now he has one; the grandmother wanted to stay close to her grandchild, and now she can. And with Yochay, unlike with the nebbishe match she was first offered (the film is almost pitiless in its portrayal), Shira will have the opportunity to release her pent-up passion, which leaks out of her throughout the film: in her longing to scream when offered her first match, on her luminous face when she plays the accordion, through her tears (Figure 1.4). But the final two scenes of Fill the Void leave viewers mindful of the fact that the trembling of passion and the trembling of fear cannot easily be distinguished from each other. Burshtein’s willingness to bring Shira to the fire, to have the flames lick her body but not devour her, tells us everything about the director, the risks she is willing to take, the rewards she reaps. This choice is, in part, a response to perceptions of Haredim. “We’re somehow portrayed as a bit crippled when it comes to feelings,” she explained in an interview after the release of Fill the Void (eight years after Fill the Void, we see the same depiction of the emotional coldness of the Haredi community in the 2020 Netflix pandemic hit Unorthodox by Maria Schrader). But, she continued, “we just have a different set of rules. It’s about attraction, it’s about sexiness—it’s about all those things that are usually absent when you talk about religion.”13 Without the marriage

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Figure 1.4  Powerful emotion in Fill the Void. Screen grab by author.

plot—in other words, if the film was set in a comparatively safe all-female space like a fatherless home, a girls’ orphanage, or a seminary, the typical backdrops for productions by Haredi women filmmakers—Burshtein would be unable to give warm flesh to her stories of heterosexual desire, of Haredi “sexiness.” It is worth examining these two scenes closely. First, the wedding is played out as nuptial foreplay: we start with a close-up of Shira’s midsection, layers of white silk, organza, tulle; the prayer book of Tehillim (Psalms), held open; another womanly hand clutching hers; the almost violent swaying of Shira’s body in prayer. In the distance, we hear the voices of men, singing. The camera slowly pans upward, still fixed so closely on Shira that her face blurs for a moment. Her eyes are wet, and her breathing is louder than the din of the men’s niggunim, their religious song. Gentle diegetic Jewish wedding music becomes audible as the women come to the bride to praise her beauty and ask for their blessings. Shira hugs them, speaks to them, takes their kvitelach, their hopes and dreams transcribed on little slips of paper, to fill her book of Tehillim, evoking the kvitel Shira passed to her rebbe to receive his blessing on her marriage and the paper petitions that are thrust by worshippers into the cracks of the kotel, the Western Wall. Her swaying—shokeling (a Yiddish word that translates as “shaking”)— never stops. If anything, it becomes more agitated, and as the camera zooms back over the bride’s face, we see it is ravaged by mascara streaks. At last, the groom, with his male procession, approaches for the badeken, the covering of the bride. Yochay places a thick, opaque veil over Shira’s face, obscuring it completely. The men’s singing grows louder, colorful confetti is thrown into the air, and after our last glimpse of the faceless bride, a sheet of white against a background of white walls and white flowers, we follow the groom and his darkly clad men as they walk backward out of the room, singing their almost mournful wordless tune, into darkness. Fade to black.



Religious Feminism of Burshtein’s Romances

39

Why does the matrimonial scene stop abruptly here? Where is the chuppah, the Jewish wedding canopy that would be familiar to both Jewish and non-Jewish viewers as the symbol of the marital home that will protect Shira and Yochay in their HEA? Why do we not see Yochay sliding a ring on Shira’s second finger or hear the words, familiar at least to most Jewish viewers, “Harei at mekudeshet li b-taba’at zo, k-dat Moshe v-yisrael” (“By this ring, you are consecrated to me in accordance with the laws of Moses and the people of Israel”)? Where is the breaking of the glass, the crowd erupting into Mazel tovs, the joyful chanting of “Od yeshama Be-arei Yehuda / Uvechutzot Yerushalaim / Kol sason vekol simcha / Kol chatan vekol kalah” customary at Jewish weddings? Why bring us to the top of the mountain but deny us the view? (Or, to evoke a narrative no doubt closer to Burshtein’s heart, why are we, like Moshe Rabbeinu, brought out of enslavement in Egypt and our wandering in the desert for forty years but not allowed to enter the Promised Land?) Remarkably, this drawn-out—and yet severely abbreviated—wedding scene, including the fadeout, does not end the film. In the ultimate scene, after the happy and typical conclusion of the marriage plot (though not quite happy and certainly not typical), and only seconds before the film cuts to black for good, viewers are confronted with the virginal bride’s sheer terror at the last step of her initiation into Haredi womanhood: the consummation of the marriage. Here comes the climax of the wedding, not the stomping of the groom’s foot on a glass. Here comes the climax of the bride’s trembling, her passionate shokeling. In this final scene, the audience witnesses a metaphorical bedroom scene, as intimate as a religious filmmaker is willing to provide, as the film shifts from blackness— with the wedding music still audible in the background—to a plain white room, devoid of non-diegetic sound and absent of dialogue. Viewers are subject only to the natural noises of the groom’s footsteps ringing against the floor as he enters the room, the creaking of the door as it closes, the rustling of clothing as the new husband slowly removes his coat and doffs his shtreimel, fingering its lush fur. As he starts to further disrobe, he turns his eyes to his bride, and the camera follows, protecting him from our voyeuristic scrutiny. There, across the room, is Shira, standing in the far corner, watching him and not watching him (still, we hear the white satin suit jacket covering his kittel seductively sliding from his body), her gaze fearful, anticipatory (Figure 1.5). Were we seated in a theater-inthe-round, I imagine, our chairs would be thumping to the beat of young Shira’s heart beneath the sheath of virginal white silk. But no need, really; we feel it. The film ends.

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Figure 1.5  The bride cornered (literally): a picture of fear and trembling in Fill the Void. Screen grab by author.

In each of Burshtein’s films, the threat to the female protagonist, in comparison with both her Haredi and Hollywood peers, seems elevated rather than alleviated. Not here do we conclude with the safety of the chuppah, a dance between husband and wife, the pleasure of clasped hands atop the Empire State Building or a kiss on a Los Angeles building’s fire escape with Verdi’s score for La Traviata rising up from a white limousine below. Burshtein defies generic expectations, asking her viewers to share in her protagonists’ trembling. The HEA for her Haredi women is not static but in motion, which is both exciting and uncomfortable. Fill the Void is often compared to ‫( אושפיזין‬Ushpizin; Gidi Dor and Shuli Rand, 2004), a film that was written by a fellow ba’al teshuva (one who became Orthodox) as a “celebration of religious life.”14 Indeed, Shai Ginsburg’s description of Ushpizin could be taken for a description of Fill the Void or, even more easily, for The Wedding Plan. “Ushpizin,” he writes, “portrays a world that revels in the presence of God in everyday life, a God who works in mysterious ways to reward the faithful and answer the prayers of those who are firm in their belief.”15 But le’havdil—let’s differentiate. Rand is writing a fairy tale: a childless couple receives a mysterious bounty of $1,000, hosts guests—ushpizin, in Aramaic— who challenge the couple’s patience and their faith, yet the couple persevere and,



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like Abraham and Sarah, are rewarded with a surprise pregnancy. Burshtein is creating films that are closer to thrillers; they are a testament to the goodness of God, yes, but it is a God who demands trembling. Burshtein makes manifest the meaning of “Haredi”: one who trembles. She shows us the fullness of a woman’s passion—a Haredi woman’s passion—so often reduced or eviscerated in mainstream representations.

Haredi Women in Film Perhaps Burshtein’s greatest point of departure is her depiction of Haredi women for mainstream audiences. Haredi women in visual media are, more often than not, subject to an absolute binary: either they are submissive, selfless, and suffering from false consciousness, or they are strong, willful, sexually mature (but unfulfilled), and about to break out of the misogynistic, destructive world of Orthodoxy, which has no place for strong women. Thus, there may be two kinds of Orthodox women in film and television (Shtisel notwithstanding) but only one kind of Orthodoxy, and it is a patriarchal prison. This is unsurprising in diasporic renditions of the genre, which play to non-Jewish audiences who view the subjected Jewish female figures through the same lens they use for the female victims of fundamentalist Muslim and Mormon patriarchy. In fact, just as feminists have come to judge films by the Bechdel Test, named after cartoonist Alison Bechdel (Are there at least two women? Do they talk to each other? Do they talk about something other than a man?), so Muslim actor Riz Ahmed has inspired the Riz Test. The Riz Test asks of Muslim characters, “If female, is she presented as oppressed by her male counterparts?” and “Are they superstitious, culturally backwards, or anti-modern?”16 These types of representations of Haredi women abound. The 2017 film adaptation of Naomi Alderman’s Disobedience, as one recent example, portrays both kinds of Orthodox women: the photographer, an independent woman, who has long abandoned the religious lifestyle, and the rabbi’s wife, who has remained under the heel of Orthodoxy and been denied her sexuality. But when the two women reunite, the latter rediscovers her passion—and leaves the community. In 2020’s Unorthodox, Hasidic Esty is miserable, finding all attempts to consummate her marriage severely painful. We know, therefore, that she will flee. She leaves Williamsburg for Berlin and magically discovers her (mezzosoprano) voice, as well as a lesbian mother and an accepting group of racially

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and nationally diverse new friends to complete the liberally sanctioned happy ending to this liberation narrative. Once Esty is free of her restrictive Haredi community, the narrative forgets that she is afflicted with a medical condition that prevents her enjoyment of vaginal sex; suddenly, she’s hot and heavy with a German man she meets and loving it. In neither of these recent accounts or earlier ones (e.g., A Stranger Among Us, A Price Above Rubies, Félix et Meira) is a religious woman entitled to a life of passion within the confines of her community. One might assume that within Israel, where Haredim are familiar, there would be a far greater diversity of female characters. And yet the culture wars between the secular and Haredi in Israel—the latter a statistical minority but a political powerhouse—are so entrenched and divisive that, more than anything, this familiarity, as the proverb goes, breeds contempt. In fact, a recent Israeli television show was devoted to precisely that division: ‫אוטונומיאות‬ (Autonomiot; Autonomies; by Ori Elon and Yehonatan Indurksy, 2018) imagines a parallel universe in which, as the result of a civil war in Israel, a Haredi autonomy has seceded from the secular state. It is a work of speculative fiction not unlike Black Mirror; the “fiction” is so close to the truth that it feels but a step away. As many scholars of Israeli cinema have noted, beginning with Amos Gitai’s 1999 film ‫( קדוש‬Kadosh), the representation of Haredi women in Israeli cinema is often produced by well-meaning secular male directors attempting to create feminist films.17 “Deeming the treatment of women intolerant and abusive,” writes Rachel S. Harris in her book on women in Israeli cinema, “the [secular] directors sought to expose the mistreatment they considered a by-product of religious limitations on women’s education, dress, and comportment.”18 Kadosh tells the story, like Ushpizin, of a childless couple. Nava Dushi’s description of this film is particularly apt: Penetrating the intimacy of a world fixed in a religious time zone, otherwise hermetically sealed from its contemporary surroundings, the film Kadosh … portrays the life of abstinence at the core of one of Jerusalem’s religiously constituted enclaves … Gitai’s gaze is committed to the exercise of restraint, reducing the cinematic form to the poverty of its language, to its desert, and as such, rendering it barren and unfit for reproduction.19

The fairy-tale ending is not coming, and women’s passions are their enemies. Ginsburg argues that “Jewish religious life … is perceived as nothing but



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oppressive and repressive, and the only possibility open to characters who wish to be true to themselves and realize their aspirations is to shed its yoke altogether.”20 Although much Israeli cinema involving Haredi women follows suit, arguably the most recent of Avi Nesher’s films, ‫( סיפור אחר‬Sipur Acher; The Other Story, 2019), attempts to shift the conversation, to show us, as Burshtein’s The Wedding Plan does, the positive effect becoming religious can have on a woman’s life.21 Anat, who baffled her parents by adopting a Haredi lifestyle and joining a women’s seminary, says time and again that she is happier this way. When we first encounter Anat, she is ritually pouring water from a washing cup (a negel vasser or netilat yadiyim set) over scarred wrists, suggesting that religion has not only not oppressed her, it has indeed saved her. But against Anat’s determined contentedness, Nesher provides a bulwark of resistance: Anat’s zeal for modesty, her need to cover herself more and more, feels pathological, not pious. Her fiancé’s does too; Shachar, played by real-life-turned-religious pop star Nathan Goshen, will play his music for secular and religious audiences, men and women, but he closes his eyes so as to not dare see women in immodest dress, à la Yonatan Razel.22 Anat’s mother questions Shachar’s willingness to play to mixed-gender audiences and is told it is fine for men to do so—just not women. Meanwhile, Anat’s inverted doppelganger, Sari, who years earlier left Orthodoxy (she provides the “other story”), raves about the ways Orthodoxy created of her a slave and a cook. Ultimately, the positive depiction of religious womanhood Nesher gestures at in The Other Story is not sustainable. Moreover, if we look back to one of Nesher’s earlier films, ‫( הסודות‬Ha-Sodot; The Secrets, 2007), wherein seminary girls perform a series of mystical, exoticized rites, from chanting to burning pictures, we ought to be very wary of his sensitivity to Orthodox life. Nesher clearly distinguishes little between Orthodoxy and any other cult. This is a point that Sari, an Asherah worshipper, explicitly makes in The Other Story. “Waving a chicken over your head isn’t extreme?” she asks Anat, referring to the Yom Kippur ritual of kapparot, in which a chicken is swung in the air and then sacrificed in lieu of the sacrificer. Furthermore, despite critics touting Nesher’s feminism,23 his presentation of the mikveh, the ritual immersion, in The Secrets seems to have little function other than to offer viewers full frontal nudity of the girls, reinforcing the secular, male fetishistic gaze that is common to the genre; in a similar vein, The Other Story begins with the camera lingering voyeuristically on young women sleeping, slowly waking, and stretching in their nighties,

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saying modeh ani, the morning prayer of thanks, which is intended for God but seems whispered into our ears instead.24 In The Other Story, Nesher’s men have guns, but his women bitch-slap, and the Asherah cult that Sari is a part of as the antidote to her sexist oppression in Orthodoxy makes women on the whole seem hysterical and in need of a cult of some kind or another in order to have purpose or strength.

Burshtein’s Religious Feminist Vision I want to be normal … for people to respect me because I have a partner. [I want] to invite people for Shabbat, not to be invited. I want to make Shabbat. I want to make Shabbat with a man. I don’t want to be alone anymore. [I want] to have someone sing Eshet Chayil to me.

—Michal, in The Wedding Plan It is not enough that Burshtein offers a picture of Orthodoxy that is not repressive for women; that alone we might expect from a religious woman who has no desire to depart from the path. But it is also not reasonable that viewers expect a secular vision of feminism from a woman who chose and embraces Orthodoxy. For a female character in Burshtein’s films, “mak[ing] Shabbat with a man” is fundamental to her personhood, which is both individual and interrelational. Still, much of Burshtein’s feminist filmmaking is not wholly unique to a religious vision. Consider, for example, the way that Burshtein inverts the voyeuristic male secular gaze that captures and claims the religious female body as sexualized object—Nesher’s, Gitai’s, and so on. Recent scholarship has argued that Orthodox Jewish women are reclaiming their “voices,” defying the Talmudic prohibition against kol isha (a woman’s voice); here, we see the reclamation of another sense, that of sight.25 This reclamation has roots in broader feminist discourse: the “male gaze” was a source of critique by Laura Mulvey in the 1970s and feminist film studies following. In films about Haredi women, however, this gaze is doubly oppressive. In Fill the Void, viewers are brought in line with the religious woman’s gaze: when we are watching the men dance at a wedding, through what appear to be gaps in the mechitzah, the barrier that separates the genders; when we are seeing and hearing the fears and indignations of the women up close (what if no one marries them? Or, in contrast, how dare people think they have no



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45

life because they’re not married!); and when we are learning of the concerns of the men at a distance, through long shots. Gender segregation allows us to focus on women primarily, and almost exclusively, even though it can be read as feministically suspect. “Despite the film’s feminist intentions,” writes Harris, “the very realism that … seeks to positively portray the religious world also depicts the mechitzah that enforces women’s silence and marginalization within the phallocentric culture in which women remain a disruptive and sexually problematic force.”26 Similarly, Dan Chyutin writes, “this ultra-Orthodox community is shown to be male-dominated; in the various scenes of ritual, men are the foci of action, while women are relegated to the role of bystanders. This is clearly evident in relation to the film’s prominent theme: the shidduch (match).”27 As I will demonstrate below, I strongly disagree. Whether on one side of the mechitzah or participating in a shidduch, the women are the action of the film. The mechitzah, rather than marginalizing, creates a boundary line, limiting the scope of our interest—to the women. The shidduch, the film drives home, is about women’s right to choose. The opening scene establishes the significance of the female religious gaze. Shira and her mother, Rivka, are at the supermarket in order to check out Shira’s potential match. There is little in terms of speech in this scene, but there is a great deal of looking. The camera follows the women’s line of sight down the aisles to their target and lingers there; viewers watch as the women watch. The women traverse the supermarket, which, even in the dairy section, appears to us as a meat market of men. Shira and Rivka find their mark, take stock of his comportment, his clothing, and his every action, and the camerawork dramatizes this scrutiny as we, the viewers, zoom in, closer than our female characters, to observe him blink. He does not return our gaze. He remains an object throughout—for them and for us. The visual work of the scene makes clear the women are the lookers, the men the looked-at. The women judge, criticize, admire; the man is entirely passive. Moreover, in this opening scene, we see that the women make the calls: literally, Rivka calls the matchmaker, and figuratively, it is up to Shira to decide whether the man she is eyeing is worth her time. Women negotiate the terms. It is not true that, as Chyutin claims, “as in Kadosh, matchmaking emerges as an ‘arrangement’ initiated and coordinated by men for the benefit of sustaining their community’s patriarchal form.”28 That is not to say there are no gendered norms. Shira, the “traditional” woman, we immediately learn, will be expected to do the laundry in the marriage (as Shira and Rivka contemplate the

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proposed match’s clumsiness, Rivka points out that he will cause her extra work in that department). To fully emphasize the agency of not only women at large but in fact the kind of woman thought to have no power, no standing at all—the unmarried “girl,” as Orthodox female singles are generally called (regardless of age)—to underscore the power of young, innocent Shira, dressed all in white, we get Shira’s mother deferring to her. “Shira,” asks the mother, older, wiser, dressed in black to contrast her daughter, but also out of focus, the asker, not the answerer, “what do you say?” Shira is to the far left of the screen, in extreme close-up. We can see the hairs on her eyebrows, the pores on her cheeks (Figure 1.6). The message of the film about the culture being explored lies in this question. What do you say, Woman of this Community? You have the right to choose. The power of women in the film premised in the opening by the camerawork is not only Shira’s if it is also and primarily Shira’s. A thousand tiny details demonstrate women’s power. Rivka holds the keys to the safe, from which Shira’s father is permitted to distribute funds to the needy. When Shira’s older sister dies, leaving behind a grieving widower and a newborn baby, the women—Shira’s mother alongside the mother of her son-in-law—discuss between them the fates of Yochay and their new grandson. Rivka is the one to act: she calls the matchmaker to suggest her daughter Shira as a bride for Yochay. Yochay declines, but Rivka is persuasive. He comes to see that she is right. Later, Rivka needs to persuade her husband as well; her husband, clearly a learned and respected man to whom the community turns, is ultimately deferent to his wife. When Rivka fights with Shira’s aunt, sparks seem to fly across the table. The men, by comparison, seem feeble.

Figure 1.6  Shira and her mother checking out a potential groom at the grocery store in Fill the Void. Screen grab by author.



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In fact, even the rebbe is cast as a character with limited authority compared to the strong women who surround him. Harris notes that “all the positions of authority in the film are held by men” and argues that the only power women have is “soft power” to “manipulate situations” within “the constraints of a wellestablished and fixed androcentric society.”29 This reading depends heavily on a knowledge-based understanding of the community. But what if we approach the film blind? Embroiled in the complicated endeavor of trying to keep the grandchild of their dead daughter close by while also not sacrificing their living daughter, Shira’s family goes to see the rebbe. In this sense, we understand that they are deferring to a wise man. But wise how? What counsel could or should such a man provide? Let’s consider the film’s treatment of rabbinic counsel. The family sits down in the rebbe’s chambers, and the rebbe asks how the bereaved Rivka is doing. Before the family can get advice about Shira’s marriage, the visit is interrupted. An old woman, the rebbe’s assistant explains, is in the other room. “May the rebbe excuse me,” says his assistant, “but the old lady … insists upon seeing the rebbe now.” The rebbe replies, “The lady will have to wait. I will see her shortly.” The assistant departs. We hear the door click shut, and the rebbe asks how Yochay and the baby are. Shira’s father presents his case. But the counsel of the wise man is again deferred as the assistant returns. We hear behind the door a cry. “She is screaming,” he says. “She won’t stop screaming.” The rebbe says, “Send her in.” The woman comes in, all despair. And what is her great urgency? She needs to buy a new oven and has no idea what to get. What is the point of this scene? To show the compassion of the rebbe, certainly. To show no issue is too small for him, that the domestic sphere of the woman is not beneath him. But then, if we think of him less as a towering figure and more as a sounding board, it almost seems as though if anyone has a “soft power,” it is the rebbe. The scene, following on the rebbe’s inquiries about the family’s feelings, suggests that the details of everyday life—how one feels (Rivka, Yochay, Mordechai), how one cooks a meal—are what he most cares about. In fact, we next see the rebbe not quoting the Torah but patiently showing the old woman his own oven: “It has five flames, two separate compartments,” he gestures. “The lady can look for herself.” If this is an androcentric society, if the “positions of authority are all held by men”—which, of course, they are—it is hard to see here.30 The woman’s reaction to the rebbe and his stove is also telling. Rather than thank him, she says, opening the oven door, “Isn’t it a little low?”

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“It’s too low? You think it’s too low?” asks the rebbe. “Maybe it could be propped up to be higher,” he suggests. “It seems low,” she responds, unimpressed. It is easy to think this scene is tangential, but, significantly, it takes what ought to be the pivotal moment of the film—the rabbinical authorization of Shira and Yochay’s wedding—and makes it inconsequential. The rebbe is a nice guy, sympathetic. But his primary function in the film is to turn the question of Shira and Yochay’s marriage back to Shira, asking, “What does the daughter think about this marriage?” She declines to answer him directly, saying, “It’s not a matter of feelings.” Over and against the prevailing notion that Haredi Judaism is about communal obligation and male authority, he insists, “It’s only a matter of feelings.” Shira says, “There is a mission that must be done, and I want to do it to everyone’s satisfaction.” “Oy Shira’le,” says the rebbe. “Shira’le, Shira’le, Shira’le.” He never reprimands, only calls out to her, interpellates her as an individual. Then he goes on to cite the Rebbe Nachman of Bretslav: “that blessed be he who says one word of truth his entire life.” Slow, plaintive music plays. The family returns home, nothing resolved. The rebbe’s counsel is only for Shira to be honest—to do what she wants to do. In this film about religious women’s agency, the decisions must be Shira’s.

Conclusion: Transcultural Feminist Solidarity—Does the Separation Wall Make It Impossible? Notably, Burshtein makes an effort to be inclusive in her depictions of women. Shira’s aunt, for instance, is an unmarried woman by choice in a world, as we see, where unmarried women ought to be looking for grooms, praying for grooms, or being told “soon by you”—the wish for a groom for an unmarried woman by her peers. She is also visibly disabled. Although we might assume that she is unmarried because no man in the community would want a woman with no arms, she tells Shira she almost married a man who didn’t mind her lack of arms (perhaps, she explains, because he had a limp himself). When Shira asks what happened, her aunt responds, “He didn’t appeal to me.” The unmarried, disabled aunt is not the main character of the film. The main character, Shira, is eighteen, virginal, and pretty. But Burshtein again includes a disabled woman in her second film, The Wedding Plan. There is also a Haredi woman in cornrows and her date, a Japanese Hasid. The main character, Michal, is a ba’alat tshuva—meaning that (like the filmmaker) she was not born into



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the Haredi world, resulting in her automatically being somewhat peripheral to Haredi society. Michal has other counts against her: she has been dating for ten years, which also means she is at least ten years too old to easily find a groom, and she has a surprising job as the owner of a mobile petting zoo! So that marginal question of marginality presented in the first film—what do we do with women who are unusual in a society that insists on conformity?—is explored far more deeply in the second. Burshtein’s move from her first film, firmly ensconced in the tight borders of a Haredi community, to that of The Wedding Plan, with characters secular and religious, in tichels and cornrows, suggests an ability to extend her insights into the lives of diverse women. We might wonder, where next? Might she, like Dina Perlstein, the doyenne of Israeli Haredi women’s films (who does only private, women-only screenings of her films), draw connections between Haredi women and their cultural sisters?31 Dina Perlstein’s film ‫( שמור על ילדתי‬Shmor Al-Yaldati; Watch Over Her, 2011), for instance, which is set in Syria (and filmed in the Negev), features women who are covered, devout, and living in gendersegregated spaces, allowing female Israeli Haredi viewers to make connections between the women on the screen and themselves. Indeed, as the viewers of Watch Over Her discover, the seemingly foreign Arab Muslim women are actually very closely connected to the heroine in the film, a Jewish woman who has traveled to Syria on business only to discover that her father is actually a Syrian and a Muslim and these women her relatives. Thus, in the little-known Haredi women’s film industry, Perlstein establishes an allegiance among women who share geographic, cultural, and religious similarities.32 Burshtein has eschewed such allegiances to date. In a 2018 interview, Burshtein was explicitly asked if she would consider including Palestinians in her films; she responded negatively by declaring, “That conflict is another world.”33 This decision is not unusual in cinematic and televised representations of Haredi culture. In fact, Burshtein’s invisible elision is almost less notable than the nominal depictions of Palestinians Nesher offers in The Other Story, with such throwaway lines as Anat’s to her father: “So what’s worse, an Arab son-inlaw or an Orthodox one?” along with the heavy sarcasm in Anat’s secular parents’ comments establishing a Muslim analogue with which to understand Haredi culture (the mother asks if Anat’s wedding veil is to be worn “like a hijab” and asserts that entering a Haredi neighborhood is like “going on a mission to Syria”). The most interesting connections drawn between Palestinians and Haredim is perhaps to be found in the dystopic series Autonomiot, which presents Palestine

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as a visible or visual elision; we see what appears to be the West Bank barrier, but in the fantastic universe of the series, it is a wall that separates the autonomous Haredi state from secular Israel. Yet, in Palestinian cinema, as in Burshtein’s films, the marriage plot has figured in a number of ways, as scholars such as Nadia Yaqub have demonstrated.34 Some of these are necessarily disparate from Burshtein’s motivations: in Michel Khleifi’s ‫( عرس الجليل‬Urs Al-Jalil; Wedding in Galilee, 1987), in which the village mukhtar is determined to hold his son’s wedding, in defiance of the curfew imposed on them, it is used to symbolize the rejection of and triumph over Israeli oppression. In other ways, however, there is an overlap between the conservative, insular worlds represented through stories of courtship and marriage. Women’s films, in particular, explore what it means to be part of a community with a special set of rules for women. In ‫( الفردوس المفقود‬Al-Firdaws Al-Mafqud; Paradise Lost, 2003) Ebtisam Mara’ana weaves together two narratives of forced submission—that of the residents of Fureidis to Israel, and of women to men—connecting Palestinian and women’s independence and selfdetermination. In an early moment in the film, Ebtisam stands before a mirror, trying on her mother’s headscarf, playacting at pious womanhood; this gesture has a strong echo in Fill the Void, in which Shira’s (more earnest) anticipation of married life is visualized through a similar mirror scene, with a turban. Stifled passion erupts from women in musical form: in Suha Arraf ’s feminocentric ‫( فيال توما‬Villa Touma, 2014), Badia’s emotions can be seen and heard through her playing of the piano, as Shira’s can through her accordion.35 As in Burshtein’s cinematic universe, men’s and women’s domains are often segregated visually and acoustically in Palestinian film.36 Palestinian women, moreover, share Haredi women’s history of resisting the term—and notion of—feminism. “In a specifically Palestinian context,” writes Anna Ball, “there is evidence that some apparently ‘feminist’ organizations may resist the use of the term ‘feminism’ precisely because they feel it may limit receptiveness to their work.”37 Still, many Palestinian films call for a “postcolonial feminist perspective,” which Ball defines as an intersectional approach that “enables the critic to interpret and communicate variously defined feminist goals and gendered experiences in a way that is resistant to the hegemonic assumptions of Western feminisms, while it also acknowledges that the task of creating liberating alternatives to colonial power structures must necessarily entail a feminist attentiveness to the forms of inequality and oppression that circulate around gendered experience and identification.”38



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There are, no doubt, many intersecting experiences and artistic expressions of women in the region, particularly between Haredi and Palestinian women within Israel, as they both sit on the fringes of mainstream society. Burshtein’s films offer the opportunity for scholars to consider the shared, and antagonistic, struggles among and between such women. Such comparisons need not detract from the recognition of social differences and power disparities among the women, but they can further expand understanding of local expressions of feminism in conservative cultures.

Notes 1 Deborah Young, “Fill the Void (Lemale et Ha’Chalal): Venice Review,” Hollywood Reporter, September 1, 2012, https://www.hollyw​oodr​epor​ter.com/rev​iew/ven​ ice-2012-fill-void-lem​ale-hacha​lal-movie-rev​iew-367​365. 2 Two of many examples: The New York Times describes the protagonist as “a young woman living in an ultra-Orthodox enclave in Tel Aviv, [who] faces a choice not unlike those faced by the heroines of Jane Austen novels and Hollywood romantic comedies” A. O. Scott, “For a Hasidic Woman, Weighing the Personal Against Larger Duties,” New York Times, May 23, 2013. Similarly, The Guardian explains the film’s Israeli Haredi community by way of Austen’s Georgian England: “Like the protagonists of the Jane Austen novels which Burshtein cites as a primary influence, these women live within a society in which their options are limited by rigidly enforced rules, and yet it’s their choices, emotions, conflicts and resolutions which drive and define the narrative” Mark Kermode, “Fill the Void—Review,” Guardian, December 15, 2013. See also Yair Rosenberg, “Israeli Film ‘Fill the Void’ Is Jane Austen for Jews,” Tablet Magazine, June 11, 2013. 3 See Curt Shleier, “Rama Burshtein Has a Fundamental Belief in Marriage,” Forward, May 11, 2017. 4 Naomi Seidman’s book The Marriage Plot is devoted to the intersection of romance and Jewishness. Seidman, The Marriage Plot: Or, How Jews Fell in Love with Love, and with Literature (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016). Whereas my focus is on a filmmaker and community that embraces religious practice, Seidman is more interested in the ghostly visitations of discarded religious rituals and beliefs in Maskilic/secularized Jewish culture. For example, she argues for the pervasiveness of the figure of the shadkhan, or matchmaker, in modern secular literature, even unto the generations for which the matchmaker was a fabled element of the Jewish past (see, e.g., her reading of Bernard Malamud’s “The Magic Barrel,” 107–16).

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5 Debra Kamin, “Female Arab Directors Are Breaking Out of the Region,” Variety, October 16, 2013. 6 Quotations taken from interviews with Shleier and Sherwin. Shleier, “Rama Burshtein”; and Adam Sherwin, “Rama Burshtein, Israel’s First Ultra-Orthodox Female Film Director, on Making Movies Without Touching Men,” iNews, October 19, 2018. 7 Orit Avishai, “ ‘Doing Religion’ in a Secular World: Women in Conservative Religions and the Question of Agency,” Gender and Society 22, no. 4 (2008): 412. 8 Feminist critiques of marriage, from Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1952) (and arguably earlier) through to the present day, have often focused on gender roles (along with the occlusion of alternative models of intimacy), with an emerging body of criticism highlighting the institution’s reliance on heterosexual performativity and gender inequalities, even within same-sex marriage. Moreover, although gender roles have evolved since de Beauvoir’s time, there is strong evidence that the expected transformation of heterosexual marriages has lagged (or, as a 2020 New York Times article put it, summarizing recent sociological studies, “Young Men Embrace Gender Equality, but They Still Don’t Vacuum”). 9 See Avner Shavit, “Late Wedding: On Second Viewing, I Realize How Brilliant Through the Wall [The Wedding Plan] Is, Yet One Big Problem Remains,” Walla!, October 28, 2016. The article is in Hebrew; translations are my own. 10 In an essay detailing her fieldwork with the women of Shas and the Islamic Movement in Israel (which also serves as a critique of Saba Mahmood’s Politics of Piety) Lihi Ben Shitrit argues, “The attention that activists give to women’s autonomy and choice . . . should not be confused with feminist consciousness.” Ben Shitrit, “Women, Freedom, and Agency in Religious Political Movements,” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 9, no. 3 (2013): 103. Ben Shitrit locates that lack of feminist consciousness in the problem (as she sees it) of women not demanding religious roles for themselves. This is not the case, as she concedes, in all Jewish Orthodox and Muslim communities, and even in the ones she discusses, much has changed since her fieldwork was conducted a decade ago. Contributions to the summer 2020 Repetitive Shofar, ed. Karen Skinazi and Rachel Harris, “The Feminism and Art of Jewish Orthodox and Haredi Women,” Repetitive Shofar 38, no. 2 (2020), on the art (including literature, film, visual art, dance, and theater) and feminism of Jewish Orthodox and Haredi women and Muslim women qadis in Israel offer a picture of the tremendous advances made by these women in recent years and act as a testament to the many manifestations of feminist consciousness, including and well beyond religious roles. 11 Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 36.



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12 In one feminist revision, the 2019 novel Queenie, Black British writer Candice Carty-Williams gives the eponymous protagonist’s close female friend the name Darcy, rather than ascribing it to one of Queenie’s racist, sexist OkCupid matches. The story concludes with Queenie surrounded by her loving friends and family, not with a man. 13 Josh Tapper, “Haredi Filmmaker Shares Her Take on ‘Sexiness’ of Arranged Marriage,” Times of Israel, October 2, 2012. 14 Rachel S. Harris, Warriors, Witches, Whores: Women in Israeli Cinema (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2017). See also Biale et al., Hasidism: A New History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018), 803; Michael Medved, “A Haredi Masterpiece,” Commentary, September 2013, 55. 15 Shai Ginsburg, “Love in Search of Belief, Belief in Search of Love,” in The Modern Jewish Experience in World Cinema, ed. Lawrence Baron (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2011), 372. 16 Tasnim Nazeer, “Memo to Bodyguard Writers: Muslim Women Are More than Victims or Terrorists,” Guardian, September 24, 2018. 17 See Dan Chyutin, “ ‘The King’s Daughter Is All Glorious Within’: Female Modesty in Judaic-Themed Israeli Cinema,” Journal of Jewish Identities 9, no. 1 (2016); Harris, Warriors, Witches, Whores; Nava Dushi, “Seeking the Local, Engaging the Global: Women and Religious Oppression in a Minor Film,” in Israeli Cinema: Identities in Motion, ed. Miri Talmon and Yaron Peleg (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011), 213–24; Ginsburg, “In Search of Belief,” 373. 18 Harris, Warriors, Witches, Whores, 91. 19 Dushi, “Seeking the Local,” 213. 20 Ginsburg, “In Search of Belief,” 371. 21 See also Mekimi (2013), a television series adapted from Noa Yaron-Dayan’s 2007 autofiction. 22 In 2017, Razel, giving a concert to a mixed-gender audience, covered his eyes in masking tape to avoid seeing women dancing. Although many feminists condemned his “extremist” behavior, some defended his decision to put the burden of not seeing women on himself, rather than on the women. To be clear, Goshen, though religious, does not embrace notions of kol isha (the religious prohibition against men hearing women’s singing voices) or extreme modesty. In fact, in 2019, a scandal arose when he invited a woman onstage to sing a duet with him at a concert, and the Jewish culture department barred the woman, saying that her singing would offend the Orthodox men in the crowd. 23 See, for example, the New York Times review of The Secrets, which calls the film a “religious soap opera and feminist cri de coeur.” Stephen Hodden, “When Faith Meets Feminism,” New York Times, November 25, 2008.

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24 Harris discusses the ways that Israeli cinema “offers a voyeuristic and scopophilic gaze that fetishizes the religious woman’s body that is otherwise hidden from view.” Harris, Warriors, Witches, Whores, 98. Unorthodox evokes The Secrets’ mikveh scene; the camera, at bird’s-eye level, sharing the gaze of the stern-faced mikveh lady, watches over a terrified Esty’s fully naked body as she enters the ritual bath. Conversely, when Esty has a second rebirth through water as a newly secular woman in Berlin, she is dressed. 25 See Rose Waldman, “Women’s Voices in Contemporary Hasidic Communities,” Shofar 38, no. 2 (2020): 35–60. 26 Harris, Warriors, Witches, Whores, 107. 27 Chyutin, “ ‘The King’s Daughter,’ ” 52. Chyutin, who offers a provocative reading of Fill the Void’s economy of desire, concedes that the film “fulfills the mother’s wish [and] … simultaneously affirms women’s capacity to revise the patriarchal agenda of matchmaking for their own purposes.” Chyutin, 53. 28 Chyutin, “ ‘The King’s Daughter,’ ” 52. 29 Harris, Warriors, Witches, Whores, 107. 30 Harris, Warriors, Witches, Whores, 107. 31 Despite the limited availability of her films, Perlstein is a commercially successful filmmaker who has made more than a dozen movies that star major Israeli actors, including Tali Sharon, Leah Koenig, and Sendi Bar. On December 4, 2017, Perlstein gave a rare appearance to an open audience at Beit Avi Chai, in Jerusalem, where she spoke about her motivations in filmmaking and about why, for her, Burshtein’s films were not Haredi films. 32 For more information on this fascinating industry, see Marlyn Vinig, Orthodox Cinema (Tel Aviv: Resling, 2011) [In Hebrew]; Karen Skinazi, Women of Valor: Orthodox Jewish Troll Fighters, Crime Writers, and Rock Stars in Contemporary Literature and Culture (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2018), 174–216; Valeria Siegelshifer and Tova Hartman, “The Emergence of Israeli Orthodox Women Filmmakers,” Shofar 38, no. 2 (2020): 125–61. 33 Sherwin, “Rama Burshtein.” 34 See Yaqub, “The Palestinian Cinematic Wedding,” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 3, no. 2 (2007): 56–85. 35 See Anna Ball’s inclusion in this book, Chapter 3, “Families on the Edge: Interstitial Relations in Recent Palestinian Women’s Cinema.” 36 Although male-directed, the film Wedding in Galilee is a good example. According to Nurith Gertz, when its cinematography dwells in the “feminine space,” the pace is slower and more poetic, accompanied by “delicate music” that contrasts the raucous music elsewhere. “These conspicuous glimpses behind the celebration,” Gertz writes, “establish a counterpoint to the male world but also integrate



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that world into a feminine space that tolerates a wider display of identity and experience.” Gertz, “Space and Gender in the New Israeli and Palestinian Cinema,” Prooftexts 22, nos. 1–2 (2002): 181. 37 Ball, Palestinian Literature and Film in Postcolonial Feminist Perspective (London: Routledge, 2012), 9. 38 Ball, Palestinian Literature and Film, 2.

Bibliography Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987. Avishai, Orit. “‘Doing Religion’ in a Secular World: Women in Conservative Religions and the Question of Agency.” Gender and Society 22, no. 4 (2008): 409–33. Ball, Anna. Palestinian Literature and Film in Postcolonial Feminist Perspective. London: Routledge, 2012. Ben Shitrit, Lihi. “Women, Freedom, and Agency in Religious Political Movements.” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 9, no. 3 (2013): 81–107. Biale, David, David Assaf, Benjamin Brown, Uriel Gellman, Samuel C. Heilman, Moshe Rosman, Gadi Sagiv, and Marcin Wodziñski. Hasidism: A New History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018. Carty-Williams, Candice. Queenie. New York: Scout Press, 2019. Chyutin, Dan. “‘The King’s Daughter Is All Glorious Within’: Female Modesty in Judaic-Themed Israeli Cinema.” Journal of Jewish Identities 9, no. 1 (2016): 39–58. Dushi, Nava. “Seeking the Local, Engaging the Global: Women and Religious Oppression in a Minor Film.” In Israeli Cinema: Identities in Motion, edited by Miri Talmon and Yaron Peleg, 213–24. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011. Gertz, Nurith. “Space and Gender in the New Israeli and Palestinian Cinema.” Prooftexts 22, nos. 1–2 (2002): 157–85. Ginsburg, Shai. “Love in Search of Belief, Belief in Search of Love.” In The Modern Jewish Experience in World Cinema, edited by Lawrence Baron, 371–76. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2011. Harris, Rachel S. Warriors, Witches, Whores: Women in Israeli Cinema. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2017. Hodden, Stephen. “When Faith Meets Feminism.” New York Times, November 25, 2008. Kamin, Debra. “Female Arab Directors Are Breaking Out of the Region.” Variety, October 16, 2013. Kermode, Mark. “Fill the Void—Review.” Guardian, December 15, 2013. Mahmood, Saba. Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012. Medved, Michael. “A Haredi Masterpiece.” Commentary, September 2013, 53–5.

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Miller, Claire Cain. “Young Men Embrace Gender Equality, but They Still Don’t Vacuum.” New York Times, February 11, 2020. Nazeer, Tasnim. “Memo to Bodyguard Writers: Muslim Women Are More than Victims or Terrorists.” Guardian, September 24, 2018. Rosenberg, Yair. “Israeli Film ‘Fill the Void’ Is Jane Austen for Jews.” Tablet Magazine, June 11, 2013. Scott, A. O. “For a Hasidic Woman, Weighing the Personal Against Larger Duties.” New York Times, May 23, 2013. Seidman, Naomi. The Marriage Plot: Or, How Jews Fell in Love with Love, and with Literature. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016. Shavit, Avner. “Late Wedding: On Second Viewing, I Realize How Brilliant Through the Wall [The Wedding Plan] Is, yet One Big Problem Remains.” Walla!, October 28, 2016. Available online: January 10, 2021. https://e.walla.co.il/item/3007​926. Sherwin, Adam. “Rama Burshtein, Israel’s First Ultra-Orthodox Female Film Director, on Making Movies Without Touching Men.” iNews, October 19, 2018. Shleier, Curt. “Rama Burshtein Has a Fundamental Belief in Marriage.” Forward, May 11, 2017. Siegelshifer, Valeria, and Tova Hartman. “The Emergence of Israeli Orthodox Women Filmmakers.” Shofar 38, no. 2 (2020): 125–61. Skinazi, Karen E. H. Women of Valor: Orthodox Jewish Troll Fighters, Crime Writers, and Rock Stars in Contemporary Literature and Culture. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2018. Skinazi, Karen E. H., and Rachel S. Harris, eds. “The Feminism and Art of Jewish Orthodox and Haredi Women,” Special issue of Shofar 38. 2 (2020). Tapper, Josh. “Haredi Filmmaker Shares Her Take on ‘Sexiness’ of Arranged Marriage.” Times of Israel, October 2, 2012. Vinig, Marlyn. Orthodox Cinema. Tel Aviv: Resling, 2011. [In Hebrew] Waldman, Rose. “Women’s Voices in Contemporary Hasidic Communities.” Shofar 38, no. 2 (2020): 35–60. Yaqub, Nadia. “The Palestinian Cinematic Wedding.” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 3, no. 2 (2007): 56–85. Young, Deborah. “Fill the Void (Lemale et Ha’Chalal): Venice Review.” Hollywood Reporter, September 1, 2012. Available online: December 4, 2020. https://www. hollyw​oodr​epor​ter.com/rev​iew/ven​ice-2012-fill-void-lem​ale-hacha​lal-movie-rev​ iew-367​365.

2

Silence … No More …: Palestinian Cinema of Transgression Lema M. Salem

Introduction In the 1960s, during the early years of the reconstruction and restructuring of Palestinian cinema, the work of Palestinian women filmmakers was defined by geographic fragmentation and irregularity. However, in the early twenty-first century, particularly toward the end of the second Palestinian intifada (2000–5), Palestinian cinema witnessed a significant surge not only from a quantitative point of view but, more importantly, with regard to the dramatic increase in the number of Palestinian women filmmakers from the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the occupied Palestinian territories. This paper focuses on the role and the representations of women in contemporary Palestinian cinema. Palestinian women filmmakers are instrumental in (re)shaping and (re)directing the ways in which women have been featured onscreen and how Palestinian cinema has inserted itself into a regional and indeed international platform of cultural production. In the twenty-first century, Palestinian women filmmakers have directed approximately 50 percent of Palestinian films. Hitherto, scholars engaging with Palestinian cinema have generally been interested in mainstream Palestinian films.1 This paper offers an in-depth analysis of films directed by Palestinian women and brings them to the surface of the Palestinian film industry alongside well-known male and female Palestinian filmmakers whose work has reached international audiences and been screened worldwide. Most of these well-known filmmakers are of another nationality or live abroad, which means funding and education are more accessible. First, I will explain the factors that led to the increase of Palestinian women filmmakers and the struggles they face. I will then analyze several exemplary films: two documentaries by

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Buthaina Khoury, an independent Palestinian filmmaker, as well as four short films produced by Shashat,2 an organization that supports Palestinian women from underprivileged, working-class backgrounds. Palestinian women filmmakers are growing in number for two reasons: first, an increase in organizations supporting women, and, second, the emergence of independent diasporic women directors. Over the past two decades, various Palestinian organizations have been established that offer assistance and professional training, encouraging women to “tell their stories” or stories from their perspective, through film. One important example is Shashat, which supports women financially and professionally and guides them until they have mastered the art and created a film. Shashat aims to act as a cultural bridge by disseminating these films, most notably at its yearly women’s film festival, which started in 2005 in only three cities in the West Bank (over the years, the festival has expanded across the West Bank and to the Gaza Strip). In addition, Shashat organizes screenings in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip’s cities, camps, villages, cultural organizations, and universities. In total, Shashat puts on 143 screenings in fourteen Palestinian cities as well as four camps, eight universities, and twenty-one cultural societies.3 Each screening is typically followed by social events, including discussions, panels, and workshops. Six of these programs are annually aired on Palestinian television.4 As Alia Arasoughly, the general director of Shashat, states, “With activities in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the festival bridges geographic and political boundaries through its shared cinematic vision.”5 Shashat works within the geographical boundaries of Palestine, and so this concept of providing a “bridge” is significant. The second reason for the growing number of Palestinian women filmmakers is the emergence of independent diasporic women directors; Palestinian women in exile have easy access to film schools and professional training opportunities, not to mention equipment, facilities, and organizations that can assist and indeed foster their artistic talents and aspirations. These women construct their themes and concerns mainly through the lens of their exilic and hyphenated experiences and identities. This breakthrough in terms of women’s participation in Palestinian filmmaking takes place at all levels of production, both within and outside the text of the film. Women work behind the camera and as editors, directors, distributors, researchers, writers, producers, and public intellectuals. They embody the experience of filmic production as well as direct or indirect social engagement, linking the social-cultural traditions, ideological differences, and



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experiences of each city in Palestine. This mission of creating a link or bridge is crucial for Palestinians, as the nation is geographically fragmented, which creates an inevitable gap between various populations. Cinema thus provides an increasingly popular and convenient medium that enables a cultural channel of communication and understanding. There are a number of reasons for this fragmentation: the growing number of checkpoints between territories, implying that Palestinians’ mobility is controlled and restricted; the diasporic Palestinian visitors or homecomers who introduce other cultures and ideologies from their host countries; the establishment and presence of foreign international and multicultural institutions and schools; Palestinians residing inside the 1948 Palestinian territories (occupied Palestine) who are citizens of Israel and have embodied different lifestyles due to their living conditions. Beyond the political and geographic constraints, Palestinian women, specifically from traditional backgrounds, face multiple societal and cultural challenges. These include close working relations with men, the mostly male domain of film production, distant film locations that require mobility, flexibility with regard to schedules, and, most importantly, engagement with sensitive issues, many of which are considered taboo. Women filmmakers, especially those who reside within the Palestinian territories, face additional limitations and restrictions. Arasoughly explains that similar constraints exist in “other Muslim countries or more countries with conservative social mores” where women are involved with film.6 She elaborates on problems “that are very specific to women in our culture”7 that prevent women from becoming key figures and leaders in the production world. According to her, the long hours on the job and travel distances between territories when shooting a film are among the major hurdles. Another problem Arasoughly discusses when it comes to women directors is the amount of time they have to spend in dark editing rooms. She explains that editing rooms often attract suspicion because “a woman and a man are sitting alone in a dark room,”8 which can lead to harassment. I argue that the restrictions and limitations Palestinian women filmmakers, and especially local filmmakers, encounter shape their aesthetic approaches. For instance, short films (fiction and documentary) make up a significant percentage of Palestinian women’s cinema. Other than being less time consuming, these productions are more readily supported by international funding sources, and they tend to address topics of interest to the sponsors, which frequently coincide with those of women filmmakers. Rather than avoiding taboos, these films get at the core of feminist issues, portraying themes of love, education, and career, while

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exploring sexuality and various complex gender dynamics shaped by power and dependency. It is imperative to consider the socioreligious context that has shaped most of the women filmmakers discussed in this paper. Their perception is that their bodies and associated gendered behaviors are tied to their family’s honor and that the family constitutes a fundamental pillar in their communities. Women who violate this honor and who bring “shame” will be punished, and what constitutes a violation can range from staying out late to frequenting unsuitable venues to pursuing a romantic or sexual relationship. Palestinian society is deeply anchored in tradition. This impacts gendered norms, regulations, and expectations, a combination that has been explored in great depth and from a variety of viewpoints.9 My own inquiry of these issues builds on these scholarly works and examines how numerous hegemonic attachments to cultural traditions and/or patriarchal ideologies can be most easily challenged, specifically through the lens of film. My primary interest lies in how the tension between tradition and heteronormativity, on the one hand, and novel articulations of feminine and masculine roles, on the other, can be engaged through the medium of film. The filmmakers examined here creatively criticize the existence and traces of a patriarchy as well as a hierarchy that is evident in Palestinian society and that is sustained by a large set of individuals. In turn, the films engage the modernization of Palestine and explore how this may lead to friction, tension, and rejection of traditional values. Through the medium of film, Palestinian women filmmakers can act out their desires, fantasies, frustrations, and creativity. Regardless of religious background, “Muslim and Christian women are affected by a similar set of traditional norms, values, and customs.”10 For instance, honor and shame are considered key moral codes throughout the Arab world. In this regard, it is vital to understand the definition of male honor, which “is not contingent on personal achievements, but depends on a man’s ability to control the behaviour of his womenfolk. Men feel responsible for the actions of women.”11 At the center of Buthaina Khoury’s documentary film ‫( مغارة ماريا‬Mgharat Maria; Maria’s Grotto) (2007) are the themes of honor killing and associated moral codes. In it, she explores the social significance of honor and shame and shows not only how women’s actions are defined and controlled but how their very presence itself—within some traditional Palestinian families—can be perceived as a burden. In some cases, mothers teach their daughters the “acceptance and endurance of their believed inferiority,”12 a perception which they, in turn, pass



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on to the next generation. Eventually, “the cycle of female inferiority will have turned full circle.”13

Maria’s Grotto Maria’s Grotto is a powerful documentary that deconstructs the most central concepts that govern gender relations in the Arab world in general and Palestinian society in particular: honor and shame. Khoury intertwines four different stories of honor killings, to great effect. She tells these stories by featuring testimonies from and interviews with family members, friends, medical experts, and victims, which are set in various legal institutions and different neighborhoods. Khoury addresses the meaning of love, femininity, and sexuality as she also takes on the themes of violence and power, which together often create a difficult and toxic environment for both men and women. It is in relation to Lila Abu-Lughod’s apt definition and explanation of “honor killing” or “honor crime” or “killing in the name of honor” that I will explore the film’s narratives: The killing of a woman by her relatives for violation of a sexual code, in the name of restoring family honour … neither values of honour nor their enforcement through violence are ever said to be restricted to Muslim communities, and honour crimes are not condoned in Islamic law or by religious authorities … insofar as the honour crime is designated a “traditional” or “cultural” practice.14

Abu-Lughod provides us with a starting point that helps us to better contextualize the honor killing phenomenon and sheds light on the social conditions of the women, men, and families who experience these tragic events. The stories that Khoury features in her documentary focus on the men. This perspective allows viewers to immerse themselves in the cultural codes that guide men and that ultimately condition the regulations that shape women’s actions and their gendered behavior. Edward Said is not oblivious to the expressions and consequences of the conflicts that shape the intimate and domestic spheres of Palestinian families. He states that violence has been a visible feature of Palestinians’ lives. He makes the distinction, however, between two different kinds of violence: “the violence visited on us by our enemies”15 and “the violence we have wreaked on each other.”16 Maria’s Grotto opens with a scene set in a Christian cemetery where people meet every Saturday to remember their loved ones. Khoury invites the elderly women gathered there to recount to her the story of Maria, whose grotto no

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one ever seems to visit. The story supposedly originated in the late 1930s, when, as one woman explains, “people’s talk made her family suspect Maria’s honor” and then her “father and uncle took her away and planned her murder.” Another woman elaborates: “They did so to remove dishonor. But after she was killed, the autopsy test shows she was innocent. God will punish everyone who accused her and helped in her murder. God doesn’t forget anyone.” Yet another woman adds, “Maria’s story has been told to all girls in this village throughout the years to be a lesson, for them to stay away from wrong.” These voices enrich a number of scholarly explorations about the meaning of honor in hamoulehs (extended families, also known as clans or tribes) as well as the traditional values and ideological assumptions that shape these villagers’ lives. Khoury’s choice to introduce her documentary with a Christian victim of an honor killing may not be coincidental. The underlying message, specifically if one is to assume that these acts are predominantly or exclusively linked to the Muslim faith, may be that these are cultural rather than religious codes. Khoury explores the fact that “honor” refers not only to a family’s honor but to the whole hamouleh, which ultimately affects the entire village’s reputation. Countless studies have established that the status of a hamouleh is primarily based on honor, which defines their relationship with the larger community. Therefore, if the community witnesses or suspects something dubious, residents inform the patriarch of the family, with the goal of saving not only the honor of the family but of the entire village. As it is the men in the family who hold the power, they are in charge of protecting their family’s honor. It is considered their duty to prevent any act of dishonor, and this is enforced by punishing the woman who may have dishonored them. To restore honor, the practice of honor killing has presented itself as an available option. The second portrait featured in the film is the story of a young teenage girl who survives an honor killing attempted by her brother, who stabbed her in their backyard because of “people’s talk.” Khoury interviews the victim, her mother, and her brother, all of whom have requested anonymity. She thus intentionally blurs their faces. Her brother describes how he “was put under psychological pressure: the community’s eyes and stares completely destroyed me.” He recounts how “relatives and others accused me of not being a man.” He recalls, “After stabbing her, I turned myself to the police … Three quarters of them think I did something to be proud of, and the other quarter considered it a crime.” He says, “I victimized myself before I victimized my sister,” he continues, “[and] I was and still am depressed.” His actions appear to have resulted in



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contradictory outcomes: on the one hand, he has performed toxic masculinity by attempting to kill his sister and preserve the honor of his family and village; on the other, the event has led him to emotional collapse. He expresses this disparity by describing himself as “not being man enough,” or as rujulah. Julie Peteet aptly explains this concept: (Rujulah) is acquired, verified and played out in the brave deed, in risktaking, and in expressions of fearlessness and assertiveness. It is attained by constant vigilance and willingness to defend honour (sharaf), face (wajh), kin and community from external aggression and to uphold and protect cultural definitions of gender-specific propriety.17

The cultural attributes of masculinity that have been enforced on men through generations empower them to act in superior ways toward women. At the same time, these attributes pressure them to perform these codes imposed upon them by the community. If a man is incapable of fulfilling certain gendered expectations, he is labeled as not sufficiently masculine. In the documentary, the brother faces this accusation because he has not fully avenged the dishonor of his family and community caused by his sister. The fact that he ultimately failed to kill her was perceived as a deficiency, as the concept of honor exists as a “defining frame for masculinity.”18 Ironically, even the police anchor their judgment in the same structure of gendered behavior: the brother tells us that many on the police force considered what he did to be a commendable act of bravery. In fact, this crime is not considered a legal transgression and thus has no official consequences. When Khoury visits the tribal law counselor, he affirms that honor killing is not punishable because it constitutes an act of defending and protecting the honor of a family, a hamouleh, and a community. It should be noted, however, that some policemen who do consider the act a crime would be unable to take any legal action, specifically if the tribal counselor disagreed. Pierre Bourdieu sums up the challenges that men frequently face in situations that impose prescribed acts of masculinity designed to protect the principal codes of honor: “He who challenges a man incapable of replying to the challenge, that is, incapable of pursuing the exchange that has been opened, dishonours him.”19 The outlined story illustrates Bourdieu’s concept of capital culture, which demonstrates that masculinity has a certain currency in Palestine and that this currency is in crisis. These pressures, as the brother mentions, victimize both men and women in different ways. Bourdieu agrees that “within a Foucaudian/

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feminist framework … it is indeed senseless to view men as the enemy” because “most men, equally with women, find themselves embedded and implicated in institutions and practices that they as individuals did not create and do not control—and that they frequently feel tyrannized by.”20 Hence, the cultural acts that are meant to protect a community’s honor are based on unequal forms of power and control within the community, with men dominating women, and the old dominating the young. Khoury features the story of another woman, who, in her early thirties and never married, was forced by her family to drink poison after they discovered that she was eight months pregnant. When Khoury asks a graveyard security worker to show her Hiyam’s grave, he refuses. She inquires, “Why? So if I ask for a man’s grave instead of a woman’s grave, would it be easier?” He replies, “Yes, it would have, and for different reasons I cannot show you.” We then see Khoury questioning various neighbors, asking if they knew Hiyam and if they are familiar with the location of her grave. Everyone’s response is a simple no. From these short conversations, we cannot but notice that the village’s patriarchal power dynamics and the labels of shame and honor follow a woman to her grave. Khoury interviews a former coworker of Hiyam’s who is also a member of her family. The woman in her sixties explains, “Shame is the same. Whether they killed her or not, her family has her blood on their hands … what is wrong for a woman is wrong for a man. It would be better if they imprisoned them or married them off … her family will be haunted by this shame. It doesn’t go away.” She adds, “Nothing is more important than honor, than one’s land.” These statements reflect the heterogeneity of Palestinians’ conceptions of honor and of punishment for “dishonor.” Another noteworthy aspect of this woman’s statement is her invocation of land and how it is tied to the concept of honor. In the words of S. H. Katz, “Possession and defence of the land and women were at the centre not only of emerging national consciousness but of individual men’s self-respect.”21 The story about Hiyam takes another turn, with a different ending, but equally motivated by the desire to maintain family and community honor. In addition to killing Hiyam, her family also secretly take revenge on her boss, Mahdi, whom they accuse of having had a sexual relationship with Hiyam. They burn his and his family’s houses and have him imprisoned. When Khoury visits a medical institution, an employee confirms that Hiyam was pregnant, that she had been forced to drink poison, and that DNA testing had established Mahdi’s innocence. Nevertheless, Hiyam’s tribe persisted in accusing Mahdi.



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Khoury also visits the police station, once with Mahdi’s mother and another time with his lawyer, a woman. During these visits, Khoury discovers for herself how deeply the masculinity crisis affects all men, a revelation she shares with the lawyer. Khoury comments on the visit, stating, “I have never felt this before. Going into the police station, a place that I thought was the center of power, I felt I was surrounded by weakness and fragility. I saw helpless and weak men. Police cannot even protect themselves, and they do not have the freedom to make decisions.” Mahdi, exasperated, notes, “I am desperate, and I am already dead even if I am released because people will blame me for the burning of their houses and will treat me as a criminal in any case. People do not have mercy, even though it has medically been proven I am innocent.” These statements clearly assert a crisis of masculinity and the extent to which patriarchal cultural traditions can define the suffering of both sexes in different ways. The final story centers around Abeer, a Palestinian citizen of Israel who started to perform with the famous Palestinian hip-hop band DAM. Before their first tour in Palestine, however, her male relatives and family threatened to kill her if she decided to appear onstage, declaring her singing a threat to their honor. Her family felt that it was not appropriate for a woman to be a singer, referencing the moral codes that dictate that a woman always keep her voice soft and her gaze downward. Abeer, though, speaks out and says: I am not ashamed of what I sing. I am better than those famous singers that are half naked and sing stupid songs about love that we are not even allowed to live and that teaches us to be passive and ignorant and to allow men to control us. I am not like that. I have friends who have a degree and work, but sadly, they do not know their rights and accept to be suppressed. They even start looking for justifications why a girl was murdered instead. I cannot fulfill my small dream because of the moral codes this culture has.

Abeer’s statements resonate with her society’s views of honor and other various cultural norms and traditions, specifically with regard to expected gender performances of women and men, femininity and masculinity. Thus, honor killings in Maria’s Grotto are represented against the backdrop of powerful sociocultural forces. These consist of widespread control over women’s bodies and sexualities, persistent familial or communal involvement in personal and intimate spheres, pressures exerted upon women who attempt to disobey these established rules, and the apparent feeling of shame associated with the

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loss of control over what is perceived as ideal performances of femininity and masculinity.

Women in Struggle In another documentary, Khoury explores feminism, sexuality, and violence from a political and social angle. In her feature-length ‫( نساء في صراع‬Nisaa fi Siraa; Women in Struggle, 2004), she sheds light on a different kind of violence and power enforced upon Palestinian women, conditions which women have been largely silent about. Women political detainees are rarely featured in literature, let alone onscreen. Khoury, as a female filmmaker, was given permission to access the women featured in this film, who felt comfortable speaking openly about their experiences and their pain. In Women in Struggle, Khoury presents four middle-aged Palestinian women who, during the late 1960s and 1980s, while imprisoned in Israel, were victims of violence. She focuses specifically on three of these women. To frame Khoury’s portrayals, it is enlightening to consider several other perspectives on the condition of Palestinian women in Israeli prisons. Scholar Maria Holt, quoting from the WCLAC (Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counselling) and WSC (Women’s Studies Centre) research, for instance, states that “Palestinian women have directly suffered the pains of Israeli arbitrary measures, compounding the suffering they already endure as women living in a patriarchal and conservative society.”22 Joyoti Grech, a master practitioner, trainer, coach, and meditation teacher, argues that “there are clear nationalpolitical implications to war rape that revolve around manipulations of national honour, racial purity and national integrity.”23 Since a woman’s honor is considered the main pillar of the Palestinian family, rape affects not only women but also their families and community. The detainees filmed by Khoury document the perception of a surprising phenomenon: the experience of a separation between their physical and emotional states at the site of torture, rape, sexual molestation, and humiliation. In other words, they argue that there is a disconnect between body and mind, regardless of the actual physical torture they endure, that often persists beyond their release. Anthropologist Julie Peteet argues that “bodies do more than represent. Torture and beatings are ordeals one undergoes as sacrifices for the [national] struggle.”24



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In Women in Struggle, Aysha Odeh, who is from Deir Jarir village in the West Bank and spent ten years in Israeli prisons, speaks about her experience of violence and how she coped with it after her release: Every hour they had new rituals and new ways of torture. They dragged me into a room after they dragged a martyr in front of me, and I thought the same was going to happen to me. They told me to take off my clothes, and I refused, so they stripped me by force and left me totally naked and cuffed my legs and hands behind me. They then threw me on the ground. They were two men and a woman; the woman stepped on my head, and one of the men settled his knee in my abdomen and proceeded to squeeze my breasts while the other man secured my legs and violated me using a stick. No matter how much I screamed, they would not stop. They carried me by my hands and legs and displayed me in front of a line of men as I was naked, then they dragged me back to my cell to do it all again.

She continues and describes her pain: It was as if all the injustice of human history perpetuated by humans against humans was gathered up that night inside them and they poured them out on me. At one point, I could no longer take it, and I lost consciousness. But when I regained consciousness, I felt I was reborn. My body was not my body alone but of Palestine as a whole.

Rasmea Odeh, from Lifta village in the West Bank, also spent ten years in prison. She describes her torture: They also dragged me and displayed me naked with tied hands and feet in front of a young man they were interrogating so they could put pressure on him to confess. He became a martyr while I was in the room … I stayed strong. I didn’t feel like my body was mine; it was for the Palestine struggle.

Rawda Basir, from Taybeh village in the West Bank, is another detainee who spent eight years in Israeli prisons; she recollects her experience differently. Rawda, unlike Rasmea, did not say much about her torture. But she did say, “From the intensive beating, I lost a lot of blood, and my health was not good. So my hair started to fall out.” Sociologist and political scientist Ruth Seifert suggests that “sexual violence against women is likely to destroy a nation’s culture … their physical and emotional destruction aims at exterminating social and cultural stability”25 and that “the rape of women of a community, culture or nation can be regarded— and is so regarded—as a symbolic rape of the body of that community.”26

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In an interview with anthropologist and gender scholar Lena Meari, Aysha explains how she perceived her body, relating her experience in the following way. “[It] was not something related to my sexual body or honour for me. It was an assault on my being and existence as a Palestinian—this is what gave my body the ability and power … I did not perceive my body as my own body, it was the body of all Palestinians and of all those Arabs. My body was reconstructed.”27 These women have deconstructed their feminine body and perceived their bodies as asexual during the period they spent in prison.28 As women are released from Israeli prisons, they report on how the different forms of violence and torture they experienced there continue to destroy and reshape their physical and psychological conditions. In Memory and Popular Film, film scholar Paul Grainge points out that “cinema has become central to the mediation of memory in modern cultural life.”29 Hence, films like Khoury’s Women in Struggle function as a tool to remember the violent incidents that shape Palestinian experiences and history. The women’s recollections of trauma, however, usually extend beyond imprisonment, continuing to affect their sexual and everyday existence well after their release. Aysha, for instance, shares that she divorced after a brief marriage and then admits for the first time: My relationship with my husband is an unhealthy one. When my husband was deported to Jordan, I felt liberated from him because I was unable to be natural with him. This is because of the torture and violence I experienced in prison. It doesn’t allow me to function as a normal female. It has changed my human nature and the chemical build-up of my body … Your life in prison dictates your behavior towards the outside world. In other words, you never leave prison; you actually continue to carry it with you.

Rawda describes her earliest experience in detention: I was engaged, but I left my fiancé when I was imprisoned because he did not come visit me once. He was scared. Most people stop visiting detainees because they are scared … I was strong, but my weakest point that made me feel horrible was seeing my mother hurt. The most important thing was family support, and I had that.

Rawda is now married, and she shares her story: My husband was an ex-prisoner too. We met at several events. He then said to me, “Not one of us ex-detainees can build or live a life like normal people. Neither



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I can marry a regular person, nor can you marry a regular man.” I honestly had not thought about marriage. I did not want a personal struggle, because there are many other social struggles to fix. But we eventually got married. We couldn’t have kids or fertility treatments, so we adopted a boy.

The psychological symptoms and mental health problems experienced by victims of torture are mostly “paralyzing fears, spells of confusion, memory disturbances, sexual dysfunction and loss of weight more common among the Palestinian ex-prisoners.”30 Aysha, Rasmea, and Rawda share various common symptoms of the violence they endured, in addition to the obvious sexual dysfunction they have spoken about: they all disclosed the psychological trauma of carrying the prison within them and described how this sensation continues to affect their everyday lives. Women in Struggle is unusual in that it features a non-stereotypical Palestinian woman: a person who is neither a superhero nor a passive victim but rather a complex hybrid of both. Thus, they suffer from the power of an enemy as well as the power of their own patriarchal society. The statements of the three ex-detainees demonstrate the persistent consequences for women who have suffered violence, abusive power structures, torture, and sexual abuse.

Separation Areej Abu Eid, a young film director from the Nuseirat Refugee Camp, in the Gaza Strip, tackles various aspects of social and domestic violence as well as relationship power dynamics in the 2012 documentary ‫( إنفصال‬Infisaal; Separation). Amal, at the center of the film, shares her struggle with both the internal and external conflicts she experienced as a result of her marriage, which was shaped by violence. After her divorce, she continued to suffer the destructive effects of power and authority symptomatic of patriarchal society. Amal, who was forced into marriage, is clearly a victim of abuse and displays all the stereotypical signs of a passive woman who has been silenced by cultural traditions. At first, she appears to be a wife who is subject to the orders of her husband (Figure 2.1). Numerous subtle hints, however, suggest that Amal is not entirely passive, giving viewers the opportunity to examine a number of stereotypical representations of female characters. On two occasions, we see Amal rebelling against her abusive and violent husband: once when she is in the process of getting the divorce and then, again, when we see her starting a new

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Figure 2.1  Amal at work in Separation. Screen grab by author.

life and becoming an independent person. Her state of dependency, which causes her great suffering, appears to be a result of her early and forced marriage; it left her without an education or work experience, which in turn made her economically dependent on her husband. Amal recounts a number of painful stories, stating, for instance, “It was worse than a traditional marriage. I was married off to my cousin in Yemen without knowing him when I was only 16 years old, and his family did not give me a dowry or visit me. I will not allow my daughters to have the same life. I will make sure they know the man and his family very well before they get married. I am now strong. I have the capability of being independent and to stand on my feet. Divorce can be the beginning of a new life: either a new happy beginning or a new beginning of death. The choice is ours.”31 Separation engages serious and difficult issues around marriage, against the backdrop of social, moral, and political issues that are tightly linked to the perception that masculinity is anchored in authoritarianism. Indeed, the relationships in the film are defined by power and authority rather than by love and respect. In her portrayals, Abu Eid ably reveals how hierarchies of power affect human relations and everyday experiences and shows that masculinity and power are inextricably entwined. When Amal refuses to hand over her property to her husband, he physically tortures her and leaves her bleeding. In the words of political scientist Lois McNay, “Feminists have shown how the various strategies of oppression around the female body from ideological representations of femininity to concrete procedures of confinement and bodily control were central to the maintenance of hierarchical social relations.”32 Foucault convincingly theorizes how power is exercised but not possessed. This analytical approach frames not only Amal’s relationship with her husband but numerous other abusive marriages.



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One scene in Abu Eid’s film that reveals the inherent power corruption of governmental institutions takes place at the police station, where Amal suffers a miscarriage. However, because of her husband’s high governmental position, the officers do not take steps to detain him. This scene specifically illustrates Foucault’s formulation that states that “forms of power/knowledge [are] used to justify the actions of persons or groups and [these] have specific consequences for relations of power.”33 Abu Eid’s creativity lies in her decision not only to depict Amal as a victim but also to portray the police officers as victims of the higher power of authority. This also applies to Amal’s husband, who is to some extent himself a victim of society’s expectations of men. There is no doubt that the power that men commonly exert over women causes increasing tension and conflict in Palestinian society. Palestinian women, however, are increasingly resisting this masculine power, and many of them are contributing to transforming masculinity by employing different means of resistance. Their primary task is to challenge the traditional masculine power structures and to deconstruct various established gender norms. There is clearly a crisis of masculinity, apparent in real life and onscreen, when men become unsure of their role. As the narrative unfolds, we learn that Amal does manage to get a divorce by accepting her husband’s conditions: to give up all means of financial support, including her dowry and the support for her three children’s expenses. After the divorce, Amal, of her own volition, shuts herself up in her family’s home in an attempt to prevent the community from gossiping about her. But the truth eventually comes out, and people start talking about Amal. At this point, Amal collects the courage she needs and starts attending courses and workshops; eventually, she gets a job and gradually gains independence. She refuses to succumb to the restrictions imposed upon her to enact and embody the expected role of femininity and ultimately exercises her own power by gaining control over her body and femininity. Amal has faced and surpassed different sources of power abuse and violence that could have reduced her life to sustained home imprisonment. Instead, she has chosen the complicated route of challenge and resistance, as “where there is power there is resistance.”34 In order to contextualize Amal’s agency within Palestinian society, it is important to state that very few women break their silence regarding domestic violence; additionally, there is a significantly higher percentage of abuse among women who live in the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics documents that

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women who are victims of domestic violence in the Gaza Strip surpass those who live in the West Bank by 21.5 percent and that 65.3 percent of these women remain silent against various acts of violence practiced by their husbands.35

Madleen Another woman film director from the Gaza Strip, Riham Al-Ghazali, made the documentary ‫( مادلين‬Madleen, 2011), the strong and compelling story of a teenage girl named Madleen who works as a fisherwoman to survive and to support her family’s dignity. She follows in her father’s professional footsteps after an illness leaves him unable to fish. In the film, Madleen takes us on a journey in which we encounter her world through her eyes. With the encouragement of her family, she breaks into a space that is traditionally male dominated: the sea. We see her virtually transforming into a “fisherman.” By working as a fisherwoman, she defies numerous sociocultural conventions and restrictions. Her life, nevertheless, is not entirely without male influence. Madleen clearly depends on the help of fishermen. We see, for instance, two men help her by pushing her small wooden skiff back to land. This scene suggests that there may be a partial or gradual acceptance of female fishers, specifically if and when family members encourage their female relatives. Throughout the film, Al-Ghazali uses wide and medium shots to produce the sensation of space and freedom, rather than focusing on the portrayal of human emotions; the long shots of Madleen amidst a vast coastal landscape produce a strong message of liberation. Al-Ghazali opens the film with a wide shot of Madleen on her wooden skiff at sea, rowing toward us (Figure 2.2). The final image, in contrast, shows her rowing away from us. Several medium shots feature Madleen as she pulls her fishing net out of the water. In these scenes, she discusses her endless love of the sea and the freedom she experiences when she is there. She explains that she has two personalities. “In the sea, I have a man’s personality, strong, and angry. But on land I am an ordinary girl with feminine-like manners.” The words Madleen uses to describe this duality are stereotypical of both women’s and men’s personalities. This suggests that she understands herself through societal gender norms; men, according to these norms, are strong and angry, and women are soft and passive, with feminine-like manners. Al-Ghazali incorporates a short interview with Madleen’s father, who clearly supports his daughter. He explains, “Every girl should get out of the kitchen, go to the sea, learn to drive, and get liberated from restrictions. We are not doing



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Figure 2.2  A wide shot of Madleen at sea in Madleen. Screen grab by author.

Figure 2.3  Madleen with her family after work in Madleen. Screen grab by author.

anything wrong. This is how we get our income.” If her father felt differently, Madleen, like most other girls, would have faced restrictions and difficulties in finding approval from others in her society. In short, a woman can build a career in a male-dominated sphere as long as she is willing to fight and break the circle of dominance. But it would be difficult, if not impossible, to achieve these kinds of breakthroughs without the support of a male authority. At the end of Madleen’s workday, her family gathers by the sea (Figure 2.3). We see close-ups of fish frying and wood burning. The ambient sound of a flickering fire creates a sense of minor tension, but the visuals of the fireplace and the burning wood suggest a feeling of comfort. These contradictory sensations may be an underlying but central message of challenging and changing various societal and gender conflicts. As the film concludes, we can feel the warmth of the family, who sing happily as they play the oud around the fire.

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Figure 2.4  A scene from Five Cups and a Cup. Screen grab by author.

Five Cups and a Cup Palestinian writer, director, and producer Laila Abbas’s ‫( خمس فناجين وفنجان‬Khams Fanajeen wa Finjaan; Five Cups and a Cup, 2011) is a short fiction film that also engages the theme of women’s careers, adopting a critical view of women who work for feminist organizations but may not be helping other women in actuality (Figure 2.4). In this dark comedy, Abbas focuses on a Palestinian feminist organization and its postmodern philosophy. Through the use of a cynical narrative structure, Abbas exposes women as agents of disaster and failure. Commonly, beyond the film world, cynicism is used when there is a loss of faith in an argument or issue. As Timothy Bewes argues, postmodern cynicism is “a self-pitying reaction to the apparent disintegration of the political reality.”36 Ewan Morrison reasserts the use of cynicism in that it “exists not because we are unaware of what is wrong [but also because] we are only too aware of our inability to get out of the impasse, our inability to take a risk, to commit to a cause.”37 Abbas, a woman filmmaker, criticizes both women in feminist organizations and the larger NGOs that are behind them. Abbas highlights the attitudes of five feminist Palestinian women who work at a feminist organization through their discussion of women’s rights and their aim to change the Palestinian personal status laws. The discussion, which takes place over coffee in a meeting room, includes tense debates. The five women need to agree on the agenda of a planned meeting with the Palestinian president to convince him to change the Palestinian personal status laws. Various issues are raised that touch upon injustices toward women (e.g., divorce and childcare). The film ends with the five women having failed to agree on the agenda: it appears they have been preoccupied with their own needs and wants and have thus forgotten the concerns of the women they should be serving or representing.



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Throughout the film, the women make snide remarks to one another. It is almost as if the five, all elegantly and well dressed, are in a competition with one another, each trying to impress the others by bragging about themselves. Their attitudes may be related to the generous salaries the women receive from their jobs at the feminist organization, in which they seem to accomplish nothing. The film’s title is clever. “Five Cups” is a reference to the five higher-classworking women, and the additional “cup” refers to the lower-class cleaning lady. The women’s cynical attitude toward one another is identical to the one they adopt toward the cleaner, whom they treat in a humiliating manner. They seem to consider her an object, a voiceless character whose main task is to serve them. They order her to bring them coffee and papers, all without making eye contact and without calling her by name, even though she has seemingly been employed by the organization for some time. Only one of the women, in fact, appears to know her name. The tone the women use with the cleaner is reminiscent of that of a master speaking to his or her slave. The cleaner is in the same room as the five other women, but she sits on a small chair some distance from them. Hence, the title, Five Cups and a Cup, stands for the five feminist working women and the one cleaning lady, who, as a result of her lower-class status, functions as a detached part of society. The film’s cynical theme centers on the fact that these five feminist women pretend to want to change women’s status but meanwhile completely fail to treat one another, not to mention the cleaning woman, with respect. Their remarks about solving women’s problems and spreading awareness of gender disparities illustrate their ultimately self-centered, self-serving goals. These contradictory roles are illustrated in the following exchange between three of the women. Woman 1: You should represent all women; you should not only speak on behalf of only us. Woman 2: Represent whom? Last time I was downtown, it was like Afghanistan. We live in different worlds, and they can barely raise their children. Woman 3: And what have you done to communicate with those who come from “Afghanistan” so they can understand what you are talking about?

As the women continue to argue, they attack, humiliate, and dehumanize women who live in villages and refugee camps. Possibly due to confusion or their unproductive conversations, disagreeing on multiple issues, the women even start to criticize their own work. One of them tells another, “By God, you

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don’t know what to do with the money.” It appears that they are aware that there is gossip about them in broader society. At one point, another woman states, “Okay, propose what you want, as long as it is reasonable, so that we don’t become the subjects of Friday sermons. Some call us Americanized, others Marxists, and others—God forbid—lesbians.” These statements appear to criticize Palestinians who are unaware of the functions of feminist organizations and/or outright reject their existence. Lindsey Moore argues that the term “feminism” remains contested in the Arab Muslim world due to its association with foreign intervention and ambivalent connotations of individualism … seeing such labels as elitist, reductive, or restrictive.”38 Abbas does not criticize the organization because it is feminist; rather, she targets the women who neglect their mission to serve women who need their attention.

Conclusion Another director who has tackled the issue of the Palestinian personal status laws is Fadya Salaheldin, in her 2012 documentary ‫( هيك القانون‬Hayk Alqanoon; This Is Law). Salaheldin follows Kholoud Al-Faqeeh, the first woman Sharia judge to be appointed to a Palestinian religious court. Salaheldin features various cases and people’s candid emotions in response to an unjust system. We hear Judge Kholoud say that she is bound to follow the Personal Status Law despite it being an obstacle to fulfill what she considers her mission: namely, changing it. Because the film exposes various gaps in the law and other related, sensitive religious matters, it was fiercely criticized and attacked, especially by various sheikhs who have placed the film at the center of their talks in mosques and have issued calls to boycott it, along with the very ideas and messages it carries. Furthermore, the most substantial criticism has come from individuals who work for the court. In conclusion, in their work, Palestinian women filmmakers consciously and/or unconsciously explore and reflect on how the patriarchal structure impacts gender relations and the status of women within Palestinian society specifically. They investigate how various norms and traditions interact with the frequent transitions and rapid changes that continuously shape the sociocultural fabric. A number of scholars39 have examined how various religious rights for women can be abused by sociocultural norms and values and have asserted



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that people often disguise these norms as religious requirements. Thus, both filmic representations and scholarly works seem to indicate that cultural and traditional constraints commonly overpower religious restrictions. Palestinian women filmmakers have certainly made an impressive contribution to their nation’s contemporary cinema. They have challenged numerous established customs and laws and expanded the scope of sensibilities and themes of Palestinian (post)national, hyphenated, and gendered identities using different traditional and modern film aesthetics from the perspective of self-conscious women. Their accomplishments should be understood in light of these filmmakers’ very own struggles and within the context of a society and an industry that continues to be male dominated. These films have opened the door to new debates about and approaches to the potential contributions that this and other art forms can make to identify and alter gender norms, traditions, and regulations.

Notes 1 I define “mainstream Palestinian films” as films that are usually feature length and target national and international markets and audiences, regardless of filmmakers’ gender. 2 I have used four films produced by Shashat in this paper: Separation directed by Areej Abu Eid, Madleen directed by Riham Al-Ghazali, Five Cups and a Cup directed by Laila Abbas, and This Is Law directed by Fadya Salaheldin. 3 Alia Arasoughly, ‫( عين على سينما المرأة الفلسطينية‬Ayn ‘Ala Sinima Al-Mar’a Al-Filastiniyya; An Eye on Palestinian Women’s Cinema) (Ramallah: Shashat, 2013), 17. [In Arabic: my translation] 4 Arasoughly, Palestinian Women’s Cinema, 10. 5 Shashat, I’m a Woman from Palestine 2 [Press Release], 2012, http://eeas.eur​opa. eu/dele​gati​ons/westb​ank/docume​nts/news/20120928​_sha​shat​_pr_​i_am​_a_w​oman​ _en.pdf. 6 Alia Arasoughly, “Interview: Cultural Boundaries and Cyber Spaces,” Women’s Learning Partnership, June 1, 2000, https://arch​ive.org/deta​ils/ali​aara​soug​hlyc​ultu​ral. 7 Arasoughly, “Interview.” 8 Arasoughly, “Interview.” 9 In the preface of her book Palestinian Women: Identity and Experience, Ebba Augustin points out that Palestine is a traditional, male-dominated society; Julie Peteet also refers to this in Gender in Crisis: Women and the Palestinian

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Resistance Movement. Ebba Augustin, Palestinian Women: Identity and Experience (London: Zed Books, 1993); Peteet, Gender in Crisis: Women and the Palestinian Resistance Movement (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991). Furthermore, Dorit Naaman, in “Brides of Palestine/Angels of Death: Media, Gender, and Performance in the Case of the Palestinian Female Suicide Bombers,” and Meredith E. Ebel, in “My Body Is a Barrel of Gunpowder: Palestinian Women’s Suicide Bombing in the Second Intifada,” have each affirmed such categorization while discussing Palestine, and in particular Palestinian women, in different contexts. Naaman, “Brides of Palestine/Angels of Death: Media, Gender, and Performance in the Case of the Palestinian Female Suicide Bombers,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 32, no. 4 (2007); Meredith Ebel, “My Body Is a Barrel of Gunpowder: Palestinian Women’s Suicide Bombing in the Second Intifada” (PhD diss., Carnegie Mellon University, 2012). 10 Augustin, Palestinian Women, 3. 11 Augustin, Palestinian Women, 8. 12 Augustin, Palestinian Women, 8. 13 Augustin, Palestinian Women, 8. 14 Peteet, “Male Gender and Rituals of Resistance in the Palestinian Intifada: A Cultural Politics of Violence,” American Ethnologist 21, no. 1 (1994): 34. 15 Edward Said and Jean Mohr, After the Last Sky: Palestinian Lives (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 5. 16 Said and Mohr, After the Last Sky, 5. 17 Peteet, “Male Gender,” 34. 18 Peteet, “Male Gender,” 34. 19 Pierre Bourdieu and Richard Nice, Algeria 1960: The Disenchantment of the World: The Sense of Honour: The Kabyle House or the World Reversed: Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 101. 20 Judith Kegan Gardiner, Masculinity Studies and Feminist Theory: New Directions (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), 2. 21 Sheila Hannah Katz, “Adam and Adama Ird and Ard: En-Gendering Political Conflict and Identity in Early Jewish and Palestinian Nationalisms,” in Gendering the Middle East, ed. Deniz Kandiyoti (London: I. B. Tauris, 1996), 88. 22 Maria Holt, “Palestinian Women, Violence, and the Peace Process,” Development in Practice 13, nos. 2–3 (2003): 234. 23 Joyoti Grech, “Resisting War Rape in Bangladesh,” Trouble and Strife 26 (1993): 18. 24 Peteet, “Male Gender,” 38. 25 Gayle Letherby, Kate Williams, Philip Birch, and Maureen Cain et al., Sex as Crime? (London: Routledge, 2013), 241. 26 Letherby et al., Sex as Crime?, 242.



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27 Columbia University, “Carceral Politics in Palestine and Beyond: Gender, Vulnerability, Prison,” YouTube, 2012, https://www.yout​ube.com/watch?v=QO8c​ 4T3O​2yQ. 28 Rita Giacaman and Penny Johnson, “Our Life Is Prison: The Triple Captivity of Wives and Mothers of Palestinian Political Prisoners,” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 9, no. 3 (2013): 57. 29 Paul Grainge, Memory and Popular Film (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), 1. 30 Raija-Leena Punamaki, “Experiences of Torture, Means of Coping, and Level of Symptoms among Palestinian Political Prisoners,” Journal of Palestine Studies (1988): 93. 31 Separation, 2012. 32 Lois McNay, Foucault and Feminism: Power, Gender and the Self (New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2013), 31. 33 Chris Barker, Cultural Studies and Discourse Analysis: A Dialogue on Language and Identity (London: Sage, 2001), 25. 34 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage Books, 1990), 95. 35 Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, Women and Men in Palestine: Issues and Statistics 2013 (Palestine, 2013), 119. 36 Timothy Bewes, Cynicism and Postmodernity (London: Verso, 1997), 7. 37 Ewan Morrison, “Cynicism and Postmodernity: Timothy Bewes,” Variant 2, no. 5 (1998): 30. 38 Lindsey Moore, Arab, Muslim, Woman: Voice and Vision in Postcolonial Literature and Film (London: Routledge, 2008), 7. 39 For example, see Augustin, Palestinian Women.

Bibliography Abu-Lughod, Lila. “Seductions of the ‘Honor Crime.’” Differences 22, no. 1 (2011): 17–63. Arasoughly, Alia. ‘Ayn ‘ala Sinima al-Mar’a al-Filastiniyya (“An Eye on Palestinian Women’s Cinema”). Ramallah: Shashat, 2013. [In Arabic] Arasoughly, Alia. “Interview: Cultural Boundaries and Cyber Spaces.” Women’s Learning Partnership, June 1, 2000. Available online: https://www.une​sco.org/archi​ves/mul​ time​dia/docum​ent-477 (accesses December 10, 2019). Augustin, Ebba. Palestinian Women: Identity and Experience. London: Zed Books, 1993. Barker, Chris. Cultural Studies and Discourse Analysis: A Dialogue on Language and Identity. London: Sage, 2001.

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Bewes, Timothy. Cynicism and Postmodernity. London: Verso Books, 1997. Bourdieu, Pierre, and Richard Nice. Algeria 1960: The Disenchantment of the World: The Sense of Honour: The Kabyle House or the World Reversed: Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979. Columbia University. “Carceral Politics in Palestine and Beyond: Gender, Vulnerability, Prison.” YouTube, 2012. Available online: https://www.yout​ube.com/watch?v= QO8c​4T3O​2yQ (accessed December 11, 2019). Ebel, Meredith E. “My Body Is a Barrel of Gunpowder: Palestinian Women’s Suicide Bombing in the Second Intifada.” PhD diss., Carnegie Mellon University, 2012. Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction. Translated by Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage Books, 1990. Gardiner, Judith Kegan. Masculinity Studies and Feminist Theory: New Directions. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013. Giacaman, Rita, and Penny Johnson. “Our Life Is Prison: The Triple Captivity of Wives and Mothers of Palestinian Political Prisoners.” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 9, no. 3 (2013): 54–80. Grainge, Paul. Memory and Popular Film. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003. Grech, Joyoti. “Resisting War Rape in Bangladesh.” Trouble and Strife 26 (1993): 17–21. Holt, Maria. “Palestinian Women, Violence, and the Peace Process.” Development in Practice 13, nos. 2–3 (2003): 223–38. Katz, Sheila Hannah. “Adam and Adama Ird and Ard: En-Gendering Political Conflict and Identity in Early Jewish and Palestinian Nationalisms.” In Gendering the Middle East, edited by Deniz Kandiyoti, 85–108. London: I. B. Tauris, 1996. Letherby, Gayle, Kate Williams, Philip Birch, and Maureen Cain. Sex as Crime? London: Routledge, 2013. McNay, Lois. Foucault and Feminism: Power, Gender and the Self. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2013. Moore, Lindsey. Arab, Muslim, Woman: Voice and Vision in Postcolonial Literature and Film. London: Routledge, 2008. Morrison, Ewan. “Cynicism and Postmodernity: Timothy Bewes.” Variant 2, no. 5 (1998): 29–30. Naaman, Dorit. “Brides of Palestine/Angels of Death: Media, Gender, and Performance in the Case of the Palestinian Female Suicide Bombers.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 32, no. 4 (2007): TBD. Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. Women and Men in Palestine: Issues and Statistics 2013. Palestine, 2013. Peteet, Julie. Gender in Crisis: Women and the Palestinian Resistance Movement. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991. Peteet, Julie. “Male Gender and Rituals of Resistance in the Palestinian Intifada: A Cultural Politics of Violence.” American Ethnologist 21, no. 1 (1994): 31–49.



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Punamaki, Raija-Leena. “Experiences of Torture, Means of Coping, and Level of Symptoms among Palestinian Political Prisoners.” Journal of Palestine Studies (1988): 81–96. Said, Edward W., and Jean Mohr. After the Last Sky: Palestinian Lives. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. Shashat. I’m a Woman from Palestine 2 [Press Release], 2012. Available online: http:// eeas.eur​opa.eu/dele​gati​ons/westb​ank/docume​nts/news/20120928​_sha​shat​_pr_​i_am​ _a_w​oman​_en.pdf.

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Families on the Edge: Interstitial Relations in Recent Palestinian Women’s Cinema Anna Ball

The trope of the family—al-‘a’ilah—lies at the heart of Palestinian cultural consciousness.1 Circulating variously as the hub of “economic, psychological and social security,”2 the embodiment of national community,3 and the simultaneous source of sharaf (honor) and sumud (steadfast resistance), it features prominently in many of the films that have come to define Palestine’s national cinema.4 As Fatima Mernissi reminds us, though, the family also presents a charged locus of gender relations,5 serving as a potent sociopolitical structure in which Palestinian women arguably come to occupy the “friction points” between the dually oppressive structures of both “a military occupation that challenges everyday living” and what some have read as “a restrictive, patrilineal household.”6 It is all the more interesting to note, therefore, that a recent wave of Palestinian women’s filmmaking has returned to the family as its core cinematic trope. In place of affirmative portraits of familial resilience and unity, however, films such as Suha Arraf ’s ‫( فيال توما‬Fila Tuma; Villa Touma, 2014) and Annemarie Jacir’s ‫( واجب‬Wajib; Duty, 2017) present us instead with gloriously dysfunctional families teetering on the edge—of conflict, of breakdown, even of self-destruction.7 While the personal drama of these films reveals, at one level, the pressures of family life under Israeli occupation, it can also be read as a vehicle for the unsettling of Palestinian gender roles, as we see the directors shifting familial “friction points” away from honorable women-aswives, mothers, and dutiful daughters and reassigning them to the culturally peripheral figures of metrosexual sons, spinster aunts, and divorcée parents. By engaging in detailed exploration of what we might term the “interstitial relations” at stake in Jacir’s and Arraf ’s films, then, it becomes possible to envision nascent reconfigurations of familial and, indeed, gender roles in contemporary

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Palestinian cultural consciousness—while also considering what kind of “edgy” feminism it might be possible to ascribe to these two interstitial directors. How might the idea of “interstitial relations” enable us to comprehend the distinctive family formations within these films more clearly? If the “interstices” are to be understood as “the space between things,” “an intervening space”8 through which something passes and from which it emerges, then this image gives form to the sense of transitional in-betweenness that drives the drama of both Wajib and Villa Touma—for, in both of these films, we observe children of different generational and cultural identities pass back into and through their family homes, with disruptive results. In Wajib, it is Shadi, the architect son of recently divorced schoolteacher Abu Shadi, who most obviously occupies an interstitial position, as he returns to Nazareth from Rome in order to fulfill his familial duty and help his father hand-deliver invitations to his sister’s forthcoming wedding, as is the local Palestinian custom. (Wajib translates, roughly, as “social duty.”9) In Villa Touma, meanwhile, it is nineteen-yearold orphan Badia, a vibrant young woman alive with romance and skilled at playing the drums, who must pass from the convent she has become too old to occupy and into the family home of her three highly traditional aunts. Cue, in both cases, intergenerational drama—leading to inevitable disruption and the eventual transformation of the family order. Yet if Shadi and Badia can be described as the interstitial relations who must pass between these cultural and generational divides before change can emerge, it is also possible to perceive a certain interstitiality at stake in the scenarios underpinning each film. Notably, what places the families “on edge” in each case has as much to do with political circumstances as personal ones. In Wajib, this interstitiality emerges through the Palestinian family’s positioning in Nazareth, a setting that casts them in the role of a minority national group living in Israel—a society replete with endemic inequalities and oppressions for Palestinians.10 The family patriarch, Abu Shadi, falls particularly afoul of these structures; we see, for instance, how he finds himself caught between his desire for progression within the Israeli state school system as a teacher, and his family’s condemnation of the people whom he is therefore obliged to invite to his daughter’s wedding, one of them an Israeli official who forced Shadi into exile after accusing him of “subversive” activity (which, we learn with a light wink from the director, consisted of running a film club). In Villa Touma, meanwhile, interstitiality rests primarily on a sense of temporal disjunction. Ostensibly a portrait of three sisters from an aristocratic Christian family unwilling to adapt to modern-day



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life, we learn that their family home in Ramallah has remained unchanged and unopened to the world since 1967: the date of the Naksa, which saw the West Bank fall to Israeli occupation.11 Caught perpetually between nostalgia for a pre-Naksa Palestine and a deep resistance to the occupied circumstances of the present day, the sisters’ interstitiality presents us with a twilight world that is at once militantly foreboding and self-destructively tragic: the product of a deeply felt political—and by extension social—marginalization. If this interstitial limbo seems the stuff of stylized fantasy, then it is worth noting that Villa Touma’s director, herself from Haifa and identifying as Palestinian, inadvertently came to prove its existence when listing the film as “Palestinian” for its entry into international film festivals, a description that saw Israeli ministers demand she return her funding to the Israeli Film Fund and relist her film as “Israeli.”12 Arraf subsequently refused and instead chose to categorize the film as “stateless,” an apt evocation of her interstitial position, caught between the demands of the Israeli state and her own desire for self-identification as Palestinian.13 Indeed, Jacir has also stridently asserted her own identification as a Palestinian director of Palestinian films, despite the fact that she is based in the city of Nazareth, in Israel—a similarly interstitial situation.14 Jacir’s self-identification was, however, affirmed through Wajib’s selection as Palestine’s entry for Best International Feature Film at the 2017 Academy Awards: a clear expression of Jacir’s and, by extension, those of other Israel-based filmmakers’ acceptance into the Palestinian cultural “family,” contested as the construct may be by Israel. In the resonance it holds with these films’ scenarios, characters, and contexts, then, the idea of the interstices enables us to perceive the invisible pressures and demands that Palestinian families must negotiate—in personal and political realms alike. If the interstitial serves to dramatize the friction that arises between the personal and political for the Palestinian family, though, it is also the space through which both Jacir and Arraf mobilize subversive destabilizations of gender roles, behaviors, and interrelations. We see this most powerfully at play in the parent-child relationships acted out in each film: in the father-son relationship between Abu Shadi and Shadi in Wajib, and between the aunts and niece in Villa Touma. Fraught parent-child relationships, in fact, figure in a number of Palestinian films from the 1980s onwards—most notably, perhaps, in Michel Khleifi’s iconic 1987 release ‫( عرس الجليل‬Urs Al-Jalil; Wedding in Galilee), the drama of which hinges on the fraught relationship between an aging patriarch and the expectations he exerts on his son to fulfill his manly duties during his wedding celebrations. These pressures render his son both literally and

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metaphorically impotent as he crumbles under the weight of duty and shame in the presence of Israeli governors at his wedding. In Elia Suleiman’s ‫( يد إلهية‬Yadon Ilaheya; Divine Intervention, 2002), meanwhile, the father-son relationship emerges as a source of pathos, the weak and aged father presenting the embodiment of his son’s simultaneous love and despair at the nation’s parallel demise. As Nurith Gertz and George Khleifi note, these films “both construct the patriarchal combination of family and nation and deconstruct it.”15 What renders Jacir’s and Arraf ’s films distinct from those of their self-scrutinizing male predecessors, however, is the sense in which family emerges as a site of irreparable disunity whereby conflicts between parent/guardian and child cannot possibly serve to reinstate the patriarchal order. By turning first to the father-son relationship and competing models of masculinity at stake in Wajib and, next, to the stifling feminocentricity of familial relations in Villa Touma, we begin to see how these families on the edge attempt to function within the space of interstitial difference.

Family Drives You Crazy: Returning to the Fatherland in Wajib Familial disunity is not immediately apparent in Jacir’s Wajib. In fact, quite the opposite: Shadi has ostensibly returned from Rome to Nazareth to assist his father in fulfilling his honorable duty of wajib in preparation for his sister’s wedding, his presence seemingly a neat affirmation of patriarchal relations and connectedness to cultural tradition. Over the course of a day, we follow the father-and-son team (played by real-life father and son Mohammad and Saleh Bakri) as they trundle via disintegrating Volvo between the houses of all those to whom wedding invitations must be delivered. In the tone of their encounters, though, Jacir indicates that all may not be quite as harmonious as it seems. A sense of mounting awkwardness pervades their visits to variously eccentric and oppressively normal relations, and though Abu Shadi proves a meticulous performer of social niceties, it is hard not to feel Shadi’s frustration bubbling beneath the surface as he is forced to consume any number of unwelcome refreshments (green liqueur among them), finds himself grilled about his accomplishments, and is bitten by a parrot before finally realizing that the cards they’ve spent hours delivering bear the wrong date for the wedding. As they pile back into his father’s car, it is clear that Shadi’s family is driving him crazy, quite



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literally—for, indeed, it is on the road, in the interstitial, low-speed meanderings between houses that the tension between father and son, and between models of Palestinian masculinity, builds and eventually erupts. The affirmative performance of Arab masculinity (rujulah) is considered central to the affirmation of “authentic” Palestinian identity.16 In the Palestinian National Charter of 1968, for instance, Palestinian identity is defined as “a genuine, inherent and eternal trait that is transmitted from fathers to sons.”17 Yet as Hisham Sharabi notes, patriarchy also operates as a living discourse, adapting to political circumstances in order to ensure its survival.18 In Shadi and Abu Shadi, we see competing adaptations of Palestinian masculinity at stake, each arising from their distinctive generational and cultural locatedness (Figure 3.1). Shadi, for instance, perceives himself as a world apart from his father; he is a cosmopolitan, metrosexual Palestinian who nevertheless displays an arguably idealized attachment to his heritage through hero worship of his Palestinian girlfriend’s father, a leading PLO member in exile. While his distinctive fashion sense—man bun, purple shirt, and slim-fit trousers—registers to an international audience as the attire of a contemporary and Europeanized masculinity, there remains something “queerly” disjunctive about Shadi’s appearance when juxtaposed with that of the more conservative Palestinian community. Indeed,

Figure 3.1  Shadi and Abu Shadi on the road together, fulfilling the tradition of wajib, in Wajib, dir. Annemarie Jacir (2017). Image courtesy of Annemarie Jacir / Philistine Films.

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his father expresses mild dismay at the bright and occasionally floral attire his son chooses to project his masculinity. At once progressive and romantically resistant in his ideologies, Shadi displays something of the quintessential “contrapuntal consciousness” that Edward Said ascribed to the exiled Palestinian19—though a contrapuntality that also leads to severe distaste at his hometown’s aesthetic preference for plastic chairs and tarpaulins, and a certain sense of cultural superiority in Shadi. This superiority is, though, subtly debunked through the humorously disjunctive response of Shadi’s relatives to his apparent success: the basis of his cosmopolitan masculinity. When he boasts of his life in Italy, one relative responds, “Not America? Never mind!”; when Shadi describes his work as an architect, a baffled friend asks whether “you mean a building planner? Your father told us you were a doctor.” Here, we sense something of Rashid Khalidi’s observation that for Palestinians of the diaspora, “overlapping senses of identity—including transnational, religious, local, family, and nationstate loyalties—[mean] that different narratives of the nation [and of cultural identity more broadly] come into conflict” among Palestinians themselves.20 Within this episode, then, we must watch uncomfortably as Shadi’s own selfperceived cosmopolitan masculine prowess falls through the gaps between these disjunctive narratives of Palestinian identity and belonging. Despite his adherence to patriarchal duty, Abu Shadi is a far from stable model of Palestinian masculinity in himself. Indeed, in some senses, he more fully embodies a state of interstitiality, apparent in the flawless performance that he delivers to relatives and neighbors alike as mediator and relentlessly positive spinner of his family’s standing. Yet, as his on-the-road conversations with his son reveal, this performance is necessitated, in part, by the impossibility of his ever fulfilling the role of ‘succesful’ patriarch. He reveals he is separated from Shadi’s mother, who now lives in the United States with a new partner, and his joy at his daughter’s forthcoming wedding is deeply marred by the thought that his ex-wife may not be in attendance so as to offer a display of family unity. His inability to fulfill the expectations of family members also extends to Shadi. Tired and at the end of their tether with each other, the tempers of father and son eventually come to a head at a gas station, and they engage, blow for blow, in the delivery of mutually uncomfortable “home truths.” “I have to live this every day!” Abu Shadi explodes, in response to his son’s criticism at his placatory attitude towards his Israeli colleagues. “You call this living?” Shadi retorts. Though Abu Shadi is mild and good-natured in demeanor, his desire and failure to please those around him therefore gestures at a masculinity in crisis—one that cannot



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fulfill any of the nationalistically validated models of masculinity available to him. This is a predicament common, as Amalia Sa’ar and Taghreed Yahia-Younis argue, to male Palestinian citizens of Israel, though also specific, here, to Abu Shadi’s own familial status.21 While it might be tempting to read this portrait of the father-son relationship in line with the common trope of the perceived “failure” of the fathers of the nation, who in the post-1967 imagination are often seen to “paralyze” the younger generation with “division, frustration, disempowerment … and lies” of traditional patriarchal nationalism,22 we must remember that in Jacir’s portrayal, father and son do not appear hierarchically but in fact mirror each other, their unfulfillable masculinities a shared predicament. Indeed, it is ultimately with an image of mutual surrender—and of parallelism—that the film concludes. Sitting with his father on the rooftop of the family home, Shadi, who throughout the film has chastised Abu Shadi for smoking, finally shares a cigarette with him. In turn, his father concedes that the view would indeed look better without the tarpaulin that so offends his son’s cultured architectural eye. But, Shadi offers, and Abu Shadi agrees, the tarpaulin should stay up because it is what Amal, the bride, wants. Deferring and agreeing to unite over a shared emotional interest—Shadi’s sister, Abu Shadi’s daughter—the understated final moment of the film therefore gestures toward an acknowledgement of the positionality they share as father and son, as diasporic subject and as Palestinian citizen of Israel: that of the interstices, not only as a site of friction but also, perhaps, as a space through which a connective acceptance of mutual limitations might emerge. Or does it? There is, it might also be argued, a final irony that hangs in the visual interstices of this closing frame—one that ultimately suggests the feminist position toward which Jacir edges in this film and that hinges on the otherwiseperipheral figure of Amal, the bride. Jacir’s decision to sideline the central female character on which the plot rests is highly refreshing in its refusal to position her as bearer of the familial “friction points.” Yet in the film’s final line, Amal is briefly centered as the key to the film’s gently poignant humor. While Shadi’s final claim—that they must respect what the bride wants for her wedding—seems to imply a deference to normative gender relations, its significance changes when read in light of an earlier scene in which Shadi, grilling his sister over her terrible choice of wedding singer, asks if it’s really what she wants. “Don’t you get it?” Amal replies. “None of this is for me.” Rather, she implies, it is for her father— and, above all, for his happiness. With these final words, Jacir offers us a knowing nod to the complex illusions of social convention that the brother must maintain

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with his sister—not out of tradition or social duty, wajib, but something beyond it: love for their father, and, in turn, their father’s love for them. These, then, are not bonds forged out of fear for the authoritarian patriarch but, rather, in acknowledgement of his vulnerability. That Jacir evokes this realization with the quiet laughter of recognition is also significant: as Chrisoula Lionis writes, within the Palestinian context, laughter presents us with a “momentary solidarity with the individuals with whom [we] laugh”23 while also revealing a close “kinship between laughter and tears.”24 It is in these interstices that Jacir leaves us: with a portrait of a fractured and imperfect family that will endure, maintained not through patriarchal authority but, instead, through the stabilizing and ultimately egalitarian bonds of familial love. Indeed, it is possible to argue that these bonds fall into focus through the distinctively female-oriented visions of women at the film’s periphery: Amal, certainly, but also, in her position beyond the frame as director, Jacir herself. In forging this unusually tender and perceptive focus on the father-son relationship from a position of gendered difference, then, Jacir also reveals the forms of gender-conscious empathy that can arise from a feminism attentive to the complex interstices of gendered and social duty – a position from which it is possible to laugh as much as cry.

Dawn of the Unmarried Undead: Feminocentric Frictions in Villa Touma If tenderness ultimately characterizes the interstitial relations of Wajib, then it is into an altogether more brutal world of familial friction that Suha Arraf plunges us in Villa Touma. Exclusively and stiflingly feminocentric, the film focuses on three aunts and their orphaned niece: the last surviving members of a Ramallah-based aristocratic Christian family whose determination to maintain their traditional values, standard of living, and public perception is also founded on the sense that, as one of the aunts puts it, “all we have left are our reputation … and our honor.” With this statement, the aunt invokes a common trope of the Palestinian nationalist imagination encapsulated in the popular phrase ardi-‘irdi (“My land is my honor”)—an image that bears highly gendered connotations through the symbolic association of women with the land, as its guardians, mothers, and lovers.25 While there are certainly national implications at stake in the sisters’ behavior—not least a resistance to the effects of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank—their sense of marginality also arguably arises



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from their minority status as Christians within Ramallah26 and a sense of the growing unfamiliarity of a West Bank society much changed in itself since 1967, increasingly open to modernization, globalization, shifting class structures, and, indeed, an expanding range of familial and gender roles for women.27 Caught in the political and cultural interstices, then, the aunts cling to their former privilege by striving to maintain family unity through highly stylized performances of female identities. With the arrival of their niece, Badia, however, the fragility of these family structures and gendered performances is starkly exposed. The heavy aesthetic stylization of Badia’s initial arrival at Villa Touma, the family home, vividly evokes the multiple interstices in which the sisters live. In their focus on the trope of the periphery and passage beyond it, these opening frames conjure not only the sisters’ self-marginalization from Ramallah society but also their on-edge mental state and, indeed, Badia’s own status as interstitial interloper. As we watch Badia arrive at the heavily padlocked gates of the highwalled house, Arraf employs high-key lighting to produce a sense of surreally hazy sunshine that mirrors Badia’s cheery modern clothing: bright red trousers and floral shirt, and, with it, her sense of exterior freedom. With Badia’s passage through the gate and into the homestead, though, the film’s aesthetic plunges into the realm of the gothic. Heavy velvet drapes shield the dark, flocked wallpaper of the home’s interior; though it is daytime, candlelight semiilluminates photographs of relatives on the mantelpiece. An oppressive silence pervades the home as Badia is led wordlessly to her room, where she is encouraged to set down her belongings—a suitcase containing clothes and a photo of her deceased mother—all of which will, within the next few days, find themselves burned by the aunts and replaced with archaic formal garments more palatable to them. With this aesthetic hostility, Arraf makes it clear that Badia’s external influence, including her modern-day femininity, is unwelcome at Villa Touma. In her choice of aesthetic, though, Arraf arguably also invokes echoes of a longer-standing gothic heritage in the Palestinian imagination— evident in works such as Emile Habiby’s ‫( سرايا بنت الغول‬Sarayah Bint Al-Ghoul; Sarayah, the Ghoul’s Daughter), itself an adaptation of the Palestinian folktale of Sarayah, who finds herself kidnapped and imprisoned by a ghoul who wishes to marry her, but who is eventually rescued by her cousin (subverted echoes of which are found, as we shall see, in the plot of Villa Touma). However, in Arraf ’s film, the aunts themselves are the ghouls: the aristocratic undead of a lost Palestine inhabited, as Ahmed Gamal has written of “postcolonial gothic” more broadly, by “ghosts, phantasms, vampires, doubles [who … throw] up recycled

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shapes of haunted modernity … a transnational class of the dispossessed.”28 Dismissed in some reviews as an “airless, artificial chamber piece”29 for this stylization, Villa Touma’s aesthetic is in fact clearly critical to Arraf ’s vision of familial interstitiality and the sense of foreboding it engenders for Badia’s contemporary femininity. In her iconic work Gender Trouble, Judith Butler offers her now-infamous explanation of gender as not “a stable identity or locus of agency from which various acts follow; rather, … an identity tenuously constituted in time, instituted in an exterior space through a stylized repetition of acts.”30 Nowhere is this more apparent than in the three aunts’ performances of femininity, through which they rigorously police their own stylized conceptualizations of family and, indeed, seek to reconstitute Badia’s expression of her femininity onto their own terms. We see this most clearly in the process of reeducation to which Badia is subjected. Following the aunts’ own aristocratic Christian family traditions, Badia is given lessons in piano, French, and etiquette, where, clad in a tea dress and heels, she must learn to walk straight-backed, head held high. If this education seems parodic, it in fact mirrors the aunts’ own highly stylized performances of femininity, the artificiality of which becomes apparent in one astonishing scene when the aunts make a rare journey beyond the walls of their home, to visit the local church. Sporting two-piece skirt suits, kid gloves, and hats with netted veils, they struggle to employ every ounce of their well-learned deportment as they troop down the streets of modern-day Ramallah, presenting an incongruous sight amidst the roaring traffic, crowds of people chatting on mobile phones, and young men offering mocking wolf whistles (Figure 3.2). In this scene, the Touma family appears not just out of place but out of time, with both their sense of style and their sanity teetering precariously on the edge of questionability. Indeed, if for Butler the constructed nature of gender is revealed in moments when the gendered subject performs “ ‘a failure to repeat, a de-formity, or a parodic repetition that exposes the phantasmic effect of abiding identity as a politically tenuous construction,’ ”31 then for Arraf, too, parodic and failed performances of femininity expose the illusory nature of the Touma family’s identity. Badia’s failure to perform aristocratic Palestinian femininity is the source of much cringe-inducing humor in the film: in one scene, she is forced to play a Chopin piano piece while dressed in a ball gown and yellow silk opera gloves, in a salon designed to showcase her newfound refinement and familial standing to the neighborhood. The sisters maintain a statuesque dignity



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Figure 3.2  The Touma family performing a parodic aristocratic femininity in Villa Touma, dir. Suha Arraf (2014). Image courtesy of Suha Arraf / Belssan Films.

as Badia’s appalling playing sees the room gradually empty. It is no surprise, however, that Badia’s education in “the arts of femininity” should turn out to be in the service of demonstrating her marriageability—an obsession of the aunts, not simply on account of the renewed family status and unity that Badia’s marriage would bring but also because, it transpires, each of them harbors a secret past defined by marital failure or disappointment, a source of shameful failure within a context where women’s marital status is widely considered the primary source of their social prestige.32 Throughout the film, Badia is often seen peering through spaces of the in-between—half-open doors, chinks in the wall, semi-opened curtains—that signal not only Badia’s interstitiality but the concealment of family secrets. It is through one such space that she witnesses the middle sister, Violette, masquerading in front of her bedroom mirror in a wedding dress one evening. When Badia later creeps in to quite literally pull this secret from her aunt’s closet, she is discovered by Violette. The aunt’s anger and distress verge on the horrific: when Violette is eventually confined to her room by the sisters, we later hear a blood-curdling shriek emanating from her upstairs as the rest of the family remains seated, unresponsively composed, at the dinner table.

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Although the family is initially reluctant to spell out the source of Violette’s mental turmoil, the youngest aunt, Antoinette, eventually explains that Violette was briefly married to a much older man who died shortly after their wedding. Meanwhile, Juliette, the eldest sister, forsook the possibility of marriage in order to take on the responsibility of the family following the death of their father, while Antoinette remains too heavily under her sisters’ control to act on any potential romance. And Badia’s own deceased mother, too, reveals an unpalatable family past: having chosen marriage to Badia’s father, a Muslim of lower social standing than the Touma family, she was considered a shameful outcast by her sisters, meaning that Badia herself is therefore an unwelcome reminder of their familial disunity. Just as Abu Shadi’s desperate desire to conform to patriarchal duty belies his own fragmented familial status in Wajib, then so, too, does the Touma family’s rigorous performance of femininity indicate the ultimate dysfunction of a family unable to resurrect a united familial idealism that has perhaps never been—and that also reveals their inability to escape the specters of their past. Despite her familial training, however, Badia retains a subversive potential within this film—and we see this most clearly in her own “phantasmic” performances of familial gender roles. In an eerie mirroring of her mother’s story, Badia falls in love with Khaled, a wedding singer, a “lowly” refugee and, it transpires, a Muslim who is also politically active: a disastrous constellation of subject-positions from the aunts’ perspective. Maintaining their relationship in secret, though, Badia’s newfound happiness begins to have a transformational effect on the family. Her piano practice acquires a genuine joyous passion; inspired by her infectious happiness, the aunts begin to draw open the blinds in the house; and Juliette unexpectedly bursts into song, to the delight of the whole family. This transformation is short-lived, however; before long, we see Badia beating and eventually binding her burgeoning abdomen, desperate to hide what we now assume to be an accidental pregnancy. Indeed, in a further blow, it soon becomes apparent that it will not be possible for Badia to marry her lover and so save her family from dishonor—Khaled, it turns out, has been martyred during his participation in the Second Intifada, which is currently erupting around the home. Now pregnant out of wedlock, Badia has violated a fundamental tenet of the honor/shame system, one that would traditionally be appeased through publicly visible patriarchal punishment.33 With this issue transposed into Villa Touma’s secretive, feminocentric world, however, the aunts seek alternative solutions, the first of which presents itself in the form of an injured fighter, fleeing the Israeli army, who shows up at their door—and turns out to



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be both Christian and unmarried, a potential suitor for Badia. When this plot is unsuccessful, however, Badia is simply confined to her room and ignored—until she appears in a bloodied nightdress at the top of the stairs, and it becomes apparent that the lives of her and her child hang in the balance. The scene cuts at this macabre interstice and, in doing so, hinges the film’s denouement on the aunts’ possible responses. As the final scene opens, the camera slowly pans back from a scene of apparent normality: a formally arranged breakfast table around which the aunts politely partake of their morning meal. Only in the final seconds do we gain a wide-enough panorama to perceive that Badia is gone—but in her place lies a small child in a cot. Dishonorable errant quietly excised from the family, the tonal implication of continuity is such that we suspect that the new baby will merely be indoctrinated into the existing order—though the slightest glimmer of ambivalence also emerges. Does this child signal new possibilities for the family’s future or simply the ongoing death-in-life of Villa Touma’s gothic limbo? Arraf chooses to leave us here, in the interstices between hope and despair, possible change, and probable continuity. How, then, might we interpret Arraf ’s directorial position in feminist terms? In one sense, she offers us conclusions similar to Jacir’s: that only by embracing the possibility of imperfect relationships within the family, accepting of intergenerational, international, and, in the case of Villa Touma, interfaith and cross-class disjunctions can the Palestinian family survive in the modern world. That the Touma family seems unable to do this can be read as evidence of Arraf ’s critically feminist stance—one that aligns itself with the long heritage of Palestinian women’s activism unafraid to critique the gendered functioning of Palestinian societal sectors premised on patriarchal nationalisms and that indeed deems it necessary to engage in such critique in order to advance not only women’s existence within the nation but the shape and form of the national “family” in itself.34 Yet Arraf ’s transposition of the cultural trope of “impotence” from an older generation of men onto an aging generation of women (who, in their inability to reproduce traditional family structures, might be assigned the alternative category of cultural “infertility,” perhaps) also presents a different possibility of feminist interpretation—one that requires us to recognize the women in Villa Touma as positioned in the impossible and debilitating interstices between personal and political, gendered and national experiences. For within the context of the occupied West Bank, the family itself becomes the target of military violence—whether in the form of home demolitions, the frequent arrest of male family members (children included),

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or severe economic limitations that ultimately impact the family unit. In this climate of “normal abnormality,”35 women, who often shoulder the burden of practical family pressures, display “extreme traumatisation … that ripples across family life [manifesting as] desensitisation, dissociation, psychic numbing and psychic violence,” one response to which emerges in “the very act of parenting— providing safety and protection, rendering discipline and vision.”36 Reviewed in this light, it is perhaps possible to arrive at a different response to the aunts that reads their archaic conservatism and its enforcement on Badia not simply as an internalization of patriarchy but as both a manifestation of deep trauma and as a means to resist being pushed further “over the edge” into a reality that renders their family members supremely vulnerable. Indeed, it is notable that while the violence of the Second Intifada erupts outside, the walls of Villa Touma stand strong: the last feminocentric bulwark, perhaps, against the masculinist militarism that surrounds them. (Reviewed in this light, there is an argument to be made that it is not, in the end, the aunts’ stalwart adherence to tradition that destroys Badia, but her succumbing to the highly masculinized romance of nationalist sentiment, ultimately represented in her doomed and self-destructive romance with Khaled.) That Arraf resists didacticism in favor of these dual interpretive possibilities can be read as evidence of her own interstitial feminism. This is arguably a positionality from which she is unafraid to engage in strident, gender-conscious critique of conservative sectors of Palestinian society itself, while also recognizing the positionalities out of which such behaviors emerge— thus refusing to place blame for or, indeed, outright condemnation of these gender practices solely at the women’s own door.

Edging Beyond “Failure”: Toward a Familial Feminism The resurrection of the family as a core trope of recent Palestinian women’s filmmaking is arguably an unexpected move from two directors who have, throughout their careers, sought to collapse the gendered demarcations between public and private realms. We see this, for instance, in their foregrounding of female characters who assert defiantly public presences through politically resistant actions in their previous works: think, for instance, of Soraya, in Jacir’s earlier ‫( ملح هذا البحر‬Milh Hada Al-Bahr; Salt of This Sea, 2008), who commits a bank robbery in order to reclaim her family’s lost inheritance, or the political engagement displayed by the central female subjects of Suha Arraf ’s 2010



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documentary ‫( نساء حماس‬Nsaa Hamas; Women of Hamas). In their desire to visualize female presence and agency in their earlier films, both Jacir and Arraf present clear cinematic agendas that can (in the tentative manner required of this highly contested term within the Palestinian context) be described as feminist.37 The turn from public to private that both Jacir and Arraf enact in Wajib and Villa Touma need not be read as a departure from this feminist trajectory, though. Indeed, in their willingness to confront the masculinist assumption that the “feminine” realm of family concerns is of less consequence— or, indeed, political significance—than the arena of public affairs (an accusation that has often been leveled at Arab women’s creativity focused on “women’s issues” in the literary arena in particular38), these directors boldly move to overturn some of the most deeply ingrained gender assumptions circulating in the androcentric, heteronormative Palestinian cultural psyche. Thus, the visual confrontations and gendered destabilizations that Jacir and Arraf perform within their films can be read as acts through which they reclaim the family as a legitimate, non-marginalizing site of cross-gendered concern—and, indeed, refuse to be limited in their subject matter according to the expectations that may circulate around their gendered positionalities. The feminisms that they present within these films, then, are ones that critique, embrace, and seek to operate within the family: a familial feminism, if you like, that embraces the complexity and disjunction entailed in family relations as sites through which gendered insights and even change can emerge. Such a feminism, the directors imply, is not a matter of fixity; rather, it operates in a process of constant dynamism, moving and adapting to social relations and finding ways to negotiate fresh gendered recognitions and possibilities—just as family relations themselves remain in a state of perpetual evolution. And what of the interstices as the model through which this familial feminism emerges? If Homi Bhabha once stated that “the realm of the in-between, the inter … is the cutting edge of culture,”39 then in these films, we witness something of that productive “inter” emerging in the intergenerational, international, and indeed interminably frustrating dynamics of disjunctive family relations— for this is indeed the space out of which we see the possibility of creatively gendered alternatives to the patriarchal, heteronormative familial unit emerge. Significantly, however, these gendered alternatives are not revealed as radically utopian structures but are instead formed precisely through the portrayal of the realistic impossibility of such utopian union, projected through visions of fractured families desperately performing coherence and continuity in the

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face of social pressure but inevitably failing. This failure must not be read in a critical manner, however. Rather, it calls to mind something of Jack Halberstam’s conceptualization of “the queer art of failure” as a radically resistant alternative to the “moral defence of the family as a way of life” that otherwise dominates heteronormative “global politics.”40 For Halberstam, “failure” to conform to these “moral familial structures” can in fact be read as a “queer art” that “quietly loses, and in losing … imagines other goals for life, for love, for art, and for being.”41 While it would be disingenuous to suggest that the gendered destabilizations we witness in Wajib or Villa Touma can be read as straightforwardly queer (the films do, after all, continue to operate within the structures of heavily heteronormative social relations, which are never substantially questioned), the extent to which both Jacir and Arraf embrace the “failure” of the family unit as a source of creative possibility nevertheless indicates their readiness to embrace alternatives to the moral and social structures that have so far determined how those in contemporary Palestine must live with one another. These films reveal that family life for Palestinians always entails a degree of “being on (the) edge.” By edging toward acceptance of familial “imperfection,” however, these directors carve out a space through which feminist visions of a reformulated family politics can begin to appear—and with them, perhaps, glimpses of Palestine’s own possible future relations, as they emerge from its present state of painful interstitiality.

Notes 1 This is of course not unique to Palestinian consciousness. The family features heavily in many cultural configurations of nationhood—including within Israeli national consciousness, where family relations have also often stood as political shorthand for the unifying and culturally insular bonds of national affiliation. Indeed, both Israeli and Palestinian nationalistic rhetoric promote reproduction and hence perpetuation of the family as ways to assert demographic “ownership” of their contested land. (See Nira Yuval-Davis, Gender and Nation (London: Sage, 1997), 30 and Rhoda Ann Kanaaneh, Birthing the Nation: Strategies of Palestinian Women in Israel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 23). It is interesting to note, however, that twenty-first-century Israeli cinema has often worked against the harmonious idealization of the family unit, particularly by exposing the cultural hybridity of Israeli society, and resulting ideological, generational, and



2 3 4

5 6

7

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ethnic divisions that exist within families. Both Ahava Colombianit (Columbian Love, dir. Shay Kanot, 2004) and Hatuna Meuheret (Late Marriage, dir. Dover Koshashvili, 2001), for instance, portray the desire for or realization of cross-cultural relationships that undermine the broader family’s desire to perpetuate cultural tradition, while a number of other films explore the demise of the family unit, either through deaths within the family (as in Foxtrot, dir. Samuel Maoz, 2017) or the desire for divorce (as in Get—Ha’mishpat Shel Vivian Amsalem; Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem, dir. Ronit and Shlomi Elkabetz, 2014). Perhaps this crosscultural echo of family disunity across both Israeli and Palestinian cinema can be read as a mirroring of mutual national frustrations—or perhaps, simply, as a shared recognition of human complexity that unites familial conditions across cultures. Samih K. Farsoun, Culture and Customs of the Palestinians (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004), 32. Rhoda Ann Kanaaneh, Birthing the Nation. 3. Nurith Gertz and George Khleifi, Palestinian Cinema: Landscape, Trauma, Memory (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008), 125. Films of particular significance here include Michel Khleifi’s Urs Al-Jalil (Wedding in Galilee, 1987), which portrays one Palestinian family’s attempt to hold a traditional wedding under Israeli state control; Elia Suleiman’s autobiographical film, Al-Zaman al-Baqi (The Time That Remains, 2009); and the number of films that feature weddings—particularly those that take place against the odds of the Occupation—as affirmations of the powerful ability of family to ensure that Palestinian culture and presence endures (see Nadia Yaqub, “The Palestinian Cinematic Wedding,” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 3 (2007): 56–85). Fatima Mernissi, Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in a Modern Muslim Society (Cambridge, MA: Schenkman Publishing, 1975), 4. Judy Roth and Salwa Duaibis, “Crows on the Cradles: Palestinian Mothers at a Frontline Vortex, Reflections on the Psychology of Occupation,” Applied Psychoanalytic Studies 12, no. 1 (2015): 6. Other notable portrayals of disrupted family relations in recent female-directed Palestinian films include Maha Haj’s Omor Shakhsiya (Personal Affairs, 2016), which focuses on a single family in which all of the core relationships (husband/ wife, parent/child, boyfriend/girlfriend, pregnant woman/elderly grandmother) are facing some form of social challenge or emotional breakdown; and Mai Masri’s 3000 Leila (3000 Nights, 2015), which presents a radical disruption to the family unit in its portrayal of a woman forced to give birth to and raise her child while incarcerated in a women’s prison. “Interstice, n,” OED Online, https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/98353?red​irec​tedF​ rom=inte​rsti​ces&.

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9 Leigh Singer, “ ‘Laughing Is a Way to Resist’: Annemarie Jacir on Her Father-Son Wedding Drama Wajib,” Sight and Sound Magazine, January 7, 2019, https://www. bfi.org.uk/news-opin​ion/sight-sound-magaz​ine/int​ervi​ews/wajib-annema​rie-jacirpale​stin​ian-fat​her-son-wedd​ing-drama. 10 Tal Meler, “The Palestinian Family in Israel: Simultaneous Trends,” Marriage and Family Review 53, no. 8 (2017): 783. 11 The Naksa, or “setback,” is the term Palestinians use to refer to the loss of land they suffered following the Six-Day War of 1967, during which Israel took control of the territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which had previously been annexed by Jordan and controlled by Egypt, respectively. Given the previous losses of land experienced during the Nakba (“disaster”) of 1948, when Israel was established, this further defeat represented the loss of autonomy over the entirety of Palestinian territory. Mark Tessler, A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Second Edition (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), 475. 12 Stuart Winer, “Culture Ministry Wants Money Back from ‘Palestinian’ Film,” Times of Israel, July 30, 2014, https://www.timeso​fisr​ael.com/cult​ure-minis​ try-wants-money-back-from-pale​stin​ian-film. 13 Creede Newton, “Villa Touma: The World’s First ‘Stateless’ Film,” Middle East Eye, April 6, 2015, https://www.middle​east​eye.net/featu​res/villa-touma-wor​lds-firststatel​ess-film. 14 Singer, “Laughing.” 15 Gertz and Khleifi, Palestinian Cinema, 123. 16 Julie Peteet, “Male Gender and Rituals of Resistance in the Palestinian Intifada: A Cultural Politics of Violence,” in Imagined Masculinities, ed. Mai Ghoussoub and Emma Sinclair-Webb (London: Saqi, 2000), 107. 17 Joseph Massad, “Conceiving the Masculine: Gender and Palestinian Nationalism,” Middle East Journal 49 (1995): 472. 18 Hisham Sharabi, Neopatriarchy: A Theory of Distorted Change in Arab Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 15. 19 Edward Said, “Reflections on Exile,” Granta 13 (1984): 157–72. 20 Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 20. 21 Amalia Sa’ar and Taghreed Yahia-Younis, “Masculinity in Crisis: The Case of Palestinian Citizens in Israel,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 35 (2008): 322. 22 Nadia Yaqub, “The Palestinian Cinematic Wedding,” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 3 (2007): 69. 23 Chrisoula Lionis, Laughter in Occupied Palestine: Comedy and Identity in Art and Film (London: I. B. Tauris, 2016), 104.



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24 Lionis, Laughter in Occupied Palestine, 75. 25 Interestingly, the image of the feminized and sexualized land is mirrored in Israeli cultural consciousness, as described by Katz (Sheila Hannah Katz, “Adam and Adama, ‘Ird and Ard: En-gendering Political Conflict and Identity in Early Jewish and Palestinian Nationalisms,” in Gendering the Middle East: Emerging Perspectives, ed. Deniz Kandiyoti (London: I. B. Tauris, 1996), 88)—and, indeed, was used to evoke the imaginary of the “virgin” land, ripe for colonization, in early Zionist discourse. (See Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (London: Routledge, 1995), 30.) 26 Peter Oborne, “The Last Generation: How Occupation Is Driving Christians Out of Palestine,” Middle East Eye, December 24, 2019, https://www.middle​east​eye.net/ big-story/last-gen​erat​ion-occ​upat​ion-pale​stin​ian-chr​isti​ans. 27 Ray Huntington, Camille Fronk, and Bruce Chadwick, “Assessing Changes in Women’s Family Roles: The Case of West Bank and Gaza Strip Palestinian Refugee Women,” International Journal of Sociology of the Family 28 (1998): 1–22. 28 Ahmed Gamal, “Postcolonial Recycling of the Oriental Gothic: Habiby’s Saraya, The Ghoul’s Daughter and Mukherjee’s Jasmine,” Transnational Literature 5 (2015): 2. 29 Jay Weissberg, “Venice Film Review: ‘Villa Touma,’ ” Variety, September 3, 2014, https://vari​ety.com/2014/film/festiv​als/ven​ice-film-rev​iew-villa-touma-120​ 1295​632/. 30 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1999), 179. 31 Butler, Gender Trouble, 178–79. 32 Meler, “The Palestinian Family,” 784. 33 Lama Abu-Odeh, “Crimes of Honour and the Construction of Gender in Arab Societies,” in Feminism and Islam: Literary and Legal Perspectives, ed. Mai Yamani (Reading: Ithaca Press, 1996), 141–96. 34 Anna Ball, Palestinian Literature and Film in Postcolonial Feminist Perspective (London: Routledge, 2012), 50–1. 35 Ignacio Martín-Baró, Writings for a Liberation Psychology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), passim. 36 Roth and Duaibis, “Crows on the Cradles,” 6. 37 I make this assertion fully conscious of the fact that the term “feminism”—or its nearest Arabic translation, al-nasawiyya—has a deeply contested status within the Palestinian consciousness, and am particularly mindful of the resistance that some Arab scholars and activists have felt toward the term on the grounds of its western associations (see Anna Ball, Palestinian Literature and Film, 7–12, for further discussion). It should be noted that I have not, to date, located any explicit

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references to feminist self-identification in statements by either Jacir or Arraf, though their work is undoubtedly attentive to gender relations. However, I use the term here in a manner that resists any monolithic categorization of the term but that recognizes the politicized commitment to gendered critique and gendered emancipation that underpins a specifically “feminist” agenda—as opposed, for example, to an agenda focused more specifically on “women’s rights” or “women’s issues.” In this, the feminist position I interpret in Jacir’s and Arraf ’s work might perhaps be most closely aligned with Arab and/or transnational feminist stances that emerge out of an interstitial recognition of the “double struggle” entailed in a politically located quest for simultaneous emancipation from the influence of colonialism and patriarchy. 38 Therese Saliba and Jeanne Kattan, “Palestinian Women and the Politics of Reception,” in Going Global: The Transnational Reception of Third World Women Writers, ed. Amal Amireh and Lisa Suhair Majaj (New York: Garland Publishing, 2000), 89. 39 Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), 25. 40 Jack Halberstam, The Queer Art of Failure (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011), 146. 41 Halberstam, The Queer Art, 146.

Bibliography Abu-Odeh, Lama. “Crimes of Honour and the Construction of Gender in Arab Societies.” In Feminism and Islam: Literary and Legal Perspectives, edited by Mai Yamani, 141–96. Reading: Ithaca Press, 1996. Arraf, Suha, dir. Villa Touma. Haifa: Belssan Films, 2014. Cinematic release. Arraf, Suha, dir. Nsaa Hamas (Women of Hamas). Haifa: Belssan Films, 2010. Cinematic release. Ball, Anna. Palestinian Literature and Film in Postcolonial Feminist Perspective. London: Routledge, 2012. Bhabha, Homi. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1999. Elkabetz, Ronit, and Shlomi Elkabetz, dirs. Get—Ha’mishpat Shel Vivian Amsalem (Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem). Paris: Arte France Cinéma, 2014. Cinematic release. Farsoun, Samih K. Culture and Customs of the Palestinians. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004.



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Gamal, Ahmed. “Postcolonial Recycling of the Oriental Gothic: Habiby’s Saraya, The Ghoul’s Daughter and Mukherjee’s Jasmine.” Transnational Literature 5 (2015): 1–22. Gertz, Nurith, and George Khleifi. Palestinian Cinema: Landscape, Trauma, Memory. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008. Haj, Maha, dir. Omor Shakhsiya (Personal Affairs). Nazareth: Yellow Dawn Productions, 2016. Cinematic release. Halberstam, Jack. The Queer Art of Failure. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011. Huntington, Ray, Camille Fronk, and Bruce Chadwick. “Assessing Changes in Women’s Family Roles: The Case of West Bank and Gaza Strip Palestinian Refugee Women.” International Journal of Sociology of the Family 28 (1998): 1–22. Jacir, Annemarie, dir. Salt of This Sea. Nazareth: Philistine Films, 2008. Cinematic release. Jacir, Annemarie, dir. Wajib. Nazareth: Philistine Films, 2017. Cinematic release. Kanaaneh, Rhoda Ann. Birthing the Nation: Strategies of Palestinian Women in Israel. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. Kanot, Shay, dir. Ahava Colombianit (Columbian Love). Tel Aviv: JCS Content, 2004. Cinematic release. Katz, Sheila Hannah. “Adam and Adama, ‘Ird and Ard: En-gendering Political Conflict and Identity in Early Jewish and Palestinian Nationalisms.” In Gendering the Middle East: Emerging Perspectives, edited by Deniz Kandiyoti. London: I. B. Tauris, 1996. Khalidi, Rashid. Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. Khleifi, Michel, dir. Urs al-Jalil (Wedding in Galilee). Nazareth: Marisa Films, 1987. Cinematic release. Koshashvili, Dover, dir. Hatuna Meuheret (Late Marriage). Tel Aviv: Israeli Film Fund, 2001. Cinematic release. Lionis, Chrisoula. Laughter in Occupied Palestine: Comedy and Identity in Art and Film. London: I. B. Tauris, 2016. Maoz, Samuel, dir. Foxtrot. Tel Aviv: Spiro Films, 2017. Cinematic release. Martín-Baró, Ignacio. Writings for a Liberation Psychology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994. Masri, Mai, dir. 3000 Leila (3000 Nights). Beirut: Arab Fund for Arts and Culture, 2015. Cinematic release. Massad, Joseph. “Conceiving the Masculine: Gender and Palestinian Nationalism.” Middle East Journal 49 (1995): 467–83. McClintock, Anne. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest. London: Routledge, 1995. Meler, Tal. “The Palestinian Family in Israel: Simultaneous Trends.” Marriage and Family Review 53, no. 8 (2017): 781–810. Mernissi, Fatima. Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in a Modern Muslim Society. Cambridge, MA: Schenkman Publishing, 1975.

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Newton, Creede. “Villa Touma: The World’s First ‘Stateless’ Film.” Middle East Eye, April 6, 2015. Available online: https://www.middle​east​eye.net/featu​res/villa-touma-wor​ lds-first-statel​ess-film (accessed March 29, 2022). Oborne, Peter. “The Last Generation: How Occupation Is Driving Christians Out of Palestine.” Middle East Eye, December 24, 2019. Available online: https://www. middle​east​eye.net/big-story/last-gen​erat​ion-occ​upat​ion-pale​stin​ian-chr​isti​ans (accessed March 29, 2022). “Interstice, n.” OED Online, https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/98353?red​irec​tedF​ rom=inte​rsti​ces& (accessed May 29, 2020). Peteet, Julie. “Male Gender and Rituals of Resistance in the Palestinian Intifada: A Cultural Politics of Violence.” In Imagined Masculinities, edited by Mai Ghoussoub and Emma Sinclair-Webb, 103–26. London: Saqi, 2000. Roth, Judy, and Salwa Duaibis. “Crows on the Cradles: Palestinian Mothers at a Frontline Vortex, Reflections on the Psychology of Occupation.” Applied Psychoanalytic Studies 12, no. 1 (2015): 5–20. Sa’ar, Amalia, and Taghreed Yahia-Younis. “Masculinity in Crisis: The Case of Palestinian Citizens in Israel.” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 35 (2008): 305–23. Said, Edward. “Reflections on Exile.” Granta 13 (1984): 157–72. Saliba, Therese, and Jeanne Kattan. “Palestinian Women and the Politics of Reception.” In Going Global: The Transnational Reception of Third World Women Writers, edited by Amal Amireh and Lisa Suhair Majaj, 84–112. New York: Garland Publishing, 2000. Sharabi, Hisham. Neopatriarchy: A Theory of Distorted Change in Arab Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. Singer, Leigh. “ ‘Laughing Is a Way to Resist’: Annemarie Jacir on Her Father-Son Wedding Drama Wajib.” Sight and Sound Magazine, January 7, 2019. Available online: https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opin​ion/sight-sound-magaz​ine/int​ervi​ews/ wajib-annema​rie-jacir-pale​stin​ian-fat​her-son-wedd​ing-drama (accessed March 29, 2022). Suleiman, Elia, dir. Yadon Ilaheya (Divine Intervention). Paris: Arte France Cinéma, 2002. Cinematic release. Suleiman, Elia, dir. Al-Zaman al-Baqi (The Time That Remains). Paris: Nazira Films, 2009. Cinematic release. Tessler, Mark. A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 2nd edition. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009. Weissberg, Jay. “Venice Film Review: ‘Villa Touma.’ ” Variety, September 3, 2014. Available online: https://vari​ety.com/2014/film/festiv​als/ven​ice-film-rev​ iew-villa-touma-120​1295​632/ (accessed March 29, 2022).



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Winer, Stuart. “Culture Ministry Wants Money Back from ‘Palestinian’ Film.” Times of Israel, July 30, 2014. Available online: https://www.timeso​fisr​ael.com/cult​ure-minis​ try-wants-money-back-from-pale​stin​ian-film/ (accessed March 29, 2022). Yaqub, Nadia. “The Palestinian Cinematic Wedding.” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 3 (2007): 56–85. Yuval-Davis, Nira. Gender and Nation. London: Sage, 1997.

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4

Disappearances and Remains: Masculinity in the Cinema of Elia Suleiman Kamran Rastegar

A Woman Disappears Sorrel to One: Spotted: an unknown woman. Normal? Finch to One: Green skirt on the scene. What do we do? —Chatter on a walkie-talkie in a scene from Chronicle of a Disappearance The dialogue above comes from Elia Suleiman’s debut film, ‫( سجل اختفاء‬Sijil Ikhtifa’; Chronicle of a Disappearance, 1996), in a scene that, for all intents and purposes, is the film’s climax. The scene begins with a Palestinian woman, ‘Adan, using a walkie-talkie that broadcasts on Israeli police bandwidth to set in motion a comic act of sabotage. Speaking fluent Hebrew, she impersonates “One,” the voice of police headquarters, and leads Israeli police units on madcap chases across the city of Jerusalem before ordering “the Congo units” (a code name for the police, apparently) to “withdraw immediately from Jerusalem” (Figure 4.1). In a subsequent scene, the Israeli police raid her residence and arrest her, but just as they are about to place her inside a police car, she mysteriously disappears. The officers continue their search, and chatter is heard between the police and headquarters over walkie-talkies. One agent reports sighting an “unknown woman,” while another asks for advice on how to handle a “green skirt” (Figure 4.2). A few seconds later, a policeman emerges from the building with a mannequin wearing a Palestinian tatriz-embroidered dress and places it in the trunk of the police car.

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Figure 4.1  ‘Adan orders Israeli police to withdraw from Jerusalem in Chronicle of a Disappearance. Screen grab by author.

Figure 4.2  Israeli police take away a mannequin instead of ‘Adan in Chronicle of a Disappearance. Screen grab by author.

The walkie-talkie chatter of the security forces, a recurring feature of several sequences in the film, presents a mode of analysis, a vector of interpretation, that renders Palestinians legible within the logic of the Israeli state. The chatter is unstable, and the dialogue between headquarters and the police in the field betrays confusion as much as it denotes a mastery or command over the subjects of their actions. Here, the visual loss of the living woman, ‘Adan, and her replacement by an “artificial” woman, the mannequin, is juxtaposed against audio reports of an “unknown” woman and a “green skirt.” This highlighting of gender in this chatter through the reference to “feminine” clothing, while apparently incidental, marks the persistent centrality of gender to the modes of representation imposed upon Palestinian subjects. ‘Adan’s subversive act, impersonating a radio dispatcher issuing commands to the police units in Jerusalem, the pinnacle act of resistance within the film, is diminished and codified in the crackling voices with reference to her gender, and in the end she is replaced by an avatar: a “Palestinian” (as marked by the traditional dress) who is a “woman.” As Sorrel asks One: “Normal?”



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On Elia Suleiman Chronicle of a Disappearance was released in 1996 and was awarded several major film prizes and reviewed broadly as a promising debut. In subsequent years, Suleiman directed three additional feature films, creating a body of work that established him as one of the most successful Palestinian filmmakers of his generation. Suleiman’s films are, in genre terms, works of narrative fiction. However, they sit on the borderline of autobiography and documentary in both aesthetic and formal terms. The four features, in many ways, serve as chapters of an ongoing “chronicle,” the subject of which is Suleiman himself. Common characters and formal features link the films to one another, even as one may discern shifts in perspective over the years that have caused the films to diverge. As Najat Rahman notes of Suleiman’s second feature ‫( يد إلهية‬Yadon Ilahiyya; Divine Intervention, 2003), in comments that could apply to all of his works, “Suleiman’s film starkly reveals the tensions between national affirmations of identity and globalized representations of them … the film represents the political in the mundane and insists on transnational cultural connections in the face of internal rifts in the relations between the self and other.”1 The central uniting feature across the four films is the presence of Suleiman as an actor, usually credited as performing the role of “ES,” the film’s primary character.2 The first two films have women co-protagonists, while the third and fourth films focus more on ES’s parents and ES himself, respectively. ES shares many biographical details with Suleiman but is also a very deliberately performative rendering of the director. The films are partially autobiographical in that their narratives are selectively driven by events from Suleiman’s life.3 In Chronicle of a Disappearance, it is his return to Israel/Palestine after years abroad; in Divine Intervention, it is the demise of his father (who is played by an actor, while his mother plays herself); in the third film, ‫( الزمن الباقي‬Al-Zaman Al-Baqi; The Time That Remains, 2009), it not only revolves around the history of his mother and father but is occasioned by the death of Suleiman’s mother; in the fourth film, ‫‘( إن شئت كما في السماء‬Inn Shi’it Kama fi Al-Sama; It Must Be Heaven, 2019), it is Suleiman’s search for a home in the world now that his parents have departed. As Patricia Pisters notes, “The films depict an invented self-portrait that is carefully constructed by the director’s selection of images, actions and situations and simultaneously completely undetermined by his personal subjectivity.”4 ES thus serves not only as an embodied double of the director Elia Suleiman but also as a vector for his exploration of his own personal, family, and, by

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extension, communal histories and experiences. In this sense, ES serves as both a repository for Suleiman’s life history and also a kind of exaggerated idealization of that history. This chapter will focus on only one aspect of this characterization— attributes that may be grouped under the heading of “masculinity.” At the same time, I will remain vigilant in disaggregating the character of ES and discussing the forms of masculinity in how he is idealized, from what may be presumed or imputed about gender and identity as they relate to Suleiman himself. It should perhaps go without saying that references to the conception of masculinity here are meant to relate only to socially developed and deployed traits, not biological traits, which are normatively and often hegemonically attributed to the category of men. As Anna Ball has suggested, “The discourse of Palestinian masculinity has begun to be understood as something that is performed and constructed not only through the framework of gender relations, but also in relation to the structures of power that underpin Palestinian nationhood and colonial relations.”5 My analysis relies less on the socialized norms around one category or another of “masculinity” than it does on articulating these conceptions in a way that highlights feminist critiques of patriarchal norms around gendering.6 The challenge in exploring colonial forms of gender normativity is in simultaneously attending to the colonial origins of many of these gender constructs, while also recognizing the degree to which they are reinscribed in certain modes of anticolonial thought, in particular nationalist thought. As Amal Amireh has noted, “The gendered national narrative is concerned with constructing, using, and disciplining the bodies of both women and men, but feminist scholars, in their efforts to reinscribe women into nationalism, tend for the most part to ignore men and masculinity. My feminist reading of Palestinian nationalism highlights the link between national constructions of femininity and masculinity.”7 So, too, is the present study concerned with thinking of articulations of masculinity in relation to those of femininity, as part of a feminist praxis—hence my beginning this essay with a reading of a scene in which Palestinian femininity is constituted discursively by the Israeli security apparatus. Gender binaries are not just oppositional, they are dialectical.

Survivance Masculinity Suleiman’s performance of ES draws upon a strategy of performing what I would term “survivance masculinity.” This performance is calibrated against



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performances of femininity that are no less deliberate. Suleiman addresses the role of gender in his cinema in an interview he gave shortly after the release of Divine Intervention, specifically addressing the relationship between ES and the character credited as the “Woman” in that film, a nominatively feminine character who serves as a projection of ES’s wishes and fantasies with regard to staging visible challenges to the military masculinity of the Israeli occupation: There is a beauty that is so aesthetic and can violently transgress, in other words, feminine beauty in this case. The transgression is in the fluidity of it. She can actually kill the soldier, down the tower, and cross with just her body language, just by melting the metal on the checkpoint. As opposed to masculine aesthetics, masculine violence which is not aesthetic, which can be less fluid and is many times confrontational, therefore is always violating and violated; always creating a binary opposition. In the film, I play a little on that … between me and her … despite the fact that I’m [the character ES is] experiencing a paralysis, or impotence. The imagined other is this feminine aesthetic violence which manages to win them all. I play with that.8

What appears to be at stake in this formulation is a deliberate use of binary gendering, a “play” with the normative conventions of masculinity as characterized by action and potency rather than “paralysis, or impotence.” No doubt Suleiman may fairly be imputed to be reifying these qualities as serving what might be termed normative masculinity. Or, in other words, Suleiman may be seen as indexing the “crisis of masculinity” trope that often underlies the work of gender in forms of heteronormative anti-colonial thought. The aestheticization of the “feminine” emerges from a putative masculinity that, although “normal,” retains a degree of dominant mastery even in (or precisely because of) its relative invisibility. Nonetheless, Suleiman is interested in inversions of expectation and ironic reversals of social hierarchies, which are not without critical value. His opposition of a “feminine violence” to that of “masculine aesthetics, masculine violence,” seeks to find alternatives to “a binary opposition”—and which, at least in the logic of the film, “wins.” This is what may be most productive in the “play” of gender norms that Suleiman presents, that a logic of victory—a logic so long withheld from Palestinian imaginary topos—emerges in the play of gendered expectations that link violence and transgression to the “feminine.” In thinking about the common aesthetics linking all four of Suleiman’s feature films, Laura Junka-Aikio suggests, “The political aesthetics that these films construct is thus feminine, affective, situational and tied to space.”9

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In the passage cited above, Suleiman has much more to say about both a (normative) masculine aesthetics and a (subversive) feminine aesthetics than about gendering and ES. He mentions, in passing, that he—or, more accurately, ES—is “experiencing a paralysis, or impotence.” The way this is said suggests something unsettled about ES and masculinity. ES is not “being” but, rather, “experiencing” these traits. They (impotence and paralysis) appear to be transitory or, as I would suggest, consciously performative. What they perform is not a recalibration of ES on a binary scale between masculine and feminine (in which impotence and paralysis are attributed to the feminine); rather, by being so much a performance, they index characteristics that are productive and even necessary for ES. These characteristics are about survival—or more precisely, are the performance of a form of survivance. The term “survivance” is here consciously utilized to underline the legible relations between Native American and Indigenous Studies as scholarly fields and the study of Palestinian culture and history. Native American scholars have made rich use of the concept of survivance, a term pioneered by Gerald Vizenor in his 2008 study of Indigenous American narrative practices.10 Lisa King, Rose Gubele, and Joyce Rain Anderson explain that “survivance is resisting … marginalizing, colonial narratives and policies so indigenous knowledge and life ways may come into the present with new life and new commitment to that survival.”11 The term remains productive to many discussions of Native American cultural practices and speaks eloquently to the aims of cultural vitality as tied to resistance and endurance. In this sense, it offers us a way to regard the quality of resistance cultures rather than as some form of intermediary or runt culture—whether as a second-order and degraded mimicry of the colonial or hegemonic orders that threaten them or as “heritage” cultures museumified in a static vitrine. In speaking of survivance masculinity, I signal a network of embodied and affective elements particular to a genealogy of masculine gendering that makes possible the continued presence of the colonized subject within the body of the settler colonial society. Survivance masculinity has several features: among those that I will explore here as they pertain to Suleiman’s work are the deployment of strategic invisibility and ethical impassivity—these are indicative rather than exhaustive. Colonized subjects whose performance of masculinity presents an unacceptable challenge to the settler colonial order find routes to survive, endure, and resist—a concept codified among Palestinians as “sumud”—within the colonial society by deploying their gender in ways that allow for their continued existence under conditions that sustain resistance.



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Strategic Invisibility Fanon’s psychoanalytic disposition to thinking through racialized subjectivity offers us a rich critical ground to begin to consider how a form of socialized masculinity may be performed in such a way as to seek survivance. As Frantz Fanon argued in Black Skins, White Masks, the racialized colonized subject is a scandal when visible. There is nothing explicitly “masculine” about the process and experience outlined by Fanon, but as is common with other anticolonial theorists of his time, Fanon’s universal figure is cast over and over as a man, and not simply by virtue of Fanon’s use of pronouns. As Gwen Bergner has noted, For the exemplary colonized subject, Fanon uses the term le noir “the black man.” This masculine “universal” refers not to humankind generally, however, but to actual men … That Fanon’s “universal” subject describes the colonized male in particular indicates that racial identities intersect with sexual difference. Fanon does not ignore sexual difference altogether, but he explores sexuality’s role in constructing race only through rigid categories of gender.12

While Fanon follows the (patriarchal/cis-heteronormative) dominant conceptual framings of both psychoanalysts and of anti-colonial nationalist thinkers in his own time, his underlying presumption that gender is an arena productive of psychic instability and neurosis is useful for the present discussion. For Fanon, the instabilities of a colonized subjectivity are fundamentally driven by a psychic crisis of self-identification, which is presumed to be about gender. “In the white world, the man of color encounters difficulties in elaborating his body schema. The image of one’s body is solely negating. It’s an image in the third person. All around the body reigns an atmosphere of certain uncertainty.”13 The visibility of the body of the man of color is initially threatening to the colonizer’s gaze, but the power of that gaze initiates a self-negating process for the Black man. The outcome is a strategy of invisibility. Fanon continues: “I slip into corners, my long antenna encountering the various axioms on the surface of things: the Negro’s clothes smell of Negro; the Negro has white teeth; the Negro has big feet; the Negro has a broad chest. I slip into corners; I keep silent; all I want is to be anonymous, to be forgotten. Look, I’ll agree to everything, on condition I go unnoticed!”14 Invisibility and silence: the cloak of nonrecognition that, on one hand, affirms the hierarchy that preserves the primacy of the colonizer’s voice and visage but that, on the other hand, makes possible a base existence for the colonized. Invisibility and silence mean escaping the visual mark of the sniper’s

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sight, the aural tracking of the wiretapper’s surveillance. But these require an active self-negation from visual and aural spheres. Fanon’s trajectory of selfnegation leads first to solidarity, a recognition of brotherhood—in Fanon’s case, he expresses this by realizing his solidarity with Jewish victims of anti-Semitism— and then, ultimately, to an explosion. “The black man is a toy in the hands of the white man. So in order to break the vicious circle, he explodes.”15 This idealized process results in a revolutionary colonized subject on the cusp of liberation. ES begins as Fanon does, with “difficulties in elaborating his body schema.” From his first appearance in 1996’s Chronicle of a Disappearance, ES is not only silent but nearly invisible. His mute body, often framed by the camera in doorways, within window frames, and in the backgrounds of scenes, communicates his uneasy presence, his stubborn but sublimated insistence on remaining in while being marginal to the scope of action. His presence often elicits little reaction; he occupies no space and seems to leave almost no trace. However, unlike Fanon’s aspirational liberator man, ES reflects a colonized figure trapped in the first stage of the process, one who is still caught in what Fanon terms “certain uncertainty.”16 His invisibility is nearly an inherited feature of his life, it would seem, and he expresses nothing about the possibility of moving through to liberatory subjectivity—perhaps because such a subjectivity can only be formed under conditions that may allow it, but more likely because, for Suleiman, the conception of a liberated subject cannot be tied to the forms of gendering produced and valorized by nationalist anti-colonialism. In Chronicle, ES wanders the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv as a ghostly presence; in the second half of the film, he pursues ‘Adan, who serves as his feminine alter ego as much as a separate character or love interest, only to eventually lose her. The title of the film refers to both the disappearance of ‘Adan and ES’s own dis-appearance: his absence in presence. The use of a feminine alter ego for ES who represents much of what he seems to have had to repress is a strategy Suleiman uses in not just Chronicle but Divine Intervention as well. In both films, this alter ego disappears, only compounding the crisis of ES’s own subjective invisibility. He and ‘Adan cross paths in a somewhat parallel existence—they meet only once, at a real estate office where both have come to find a “home.” ES ends up in a home surrounded by empty lots, “close to the airport,” while ‘Adan moves into a makeshift space in the Palestinian National Theater building in Jerusalem, surrounded by artifacts of cultural resistance. By the end of the film, ES has achieved little: he visits sites across the region, but he mostly sits alone in his empty apartment, tapping away on his computer.



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Although at one point he is invited to give a lecture, his attempt to speak is thwarted by both the sound system’s feedback and the audience’s lack of interest. The only plot device involving his character is the accidental discovery of a police walkie-talkie that has been dropped on the sidewalk. But even here, no action ensues—somehow ‘Adan obtains the walkie-talkie, but she uses it to order the withdrawal of Israeli police from Jerusalem (the scene alluded to in the introduction of this chapter). After she disappears, ES returns to his family home and lurks as a ghostly shadow in the doorway as his parents fall asleep in front of a television broadcasting the Israeli national anthem. Beyond the relational marker that ‘Adan offers, ES’s is most defined in relation to another common presence in all four films by Suleiman, that of Israeli militarized masculinity. In Chronicle of a Disappearance, this is most significantly brought into relief during a scene in which ES’s home is raided by Israeli soldiers. As the soldiers approach and flow through the house in a highly choreographed manner, they completely overlook ES’s presence in the space (Figure 4.3). During the search, a campy tango serves as a non-diagetic soundtrack, and afterwards, ES listens in surreptitiously to the reports being made about him on the military walkie-talkies. The patter describes him and his surroundings: Assignment Report. Crow to One: two front doors, four doors, four windows, a balcony, a fan, a phone, a picture with a hen, four seats …

Figure 4.3  ES watches as Israeli police raid his house, ignoring him, in Chronicle of a Disappearance. Screen grab by author.

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Faster! Four old wooden chairs, a computer, a stereo, a desk, two wicker armchairs, a Japanese textbook, a painting with tulips, a white painting, Sonallah Ibrahim, Carver, Karl Kraus, a fishing kit, Mustapha Qamar, Samira Said, Ragheb Allama, nylon curtains, a guy in pajamas, over.

The next day, the report continues: What was in the house? A pilot. An air-head. An intellectual. Any problems? Hell, no! We forced him to land.

Later in the film, the report seems to be continuing: – How did it go with the square guy? – He was following us in his slippers. – Did he say anything? – Nothing. A real wimp. Just followed us in his slippers. – Whereas you’re a real tough nut! Over.

This record, a representation of ES and his cultural context prepared by the Israeli military intelligence apparatus, renders him, “a guy in pajamas,” as not only “an air-head” but as “an intellectual” who reads Sonallah Ibrahim and Raymond Carver and listens to a pan-Arab list of singers from Morocco, Egypt, and Lebanon. Yet the report also misconstrues with little repercussion (for example, the “Japanese textbook” on his desk is apparently a copy of Roland Barthes’ book Empire of Signs—it has a photo of a Japanese kabuki performer on its cover). The soldiers go on to describe ES as a “square guy,” a “wimp” who follows them around in his slippers, saying nothing. The action of him following them around impassively, which is repeated several times in the scene, emphasizes their reading of him as physically incapable, lacking in action, and unable to offer resistance in a way that is legible to their system. He is a mockery, “forced to land.” The jovial retort “whereas you’re a real tough nut!” serves only to further alienate ES from the fraternal system of colonial discourse that reads him as a subject marked by a deficient form of masculinity. At another point in the film, ES stands on a sidewalk watching while a line of Israeli police rush



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out of a van and line up against a wall to urinate—he is again excluded and illegible to their fraternal system. That said, by offering himself to this mode of interpretation, ES elides the direct confrontation and brutal violence that other putatively “masculine” forms of resistance would have generated. When Palestinians, and perhaps specifically Palestinian men, are continually read and represented as being prone to violence (an axiom often cited by Israeli security officials is “Arabs only understand force”), a “square guy … in his slippers” elicits derision but goes on to survive another day. In Divine Intervention, the feminine foil to ES goes further in highlighting his invisibility. With the film framed as a love story, ES and his lover/alter ego (credited simply as the “Woman”) resort to furtive meetings in a no-man’s-land at a checkpoint. Once again, at this site, the two foils for ES are the “Woman,” on one hand, and Israeli military masculinity, on the other. Where ES continues to be overlooked or disregarded in his perambulations, the “Woman” demands the ocular engagement of Israelis, in particular military men. In two scenes, she confronts and confounds them: in the first, walking through the checkpoint without heeding their commands for her to stop, and, in the second, through her incarnation as a ninja figure who fights a number of Israeli Border Police at a training facility, vanquishing them through stylized and highly symbolic choreography. Anna Ball comments on the checkpoint scene: “Suleiman’s female border crosser disrupts the racial and gendered binarisms of the masculine Israeli oppressor and the feminine Palestinian oppressed.”17 The disruption of these binaries is achieved in part by the visual presence of the “Woman” in that the Israelis have no choice but to engage her visually (they train her in their gun sights) and to react to her full embodiment of, in the first scene, a hyperfeminine and stylish urban-cosmopolitan woman, and, second, a mythological ninja woman-warrior. As Rasha Salti argues, “The gendering of conventional masculine constructions of the fida’i [resistance fighter] is subverted by the casting of the ninja as a woman.”18 There is clearly more to say about the deployment of these feminine tropes, but I fully concur with Ball in her assessment that Suleiman’s staging of these alter egos “remains a symbolic manifestation of the troubled and emasculated male psyche, acting as the screen onto which parodic and mimetic versions of Palestinian identity are projected.”19 But what this feminine presence achieves is a significant difference from the putative masculinity embodied by ES. Suleiman draws on other means by which to juxtapose and define ES, by subtly comparing him to his own father, who represents a form of masculinity that originates in local patriarchal norms and traditions, which are also

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Figure 4.4  Fuad rushes to save an Israeli soldier from a burning truck in The Time That Remains. Screen grab by author.

presented as characteristic of resistance by nationalist organizations. For example, in Chronicle, Suleiman’s father participates in ongoing arm-wrestling matches with other men in the neighborhood. During one poignant scene near the end of the film, ES watches through a window as his father jovially welcomes a younger rival and then bests him in the match. ES is unable to join in on this ritual and can only view it at a distance. In Divine Intervention, a close-up of two interlocked hands appears to reference his father’s arm wrestling, but then, when the next shot portrays this action in a medium shot, we realize that ES is in fact helping his father up into a seated position in his hospital bed. The sequence plays as an elegy for his father’s vitality, a point made all the more emotionally resonant after the father’s story more fully unfolds in Suleiman’s third film, The Time That Remains. The story of ES’s father, credited in this film as “Fuad” (in the prior films, he is credited as “Father”), begins with heroic military resistance during the 1948 war, after which the film concerns itself primarily with the long decline that he endured over the course of the subsequent decades. Throughout, the film represents Fuad as a product of the modes of indigenous masculinity that ES is so distanced from—as a fighter against the Zionists in 1948 who, years later, risks his own life to rescue an Israeli soldier from a burning truck (Figure 4.4). Suleiman seems committed to celebrating the father character’s earlier embodiment of traits of heroism and resistance, even as he slowly inches toward death and oblivion. By comparison, however, ES is marked by not just



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a comparative invisibility but also a deliberate impassivity toward the brutality and injustice that surrounds him.

Ethical Impassivity The invisibility of ES is not a device for narrative action, but, rather, an index for the relatively marginal location the character occupies in the ocular regime of the Israeli state. In this sense, he is more like Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man than the Invisible Man of Marvel comic books. As with Fanon, he is also driven to remain “anonymous” and wants to be “forgotten,” invisible. As Jenny Chamarette suggests, “ES’s standing gesture is a vision of passivity: attentiveness leaves his body in search of other sources of attention/observation, which are then cinematically refound through off-screen sound and reverse-shot cuts.”20 ES commands his own ocular system and acts as an observer and screen upon which the prosaic and mundane, as well as spectacular or horrific events, in his proximity can be registered. Suleiman’s most unsettling visual sleight of hand might be the way in which he presents many shots in his films as “objective” framings of the action but which, on further review, almost always register as point-of-view framings. In this, he compels the audience to adopt his own view (or, rather, ES’s own view) as not merely an effect but, rather, the normative perspective. Put otherwise, his films are doubly self-referential; not simply a staging of autobiography at the level of plot, the visual language presents the generic shot of classic cinema—an “objective” shot—as point-of-view. This means the impassivity that ES performs is counteracted by the degree to which every POV shot is active—an active attempt to command and interpret the visual field. Beyond this, ES’s impassivity is coded with a certain kind of knowledge; it is not the impassivity of apathy or ignorance but rather that of a consciousness honed by daily negation. What remains, despite the flattening operation that shapes and reduces the lived expanses of the colonized, is a jagged shard of dark humor, a reflection that atrocity frequently carries with it some quality of the absurd. A hallmark moment of this may occur in a scene in Divine Intervention in which ES, while sitting at the checkpoint where he meets his lover, observes an Israeli soldier engaging in a variety of humorous but simultaneously horrific interactions with Palestinians who are waiting in their cars. The soldier runs between the cars with a bullhorn, taking IDs, singing, removing passengers

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Figure 4.5  ES’s standoff with an Israeli driver in Divine Intervention. Screen grab by author.

from their cars and commenting on their coats, grabbing one from one car and exchanging him for another, and a series of other violations of their dignity. As this all plays out, ES watches on from a distance. The action is framed in a wide angle shot, and even on a large screen, the faces of the soldiers and the Palestinians remain somewhat indistinct. The staging of ES as an observer places him in the role of ethical witness, but one frozen in impassivity. It’s clear that he is powerless to affect the situation or to intervene—only a divine intervention could possibly do so. It may be for this reason that the scene ends with a somewhat uncharacteristic shot—rather than closing with the POV angle that has been used throughout the scene, the final shot is a birds-eye shot and is framed even wider than the prior one. This, indeed, is the gaze of the divine, observing the checkpoint from a high vantage and offering the only possible route to some measure of justice. This impassivity, however, cannot be read only with regard to that specific scene; it must be placed into conversation with the following scene, in which ES drives up to a red light and notices a billboard placed in his line of vision. The billboard is uncanny—it advertises a shooting range and features an image ostensibly of a Palestinian (denoted by the kuffieyeh covering her head); a closer inspection reveals that she is the Woman, ES’s lover, who has recently disappeared. ES turns to see an Israeli Jewish driver pull up beside him in his own car, an Israeli flag fluttering from his radio antenna. ES, who wears a pair of sunglasses reminiscent of those the Woman had on when she crossed the checkpoint, places a cassette into his car stereo; it begins playing Natacha Atlas’s cover of “I Put a Spell on You” (Figure 4.5). He rolls down his window to attract the attention of the man in the adjacent car, and the two stare at each other (Figure 4.6). They sit there, not accelerating, as the light changes from red to green and back. This scene marks perhaps the most direct act



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Figure 4.6  The Israeli driver’s standoff with ES in Divine Intervention. Screen grab by author.

of confrontation staged by ES in any of Suleiman’s films. The confrontation also evokes, however ironically, a certain queerness in its standoff, as the soundtrack connotes an economy of desire that links the two men. Behind ES, the billboard frames him, while his sunglasses and generally cool demeanor communicate a defiance in the face of the flat gaze of the Israeli Jewish man. However, nothing comes of this confrontation other than ES insisting on being seen. In this moment, which takes place near the end of the film, ES seems to hint at what Fanon viewed as the final stage of subjective formation for the colonial subject: explosion. Indeed, in the final scene, shortly after this, ES sits at the kitchen table, his mother beside him—his father is now absent, having recently died. The two remaining figures of the family stare ahead at something. A reverse shot betrays what they are looking at: a pressure cooker on the counter, whistling and shaking ominously. They remain in place, not reacting. This “passive” conclusion echoes the ending of Chronicle: the aforementioned long shot of ES’s parents asleep while the TV plays the Israeli national anthem stoked dismay from some Palestinian and Arab critics, who saw the scene as a staging of passive capitulation to Zionism. But these “passive” conclusions can also be seen as deliberate inversions. As Pisters has argued about Suleiman’s work, “This dimension of inertia and passivity in the performance of the director/ protagonist can alternatively be seen more actively, as a performative style that creates a distance from his own subjectivity, which turns his ‘absent’ and silent acting into a ‘politics of the impersonal.’ ”21 Here, the “politics of the impersonal” may include a disavowal of the dominant modes of gendering that allow for the Palestinian “man” and “woman” to occupy a space in which their survival is in part dependent upon abjuring the expectations of the ideologies that seek to dominate, control, and, ultimately, eliminate them.

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Conclusion As a semi-autobiographical figure, ES represents a certain distillation of the objective of survivance masculinity, primarily that of providing a model for persistence within a colonial order. Suleiman stages ES’s masculinity using some of the qualities that Fanon highlights in the consciousness of the colonized subject: stealth, invisibility, and impassivity among them. Suleiman coordinates the character’s performance of masculinity through oppositions: to codes of Israeli Jewish masculinity, to the codes of heroic nationalist masculinity that undergird his father’s story, to the heroism and potential for violence within Palestinian femininity. Ultimately, the strategies of survivance can, however momentarily, shift from invisibility to defiance, and perhaps even desire, before returning to a strategic passivity. However, as always, beneath the apparently placid surface and its binaries, it may well be that something is about to explode.

Notes 1 Najat Rahman, In the Wake of the Poetic: Palestinian Artists After Darwish (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2015), 65. 2 In Chronicle of a Disappearance, Suleiman is credited as performing the role of “self,” but in the remaining three films he is credited as performing the role of “ES.” Since it seems quite indisputable that the four films are a series with the same protagonist, I follow Suleiman’s choice in the later films to name this recurring character ES. See IMDB, “Elia Suleiman,” https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0837​ 839/?ref_=ttfc​_fc_​dr1#actor. 3 In many ways, however, the films are not autobiographical or like documentaries at all. For example, Suleiman omits his real-life siblings entirely from the family story he crafts throughout the series. Also, he does not hesitate to cast actors in the roles of nowdeceased family members alongside actual members of his family playing themselves. 4 Patricia Pisters, “Violence and Laughter: Paradoxes of Nomadic Thought in Postcolonial Cinema,” in Deleuze and the Postcolonial, ed. Simone Bignall and Paul Patton (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 201. 5 Anna Ball, Palestinian Literature and Film in Postcolonial Feminist Perspective (London: Routledge, 2012), 74. 6 Masculinity studies have a somewhat mixed history, which reveals both what is critical but also what is problematic around the study of the “masculine,” while



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also bearing marks of neglect for the need for any critical study of gender to be primarily concerned with feminist critiques of patriarchal codes. 7 Amal Amireh, “Between Complicity and Subversion: Body Politics in Palestinian National Narrative,” South Atlantic Quarterly 102, no. 4 (Fall 2003): 749. 8 Drake Stutesman, “Elia Suleiman Interview,” Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media 45, no. 1 (Spring 2004): 87. 9 Laura Junka-Aikio, “Articulation, National Unity and the Aesthetics of Living Against Occupation in Elia Suleiman’s Palestine Trilogy,” Journal for Cultural Research 17, no. 4 (2013): 410. 10 Gerald Robert Vizenor, Survivance: Narratives of Native Presence (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2008). 11 Lisa King, Rose Gubele, and Joyce Rain Anderson, “Careful with the Stories We Tell: Naming Survivance, Sovereignty and Story,” in Survivance, Sovereignty, and Story: Teaching American Indian Rhetorics, ed. Lisa King, Rose Gubele, and Joyce Rain Anderson (Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado, 2015), 7. 12 Gwen Bergner, “Who Is That Masked Woman? Or, the Role of Gender in Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks,” PMLA 110, no. 1 (1995): 77, www.jstor.org/sta​ ble/463​196. 13 Franz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, trans. Richard Philcox (New York: Grove Press, [1952] 2008), 90. 14 Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 96. 15 Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 119. 16 Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 90. 17 Anna Ball, “Between a Postcolonial Nation and Fantasies of the Feminine: The Contested Visions of Palestinian Cinema,” Camera Obscura 23, no. 3 (2008): 21. 18 Rasha Salti, “From Resistance and Bearing Witness to the Power of the Fantastical: Icons and Symbols in Palestinian Poetry and Cinema,” Third Text 24, no. 1 (January 2010): 50. 19 Ball, “Fantasies of the Feminine,” 24. 20 Jenny Chamarette, “Absurd Avatars, Transcultural Relations: Elia Suleiman, Franco-Palestinian Filmmaking and Beyond,” Modern & Contemporary France 22, no. 1 (January 2014): 97. 21 Pisters, “Violence and Laughter,” 205.

Bibliography Amireh, Amal. “Between Complicity and Subversion: Body Politics in Palestinian National Narrative.” South Atlantic Quarterly 102, no. 4 (Fall 2003): 747–72.

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Ball, Anna. “Between a Postcolonial Nation and Fantasies of the Feminine: The Contested Visions of Palestinian Cinema.” Camera Obscura 23, no. 3 (2008): 1–33. Ball, Anna. Palestinian Literature and Film in Postcolonial Feminist Perspective. London: Routledge, 2012. Bergner, Gwen. “Who Is That Masked Woman? Or, the Role of Gender in Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks.” PMLA 110, no. 1 (1995): 75–88. Available online: www.jstor.org/ sta​ble/463​196 (accessed April 16, 2022). Chamarette, Jenny. “Absurd Avatars, Transcultural Relations: Elia Suleiman, FrancoPalestinian Filmmaking and Beyond.” Modern & Contemporary France 22, no. 1 (January 2014): 85–102. Fanon, Franz. Black Skin, White Masks. Translated by Richard Philcox. New York: Grove Press, [1952] 2008. IMDB. “Elia Suleiman.” Available online: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0837​ 839/?ref_=ttfc​_fc_​dr1#actor (accessed June 15, 2020). Junka-Aikio, Laura. “Articulation, National Unity and the Aesthetics of Living against Occupation in Elia Suleiman’s Palestine Trilogy.” Journal for Cultural Research 17, no. 4 (2013): 398–413. King, Lisa, Rose Gubele, and Joyce Rain Anderson. “Careful with the Stories We Tell: Naming Survivance, Sovereignty and Story.” In Survivance, Sovereignty, and Story: Teaching American Indian Rhetorics, edited by Lisa King, Rose Gubele, and Joyce Rain Anderson, 3–16. Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2015. Pisters, Patricia. “Violence and Laughter: Paradoxes of Nomadic Thought in Postcolonial Cinema.” In Deleuze and the Postcolonial, edited by Simone Bignall and Paul Patton, 201–19. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010. Rahman, Najat. In the Wake of the Poetic: Palestinian Artists After Darwish. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2015. Salti, Rasha. “From Resistance and Bearing Witness to the Power of the Fantastical: Icons and Symbols in Palestinian Poetry and Cinema.” Third Text 24, no. 1 (January 2010): 39–52. Stutesman, Drake. “Elia Suleiman Interview.” Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media 45, no. 1 (Spring 2004): 85–94. Vizenor, Gerald Robert. Survivance: Narratives of Native Presence. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2008.

5

“Queer as Can Be”: On Masculinity in Jumana Manna’s Blessed, Blessed Oblivion Gil Hochberg

Masculinity and Crisis There is a certain way in which masculinity is discussed in the context of Palestine and Palestinian men. The most common trope is that of crisis. Time and again we hear that masculinity in Palestine, and among Palestinian men, is “in crisis”— there is a “crisis in masculinity.” While reporting on the great challenges Palestinian people face—lack of education and employment opportunities, financial hardship, restrictions on movement, constant harassment by Israeli authorities—studies also reinforce, directly or indirectly, heteronormative conceptions of manhood and masculinity as the desired standard against which Palestinian masculinity is deemed to be in crisis. Young Palestinian men’s behavior is often analyzed through the lens of wounded, failed, and broken masculinity. We are told that, particularly within Israel, “Palestinians are undergoing a deep crisis of masculinity.”1 Palestinian masculinities have been the subject of research in several important studies. Among them, Julie Peteet and Esmail Nashif have focused on Palestinian prisoners and concluded that rituals of torture and endurance inscribed on the body play a leading role in the formation of Palestinian manhood. Both also share the idea that overcoming torture as a model of masculinity serves to transform humiliation into empowerment. In a different study, Rhoda Kanaaneh looked at Palestinian men who volunteer for the Israeli security forces, noting that other Palestinians view these men as embodying “immature, pubescent masculinity … [and] needing the military to bolster their weak masculinities.”2 Amalia Sa’ar and Taghreed Yahya-Younis suggest that among the dominant popular narratives about the “crisis of masculinity” in Palestinian men is one about the loss of traditional gender roles, maturity, and self-control.3 From another study, we learn that “the inability to partake in healthy

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and productive means of masculine expression leads to problems of aggression and control, self-esteem issues, conflicted dependency needs, and racial identity issues.”4 But what exactly is “a healthy productive means of masculine expression”? The authors go on to tell us that their study “found that two important factors had considerable impact on healthy masculine development.”5 Healthy masculine development? The authors of this study, and many others, seem to know what this means. We read that “anxiety and trauma” make it difficult for young Palestinian men to think about themselves or to develop an “appropriate and successful masculine identity.” Feelings of powerlessness are experienced as an insult to “their traditional code of manhood.”6 All this may very well be true and indeed reflect the local youth discourse. But the question remains: are scholars of gender to take these stereotypical and binary models and understanding of gender identity at face value? Not only is muted masculinity reported as an outcome of a crisis; so is “hypermasculinity.” “There is considerable violence … Young men are often sexually frustrated and overstimulated … boys tend to evince a hypermasculinity in which they swagger and sway, showing that they are men.”7 Violence, sexism, drugs, and alcohol are all described as outcomes of a masculinity in crisis— paralleling what is known in the US context as “toxic masculinity.” This toxicity, however, does not result from the “failures” and “crises of masculinity” but resides at the heart of the fetishized gender economy of “healthy” and “productive” masculinity: within heterosexual, normative, middle class, and “appropriate levels” of violence, power, and sexuality. After all, within this model, what is manhood if not power? Hence, a typical frat boy hypermasculine culture (the emblem of American white heteronormative masculinity at its “very best”) does not significantly differ from the so-called Palestinian masculinity in crisis. Joseph Massad has explored the ways “masculinity becomes nationalized.”8 He writes that within the popular Palestinian imagination, as well as the early Zionist imagination, Zionists are seen as masculine, and the violence they impose on Palestinians is “considered metaphorically to be of a violent sexual nature.”9 Accordingly, he shows how Palestinian nationalism is invested in creating an anti-colonial model of masculinity to combat the Zionist/colonial one: “The UNLU states that ‘your [a masculine pronoun] strong arms which shake the foundations of the Zionist occupation are the same arms which will build the independent Palestinian state.’ ”10 It is well established that national thought and national movements across the world are always already gendered. It is for precisely this reason that, oftentimes, texts that are read and contextualized through a national framework (whether colonial or anti-colonial) tend to



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perpetuate binary perceptions of gender identity, relegating the discussion of “masculinity” and “femininity” to particular roles within the nation or national struggle.11 Maria Holt describes a similar reality: “[Palestinian] men have traditionally been responsible for defending the community, their inability to do so and their apparent powerlessness in the face of a militarily superior enemy has caused a crisis of masculinity.”12 This “crisis” is then presented as the cause of, if not the justification for, what is otherwise considered “pathological behavior” (too violent, too sexist, too impulsive, etc.)—a mark of the unhealthy performance of masculinity to compensate for a crisis. Time and time again, then, we encounter a pairing of (national) agency and maturity with healthy masculinity, which ultimately means normative and heterosexual. In a more recent essay, Magen MacKenzie and Alana Foster discuss what they call “masculinity nostalgia.” They suggest that the impact of Israeli occupation on Palestinian men in the West Bank creates “the conditions for masculinity nostalgia, or a yearning for a set of gender norms and relations linked to fantasies of a secure, ‘traditional’ and ordered past.”13 Whether considered nostalgia, a quest, or a crisis, “masculinity” in the Palestinian context is almost entirely mapped onto a heteronormative national framework. It is not surprising, then, that a film directed by a Palestinian woman about Palestinian men would be read by critics, and circulated in film festivals and museums across the world, in precisely these terms: as a work about Palestinian masculinity in crisis.

Thugs Will Be Thugs Jumana Manna’s 2010 short film ‫( مبارك مبارك النسيان‬Mbarak Mbarak Alnisyaan; Blessed, Blessed Oblivion, East Jerusalem, 21 minutes) circulated widely through film festivals, galleries, and museums. Partly an experimental documentary, partly an ethnographic film, partly an essay film, it is not an easy-to-classify text. Perhaps this indefinable quality contributed to critics’ choice to focus on the film’s content and context over its distinct stylistic features, despite the fact that it is an arthouse film that caters to a particular audience who is likely interested in the work’s cinematic language and not just its subject matter. Featured in numerous film festivals, Blessed has been repeatedly described as a film about “male thug culture in East Jerusalem” as well as an exploration of masculinity “dominated by violence, drugs and crime, openly sexist and misogynistic language, and criminal codes of honor.”14 Along similar lines, it has

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Figure 5.1  At the gym in Blessed, Blessed Oblivion. Screen grab by author.

been labeled as a film about “the unclear desire of heroic resistance.”15 Many of the catalogue depictions of the film utilize a language of unveiling and exposure commonly found in descriptions of ethnographic films: “Manna gained access to environments rarely seen by the female eye. The barbershop, gym (Figure 5.1), and mechanic’s garage are all located in her hometown of East Jerusalem.” Or: Manna gains access “to a world that a young woman in Jerusalem usually cannot access.”16 Depicting the homosocial world captured in Manna’s film and the behavior of its male protagonists, many reviewers noted the “exaggeratedly masculine” behavior of the men.17 Some praised the director for bringing to the screen “the struggles of the Palestinian working-class men” and for offering the audience an opportunity to better understand “the unrestrainable ‘tough guy’ as a dystopic response to the immense pressures that the (male) youth of Jerusalem undergo … depicting the vulgarity, misogyny and muddled desires of heroic resistance and petty crime … from a female perspective.”18 And so we find ourselves, once again, nested in a narrative about “masculinity in crisis,” this time approached with empathy (the “female perspective”). Blessed is described as a film about “the frustrations and lost potential of young Palestinian men, in occupied East Jerusalem, for whom there are few opportunities of further employment or education”; we learn that the thug culture, the hypermasculinity, the sexism, and the misogyny, along with the fixation on bodybuilding, cars, and gadgets, all derive from a crisis. A crisis of masculinity, itself an outcome of life under Israeli occupation.19



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None of these reviews or descriptions are “wrong,” but they hug the trope of “crisis of masculinity” all too tight and all too fast. Indeed, the idea that Manna’s experimental documentary is an empathic rendition of Palestinian thug culture, which allows us to better understand young, working-class Palestinian men, presupposes and uncritically adopts many clichés and stereotypes about workingclass men in general and “Palestinian shabab” in particular: they are hypermasculine, sexist, misogynist, shallow, and violent. They care only about bodybuilding, sex, and cars. But “it is not their fault.” They are overcompensating for their wounded, broken masculinity. They are symptomatic expressions of masculinity in crisis. Give these men a better education, better employment opportunities, respect, freedom of mobility, and national identity, and you will see a productive, balanced, and healthy masculinity. The message, to be sure, is something along the lines of, under every thug lies a potential gentleman, or at least a respectful patriarch. Behind every member of the hypermasculine riffraff lies the potential of a proper man who has just the right amount of sexism, honor, and misogyny. Of course, Manna’s film is, in part, a commentary on the hardship of the Israeli occupation and its negative impact on Palestinian working-class men. But Blessed is far from a straightforward ethnographic cinematic exploration that simply reaffirms conventional understandings of (Palestinian) “thug culture.” Rather, I suggest that the film overtly critiques the cultural trope of “masculinity in crisis” as a gateway for understanding and relating to the Palestinian predicament. My own reading of the film thus highlights the ways Manna uses this familiar cultural and discursive trope to undermine its authority and question its validity. To put it differently, I suggest that Blessed is a film about the limits of representations associated with the popular trope of “crisis of masculinity” rather than a film that adopts this trope and abides by its social and aesthetic conventions. *** Blessed opens with a black screen and white subtitles. The subtitles provide the English translation of a joke told in Arabic by Ahmad Bashir, a young man in his twenties and the main character of Manna’s film. Ahmad’s is a “dirty,” sexist joke about a mother who asks her son to go buy his father Viagra to ensure that she does not have to go fuck the neighbor, or the neighbor’s neighbor, because “her vagina is itching,” and not even the cucumbers have helped: “Son, go get your father Viagra, or I will bring shame on our family.” The punch line is followed by laughter—Ahmad’s and his friends, whom we see in the next shot, which shows a few young men in an auto body shop. These men, Palestinians from Silwan, a neighborhood in East Jerusalem, are the film’s protagonists. They are the “thugs”

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Figure 5.2  An intimate shot of men’s hair in Blessed, Blessed Oblivion. Screen grab by author.

Manna’s camera follows from the car shop to the barbershop (Figure 5.2) to the gym to the streets, where they gather to dance, smoke, and share “dirty jokes.” But if the opening scene of Blessed could be the opening of any B movie or low-end locker-room comedy filled with lewd jokes and “manly activities,” the ensuing sequences of Manna’s film situate us in a radically different, much less coherent and familiar setting. The camera slides over a young man’s lips, in an extreme close-up, almost penetrating his mouth, revealing his tongue smoothly wetting his upper lip as he begins to recite a poem. And not just any poem, but a 1936 poem entitled ‫الشهيد‬ (Al-Shaheed; The Martyr), by the late Palestinian poet and freedom fighter Abdel Raheem Mahmoud. The camera zooms in on the lips of the young man, Ahmed, as he recites: I will carry my soil on my palm And cast it in the abyss of death For either a life that cheers up a friend or a death that vexes enmity And the soul of the honest has two goals Arriving to heaven and obtaining death.

Within less than a minute, then, the film has come full circle, from a sexist joke to an iconic national poem, from a depiction of a vulgar thug to a dreamy image of a national martyr. From this point on, Manna uses very little dialogue (there are two short scenes in which the director, from out of the frame, asks questions



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of her filmed subjects). Instead, Blessed unfolds as a collage of colorful images and upbeat pop music. Against the backdrop of the popular hit “If Only You Would Come to Me,” in which a man sings about a lover who has deceived him and for whom he has “sacrificed [his] own blood,”20 we are shown a pastiche of sensual images: closeups of Ahmed’s lips and tongue, greasy hands, a car engine, buff chests, sweaty arms, cars covered in dripping pinkish soap bubbles, thick soapy brushes, exposed wires, a man’s hair slathered with shampoo (Figure 5.2), a close-up of a man’s face covered in shaving cream, men whispering into one another’s ears. Lifting, shaving, shampooing, brushing, washing, greasing. We see these men and their actions at the gym, the car shop, the garage, and the barbershop, but we see them in fragments: muscles, hair, soap, foam, chests, arms, crotches, lips, shorts. We move from the Iraqi hit to an Egyptian pop song, ‫( احمد ياعمر‬Ahmad Ya-Omar), performed by the Egyptian dancer, singer, and provocateur Sama El-Masry, and after that clip we hear several typical American gym hits, such as “Mr. Vain,” by Culture Beat. Manna deliberately chooses to film these scenes in an explicitly erotic and suggestive manner. The shampooed hair is filmed from a low angle that exposes the man’s crotch, focusing on the movement of his pants up and down to the rhythm of his hair being washed. The wet and soapy car, similarly, carries unmistakable visual connotations, with the soap dripping down the side of the vehicle like male ejaculation (Figure 5.3).

Figure 5.3  Car ejaculation in Blessed, Blessed Oblivion. Screen grab by author.

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Highlighting the visual unity of this homosocial space—soapy, bubbly, sweaty—Manna is not shy about making explicitly sexual allusions and depicting the relationship between the men, as well as between the men and their cars and tools, through heightened homoeroticized lenses and with a fair share of ironic twists. First, the images of men being intimate with one another (and their cars) are set to a song that contains banal heterosexual lyrics that accentuate the gender binary of the masculine and the feminine. Second, Manna’s jumpy, collage-like editorial process creates overtly parodic effects. Such is the case, for example, when the image of a man’s naked torso leads us directly to a poster of President Mahmoud ‘Abbas, focusing on the triangle shape created by his tie, and cutting swiftly to another triangle: the space between another man’s legs. What might have initially seemed to be an ethnographic documentary about working-class Palestinian men in East Jerusalem and their “thug culture” (dirty jokes) proves to be far less straightforward. Manna sets out here the foundation of what becomes in later films21 a signature style of exploring the limits of ethnographic filming within a seemingly ethnographic practice. In this case, the ethnographic setting presents itself in the form of a film by a young, upper-middle-class Palestinian woman filmmaker who is granted access to a world otherwise closed to her gender and class. But Manna uses this framework and this setting, I argue, to offer a subtle critique of the genre itself and replace its premises—revealing authentic experiences, exposing secrets of otherwise unknown subcultures, giving voice to the oppressed—with a radically different aesthetics and vision: parody and camp. I interpret reviewers’ deliberate omission of the film’s stylistic features to be symptomatic rather than coincidental. How can one read Blessed as a film about masculinity in crisis and not notice the film’s ironic renditions of this very trope? I fail to see how it is possible to overlook or undermine Manna’s campy aesthetics or her engagement with popular gay masculine visual representations of the male body and of the homosocial sphere. Above all, it is hard to imagine how one could read Blessed outside the context of the intertextual dialogue the film holds with not just any gay film but the first and most iconic American experimental gay film: Kenneth Anger’s 1963 short film Scorpio Rising.22 Scorpio Rising, now a cult film, is a cinematic homage to gay/motorcycle/leather club culture, which flourished in Los Angeles in the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s. It is a film about men and their bikes, about men who love men and love bikes. But above all, Scorpio is a film about iconography (Figures 5.4 and



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Figure 5.4  A close-up of the male body in Scorpio. Screen grab by author.

Figure 5.5  A man repairing his motorbike in Scorpio. Screen grab by author.

5.5). Considered a landmark of 1960s underground experimental films, Scorpio brings together uncommonly blended iconic images ranging from visual icons of 1950s and 1960s Hollywood (James Dean, Marlon Brando); visual icons of gay leather culture; astrological and cosmological symbols; Christian iconography (primarily a bleeding Jesus on the cross); and motorcycle cult, sadomasochist, and fascist iconography (swastikas, Hitler, etc.). Choosing Scorpio as her main inspiration and pretext, Manna describes Blessed as a cinematic homage to Anger’s film. Her film about Palestinian thug culture in East Jerusalem is thus an occasion to revisit Anger’s 1963 film about other men, other “thugs,” and a wide range of visual iconography associated with various articulations and rituals of masculinity. Would critics fail to acknowledge this if Blessed was not a Palestinian film? What if the pressure to read the film through a national framework, in which masculinity can only

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be discussed in terms of “crisis,” wasn’t there? Could we then “see” that Blessed is first and foremost a queer film? A film that queers the national gendered rendition of the masculine by rejecting the trope of “masculinity in crisis” as its starting point?

Queer as Can Be The title of this essay, “Queer as Can Be,” is meant to suggest that there is something profoundly queer about Manna’s film and that the overall reception of the film, which systematically fails to read its queerness, is quite a queer affair. Whether for marketing and publicity concerns or for deep-seated eulogies about what makes a film “authentically” Palestinian, reviewers and promotors have chosen to undermine, if not altogether ignore, the significance of Anger’s film as the indexical text of Blessed. In doing so, they have indirectly implied that for the film to be read in its Palestinian context, it must be seen as being about working-class Palestinian men identified in the context of the Palestinian national struggle—and hence as a film about “masculinity in crisis” instead of a queer cross-national, cross-temporal, cross-cultural work. Manna’s film is, of course, a Palestinian film, in the sense that it is directed by a Palestinian, was shot in Palestine, and features Palestinians in their daily lives. But subjecting our reading of the film in general and its treatment of masculinity to the Palestinian context alone (national struggle, occupation, racism) without recognizing Manna’s explicit attempt to bring this context into dialogue with an altogether different indexicality is to miss the most powerful aspect of Blessed, namely its worldliness. Blessed’s intertextual engagement with Scorpio Rising opens the local (seemingly ethnocultural) context of the film to a broader, crosscultural framework and allows it to take part in a global cinematic language and exchange. For this reason, I believe it is crucial to situate the film in the context of queer iconography and the history of queer cinema—over and above the narrow framework of a national contextualization. I am not arguing that Manna’s film avoids the specific and local context of Palestine. Far from it: the film includes clear visual and audio signifiers that allude to the specific Palestinian context. It opens with the main protagonist, Ahmad Bashir, reciting a well-known Palestinian poem, and then shows the walls of the garage in East Jerusalem, which are covered with posters of Palestinian martyrs and Palestinian flag stickers. But I suggest that these signifiers are nevertheless literally placed in the background,



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on the walls behind the central frame, which is devoted to close-up images of male bodies, cars, tools, and weights, a mise-en-scène of highly charged and erotically suggestive images, all of which are in direct dialogue with Anger’s film and queer aesthetics. To overlook this means to write out the queerness of the film. It is, in other words, to be engaged in a straight act of censorship: one that ultimately renders queer desire and queer aesthetics secondary, marginal, irrelevant, and subjected to the political visibility of the nation as the only site of political affiliation and identification. *** Manna’s film, like Anger’s, mixes highbrow and lowbrow, avant-garde and pop, artistic and pornographic camera positions—all of which refuse easy classification. Without a familiarity with Anger’s Scorpio, one is likely to miss the stylistic and political implications of Manna’s cinematic style. We must not approach this close study of male bodies only in reference to the stereotyped “thug” Palestinian culture but must additionally consider how these images serve as an homage to Anger’s campy, overtly homoerotic, and vivacious filming style. To begin with, Manna “borrows” from Anger the structure of segmentation of her film into pop-song clips. Scorpio is composed of thirteen segments scored to American pop music (including Elvis Presley, Ricky Nelson, and Martha and the Vandellas). Blessed follows a similar modality, with the visual sequences segmented into different pop songs: Iraqi, Egyptian, American. Anger’s film opens with a long sequence of a young man greasing, cleaning, and admiring his motorcycle in a neat and empty garage. The camera lingers on the shiny metal; the man’s arms; his eyes, fixated on the bike. This man loves his bike. But as Rachel Moore astutely notices, he “doesn’t love [the bike] as much as the camera does, licking it with light to polish the fenders for a brilliant showroom sheen.”23 From the shiny, beloved bike, the lens widens to expose a meticulously organized garage filled with bike parts and plastered with images of young men, motorcycles, leather jackets, posters of Marlon Brando, James Dean, Christ, and Hitler. A real “ecstasy of will and power,” to use Paul Sitny’s words.24 What follows are shots of men flexing their muscles, grooming themselves, wearing leather jackets, and buckling and unbuckling their pants. Oiling and cleaning their bikes, riding together: with these images in mind, one cannot but see Manna’s men and cars as a poetic wink to Anger’s men and bikes. Manna’s film, similarly, is a cinematic study of masculinity that is at least as invested in queering the trope of the “thug in crisis” than in replacing it. Somewhere in the visual landscape created through the intertextuality between

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Anger’s film and Manna’s manifests a suggestion of sorts, if only as a cheeky play on words: Thug or Fag? Blessed, like Scorpio, is a visual feast of muscles, machines, soap, and grease. Motorcycles are replaced with cars, leather jackets with bare chests, and James Dean posters with posters of Palestinian freedom fighters. Both films explore masculinity by highlighting the ritualistic aspect of performing manhood. The rituals of cleaning, shaving, greasing, tooling, fixing, riding, and pumping (muscles) are the stuff that make men manly. And in both films, the spaces where men “become” manly (the gym, barbershop, garage, car shop) are homosocial spaces that are always already homoerotic. Manna’s camera revisits the tropes of “thug culture” in a stylized manner that renders heterosexual machismo as an expression of an underlying queer desire. Her camera and editing process accordingly highlights the sexually charged homosocial space by using pornographic angles. I use the term “pornographic” intentionally here to capture the manner in which Manna’s filming style—her penetrative close-ups of men’s shorts, mouths, and chests, as well as her editorial transitions from one image to another—is itself an homage to Anger’s film. Indeed, Scorpio Rising was a cinematic landmark not only because it was the first overtly gay underground experimental film but also because it adopted a crossover style that merges the cinematic qualities of avant-garde film with features of pornographic visual representations. When Scorpio first came out, in 1963, its screening was not allowed. In March 1964, a Los Angeles theater manager screening the film was arrested for “lewd exhibition.” That arrest was followed by a courtroom battle that made it all the way to the California State Supreme Court.25 Only two years later, the film was screened in New York City, and the mainstream press praised it for its artistic qualities. Manna plays with a similar tension: certain aspects of her film derive from conventions of the essay-film genre and ethno-documentary (e.g., the mixing and clashing of text and image, the inclusion of poetry, and the opacity of an overall framing narrative). But these avant-garde aspects are contrasted by her use of pornographic shots and pop music. Manna’s montage of men’s torsos, crotches, muscles, mouths, and hair, along with cars, grease, and soap, is clearly mapped onto Anger’s visceral images. But Manna cleverly adopts this style to go beyond simply aping another director. Her film uses mimicry in order to render familiar Palestinian visual icons, such as the posters of the Shaheed, “uncanny”: both familiar and estranged. Focusing, on the one hand, on the specificity of her subjects (Palestinian working-class men) in the context of the Palestinian struggle (a poster of a martyr, an Israeli police report,



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a poster of Abbas) and, on the other, using a visual language borrowed from a cross-Atlantic source, Manna generates a new language and imagery for speaking about masculinity, in which even the trope of national sacrifice is queered. Blessed’s push and pull between the local and the global—between the specificity of the Palestinian predicament and the broader predicament of the prototypical “outsider” and “outlawed”—allows Manna not only to create a queer version of Palestinian hypermasculinity and render the figure of the Palestinian “thug” as an object of (queer) desire (fag) but to further eroticize the Palestinian struggle itself. From the opening images of the young man’s mouth reciting Abdel Raheem Mahmoud’s “The Shaheed” to the later scenes of men working out to the sound of El Ali singing about a lover for whom he “sacrificed [his] own blood,” Blessed generates a legacy of masculinity articulated in terms of loss, sacrifice, and blood, whether for a lover or a nation. We may even say that sacrifice and blood are the stuff that “make men,” but this does not apply only to Palestine. On the contrary, Manna’s clever homage brings us right back to Anger’s film, in which we find the very same economy of desire. Not only does Anger’s biker die at the end in a crash (sacrifice is part of love and is demanded by Scorpio), but the film further revisits the image of Jesus bleeding on the cross as one of the iconic original symbols that provide a mythology of ritualistic, performative, cult-like masculinity, embedded in a bond of love, sacrifice, and blood. Manna uses iconic images in a similar fashion to highlight the mythical status of young Shaheed, but equally so to celebrate the buff, blond Aryan-looking man (clad in nothing but a speedo) whose image covers the walls of the East Jerusalem gym where the men exercise. Blessed closes with Ahmad reciting a couple more lines from “al Shaheed”: “I will protect my blood with the edge of my sword / So that my people know that I am the boy.” But the film that opens with a dirty joke ends with one as well, as Ahmad transitions quickly from the recitation to laughter and makes comments about “fucking”: “a big dick” (mizbir) and a “small vagina” (ksesa). Of course, this can be read as an empathic but nevertheless patronizing conclusion, as in “thugs will be thugs.” But I prefer to read Ahmad’s laughter as a reminder of something both Manna’s and Anger’s films invite us to consider: the political potentiality of visual pleasure and queer aesthetics. In these two films, visual pleasure is the outcome of a pastiche that brings together images of male bodies, cars, bikes, soap, grease, touch, sweat, and the blending of the homosocial and the homoerotic. A celebration of masculinity, whether in Los Angeles or in East Jerusalem. A sheer celebration of so-called “outcast masculinities,” a joyful, colorful embrace of queerness in its broadest

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sense, in which we have no room or patience for the inherently homophobic discourse of “masculinity in crisis.”

Notes 1 Amalia Sa’ar and Taghreed Yahya-Younis, “Masculinity in Crisis: The Case of Palestinians in Israel,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 35, no. 3 (2008): 304. 2 Rhoda Ann Kanaaneh, “Boys or Men? Duped or ‘Made’? Palestinian Soldiers in the Israeli Military,” American Ethnologist 32, no. 2 (May 2005): 263. 3 Sa’ar and Yahya-Younis, “Masculinity in Crisis,” 319. 4 Warren Spielberg, Khuloud Jamal Khayyat Dajani, and Taisir M. Abdallah, “No-Man’s-Land: Hearing the Voices of Palestinian Young Men Residing in East Jerusalem,” Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology 22, no. 3 (2016): 275. 5 Spielberg, Dajani, and Abdallah, “No-Man’s-Land,” 275. 6 Spielberg, Dajani, and Abdallah, “No-Man’s-Land,” 276. 7 Spielberg, Dajani, and Abdallah, “No-Man’s-Land,” 278. 8 Joseph Massad, “Conceiving the Masculine: Gender and Palestinian Nationalism,” Middle East Journal 49, no. 3 (Summer 1995): 469. 9 Massad, “Conceiving the Masculine,” 471. 10 Massad, “Conceiving the Masculine,” 479. The Unified National Leadership of the Uprising (UNLU) (al-Qiyada al Muwhhada) was a coalition of the Local Palestinian leadership during the First Intifada and played an important role in mobilizing grassroots support for the uprising. 11 Much has been written on this matter. See, for example, George Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality: Respectability and Abnormal Sexuality in Modern Europe (New York: Howard Fertig, 1985). On the gendering of nationalism, see Floya Anthias and Nira Yuval-Davis, eds., Women-Nation-State (London: Macmillan, 1989); Wendy Brown, “Finding the Man in the State,” Feminist Studies 18, no. 1 (Spring 1992): 7–34; Tamar Mayer, “From Zero to Hero: Masculinity in Jewish Nationalism,” in Gender Ironies of Nationalism: Sexing the Nation, ed. Tamar Mayer (New York: Routledge, 2000), 283–308; Joan Nagel, “Masculinity and Nationalism: Gender and Sexuality in the Making of Nations,” in Nations and Nationalism: A Reader, ed. Philip Spencer and Howard Wollman (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005), 110–31; and Ann McClintock, “No Longer in a Future Heaven: Women and Nationalism in South Africa,” Transitions 51 (1991): 104–23. 12 Maria Holt, “Palestinian Women, Violence, and the Peace Process,” Development in Practice 13, no. 2 (2003): 229.



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13 Magen MacKenzie and Alana Foster, “Masculinity Nostalgia: How War and Occupation Inspire a Yearning for Gender Order,” Security Dialogue 48, no. 3 (2017): 207. 14 EcransMed, “Screenings from the Mediterranean: Blessed Blessed Oblivion,” afoula. wixsite.com/ecranmed-2/blessed-blessed-oblivion-en. 15 Museum of Modern Art Warsaw, “Lest the Two Seas Meet: Jumana Manna,” http://barz​akh.artmus​eum.pl/en/art​ist/jum​ana-manna. 16 Vox Populi Gallery, “Jumana Manna: Blessed Blessed Oblivion,” voxpopuligallery. org/exhibitions/blessed-blessed-oblivion/. 17 Ken Johnson, “Social Analysis from the Edge,” New York Times, March 27, 2014, www.nyti​mes.com/2014/03/28/arts/des​ign/rosse​lla-bisco​tti-and-oth​ers-at-sculpt​ ure-cen​ter.html. 18 Arielle Bier, “Political Populism,” Frieze, February 1, 2016, https://fri​eze.com/arti​ cle/politi​cal-popul​ism; Berlinische Galerie, “Jumana Manna,” berlinischegalerie.de/ assets/downloads/IBB-Videoraum/2013/Handout_JumanaManna_engl_FINAL. pdf. 19 See A. M. Qattan Foundation, “Such Stuff as Dreams Are Made On: Young Artists from Palestine” (London: The Mosaic Rooms, 2011), http://mosa​icro​oms.org/ wp-cont​ent/uplo​ads/young-arti​sts-web.pdf. 20 Performed by Iraqi pop star Outhayna El Ali. For a recording of the performance, see [“Title of Page,”] Video file, 5:49. YouTube. Posted by Mosab Ojaimi, August 25, 2012. www.yout​ube.com/watch?v=G-m7C4Dx​twA. For the full lyrics (in Arabic and English), see “Title of Page,” Lyric Arabic Music Translation, accessed [date], lyricmusicarabic.blogspot.com/2010/07/lyric-ya-reitek-ozeina-al-ali.html. 21 Particularly in A Magical Substance Flows into Me. Manna, dir., A Magical Substance Flows into Me (September 2015), medium. (66 min.; released September 2015 in the UK). For a reading of the film as a critique of ethnology cinema, see Gil Hochberg, “Archival Afterlives in a Conflict Zone: Animating the Past in Jumana Manna’s Cinematic Fables of Pre-1948 Palestine,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 38, no. 1 (2018): 30–42. 22 Much has been written about Anger’s film. Among the publications, see Kornelia Boczkowska, “The Outlaw Machine, the Monstrous Outsider and Motorcycle Fetishists: Challenging Rebellion, Mobility and Masculinity in Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising and Steven Spielberg’s Duel,” Text Matters 9, no. 9 (2019): 82–99; Juan A. Suarez, “Pop, Queer, or Fascist? The Ambiguity of Mass Culture in Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising,” in Experimental Cinema: The Film Reader, ed. Wheeler W. Dixon and Gwendolyn Audrey Foster (London: Routledge, 2002), 115–38; Paul Sitney, Visionary Film: The American Avant-garde, 1943–2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); Katie Mills, The Road Story and the Rebel: Moving through

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Film, Fiction, and Television (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2006); Ed Lowry, “The Appropriation of Signs in Scorpio Rising,” Velvet LightTrap 20 (1986): 41–7; and R. L. Cagle, Scorpio Rising: A Queer Film Classic (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2019). 23 Rachel Moore, “Cultural Bolshevism at Capital’s Late-Night Show: Scorpio Rising,” Afterall: A Journal of Art, Context and Enquiry 7 (2003): 73. 24 Sitney, Visionary Film, 106–7. 25 For coverage of the arrest and the following trial, see Mike Everleth, “Scorpio Rising: The 1964 Los Angeles Obscenity Trial,” Underground Film Journal, June 18, 2017, https://www.und​ergr​ound​film​jour​nal.com/scor​pio-ris​ing-the-1964-losange​les-obscen​ity-trial/; and Nora Sayre, “Three Experiments of 1960’s,” New York Times, February 21, 1975, https://www.nyti​mes.com/1975/02/21/archi​ves/scr​ een-three-expe​rime​nts-of-1960s.html.

Bibliography A. M. Qattan Foundation. “Such Stuff as Dreams Are Made On: Young Artists from Palestine.” London: The Mosaic Rooms, 2011. Available online: http://mosa​icro​oms.org/wp-cont​ent/uplo​ads/young-arti​sts-web.pdf (accessed on April 16, 2022). Anthias, Floya, and Nira Yuval-Davis, eds. Women-Nation-State. London: Macmillan, 1989. Berlinische Galerie. “Jumana Manna.” Available online: berlinischegalerie.de/assets/ downloads/IBB-Videoraum/2013/Handout_JumanaManna_engl_FINAL.pdf (accessed April 16, 2022). Bier, Arielle. “Political Populism.” Frieze, February 1, 2016. Available online: https://fri​ eze.com/arti​cle/politi​cal-popul​ism (accessed April 16, 2022). Boczkowska, Kornelia. “The Outlaw Machine, the Monstrous Outsider and Motorcycle Fetishists: Challenging Rebellion, Mobility and Masculinity in Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising and Steven Spielberg’s Duel.” Text Matters 9, no. 9 (2019): 82–99. Brown, Wendy. “Finding the Man in the State.” Feminist Studies 18, no. 1 (Spring 1992): 7–34. Cagle, R. L. Scorpio Rising: A Queer Film Classic. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2019. EcransMed. “Screenings from the Mediterranean: Blessed Blessed Oblivion.” Available online: afoula.wixsite.com/ecranmed-2/blessed-blessed-oblivion-en (accessed July 15, 2020).



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Everleth, Mike. “Scorpio Rising: The 1964 Los Angeles Obscenity Trial.” Underground Film Journal, June 18, 2017. Available online: https://www.und​ergr​ound​film​jour​nal. com/scor​pio-ris​ing-the-1964-los-ange​les-obscen​ity-trial/ (accessed April 16, 2022). Hochberg, Gil. “Archival Afterlives in a Conflict Zone: Animating the Past in Jumana Manna’s Cinematic Fables of Pre-1948 Palestine.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 38, no.1 (2018): 30–42. Holt, Maria. “Palestinian Women, Violence, and the Peace Process.” Development in Practice 13, no. 2 (2003): 223–38. Johnson, Ken. “Social Analysis from the Edge.” New York Times, March 27, 2014. Available online: www.nyti​mes.com/2014/03/28/arts/des​ign/rosse​lla-bisco​tti-andoth​ers-at-sculpt​ure-cen​ter.html (accessed April 16, 2022). Kanaaneh, Rhoda Ann. “Boys or Men? Duped or ‘Made’? Palestinian Soldiers in the Israeli Military.” American Ethnologist 32, no. 2 (May 2005): 260–75. Lowry, ed. “The Appropriation of Signs in Scorpio Rising.” Velvet Light-Trap 20 (1986): 41–7. MacKenzie, Megan, and Alana Foster. “Masculinity Nostalgia: How War and Occupation Inspire a Yearning for Gender Order.” Security Dialogue 48, no. 3 (2017): 206–23. Massad, Joseph. “Conceiving the Masculine: Gender and Palestinian Nationalism.” Middle East Journal 49, no. 3 (Summer 1995): 467–83. Mayer, Tamar. “From Zero to Hero: Masculinity in Jewish Nationalism.” In Gender Ironies of Nationalism: Sexing the Nation, edited by Tamar Mayer, 283–308. New York: Routledge, 2000. McClintock, Ann. “No Longer in a Future Heaven: Women and Nationalism in South Africa.” Transitions 51 (1991): 104–23. Mills, Katie. The Road Story and the Rebel: Moving Through Film, Fiction, and Television. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2006. Moore, Rachel. “Cultural Bolshevism at Capital’s Late-Night Show: Scorpio Rising.” Afterall: A Journal of Art, Context and Enquiry 7 (2003): 72–7. Mosse, George. Nationalism and Sexuality: Respectability and Abnormal Sexuality in Modern Europe. New York: Howard Fertig, 1985. Museum of Modern Art Warsaw. “Lest the Two Seas Meet: Jumana Manna.” . http:// barz​akh.artmus​eum.pl/en/art​ist/jum​ana-manna (accessed July 15, 2020). Nagel, Joan. “Masculinity and Nationalism: Gender and Sexuality in the Making of Nations.” In Nations and Nationalism: A Reader, edited by Philip Spencer and Howard Wollman, 110–31. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005. Nashif, Esmail. “Attempts at Liberation: Body Materialization and Community Building among Palestinian Political Captives.” Arab Studies Journal 12–13, nos. 2–1 (Fall 2004/Spring 2005): 46–79.

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Peteet, Julie M. “Male Gender and Rituals of Resistance in the Palestinian Intifada: A Cultural Politics of Violence.” American Ethnologist 21, no. 1 (1994): 31–49. Sa’ar, Amalia, and Taghreed Yahya-Younis. “Masculinity in Crisis: The Case of Palestinians in Israel.” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 35, no. 3 (2008): 305–23. Sayre, Nora. “Three Experiments of 1960’s.” New York Times, February 21, 1975. https:// www.nyti​mes.com/1975/02/21/archi​ves/scr​een-three-expe​rime​nts-of-1960s.html (accessed April 16, 2022). Sitney, Paul. Visionary Film: The American Avant-garde, 1943–2000. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Spielberg, Warren, Khuloud Jamal Khayyat Dajani, and Taisir M. Abdallah. “No-Man’sLand: Hearing the Voices of Palestinian Young Men Residing in East Jerusalem.” Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology 22, no. 3 (2016): 272–81. Suarez, Juan A. “Pop, Queer, or Fascist? The Ambiguity of Mass Culture in Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising.” In Experimental Cinema: The Film Reader, edited by Wheeler W. Dixon and Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, 115–38. London: Routledge, 2002. Vox Populi Gallery. “Jumana Manna: Blessed Blessed Oblivion.” Available online: voxpopuligallery.org/exhibitions/blessed-blessed-oblivion/ (accessed July 15, 2020).

Part 3

Israeli-Palestinian Intersections

146

6

Our African Palestine: Intersectional Specters in the House of Zion Greg Burris

Black Lives Matter in Israel? Sounds like science fiction. —Gideon Levy1 For a roughly eight-year period beginning in 2005, about fifty thousand African refugees crossed into Israel—a flow that slowed to a trickle after Israel erected a militarized barrier along its border with Egypt in December 2013.2 Most of these refugees were fleeing war and violence in Darfur, Eritrea, and South Sudan, and their paths to Israel involved an often perilous journey across the Sinai Peninsula in which they dealt with hostile Egyptian authorities, harsh environmental conditions, and predatory bands of smugglers and human traffickers. Israel still refuses to classify these Africans as refugees and instead sees them as “economic migrants” or even as “infiltrators” (mistanenim), a term that appears not only in right-wing hate speech but in standard Israeli legal discourse. They have been locked up by the thousands in the Holot Detention Center, an open-air prison in the Negev Desert, and many have also been deported, sometimes back to the very countries from which they fled. Israel’s treatment of the refugees thus flies in the face of international law, specifically the United Nations’ 1951 Refugee Convention—an agreement that delegates from Israel ironically played a key role in passing in the wake of the Holocaust.3 These asylum-seekers are certainly not the only Black community in Israel to have faced racial discrimination. Here, one may be reminded of the Mizrahi Jews who formed their own Black Panther Party in the 1970s or the Ethiopian Jewish activists today who decry their treatment as second-class citizens. But as members of a Black community that is not even Jewish, these asylum-seekers face a particularly precarious situation. Their plight first caught my attention in 2012.

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That year, there was a dramatic rise in hate speech and racist violence against them. After one demonstration, a mob of anti-African protesters descended upon Hatikva, a South Tel Aviv neighborhood where many of the refugees live. Chanting, “The people want the Africans to be burned!” they bombed a kindergarten and smashed the windows of several African-run shops.4 Around the same time, former Israel Defense Forces spokesperson (and current Knesset member) Miri Regev gave speeches calling the Africans a “cancer.” She later apologized for this comment—not to the asylum-seekers but to Jewish cancer survivors; she was sorry for comparing them to Black Africans.5 Similarly, Interior Minister Eli Yishai of the Shas party told a reporter that “this country belongs to us, to the white man.” He vowed to use “all the tools [necessary] to expel the foreigners, until not one infiltrator remains.”6 Here it is worth noting that both of these politicians have their origins in North Africa. Regev’s father is a Moroccan Jew; Yishai’s family is Tunisian. As is so often the case, those whose claim to whiteness is most tenuous—in this instance, Mizrahi Jews—turn out to be the racial pecking order’s most virulent enforcers. To borrow George Lipsitz’s apt phrase, “white supremacy is an equal opportunity employer.”7 While the question of these Africans is most obviously a question of race, it is also a question of gender. This intersection often becomes apparent in some of the most violent acts that have been committed against the refugees. In 2014, for instance, an Israeli man attacked an Eritrean woman with a pair of scissors, stabbing her one-year-old daughter three times in the head. He later explained that he wanted to attack a “Black baby” to protect the “white race.”8 Two years later, a forty-year-old refugee from Darfur named Babikir Ali Adham-Abdo was beaten to death in front of Petah Tikva’s city hall by two young men who claimed he had been flirting with Jewish girls. The brutality inflicted on AdhamAbdo was so severe that his own brother could not recognize him, and he was identified only because of the fingers missing from his hand—fingers that he had lost due to violence in Darfur. In neither of these two cases did the perpetrators face serious prison time. The scissor attacker was committed to a psychiatric ward, and the Petah Tikva murderers made a plea deal for the lesser charge of manslaughter.9 As these examples indicate, African asylum-seekers are targeted not only because of racism but also because of patriarchy. They are victims of a supremacist web of identity that is foundational to Zionism itself. On this point, it is also worth noting that one of the figures inciting anti-African sentiments is Michael Ben-Ari, a former Knesset member who has also served as a spokesperson for



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149

Lehava. This Kahanist hate group viciously opposes interracial relationships between Jews and non-Jews and specifically sees itself as protecting the virtue of Jewish women. For Lehava, “assimilation is a Holocaust of the Jewish people,” and the group therefore sees the presence of Africans in Israel as a threat to Jewish purity.10 Importantly, the African refugees are not just passive victims. They have fought back, staging protests with their bodies and voices. In 2013, several hundred Africans incarcerated in Saharonim Prison went on a hunger strike to protest unjust treatment.11 Others took to the streets, and that same year, an estimated 25,000 people marched in the largest such protest.12 In some instances, the refugees have created protest spectacles. At a 2018 demonstration in Tel Aviv, for instance, they painted their faces white to call attention to Israel’s supremacist hierarchies. On another occasion, they staged a mock slave auction. This was done as a response to Benjamin Netanyahu’s deportation policy, which effectively sought to bribe the refugees into leaving with a few thousand dollars in cash and a one-way plane ticket back to Africa.13 Those without ownership of the media thus attempted to take command of it, and their activism did not go unnoticed. As a result of these developments—both the hatred and the resistance—some Israeli citizens took action, and since the early 2010s, the plight of the refugees has inspired a number of philanthropic initiatives and cultural productions, including journalistic exposés, novels, and documentary films.14 In this way, the African asylum-seekers became the subject of an Israeli philanthropic gaze: Black skins in front of white cameras. In the past decade, there have been five Israeli documentaries produced about the African refugees: ‫( כופר נפש‬Kofer Nefesh; Sound of Torture; Keren Shayo, 2013), African Exodus (Brad Rothschild, 2014), Ethnocracy in the Promised Land: Israel’s African Refugees (Lia Tarachansky and Jesse Freeston, 2015), ‫הוטליין‬ (Hotline; Silvina Landsmann, 2015), and ‫( בין גדרות‬Bein Gderot; Between Fences, Avi Mograbi, 2016).15 All of these films champion the cause of the refugees, and they do so from ostensibly anti-racist and even feminist perspectives. Their appearance on Israeli screens might therefore be welcomed as a humanitarian counterweight to the violent rhetoric and actions of Israel’s racist right. However, while the discourse of liberal inclusion is certainly preferable to overt bigotry, it is not necessarily all that radical. Indeed, as Wendy Brown and Ghassan Hage have argued in the context of two other white settler-colonial states—the United States and Australia, respectively—multicultural tolerance can function not to overturn existing racial and gender hierarchies but to actually extend their

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reach. In Brown’s words, “tolerance … manages the demands of marginal groups in ways that incorporate them without disturbing the hegemony of the norms that marginalize them.”16 Intersectionality is not always subversive. Zionists, too, can play the game of multicultural colonialism, and their closet of white sheets also contains a coat of many colors.17 In these documentaries, then, the belligerent language of anti-African hatred is replaced by the benevolent words of liberal tolerance, but this does not necessarily mean that Israel’s identitarian hierarchies are effectively challenged. Indeed, while all five of these films are openly critical of Israeli government policies vis-à-vis the asylum-seekers, they couch their criticisms in very different terms. If some leave the racial and gender hierarchies of Zionism intact, others attempt to shatter them—two dueling tendencies that I will explore in the films Hotline and Between Fences. Thus, while the racial and gender dynamics of Israel have usually been examined with respect to intra-Jewish divisions (i.e., Ashkenazi supremacy) or the Palestinian issue (i.e., settler-colonialism), in this essay, I want to consider them with respect to the African refugees.18 Before turning our attention directly to the documentaries, a question must first be addressed: How does one even begin to approach the African refugees in the context of a settler-colonialist state? It is important to note that while these Eritrean and Sudanese asylum-seekers are new arrivals to the scene, they are certainly not the only refugees there. Lest we forget, many of the Jews who colonized the land first arrived on refugee boats from Europe, and the establishment of their state involved the mass dispossession of the land’s native inhabitants, the Indigenous Palestinians. In such a situation, it is difficult to keep all of these various communities and their conflicting claims in mind.19 Nevertheless, if we try to address today’s African refugees without acknowledging both the settler-colonialist nature of the Israeli state and the presence of the Palestinian refugees, we run a great risk, and our attempts at forging an intersectional politics is in danger of becoming nothing more than a milquetoast brand of Zionist multiculturalism. Indeed, if the Africans are to be granted asylum, does this mean that they are to become good Israelis? Will the Africans soon begin donning military fatigues and patrolling West Bank checkpoints? Such fears are not far-fetched, and one of the recent documentaries about the refugees, African Exodus, even looks forward to the day when such a possibility becomes a reality. Zionist solutions, however, are never the only solutions, and I do not believe that this is the only way to conceptualize the struggle of today’s African refugees.



Intersectional Specters in the House of Zion

151

The issue can also be framed in anti-colonialist terms. Indeed, what could be more African than that? In this frightening age, a time when new refugees are joining the ranks of old refugees at an unprecedented rate across the globe, I am increasingly convinced of the need for us—even those of us concerned primarily with Palestine—to return to the question of Africa. To borrow a phrase from Amílcar Cabral, we need to “return to the source.”20 In the context of Palestine, this means, first of all, recognizing that Africa and the Africans are not really so foreign after all. Africa has long haunted Palestine. It has been the phantasmatic background against which Zionism developed. Indeed, when Theodor Herzl first began imagining his utopian Jewish state, he was dreaming about Africa. In the very first entry of his published diaries, Herzl explained that he was inspired by those macho imperialist adventure novels set in the “Dark Continent.”21 Herzl thus fancied himself as some sort of Jewish Henry Morton Stanley, and by mimicking the phallic white colonists, he wanted to join their ranks.22 By reenacting Europe’s African adventures in Palestine, Herzl wanted the Jews to become white men.23 Africa never stopped hovering in the background of Herzl’s thoughts, and lest we forget, he fully endorsed the quixotic British proposal to set up his Jewish state in Africa, the so-called Uganda Plan—“so-called” because its advocates knew so little about the African map that they did not realize the piece of land they were offered was actually located in Kenya.24 In late-nineteenth-century Vienna, Africa was on the mind, and on this matter, Herzl was not alone. We can see how Africa dominated European thought at that time if we recall another figure that history seems to have forgotten—a man who bears an uncanny biographical likeness to Theodor Herzl, even in name: Theodor Hertzka. Like Herzl, Hertzka was a Viennese Jew. The two were both employed at different times by the same newspaper, and Hertzka also wrote a novel about a utopian colony set in Africa, Freiland (1890). Although it is hardly remembered today, Hertzka’s novel took Europe by storm. More than two thousand of his enthusiastic readers decided to make his vision a reality, and in the 1890s, they actually set sail across the Mediterranean with the intention of colonizing parts of Uganda. In harboring colonialist dreams of Africa, then, Herzl was hardly a unique figure.25 Africa continued to haunt the Zionist imagination after Israel’s 1948 establishment. Palestine was to become the African crucible where Jewish whiteness was forged, and if European colonists had imagined Africa to be terra nullius—an empty land with no history—the same goes for the Zionist

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treatment of Palestine. The words of Portuguese dictator António de Oliveira Salazar, his arrogant declaration that “Africa does not exist,” were thus perfectly mirrored by Golda Meir when she issued her infamous proclamation about the non-existence of the Palestinians.26 Like Africa, Palestine was imagined to be an empty, virginal territory—in Zionist terms, “a land without a people for a people without a land.”27 In the fifties and sixties, Israeli leaders worked to develop relations with many African nations as part of its “periphery strategy,” an attempt to leapfrog over their Arab neighbors. Although Israel’s critics like to point out its history of military cooperation with apartheid South Africa as evidence of its affinity for white supremacy, Israel’s lesser-known involvement in aid and development for the newly independent African nations during this time might actually tell us just as much about its racial identity.28 Indeed, Haim Yacobi contends that these development projects served an important role in the creation of Israel’s own self-image—in his words, its “moral geography.”29 Simply put, if it was the place of white, civilized societies to paternalistically administer aid to poor Black nations, then Israel clearly wanted to belong to the former. By helping Africa, Israel could prove its own whiteness.30 Notably, some of the Israelis who were sent to Africa during this period later brought their craft back home. As Yacobi documents, one of these people, an urban planner named Thomas Leitersdorf, worked for years in the Ivory Coast before returning to Israel and becoming a leading planner for Jewish settlements in the West Bank like Ma’ale Adumim. Similarly, the architect Zalman Enav worked extensively in Ethiopia, where he designed apartments, hospitals, educational facilities, and government buildings. After returning to Israel, he likewise put his architectural skills to use in the settlements and even designed Ariel Sharon’s ranch house on the ruins of a depopulated Palestinian village. In this way, Africa served as a laboratory for continued Israeli colonization.31 In recent years, Israel has once again taken the lead in courting relations with various African states. This newly revived periphery strategy involves weapons sales and mutual support at various international diplomatic forums, but it also involves attempts to set up agreements with states like Rwanda and Uganda to assist Israel in the deportation of its community of African refugees.32 Moreover, in the case of Sudan, Israel seems to be leveraging its whiteness, offering to use its clout with the Trump administration to get Sudan dropped from the State Department’s official list of state supporters of terrorism.33



Intersectional Specters in the House of Zion

153

If the specter of Africa haunts Palestine, it is the Palestinian who haunts today’s African refugee. The term used to describe the Africans (“infiltrator”) was originally designated for those Palestinians who tried to return to their homes in the first decade after the Nakba, and the laws used against today’s African refugees were originally written to criminalize yesteryear’s Palestinians—specifically, Israel’s 1954 Anti-Infiltration Act.34 But the shadow of the Palestinians accompanies the Africans further than that. One of the prisons currently holding African refugees, Ktzi’ot, was initially opened to detain Palestinians during the First Intifada; the menial jobs that some Africans find are often the jobs that Palestinians left vacant in the wake of the Second Intifada; and the wall constructed along Israel’s southern border to curb the flow of refugees is the logical extension of the Apartheid Wall already snaking through the West Bank. Furthermore, even though it is rarely acknowledged upfront, I believe the primary obstacle to the Africans’ status in Israel is the specter of the Palestinians. The number of Africans in Israel is relatively few. Solving their dilemma should not actually be that difficult. However, it is the precedent that such a move would set that is so troubling. Israel cannot help the African refugees because it refuses to acknowledge the claims of the Palestinian refugees. As Black Africans, their claims of asylum are perceived not as cries for justice but as calls to overthrow the white colonialist order itself. Thus, thanks to Zionism’s racial and gender hierarchies, the Africans and the Palestinians are linked together at a deep level. They are intersectional specters inhabiting the House of Zion, and despite the myriad of differences between them, their fates are closely bound. With these connections in mind, I now want to turn to two Israeli documentaries about the asylum-seekers: Hotline and Between Fences. Hotline follows the activities of a small Tel Aviv-based nonprofit organization, the Hotline for Refugees and Migrants. The women who work there face numerous hurdles as they navigate Israel’s complicated and sometimes Kafkaesque bureaucracy in order to assist the African refugees—in town hall meetings, in special sessions of the Knesset, and in the Israeli courts. Inspired by cinema verité and specifically the work of US documentarian Frederick Wiseman, Hotline’s director, Silvina Landsmann, sought to give viewers a fly-on-the-wall look at Israeli institutions—a style she also adopted in her earlier film ‫בגרות‬ ‫( לוחמים‬Bagrut Lochamim; Soldier/Citizen, 2012).35 Hotline thus refrains from overt commentary. There are no talking heads, charts or graphics, or voice-over narration. Such an approach has sometimes been lauded

154

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for its ostensible neutrality. Indeed, at least one of Hotline’s reviewers praised the film for its “non-editorialising approach” and its “detached observational stance.”36 As is always the case, however, objectivity is not really so objective. Decisions have to be made, and whether the director intended it or not, her authorial voice does emerge throughout the film.37 Toward the end of Hotline, for instance, there is a very revealing sequence. A worker from the Hotline organization sits across from a refugee and listens to him recount his harrowing journey across the Sinai. The two are positioned behind a partially open door, and the camera frames them so that we clearly see the face of the Israeli. The African, however, remains completely obscured. All we can see of him is an occasional hand gesture through the crack in the door. One can only assume that he was hidden to protect his identity, but this very deliberate framing nevertheless demonstrates a troubling tendency. The film’s attention is always on white Israeli women. They are the heroes, not the asylum-seekers. Hotline is not a film about Black liberation; it is a film about the empowerment of white Israeli women. To be clear, my critique here should not be construed as an attack on the Hotline agency itself. Rather, my critique has to do with the way this agency is framed, the way the film foregrounds Hotline’s staff members without recognizing how their positions are part of the same identitarian regime that oppresses the African refugees. By emphasizing the Israelis’ agency over that of the Africans, Hotline suggests that salvation can come from within Israeli civil society as it currently exists without in any serious way transforming it. In Hotline, there are two major groups of antagonists. The first is the audience that viciously confronts one of the agency’s organizers in a South Tel Aviv auditorium. The crowd is made up of mostly Mizrahi women who accuse her of being a rich Ashkenazi, and one of them even curses the representative to her face: “I hope your girls get raped.” Simply put, in Hotline, the Mizrahim are monsters (Figure 6.1). In this way, the film gets caught up in that old blame game, displacing the symptoms of structural racism onto individual scapegoats. Israel’s foundational racial hierarchy—a European fantasy of phallic white supremacy—is thus projected onto the Mizrahi devils. Anti-African bigotry is presented not as a problem endemic to Zionism but as a problem stemming from those Israelis who are not yet fully Israeli—that is, those who are not yet fully white. The implied solution is not a dismantlement of whiteness but further assimilation into it.38 Hotline’s second major group of antagonists is the condescending male politicians who smugly dismiss the Hotline representative at a special session of



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155

Figure 6.1  A Hotline representative being confronted by Mizrahi protesters in Hotline. Screen grab by author.

Figure 6.2  Politicians calling for the deportation of “infiltrators” in Hotline. Screen grab by author.

the Knesset. One of them even jokes about deporting her along with the African “infiltrators,” and his colleagues all laugh at his offensive comment (Figure 6.2). In Hotline, these two antagonistic groups—the angry Mizrahi women and the patronizing patriarchal politicians—end up serving the same function as the Africans; all three of them are props that the film uses to bolster the heroism of white women. Thus, Hotline fashions itself as a social justice–minded feminist film, and it was treated as such on the international film festival circuit. If Hotline is feminist, however, it is a very particular type of feminism—a feminism that glorifies the actions of white women without pausing to reflect on the privilege of their racial position.39 The Africans are treated sympathetically, but only in

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Reel Gender

a way in which members of Israeli civil society emerge as the true heroes. For all of the film’s attention to institutions, it remains blind to Israel’s foundational institute of white colonialism. Between Fences is a very different kind of film. Taking place almost entirely at the Holot Detention Center, the documentary follows a group of African refugees as they work together with an Israeli filmmaker (the director himself, Avi Mograbi) and an Israeli theater director (Chen Alon) to perform scenes of “theater of the oppressed”–style drama.40 If other documentaries, including Hotline, treat the Africans primarily as victims, Between Fences takes a different approach, and in their interviews, conversations, and performances, the Africans exhibit fuller personalities and more creative spirits than in any of the other films. Indeed, of all of the Israeli documentaries about the asylum-seekers, Between Fences is the only one in which they are allowed to laugh.41 Although the film certainly does not ignore or deny the tremendous injustice these refugees face, neither does it let that injustice completely dominate them. If social justice documentaries often try to prove the humanity of their oppressed subjects, Between Fences presumes their humanity from the outset.42 In a very Rancièrian way, Between Fences presupposes equality as a given.43 As a result, the Israelis presented in the film are not treated as particularly heroic. Their actions, including their participation in the performances and their apparent solidarity with the refugees, are not the point of the film. If anything, the film works not to glorify the white Israelis but to humble them. That is, Between Fences works to indict whiteness itself. Unlike Hotline, Between Fences makes no claims to detached neutrality, and if Landsmann uses cinema verité methods to disguise her own authorial presence, Mograbi does the opposite, placing himself directly in the film (Figure 6.3). Even though he is present, however, he is not the center of attention, and when he does appear, it is usually in a self-deprecating way. At one point, for instance, Mograbi tells the African performers that he will not be coming to their next meeting because he has to travel abroad. Here, Mograbi does not try to hide his privilege. He merely states the facts of the situation without trying to camouflage or sugarcoat them. By including this uncomfortable and even embarrassing moment in the film, Mograbi invites audiences to reflect on the injustice of the situation. As an Israeli man, he can freely travel abroad, while the main stars of the film, the Africans, are stuck in the desert. This contrast between Mograbi and the Africans—between privileged and unprivileged, between mobile and immobile, between white and Black—could not be any starker. Mograbi thus



Intersectional Specters in the House of Zion

157

Figure 6.3  Director Avi Mograbi alongside the African performers in Between Fences. Screen grab by author.

Figure 6.4  An African refugee behind a fence in Between Fences. Screen grab by author.

appears to be using himself to criticize the political and social system that grants power and privilege to white Israelis.44 This tactic connects Between Fences to Mograbi’s larger filmography, and early on in the film, there is an awkwardly long sequence in which he speaks to an African refugee sitting behind a fence (Figure 6.4). It is an image that closely resembles shots in his other documentaries. At the end of (… ‫אוגוסט (רגע לפני‬ (Ogust (Rega Lifnei…); August: A Moment before the Eruption, 2002), for instance, Mograbi takes his camera north to Israel’s border with Lebanon. On the other side of the fence, a boy looks at Mograbi while Mograbi looks at him. They exchange a few words, the boy in Arabic, Mograbi in Hebrew. The boy then shouts some slogans about Hezbollah, throws a few rocks at Mograbi, and

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saunters away. Similarly, the first Palestinians to appear in ‫נקם אחת משתי עיני‬ (Nekam Achat Mishtey Eynay; Avenge but One of My Two Eyes, 2005) are also stuck behind a fence. They are workers in the West Bank, people who were simply attempting to get to their jobs when Israeli soldiers arbitrarily closed the gate. The Palestinians find themselves waiting with no end in sight. In all three of these examples, Mograbi lets the camera linger on the fence—a barrier separating the Israeli from the African, the Lebanese Arab, and the Palestinian. Significantly, in these scenes, it is a barrier which Mograbi himself does not cross. However, one does not get the impression that Mograbi is looking into a cage like a visitor at a zoo. Rather, one gets the impression that Mograbi is himself in the cage, looking out at a bigger world around him. His Israeli passport may give him certain privileges and international mobility, but in terms of his identity, he is trapped. These sequences highlight the fences, borders, and manufactured divisions that Israel has constructed between the white, Western Jew and its various racialized Others. In this way, Mograbi is once again using himself to criticize his own position.45 To be sure, Mograbi is not denying his identity as an Israeli Jew, and his approach therefore stands in contrast with others like Shlomo Sand, whose critical views of Zionism have led him to renounce his own Jewishness.46 But neither does Mograbi make the mistake of so many other white activists who reject the centrality of their own identity so loudly that they ironically end up putting themselves at the center once again. If other films ultimately treat the African refugees as props in order to bolster existing elements of Israeli society, Mograbi’s self-deprecating approach shatters this possibility. As such, screenings of his films are increasingly rare in Israel. Thus, there is little wonder that while Hotline received top prizes at prestigious Israeli film festivals Between Fences (2016) was not picked up by Israeli distributors. It was simply far too subversive, its message far too scandalous. Israelis do not seem to have a stomach for Mograbi’s documentaries—and in a recent interview, Mograbi even suggested that he makes his films for himself and for people abroad.47 In a way, he seems to be giving up on Israeli society and, along with it, the power and privilege of its supremacist regimes. Toward the end of Between Fences, there is an extended scene in which a group of four Israeli actors join four of the Holot detainees for an improvised performance, and together, they reenact the harrowing moment when the refugees first crossed into Israel. The two groups of actors intermingle, with some of the Africans playing the role of Israeli soldiers and some of the Israelis playing



Intersectional Specters in the House of Zion

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the role of African refugees. Notably, while the actors allow themselves this bit of racial role-switching, the idea of changing genders does not seem to occur to them; the women remain women, and the men remain men. As four of the actors begin approaching the Israeli border, the other four pretend to spray them with tear gas. One of the African actors, playing the role of an Israeli soldier, even insults the refugees with racial slurs, using a Hebrew word he undoubtedly first heard directed at him: cushim. Eventually, the refugees’ pleas for help and aid are answered—at least in part. Re-creating a scene that has often been reported, the soldiers decide to separate the refugees and to allow only the women to cross into Israel. In their rendition of this moment, there is an unintended irony: the two women who are playing refugees are both Israelis. Thus, the visual image is very powerful; the white women are allowed entry, while the Black male actors—that is, the actual refugees—are forced at gunpoint to remain in the Sinai. Through this performance, Between Fences demonstrates an intersectional truth that Hotline tries to suppress. White women certainly have a burden to bear in Israeli society, but they are also the beneficiaries of a racist colonial system. In such a situation, true feminist liberation must be anti-colonialist. That is, it must also be linked with the cause of Israel’s racialized others. In this way, Africa—that continent that once helped inspire the colonization of Palestine—might also play a role in its liberation.

Notes 1 Gideon Levy, “Black Lives Matter in Israel? Sounds Like Science Fiction,” Ha’aretz, June 21, 2020, https://www.haar​etz.com/opin​ion/.prem​ium-black-lives-mat​ter-inisr​ael-sou​nds-like-scie​nce-fict​ion-1.8935​493. 2 Although I am using the term “Israel” for convenience, the territory currently administered by the Israeli government is, together with the West Bank and Gaza, part of Palestine. 3 Gilad Ben-Nun, Seeking Asylum in Israel: Refugees and the History of Migration Law (London: I. B. Tauris, 2017), 19–50. See also Mya Guarnieri Jaradat, The Unchosen: The Lives of Israel’s New Others (London: Pluto, 2017); and Sarah S. Willen, Fighting for Dignity: Migrant Lives at Israel’s Margins (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019). 4 See Yotam Gidron, “World Refugee Week: A Community Deported, in Pictures,” +972 Magazine, June 22, 2012, https://www.972​mag.com/world-refu​

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6

7 8

9

10 11 12

13

14

Reel Gender gee-week-a-commun​ity-depor​ted-in-pictu​res/; and Max Blumenthal, Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel (New York: Nation Books, 2013), 344. Quoted in Ali Abunimah, “Israeli Lawmaker Miri Regev: ‘Heaven Forbid’ We Compare Africans to Human Beings,” Electronic Intifada, May 31, 2012, https://ele​ ctro​nici​ntif​ada.net/blogs/ali-abuni​mah/isra​eli-lawma​ker-miri-regev-hea​ven-for​ bid-we-comp​are-afric​ans-human-bei​ngs. Quoted in Dana Weiler-Polak, “Israel Enacts Law Allowing Authorities to Detain Illegal Migrants for up to 3 Years,” Ha’aretz, June 3, 2012, https://www.haar​etz.com/ isr​ael-s-new-infil​trat​ors-law-comes-into-eff​ect-1.5167​886. George Lipsitz, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics, 2nd ed. (1998; Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006), viii. Efrat Neuman, “Afula Man Indicted for Trying to Kill Black Baby,” Ha’aretz, January 16, 2014, https://www.haar​etz.com/.prem​ium-cha​ rge-man-tried-to-kill-black-baby-1.5312​347. This incident is also discussed in Christina Sharpe, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016), 73, 79. David Sheen, “The Emmett Till Effect in Israel,” Truthdig, February 27, 2018, https://www.truth​dig.com/artic​les/emm​ett-till-eff​ect-isr​ael/; and David Sheen, “Black Lives Do Not Matter in Israel,” Al Jazeera, March 29, 2018, https://www. aljaze​era.com/opini​ons/2018/3/29/black-lives-do-not-mat​ter-in-isr​ael. Quoted in Elise K. Burton, “An Assimilating Majority?: Israeli Marriage Law and Identity in the Jewish State,” Journal of Jewish Identities 8, no. 1 (2015): 73. Noam Dvir, “Saharonim Detainees Go on Hunger Strike,” Ynet, June 27, 2013, https://www.ynetn​ews.com/artic​les/0,7340,L-4398​026,00.html. Lee Yaron, “25,000 Protest in Tel Aviv Against Israel’s Asylum Seeker Deportation Plan,” Ha’aretz, March 24, 2018, https://www.haar​etz.com/isr​ael-news/25-000-prot​ est-in-tel-aviv-agai​nst-depo​rtat​ion-of-asy​lum-seek​ers-1.5938​048. Abdi Latif Dahir, “African Migrants Are Painting Their Faces White to Stop Israel from Deporting Them,” Quartz Africa, February 26, 2018, https://qz.com/afr​ ica/1215​813/pho​tos-erit​rea-and-sudan-migra​nts-paint-faces-white-to-prot​est-rwa​ nda-depo​rtat​ion/; and “State Said Set to Tell High Court Migrant Deportation Deal to Uganda Still On,” Times of Israel, April 8, 2018, https://www.timeso​fisr​ael.com/ state-to-tell-high-court-that-depo​rtat​ion-deal-with-uga​nda-still-on-rep​ort/. See the Ayelet Gundar-Goshen novel Waking Lions, trans. Sondra Silverston (London: Pushkin, 2016). Also of relevance here is the short film ‫( אשת השגריר‬Eshet HaShagrir; The Ambassador’s Wife, Dina Zvi-Riklis, 2016), discussed in Rachel S. Harris, Warriors, Witches, Whores: Women in Israeli Cinema (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2017), 235–6.



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15 Two of these documentaries are Israeli only insofar as their directors hold Israeli citizenship. African Exodus was directed by Brad Rothschild, a dual US-Israeli citizen who once worked as a speechwriter for the Israeli delegation to the United Nations, and Ethnocracy in the Promised Land was codirected by Lia Tarachansky, an investigative journalist-turned-filmmaker who grew up on a West Bank settlement before breaking with Zionism and immigrating to Canada. The Israeliness of the other three films is more firmly established. Not only were they helmed by Israeli directors, but they were produced by Israeli companies and financed at least partially with Israeli funds. 16 Wendy Brown, Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 36. Likewise, for Hage, “White multiculturalism and White racism, each in their own way, work at containing the increasingly active role of non-White Australians in the process of governing Australia.” Ghassan Hage, White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society (New York: Routledge, 2000), 19. Emphasis in original. See also Slavoj Žižek, “Multiculturalism, or, the Cultural Logic of Multinational Capitalism,” New Left Review 1.225 (1997): 28–51. 17 For a thorough and critical discussion of intersectionality, see Jennifer C. Nash, Black Feminism Reimagined: After Intersectionality (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019). For an example of Zionist multiculturalism, see Gil Hochberg, “Forget Pinkwashing, It’s Brownwashing Time: Self-Orientalizing on the US Campus,” Mondoweiss, November 28, 2017, https://mon​dowe​iss.net/2017/11/pink​wash​ingbrown​wash​ing-orient​aliz​ing/. 18 Recent discussions of race in Israel include Ronit Lentin, Traces of Racial Exceptionalism: Racializing Israeli Settler Colonialism (London: Bloomsbury, 2018); and Yasmeen Abu-Laban and Abigail B. Bakan, Israel, Palestine and the Politics of Race (London: I. B. Tauris, 2019). See also David Theo Goldberg, “Racial Palestinianization,” in Thinking Palestine, ed. Ronit Lentin (New York: Zed Books, 2008), 25–45. 19 Of course, it is impossible to always mention every struggle. Intersectionality may be the activist buzzword of the day, but being intersectional should not just mean that we perpetually add more and more struggles to a never-ending inventory of progressive movements—a faulty understanding of activism that was already lampooned by Judith Butler as the “embarrassed ‘etc.’ at the end of the list.” Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, 2nd ed. (1990; New York: Routledge, 2010), 196. See also Nash, Black Feminism Reimagined. 20 Amílcar Cabral, Return to the Source: Selected Speeches of Amílcar Cabral (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1973).

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21 Theodor Herzl, The Complete Diaries of Theodor Herzl, vol. 1, trans. Harry Zohn, ed. Raphael Patai (New York: Herzl Foundation, 1960), 4. 22 Herzl was not the last Zionist to be influenced by imperialist adventure novels, and in 1985 the Israeli production duo Yoram Globus and Menahem Golan released their version of King Solomon’s Mines (J. Lee Thompson)—the only film adaptation of the novel to feature villainous Arab slavers. See Jack G. Shaheen, Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People, 2nd ed. (2001; Northampton, Massachusetts: Olive Branch, 2009), 307. 23 As Daniel Boyarin argues, “We can now read the symbolic significance of Herzl’s early determination that the Jewish State must be founded in Africa or South America. These were the privileged sites for colonialist performances of male gendering. My suggestion is that Herzlian Zionism imagined itself as colonialism because such a representation was pivotal to the entire project of becoming ‘white men.’ What greater Christian duty could there be in the late nineteenth century than carrying on the civilizing mission, exporting manliness to the Eastern Jews and to darkest Palestine?” Daniel Boyarin, Unheroic Conduct: The Rise of Heterosexuality and the Invention of the Jewish Man (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 302–3. See also the discussion of Zionist phallic masculinity in Raz Yosef, Beyond Flesh: Queer Masculinities and Nationalism in Israeli Cinema (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004). 24 Michael Cliansmith, “The Uganda Offer, 1902–1905: A Study of Settlement Concessions in British East Africa,” Ufahamu 5, no. 1 (1974): 71–96; and Gur Alroey, “Journey to New Palestine: The Zionist Expedition to East Africa and the Aftermath of the Uganda Debate,” Jewish Culture and History 10, no. 1 (2008): 23– 58. See also Eitan Bar-Yosef, The Holy Land in English Culture 1799–1917: Palestine and the Question of Orientalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 229–30. 25 On Hertzka, see Peter Rosner, “Theodor Hertzka and the Utopia of Freiland,” History of Economic Ideas 14, no. 3 (2006): 113–37. Herzl was aware of Hertzka’s text, and in the opening pages of The Jewish State, he attempted to distance his own enterprise from it. “ ‘Freiland,’ ” he wrote, “is as remote from actuality as the Equatorial mountain on which his dream State lies . . . Even supposing ‘Freiland societies’ were to come into existence, I should look on the whole thing as a joke.” Theodor Herzl, The Jewish State (Leipzig: M. Breitenstein’s VerlagsBuchhandlung, 1986; New York: Dover, 1988), 70. See also Ulrich E. Bach, “Seeking Emptiness: Theodor Hertzka’s Colonial Utopia Freiland (1890),” Utopian Studies 22, no. 1 (2011): 74–90. 26 Salazar quoted in Cabral, Return to the Source, 26. In 1969, Meir told a reporter, “There were no such thing as Palestinians. When was there an independent



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Palestinian people with a Palestinian state? It was either southern Syria before the First World War, and then it was a Palestine including Jordan. It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist. There is really no such thing as a representative body speaking for so-called Palestinians.” Quoted in “Golda Meir Scorns Soviets: Israeli Premier Explains Stand on Big-4 Talks, Security,” Washington Post, June 16, 1969, A15. See also Gabriel Piterberg, “Erasures,” New Left Review 10 (2001): 31–46. Other examples of such colonialist erasure include Albert Camus’ contention that “[t]‌here has never yet been an Algerian nation.” Quoted in Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (1993; repr., New York: Vintage, 1994), 179. 27 Although he did not coin the phrase, British Zionist Israel Zangwill is often credited with popularizing it in the early years of the twentieth century. The phrase more likely originated during the previous century in both US and European Christian circles. See Diana Muir, “A Land Without a People for a People Without a Land,” Middle East Quarterly 15 (2008): 55–62; and Amy Kaplan, Our American Israel: The Story of an Entangled Alliance (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018), 216. It should be noted that the title of this essay is a play on the title of Kaplan’s book. 28 As Edward Said observed in a 1986 interview, “Nobody ever talks about the fact that the largest and most powerful organic link that exists between South Africa and another society is its link with Israel.” Edward Said, Power, Politics, and Culture: Interviews with Edward W. Said, ed. Gauri Viswanathan (New York: Pantheon, 2001), 66. See also the essays in Jon Soske and Sean Jacobs, eds., Apartheid Israel: The Politics of an Analogy (Chicago: Haymarket, 2015); and Ilan Pappé, ed., Israel and South Africa: The Many Faces of Apartheid (London: Zed Books, 2015). 29 Haim Yacobi, Israel and Africa: A Genealogy of Moral Geography (New York: Routledge, 2016). See also Eitan Bar-Yosef, “A Villa in the Jungle: Herzl, Zionist Culture, and the Great African Adventure,” in Theodor Herzl: From Europe to Zion, ed. Mark H. Gelber and Vivian Liska (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2017), 85–102. 30 Herzl had already gestured toward this dynamic in his 1902 utopian novel Old New Land, in which one of the characters argues that “the restoration of the Jews . . . [will] pave the way for the restoration of the Negroes.” Theodor Herzl, Old New Land, trans. Lotta Levensohn (1902; Princeton: Markus Wiener, 1997), 170. 31 Yacobi, Israel and Africa, 37–55. 32 On Israel’s continued weapons sales to Africa, see Jeff Halper, War Against the People: Israel, the Palestinians and Global Pacification (London: Pluto,

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2015), 210–12. See also Yotam Gidron, Israel in Africa: Security, Migration, Interstate Politics (London: Zed Books, 2020); and Yotam Gidron, “Call It a Comeback: Israel’s Grand ‘Return’ to Africa,” African Arguments, August 3, 2017, https://afric​anar​gume​nts.org/2017/08/call-it-a-comeb​ack-isra​els-grand-ret​urn-toafr​ica/. 33 Rose Worden, “How Sudan Is Ingratiating Itself with Trump Through Israel,” New Arab, February 13, 2020, https://www.arabba​rome​ter.org/media-news/ how-sudan-is-ingra​tiat​ing-its​elf-with-trump-thro​ugh-isr​ael/. 34 Ben-Nun, Seeking Asylum in Israel, 119–31. 35 Eric Cortellessa, “ ‘Hotline’ Film Is Hands-Off Yet Intense Look at Rights Group,” Times of Israel, July 27, 2015, https://www.timeso​fisr​ael.com/hotl​ ine-film-is-hands-off-yet-inte​nse-look-at-rig​hts-group/. 36 Jonathan Romney, Review of Hotline, Screen Daily, February 9, 2015, https://www. scre​enda​ily.com/hotl​ine/5083​023.arti​cle. 37 For an earlier critique of documentary cinema’s truth claims, see Brian Winston, “The Documentary Film as Scientific Inscription,” in Theorizing Documentary, ed. Michael Renov (New York: Routledge, 1993), 37–57. 38 For a discussion of the African asylum-seekers that takes into account the Ashkenazi-Mizrahi divide, see Nir Cohen and Talia Margalit, “ ‘There Are Really Two Cities Here’: Fragmented Urban Citizenship in Tel Aviv,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 39, no. 4 (2015): 666–86. For more on the Mizrahim, see Ella Shohat, “Sephardim in Israel: Zionism from the Standpoint of Its Jewish Victims,” Social Text 19–20 (1988): 1–35; and Yaron Shemer, Identity, Place, and Subversion in Contemporary Mizrahi Cinema in Israel (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013). 39 The racial blind spots of white feminism have been widely acknowledged. See, for instance, Ruth Frankenberg, White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993). For critiques of Israeli feminism along these same lines, see Nahla Abdo, Women in Israel: Gender, Race, and Citizenship (London: Zed Books, 2011); and Smadar Lavie, “Mizrahi Feminism and the Question of Palestine,” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 7, no. 2 (2011): 56–88. 40 Between Fences can be compared to similar movies from the region that involve performances by other oppressed communities: the Palestinian torture victims in Raed Andoni’s ‫( اصطياد أشباح‬Astyad ‘Ashbah; Ghost Hunting, 2017), for instance, or the Lebanese prisoners and kafala workers in Zeina Daccache’s 12 12( ‫لبناني غاضب‬ Lubnaniin Ghadib;12 Angry Lebanese, 2009), ‫( يوميات شهرزاد‬Yawmiyat Scheherazade; Scheherazade’s Diary, 2013), and ‫( شبيّك لبيّك‬Shebaik Lebaik; Your Wish is Our



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Command, 2016). The African actors of Between Fences eventually took their show on the road and gave a number of performances elsewhere in Israel. See Sonja Arsham Kuftinec, “Holot Legislative Theatre: Performing Refugees in Israel,” TDR/ The Drama Review 63, no. 2 (2019): 166–72; and Ofer Perelman, “How a Sudanese Asylum Seeker Caught the Acting Bug in Holot,” Ha’aretz, March 17, 2018, https:// www.haar​etz.com/isr​ael-news/.prem​ium.MAGAZ​INE-how-a-sudan​ese-asy​lumsee​ker-cau​ght-the-act​ing-bug-in-holot-1.5911​079. 41 Although not discussed in detail here, the documentary Ethnocracy in the Promised Land also deserves credit for taking an explicitly critical position vis-à-vis Zionism. See also the director’s previous film, ‫( בצדי הדרך‬Be’zdei ha’Derech; On the Side of the Road, dir. Lia Tarachansky, 2013), which discusses Nakba-denial and her own break with Zionism. 42 Palestinian filmmaker Annemarie Jacir similarly criticizes this tendency on the part of some filmmakers to humanize Arabs. As she argues, “To make work that will essentially ‘humanize’ or ‘explain’ Arabs is so limiting and, in fact, insulting, and I think it kills the potential of what I consider art. People who still don’t get that Arabs are layered, complex ‘humans’ are simply not the audience I am interested in.” Annemarie Jacir, “ ‘I Wanted That Story to Be Told,’ ” interview by Ferial Ghazoul, Moustafa Bayoumi, Hamid Dabashi, and Mark Westmoreland, Alif 31 (2011): 246. 43 In his writings, Jacques Rancière seeks to fundamentally redefine our notion of equality. For him, equality is not a policy decision or a piece of legislation but a supposition to be made from the outset. This view has very important political implications. For Rancière, it is not that there would be no equality without a preceding struggle; rather, there would be no collective struggle against inequality without a preceding supposition of equality. That is, inequality is properly opposed only because equality is first presupposed. Rancière’s argument thus directs our attention toward the real, everyday existence of equality in the present, and his work can therefore be compared to the thinking of other scholars like bell hooks and Wendy Brown, who similarly argue that emancipatory politics is subverted as long as it is based on wounds or brokenness. By treating the African asylum-seekers as equals from the outset, Between Fences performs this same act. The film does not seek to prove their equality; it just assumes it. See Jacques Rancière, Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy, 2nd ed., trans. Julie Rose (1995; Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999). See also bell bell hooks, “Lorde: The Imagination of Justice,” in I Am Your Sister: Collected and Unpublished Writings of Audre Lorde, ed. Rudolph P. Byrd, Johnnetta Betsch Cole, and Beverly Guy-Sheftall (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 248; and Wendy Brown,

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Reel Gender “Wounded Attachments,” Political Theory 21, no. 3 (1993): 390–410. I have attempted to put Rancière’s notion of equality in conversation with the discourse of both Black radicalism and Palestinian liberation in my book, The Palestinian Idea: Film, Media, and the Radical Imagination (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2019). Writing about Mograbi’s earlier films, Shai Ginsburg similarly claims that “the filmmaker often serves as a primary figure of identification, as the audience is drawn to admire his (or her) courage, honesty and integrity. Mograbi works hard to undercut this tendency.” Shai Ginsburg, “Studying Violence: The Films of Avi Mograbi,” Zeek, October 24, 2009, https://zeek.forw​ard.com/artic​ les/115​717/. As a Tel Aviv–born Israeli, Mograbi refers to himself as “white” in the film, but it is important to note that he is Mizrahi. As Mograbi explains in a previous documentary, ‫( פעם נכנסתי לגן‬Nichnasti Pa’am Lagan; Once I Entered a Garden, 2012), his family’s origins are in Beirut and Damascus. Although Sand claims to reject all forms of ethnic or racial essentialism, he nevertheless seems to advance a very essentialist understanding of Jewishness when he fails to see how it can be articulated in non-Zionist terms. See his book How I Stopped Being a Jew, trans. David Fernbach (2014; New York: Verso, 2013). Mograbi: “My films . . . interest me and people abroad. They don’t interest the audience in Israel that much. I continue making films because I can’t stand idly by . . . to give it up, for me, is to give up on life.” Quoted in Dror Dayan, “The Manifestations of Political Power Structures in Documentary Film,” (PhD diss., Bournemouth University, 2018), 111.

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Jacir, Annemarie. “ ‘I Wanted That Story to Be Told.’ ” Interview by Ferial Ghazoul, Moustafa Bayoumi, Hamid Dabashi, and Mark Westmoreland. Alif 31 (2011): 241–54. Jaradat, Mya Guarnieri. The Unchosen: The Lives of Israel’s New Others. London: Pluto, 2017. Kaplan, Amy. Our American Israel: The Story of an Entangled Alliance. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018. Kuftinec, Sonja Arsham. “Holot Legislative Theatre: Performing Refugees in Israel.” TDR/The Drama Review 63, no. 2 (2019): 166–72. Lavie, Smadar. “Mizrahi Feminism and the Question of Palestine.” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 7, no. 2 (2011): 56–88. Lentin, Ronit. Traces of Racial Exceptionalism: Racializing Israeli Settler Colonialism. London: Bloomsbury, 2018. Levy, Gideon. “Black Lives Matter in Israel? Sounds Like Science Fiction.” Ha’aretz, June 21, 2020. Available online: https://www.haar​etz.com/opin​ion/.prem​ium-black-livesmat​ter-in-isr​ael-sou​nds-like-scie​nce-fict​ion-1.8935​493 (accessed April 16, 2022). Lipsitz, George. The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics. 2nd ed. 1998; Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006. Muir, Diana. “A Land Without a People for a People Without a Land.” Middle East Quarterly 15 (2008): 55–62. Nash, Jennifer C. Black Feminism Reimagined: After Intersectionality. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019. Neuman, Efrat. “Afula Man Indicted for Trying to Kill Black Baby.” Ha’aretz, January 16, 2014. Available online: https://www.haar​etz.com/.prem​ium-cha​ rge-man-tried-to-kill-black-baby-1.5312​347 (accessed April 16, 2022). Pappé, Ilan, ed. Israel and South Africa: The Many Faces of Apartheid. London: Zed Books, 2015. Perelman, Ofer. “How a Sudanese Asylum Seeker Caught the Acting Bug in Holot.” Ha’aretz, March 17, 2018. Available online: https://www.haar​etz.com/isr​ ael-news/.prem​ium.MAGAZ​INE-how-a-sudan​ese-asy​lum-see​ker-cau​ght-the-act​ ing-bug-in-holot-1.5911​079 (accessed April 16, 2022). Piterberg, Gabriel. “Erasures.” New Left Review 10 (2001): 31–46. Rancière, Jacques. Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy. Translated by Julie Rose. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1999. First published 1995 by Éditions Galilée (Paris). Romney, Jonathan. Review of Hotline. Screen Daily, February 9, 2015. Available online: https://www.scre​enda​ily.com/hotl​ine/5083​023.arti​cle (accessed April 16, 2022). Rosner, Peter. “Theodor Hertzka and the Utopia of Freiland.” History of Economic Ideas 14, no. 3 (2006): 113–37. Said, Edward W. Culture and Imperialism. 1993. Reprint, New York: Vintage, 1994.

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Said, Edward W. Power, Politics, and Culture: Interviews with Edward W. Said, edited by Gauri Viswanathan. New York: Pantheon, 2001. Sand, Shlomo. How I Stopped Being a Jew. Translated by David Fernbach. New York: Verso, 2014. First published 2013 by Flammarion (Paris). Shaheen, Jack G. Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People. 2nd ed. 2001; Northampton, MA: Olive Branch, 2009. Sharpe, Christina. In the Wake: On Blackness and Being. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016. Sheen, David. “Black Lives Do Not Matter in Israel.” Al Jazeera, March 29, 2018. Available online: https://www.aljaze​era.com/opini​ons/2018/3/29/black-lives-do-notmat​ter-in-isr​ael (accessed April 16, 2022). Sheen, David. “The Emmett Till Effect in Israel.” Truthdig, February 27, 2018. Available online: https://www.truth​dig.com/artic​les/emm​ett-till-eff​ect-isr​ael/. Shemer, Yaron. Identity, Place, and Subversion in Contemporary Mizrahi Cinema in Israel. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013. Shohat, Ella. “Sephardim in Israel: Zionism from the Standpoint of Its Jewish Victims.” Social Text 19–20 (1988): 1–35. Soske, Jon, and Sean Jacobs, eds. Apartheid Israel: The Politics of an Analogy. Chicago: Haymarket, 2015. “State Said Set to Tell High Court Migrant Deportation Deal to Uganda Still On.” Times of Israel, April 8, 2018. Available online: https://www.timeso​fisr​ael.com/ state-to-tell-high-court-that-depo​rtat​ion-deal-with-uga​nda-still-on-rep​ort/ (accessed April 16, 2022). Weiler-Polak, Dana. “Israel Enacts Law Allowing Authorities to Detain Illegal Migrants for up to 3 Years.” Ha’aretz, June 3, 2012. Available online: https://www.haar​etz.com/ isr​ael-s-new-infil​trat​ors-law-comes-into-eff​ect-1.5167​886 (accessed April 16, 2022). Willen, Sarah S. Fighting for Dignity: Migrant Lives at Israel’s Margins. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019. Winston, Brian. “The Documentary Film as Scientific Inscription.” In Theorizing Documentary, edited by Michael Renov, 37–57. New York: Routledge, 1993. Worden, Rose. “How Sudan Is Ingratiating Itself with Trump Through Israel.” New Arab, February 13, 2020. Available online: https://www.arabba​rome​ter.org/ media-news/how-sudan-is-ingra​tiat​ing-its​elf-with-trump-thro​ugh-isr​ael/ (accessed April 16, 2022). Yacobi, Haim. Israel and Africa: A Genealogy of Moral Geography. New York: Routledge, 2016. Yaron, Lee. “25,000 Protest in Tel Aviv against Israel’s Asylum Seeker Deportation Plan.” Ha’aretz, March 24, 2018. Available online: https://www.haar​etz.com/isr​ ael-news/25-000-prot​est-in-tel-aviv-agai​nst-depo​rtat​ion-of-asy​lum-seek​ers-1.5938​ 048 (accessed April 16, 2022).



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Yosef, Raz. Beyond Flesh: Queer Masculinities and Nationalism in Israeli Cinema. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004. Žižek, Slavoj. “Multiculturalism, or, the Cultural Logic of Multinational Capitalism.” New Left Review 1.225 (1997): 28–51.

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Write Down, I Am a Woman Shai Ginsburg

The title of this contribution is a play on the title of Ebtisam Mara’ana-Menuhin’s 2014 documentary ‫ أنا عربي‬،‫( سجل‬Sajil, Ana Arabi; Write Down, I Am an Arab), itself a quote of Mahmoud Darwish’s memorable anaphora in his poem ‫بطاقة‬ ‫( الهوية‬Bitaqat al’Huya; Identity Card). Yet, the actual title of the documentary displaces and translates Darwish’s anaphora two or three times at least: it renders Darwish’s Arabic line in Hebrew, ‫ אני ערבי‬,‫( תרשום‬Tirshom, Ani Aravi), or, in the international version of the film, in English. The queries raised by the bi- or trilingual title—the fissures, schisms, translations, and dislocations it performs— are central to Darwish’s life, but also to Mara’ana-Menuhin’s cinematic oeuvre as a whole. As an Israeli-Palestinian Arab, she repeatedly interrogates what it means to say “I” in two or three languages: What does it mean to proclaim in Israel, “Write down, I am an Arab”? What does it mean to insist on an Israeli identity under such proclamations? How is one to negotiate the strained, often violent relationship between the Arabic and the Hebrew, not only between the state and its citizens, but also between the divergent speakers of these languages? Particularly when the specter of the not-here, of state-imposed or self-imposed exile, is always looming? Yet, as my title suggests, the filmmaker complicates these questions further because she refracts them through her perspective as a woman. What does it mean, she asks, to proclaim, “Write down, I am a woman” in Arabic, in Israel? These questions inform Mara’ana-Menuhin’s entire cinematic oeuvre. They are featured in full in her 2003 debut documentary, ‫ الفردوس المفقود‬،‫الفريديس‬ (Al-Fureidis, Al-Firdus Al-Mafqud; Paradise Lost), in which she considers her place in her home village, Fureidis, on the one hand, and in the State of Israel at large, on the other (Figure 7.1). The Arabic title of the documentary, better translated as “Fureidis, A Lost Paradise”—a pun on the legendary etymology of

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Figure 7.1  Fureidis, in Paradise Lost. Screen grab by author.

Figure 7.2  Ebtisam Mara’ana-Menuhin’s father, in Paradise Lost. Screen grab by author.

the village name, which traces it to the Arabic word for “paradise”—anchors the film in the tropes of land, loss, and the ensuing nostalgia so central to Palestinian cinema, and cultural production in general, since 1948.1 Yet she refracts these tropes through the perspective of protagonists who are, by and large, the victims of contemporary patriarchal Palestinian-Arab power structures, radically rephrasing the tropes as lingering questions: what precisely was lost, when was it lost, how was it lost, and who will now pay the price for this loss? Early in the documentary, the filmmaker interviews her father (Figure 7.2), who as a twelve-year-old was taken to Tantura, a neighboring village, immediately after Jewish Israeli forces took over the village in 1948, to bury the dead of the massacre.2 When she asks him explicitly about his war experience as he caresses a dying fig tree, he says, “I don’t know anything about it … Why do you want to go into that? It’s a political matter. What business is it of yours? It’s none of our business. Listen to me, my daughter.” As becomes apparent, his position is not



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unique, and his words are echoed by other men Mara’ana-Menuhin interviews throughout the film. “The people here don’t like trouble; our village doesn’t like trouble. Beware of politics,” one man tells her. The film thus spins a biblical allegory of a Garden of Eden with the “fruit of knowledge” at its center, a fruit one should refrain from tasting so as to perpetuate the residents’ state of bliss. The self-appointed guardians of the garden are the men of the village, who take it upon themselves to utter, time and again, the state edict to those who dare challenge it—mainly women, as we discover over the course of the documentary. Yet these men never state what trouble to avoid and what to gloss over in silence. The ability—or, rather, inability—to proclaim, “I am an Arab,” has to do, then, not merely with Israeli oppression and repression but, more significantly, with Israeli-Palestinian-Arab strategies in the face of Israeli-Jewish rule, with the ways—to rephrase Wim Wenders’s famous quote—the Israeli state has colonized and coopted the Palestinian unconscious.3 Whereas the Palestinian story is one of silencing, Mara’ana-Menuhin puts into relief the gendering of such silence. As the power to authorize speech (and silence) is vested in men, Mara’ana-Menuhin shows, the effect has been to reinforce the oppressive paternal power structure of Palestinian society—a theme she revisits in all of her films.4 The documentary follows the divergent trajectories—literally, journeys in space—of three of the village women: Mara’ana-Menuhin’s mother; Suaad Genem, a classmate of her older sister; and herself. Each journey charts a different possible response to the “paradisiacal” order of silence and willful ignorance enforced by the men of the village. Mara’ana-Menuhin establishes commonalities in these different female trajectories and journeys5 but at the same time insists that her own journey as a filmmaker is qualitatively different from the other two. Her mother’s is the traditional religious journey embodied in the hajj to Mecca. The opening sequence of the film shows Mara’ana-Menuhin trying to put on a hijab. As she attempts to set the garment into place, her mother explains, “When I get back from the hajj, I will wear it every day.” When the daughter wonders, “But there are evening dresses for parties and dances,” the mother responds, “In religion there are no parties and dances.” “You won’t dance,” asks the daughter, “not even in my wedding?” “No,” her mother insists. Interviewed upon her return from the hajj, she says: “You must obey your husband and your family, make sure you pray. Your husband is a demigod.” Women, are to channel their husbands’ voice, as they do, we might add, the Quran. In Paradise Lost we find, then, a powerful critique of such Islamic ideology—not as a source of

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authentic Palestinian identity and resistance to Israeli Jewish dominance but rather as a mechanism of co-optation of Palestinian-Arabs by the State of Israel. The filmmaker’s rejection of that trajectory is embodied not only in her refusal to don the hijab but in her quest to locate Suaad Genem: Where is she now? Why has she left the village? When asked why Suaad no longer lives in the village and what it was that she did, Mara’ana-Menuhin’s interviewees are reluctant to respond. One man, Suaad’s former classmate, says, “I think Suaad did something harmful to the State or National Security; therefore, she deserved to be punished.” Yet neither Suaad’s whereabouts nor the reasons that led to her departure are difficult to track down. Now practicing international law in the UK, Suaad was arrested a number of times and accused of being a member of the Fatah, of waving the Palestinian flag in public, and of taking part in a demonstration against the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. The search for Suaad performs an unveiling of a kind, but what is unveiled is anything but a deep, horrible mystery. On the contrary, it is the banal, everyday oppression of Palestinian-Arabs in Israel, oppression for which the men in the village are not merely the victims but also the local agents. As Suaad herself comments, “What did I do? And why are the others so afraid of me? As if the Israeli establishment wasn’t enough, they also …” (her voice trails off). Suaad’s inability to complete this sentence points to the ways in which the villagers construe her blacklisting by state authorities as somehow also blemishing her honor; the political and the sexual (inasmuch as women are concerned) are closely intertwined.6 Mara’ana-Menuhin’s decision to leave the village, against both her mother’s wishes and Suaad’s advice, local attitudes notwithstanding, resituates the village, one of the central tropes of Palestinian cinema and an emblem of a lost homeland. Whereas Palestinian myth holds the village as historically lost due to the failure of its residents to defend it, she features her move as a present willful loss in defiance of history.7 It is a protest against history, both the “ancient” history of 1948 that has shaped the lives of the village elders (including her parents) and the more recent history that forced Suaad out of the village and into exile. At the end of the film, we see the Tantura coast and then Mara’ana-Menuhin herself standing on a train platform. In a voice-over, she says: “I always wanted to know the history, but today I don’t want to keep looking back … I want to look forward, ahead, to a future in which I’ll be able to be a free woman.” In her films, Mara’ana-Menuhin thus develops an uneasy position in which she simultaneously holds on to the history of past (and present) atrocities and seeks to put it to rest, both traces the oppression of Israeli-Palestinian-Arab women



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to the Israeli oppression of Palestinians and yet sees in Israel (or, rather more specifically, in Tel Aviv) the hope of liberation from that oppression. Mara’ana-Menuhin’s films are the product of parallel developments in both Israeli-Jewish cinema and Palestinian (both exiled and Israeli) cinema. IsraeliJewish cinema of the 1990s and early 2000s shifted away from the chauvinist paradigm that had predominated it, exploring mechanisms of repression and suppression (and, chief among those, nostalgia) and putting into relief alternative identities that had until then been largely invisible. This shift resulted in greater attention to the films of new cohorts of filmmakers belonging to parts of the population heretofore marginal to Israeli filmmaking, and to the films of women in particular. Those decades thus saw the rise to prominence of women filmmakers (particularly documentarians) and of the cinematic female autobiography,8 to which Mara’ana-Menuhin’s films are clearly indebted. Similarly, her documentaries demonstrate the fact that since the mid-1980s Palestinian films have paid greater attention to the heterogeneous nature of Palestinian society and to the fissures and frictions that cut through it.9 Like the narrative and documentary films of other Israeli-Palestinian-Arab filmmakers of her generation, Mara’ana-Menuhin’s films seek to set aside questions of retribution for historical injustice and instead focus on contemporary inequities in the here and now.10 Still, Mara’ana-Menuhin’s films are also in an uneasy relationship with both traditions. Whereas scholars have anchored Palestinian cinema in the problematics of Palestinian visibility11 or in “[t]‌he mutation of the politically repressed into the aesthetical representational,”12 Mara’ana-Menuhin insists that the conditions of in/visibility and repression Israeli-Palestinian-Arab women face cannot be conflated with those of Israeli-Palestinian-Arab men, the traditional subjects of Palestinian cinema and scholarship. And as ‫( بال مؤاخذة‬Bila Mu’akdadha; You Cannot Ask That), her latest television project (2019) evinces, she expands this critique to other Israeli-Palestinian-Arab Others: LGBTQ people, Black Israeli-Palestinian-Arabs, individuals with disabilities, members of interfaith families, and more. In this respect, her films are more akin to what Ella Shohat has termed “post-Third-World feminist” filmmaking.13 That being said, her films cannot be subsumed under this category either. Scholars of Palestinian films have privileged untraditional and experimental production and distribution, narrative, characterization, and aesthetics to highlight the unique exilic condition of Palestinian cinema and, by extension, of Palestinians at large. In this respect, they read Palestinian films as accented,

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to use Hamid Nafici’s term,14 or as minor, to use Deleuze and Guattari’s term.15 Similarly, scholars of Israeli cinema since 1990 have highlighted those films whose characters and narratives challenge state- and communal-sanctioned mores and ethos.16 In the context of Israel, where Hebrew is the dominant language and Judaism the confession of the majority, Mara’ana-Menuhin’s documentaries are accented, both in terms of their Arabic language and in terms of their protagonists. Yet the end points of her documentaries are unexpected from this perspective. Her films do not seek to chart escape routes beyond community and state, as Nafici, and Deleuze and Guattari would have it; her films do not conflate the abuses of the two, even after they trace the one to the other and show how they reinforce each other. Rather, the filmmaker posits the “liberal state”—one prevalent, though not exclusive, ethos in Israel, clearly an image more than a reality, embodied most prominently in “Tel Aviv”—a wishful image of a space indifferent to the language, religion, and gender of its subjects, as a place of refuge and liberation. She does not seek to “convert” her characters but to carve out a space for them in which such indifference would allow them to realize themselves. In other words, the horizon of Mara’ana-Menuhin’s cinema is the unaccented, the major. This may explain both the appeal of her films as well as the resistance to them. Central to that project is the literal and metaphorical unveiling of Mara’anaMenuhin as well as of her protagonists. My use of this problematic metaphor here is intentional: it is literalized not only in Paradise Lost, as we have already seen, but also in the filmmaker’s subsequent documentaries. In each, she charts the opportunities (or lack thereof) granted to Israeli-Arab-Palestinian others and endeavors to find a language and a voice—deemed both political and dangerous, as I have noted above—of resistance: against the Israeli state, indeed, but mainly against the silence forced on women in Israeli-Arab-Palestinian communities. The 2004 documentary ‫( الجسر‬Al-Jisr; The Bridge) features the town of Jisr az-Zarqa and locates it both temporally and spatially between past and present. At the opening of the documentary, the filmmaker brings us into the town, shooting through the windshield of a car in motion, which exits the highway, drives through a narrow concrete passage underneath it, and then emerges into the streets of the village, while a voice-over, one of Mara’ana-Menuhin’s female interviewees, relates the history of the place: The town of Jisr az-Zarqa is a Palestinian-Arab, a Muslim town, a fisher town. Unlike other Arab towns, the people of the town were not expelled during the



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1948 War. It is said that the people of our town were not expelled because the people of the neighboring Binyamina, a Jewish town, have asked to leave us here so we could work for them. Today, Jisr is the only Arab town on the coast … The Arab towns in the Galilee and the Triangle [the areas in the vicinity of Umm al-Fahm and Kafr Qasim] have severed all ties with us. They look at us as second rate. They rarely marry a girl from Jisr.

Under and to the side of the Israeli modern transportation infrastructure Mara’ana-Menuhin “excavates” what is actually in plain sight, a Palestinian past and present. The history of Jisr az-Zarqa mirrors that of Fureidis, which the filmmaker explored in Paradise Lost, turning the present film as a whole into a reflection on the same themes with which she dealt earlier. Cut off from other IsraeliPalestinian-Arabs for a touch of historical collaboration—note how the narration draws the implication for women in particular—the town is also cut off from its neighboring Jewish municipalities. Over the course of the film, Mara’anaMenuhin documents (in aerial shots) the separation wall—almost twenty feet high and more than half a mile long—constructed in 2003 between Jisr az-Zarqa and the neighboring Caesarea. Again, there is a voice-over in which a woman interviewee notes: Caesarea is over there. They are our neighbors. They built this wall between us and Caesarea. Caesarea is a Jewish town, one of the wealthiest in Israel, and we are one of the poorest in Israel. God is great, we live next to each other, and they built a wall to separate us. … Israel has all the means to build walls and fences. Israel is building a fence not only between itself and the Palestinians. It’s also doing the same thing here.

Such constructions are used not only to set apart Jews from non-Jews, the wealthy from the poor, but also to keep Palestinians in the Occupied Territories— as well as Israeli-Palestinian-Arabs—out of sight.17 As Mara’ana-Menuhin shows, such walls are not always physical, nor are they always created by the state at the behest of its Jewish subjects; often, Palestinian-Arabs willfully take part in their construction. Her cinema may be described as an endeavor to undercut the Israeli architectural logics of apartheid, to bring sights and sounds from beyond those walls, denouncing state apparatuses but, more than that, the ways IsraeliPalestinian-Arabs themselves enhance these apparatuses. As I have already noted, Mara’ana-Menuhin shows that the ramifications of the co-optation of Israeli-Palestinian-Arabs by state apparatuses are particularly dire for women.

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Emblematic here is a scene early in the film. Hamama and Haldiya, two of Mara’ana-Menuhin’s interviewees, are on a rooftop when they observe a funeral procession making its way through the streets of town. They have the following exchange: Why were we allowed into the cemetery before? That was before. What’s changed? Women aren’t permitted to enter the cemetery. Everything is forbidden in this village … Because everything is forbidden, people kill each other … Why was this guy murdered? Because of a girl.

The women Mara’ana-Menuhin feature here are single. They have defied the edict to wed and reproduce (family, communal, and political structures) and are consequently relegated to second-class citizens in the third degree: as non-Jewish Palestinian-Arabs, as women, and as unmarried members of their village, they are deprived of power and are forced into the position of hushed observers, with few opportunities to claim agency and shape their lives, let alone their communities. Commenting on Paradise Lost, Dorit Naaman notes the importance of the body and of embodying politics in the body as well as in its emotional expressions in Mara’ana-Menuhin’s filmmaking.18 Yet it is not merely the bodies of the women she features in her documentaries but her willingness to “lend” them her camera and microphone: visual and audio editing dub the gaze and modes of distribution—either as theatrical release or as television broadcast (and, currently, streaming). She turns the gaze into an intervention, her version of docu-activism.19 In the 2006 ‫( بدل‬Badal), Mara’ana-Menuhin complicates this perspective further. “Badal” is the Arabic term for an exchange marriage, in which a brother and sister from one family marry a sister and brother from another family. The fate of the siblings thus married are interlocked: if one couple divorces, the other one must do so as well. Once again, the documentary is presented as an extension of the filmmaker’s personal story: since Mara’ana-Menuhin is dark-skinned, has a scar on her hand, and is getting old, her mother hopes to marry her in a badal deal. She refuses but turns to the family of her late uncle, whose widow, Um-Wajih, now seeks a badal deal that involves her recently widowed son, Wajih, and his eldest daughter, Mayada. The uncle and his wife were themselves



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married through a badal deal, but four years prior to the making of the documentary the uncle died by suicide after allegedly falling in love with one of his daughters-in-law. Her personal tragedy notwithstanding, however, Um-Wajih continues to marry off all of her children, five sons and five daughters, in badal deals. Ruling her extended family high-handedly, she exerts economic and emotional pressure to force them to yield to her will. In an uncomfortable scene that takes place in the kitchen of her recently married youngest son, Abdallah, and his (unnamed) bride, Um-Wajih and Abdallah are shot in the foreground, sitting near the table, whereas the wife is in the background, by the kitchen counter, concealed mostly by Um Wajih and slightly out of focus. “Was there anything about the badal you didn’t like?” asks Um-Wajih, looking at the camera. “No,” responds Abdallah, with his eyes lowered, playing uncomfortably with the tablecloth. “Then why say you refused?” continues Um Wajih. When the wife finally joins them at the table, carrying a tray with a pot of tea and glasses, Um-Wajih says, “As long as you’re happy together,” looking at the couple. Seated now next to each other but still apart, hands in laps, staring blankly at the table, husband and wife respond, “Yes, thank God” (Figure 7.3). A sad irony emerges from the disparity between the idiomatic phrases uttered by each and the emotional distance evinced by the shot.

Figure 7.3  Um-Wajih, Abdallah, and his (unnamed) bride, in Badal. Screen grab by author.

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Whereas at the beginning of the documentary it appears as if badal marriages are a tragedy shared equally by men and women it soon becomes clear, however, that women bear a much heavier burden. When the prospects of a badal deal are considered for Wajih and his daughter Mayada, the former declares, “My daughter comes first and I second.” Notwithstanding such sentiments, however, Um-Wajih privileges the needs and desires of her son as a man over those of her granddaughter. The men involved in the deal may put forward what bride they would like to have and have the power to “make or break” the deal: Wajih, for instance, insists on marrying a virgin and refuses to consider a divorcée or widow. “A husband is like a little God,” says Um-Wajih, as she discusses her son, “and she who serves him receives 100 blessings. A man can beat a woman, he has the right to.” Women, on the other hand, have little choice, and they are, quite literally, silenced, afraid to voice themselves and to assert agency. Mayada is rejected because, in the words of her grandmother, “the girl is skinny. She never filled out.” Ultimately, Um-Wajih decides that she cannot marry off Mayada and that Wajih should marry on his own, without a badal deal. The film thus does not set men against women but, rather, sets two parties of women against each other, caught in the patriarchal culture: the grandmother, vested in the absence of her spouse with authority and agency, against her granddaughter, deprived of agency and voice. Intensifying the sense of a “dead end” is the fact that the women have internalized the patriarchal vision of the family’s gendered roles. This is the case not only for Um-Wajih but for her granddaughter as well. “A girl must cook,” says Mayada during one interview. “It’s shameful if she doesn’t know how.” And during another, “Would you accept your husband to mop and do the dishes?” Indeed, women play a key part in the cycle of patriarchal oppression. Whereas traditionally Palestinian films featured women’s cooking as central to the preservation of a national culture, Mara’ana-Menuhin suggests that even while her protagonists accept their traditional roles, national culture also serves to imprison, isolate, and abuse them.20 Mara’ana-Menuhin continues her radical critique of the institution of marriage in Israeli-Palestinian-Arab communities in her next film, the 2007 ‫طالق‬ ‫( بالثالث‬Taliq Bi’althalath; Three Times Divorced). Whereas Badal examines the initiation of marriage, this film looks at its dissolution. The documentary features Hitam, a Gaza-born Palestinian who was married by her brother to an Israeli Palestinian-Arab and moved to Rahat, in the south of Israel. After the couple has six children together, Hitam’s husband divorces her and gains custody of five of their children. Consequently, Hitam is unable to contact her children and loses



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both her property and her legal status in Israel. The documentary explores the web of communal patriarchal chauvinism, religious courts (which, in Israel, determine matters of personal status), and the Israel state apparatus in which Hitam finds herself caught. The film follows her repeated appeals to the Sharia Court, which, as a rule, favors men, to regain custody of her children. In an early scene, Hitam and her husband arrive at the Sharia Court in Beersheba. Standing outside the door to the building, clasping its grates—a repeated image in the film—Hitam sees her former husband and his lawyers enter the building. After she learns that the hearing has started, she tries to enter the building herself. Knocking on the door, she cries, “Why have they started the hearing and not let me in?” She continues—“Open the door, let me in, I am the defendant. I have a hearing today, it’s my right to be inside”—but to no avail. Barred from entering as a woman, she has to wait for her lawyer to come out, brief her on the proceedings, and let her know that the hearings have been postponed (Figure 7.4). Initially, Hitam and her youngest child stay with her brother, but after she snatches two more of her children from their school and brings them to her

Figure 7.4  Hitam at the Shari’a Court in Beersheba, in Three Times Divorced. Screen grab by author.

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brother’s house, he throws her out, and she takes refuge at a women’s shelter in Haifa. Yet, not having an Israeli ID, she is forced to leave. Two options are available to her: return to Gaza and give up on ever seeing her children again, or go back to her husband. Hitam choses to return to her husband, but shortly afterwards, he beats her viciously and stabs her with a knife, and she is forced to flee without her children. Palestinian cinema in general and documentary cinema in particular have traditionally endeavored to document visual evidence of the physical damage and destruction of Palestinian lives—primarily, though not exclusively, by the State of Israel: shots of rubble, dead bodies strewn in the streets, and injured patients in hospitals are familiar tropes.21 Yet the communal and family violence that victimize women is often concealed and rarely makes it into the public eye; the manifestations of the structural violence to which they are regularly subjected, and of the “mild” violence of the strict regulation of their lives, bodies, desires, and dreams, are even more difficult to visualize. Such visual evidence as Hitam’s bandaged hand and battered face is rare in Mara’anaMenuhin’s documentaries. Indeed, it is to a large extent immaterial, and she seeks not to further circulate such sensational images but to render visible the structural violence—more widespread and prevalent—done to women. Once again, the title of the documentary is telling. It reflects not only the three times a Muslim man must proclaim he is divorcing his wife in order for the divorce to take effect—he may withdraw his words twice but not a third time— but also Hitam’s triple abandonment: by the male members of her family and community, by her husband, and by the state. In no other of Mara’ana-Menuhin’s documentaries is the collusion of the state and the patriarchal community in its aim to oppress Palestinian-Arab women made as manifest as in Three Times Divorced. In this context, it is tempting to see the work as the filmmaker’s response to Anat Zuria’s 2004 documentary ‫( מקודשת‬Mekudeshet; Sentenced to Marriage), which follows the travails of Jewish agunot—women whose husbands refuse to divorce them—in rabbinical courts. Without minimizing the misery and suffering of these women, Three Times Divorced suggests that their plight cannot be conflated with the plight of second-class citizens and noncitizens. Whereas the Israeli-Jewish press and cinema deal extensively with the plight of women in rabbinical courts, they rarely if ever address the experiences of women in other religious court systems to which they are subjected by the state. In fact, it could be argued that such documentaries as Zuria’s blindfold their audience to the additional complexity faced by non-Jews who are forced to go through these courts: different legal statuses vis-à-vis the state translate into additional misery.



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Mara’ana-Menuhin’s camerawork bears witness to this difference. Whereas, as I have suggested above, the filmmaker tends to adopt her subjects’ point of view, in this case the camera consistently distinguishes between the filmmaker’s perspective and Hitam’s, and the filmmaker is careful not to elide the distance between herself and Hitam. Thus, for much of the film, the camera presents Hitam in close-ups, medium shots, and full shots as a subject of the film. At the same time, lending a voice and a camera to her protagonist, Mara’anaMenuhin endows Hitam with mobility and allows her to extract her body, if only temporarily, from the double disciplining gaze of the state apparatus and of patriarchy. The question of whether such a move can be made permanent, however, remains unanswered. The relationship between Israeli-Jewish society, Israeli-Jewish spaces, and Israeli-Palestinian-Arabs emerges as a major theme in Mara’ana-Menuhin’s cinema from this point on. The films she makes also explicitly engage with the significance of “Tel Aviv” for Israeli-Palestinian-Arabs like herself (alongside a number of her protagonists). At a book launch in Haifa, an emcee introducing the writer and activist Raji Bathish, the protagonist of Mara’ana-Menuhin’s 2007 documentary ‫( غرفة في تل أبيب‬Ghurfa Fi Tal-Abib; A Room in Tel Aviv), made as an episode of the television series ‫( גיבורי תרבות‬Giborey Tarbut; Cultural Heroes), states: The book A Room in Tel-Aviv is like Virginia Woolf ’s A Room of One’s Own. The book’s message is that the liberation of the individual from the yoke of the community, of the public sphere, is a necessary condition of freedom … In Raji’s eyes, Tel Aviv is not a city of oppression but, rather, a public space that allows the individual, that unique creature called the Palestinian-Arab in Israel, to realize his individuality in an unprecedented way.

A Room in Tel Aviv follows Bathish as he travels between different rooms: his old room in his parents’ house in Nazareth, a hotel room in East Jerusalem, a friend’s room in Ramallah and, indeed, his present room in Tel Aviv. This trajectory allows Mara’ana-Menuhin to not only reflect on her own endeavor to find for herself (a) room in Tel Aviv but also explore the relationship between divergent places, divergent modes of “belonging” as well as “unbelonging” in a room, and, ultimately, the complex place that Tel Aviv, as a real space and as an image, occupies in the Israeli-Palestinian-Arab imagination. In Ramallah, Mara’ana-Menuhin documents a conversation between herself, Bathish, and the Palestinian writer and journalist Ziad Khaddash shot in the

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latter’s room, all three basking in warm, yellowish-orange light. In response to Mara’ana-Menuhin’s direct question about whether he has had sex with women in the room, Khaddash acknowledges: Yes, more than once. There are those who come back not because of me, not because I am good in bed, but because the room is nice. Someone told me: This is the fourth time I come here already, not because of you, but because the room is intimate.

The conversation then moves to the absence of a Palestinian city. “Isn’t Ramallah the city of the individual?” Bathish asks Khaddash, and the latter responds, That’s an illusion, the same illusion as in Nazareth, that it’s modern; yet many know that it is communal and clannish and primitive … Ramallah is still a village. We do not yet have a city … that’s why we don’t have a successful novel. The novel is the offspring of disagreements, of industrial society, of the individual, of madness, and of the great freedom one can have. We have no freedom and no space, neither social nor political.

“Tel Aviv” emerges as a site of anxiety and hope, as both the seat of oppressive state power—economic, military, social, political, and cultural—and the locus of freedom and opportunity. Ultimately, “Tel Aviv” appears not necessarily as a real space but, rather, as a productive space of indeterminacy and possibilities that contrast the foreclosed, pre-determined life in Israeli-Palestinian-Arab communities and towns. In the 2008 ‫( ليدي كل العرب‬Lady Kul Al-Arab; Lady of All Arabs), Mara’anaMenuhin again explores the possibility of individual self-realization and expression for Arabs in Israel, this time among the Druze community, focusing on the very body of the Israeli-Arab woman. The film follows Duah Fares, of the largely Druze town of Sajur, in the northern part of Israel. After Duah reaches the final stage of the Lady Kul al-Arab beauty pageant—organized for IsraeliPalestinian-Arabs—she decides to withdraw and register, instead, as a contestant in the statewide beauty pageant. The Arab pageant, she tells the filmmaker, would offer her only limited, brief opportunities within the Arab sector, but she dreams of an international career as a model. As a matter of fact, she perceives the beauty pageant differently from the other contestants. Whereas most contestants hope to parlay a pageant victory into finding a spouse and a decent job, Duah dreams of moving beyond her community. Registering with her agent in the Israeli beauty pageant, she stumbles upon the issue of name. The conversation is shot in a series of close-ups of Duah and her agent:



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—Now, for your name. What name would you choose for yourself? —I am not sure. I don’t want to use my own name. —We’ve done well with it thus far. Let’s leave it. —But is “Duah” nice? —Yes, I swear. Believe me. —I want a nice Israeli name or a foreign name.

“I wanted to change my name for a while,” Duah continues, as she flips through Israeli magazines, examining the glossy ads. “I always liked the name Angelina,” she concludes, and ends up filling out the forms under that name. What seems at first to be a simple story of realizing one’s aspirations turns into an account of the ensuing conflict of identity as well as community, which is projected on the map of the state, between the Druze village and Tel Aviv, the site of the Israeli pageant. Whereas the Arab pageant adheres to the customs of modesty that prevail in Duah’s community—customs shared by most of the contestants—the Israeli pageant, like other such pageants in Europe and the United States, features contestants in revealing clothes. The prospect of Duah appearing in a swimsuit spurs condemnation in her hometown and shakes not only her parents but also the Druze community as a whole. The community elders put pressure on Duah and her parents, warning them that they risk being ostracized if Duah fails to withdraw from the pageant. But the pressure does not stop there. Duah and her parents receive threats, and she has to go into hiding and remain under constant police protection for the duration of the pageant. Duah must now weigh her dream against its consequences—for herself as well as to her family. A career as a model, it is clear, would come at a very dear price. Ultimately, she withdraws from the contest. Duah’s desire to be part of the Israeli beauty pageant might appear to be misguided, substituting the gaze of one chauvinist-patriarchal structure for another. Yet the film offers, in fact, a meditation on the power of the gaze to not only oppress but also liberate. Mara’ana-Menuhin’s camera focuses on Duah’s body (and the bodies of other contestants) in an endeavor to extricate it from the disciplining patriarchal gaze.22 Indeed, as the elders of the village underscore when they meet with Duah and her family, the exhibited female body threatens to disrupt collective identity as well as the elders’ authority. Within this exchange, the state apparatuses are never far removed, but their function is indeterminate. Whereas they historically reinforced patriarchal power structures in order to

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secure the cooperation and collaboration of Druze communities with the state, these same apparatuses could also possibly offer refuge from the disciplining patriarchal gaze of one’s local community and protect one from ensuing threats against one’s body that accompany that gaze. In this respect, the politics of Mara’ana-Menuhin’s documentaries is strategic rather than fundamentalist, highlighting the bitter irony that the Israeli colonization of the Israeli-PalestinianArab unconscious is not merely oppressive but, at the same time, liberating. All of Mara’ana-Menuhin’s films are about leaving home, about what is to be gained and lost by doing so. (77 ‫ ;درج‬77 Daraja; 77 Steps, 2010), which seemingly picks up where Paradise Lost ended, is no exception. It documents Mara’anaMenuhin’s move to Tel Aviv and her endeavors to find her place as an IsraeliPalestinian-Arab woman in the heart of Jewish Israel. The willful move to Tel Aviv undercuts, obviously, the cinematic trope of the return to the village or small town as the metonym of antebellum Palestine, yet it is not untroubled. The film opens with a shot of two legs climbing a narrow staircase. We hear a conversation in Hebrew between a woman seeking to rent an apartment and a man, a landlord. The conversation seems to be going well, and when the woman asks when she should come see the apartment, the man responds, “Right now.” The woman then says, “My name is Ibtisam.” “I did not catch that,” says the man. “Ibti-Sam,” repeats the woman. “It’s an Arabic name.” The man then says, curtly, “Call me on Sunday, I am busy now.” Set over the visual of an apartment interior, the voice-over, now in Arabic, says, “I finally managed to find an apartment in Tel Aviv. Sometimes I had to shorten my name to Betty, or Ibti, or Sam.” The film cuts to shots of urban street life, and then we see Mara’ana-Menuhin standing underneath the sign for “Café Paradiso”—a local emblem of her now-lost village—as her voice-over continues: “I want to belong to the place, to this place.” The film builds on the separation of the visual and the audial. Mara’anaMenuhin’s voice-over is, of course, in the first person. The visual track shifts, on the other hand, between first person and third person, between shots captured by Mara’ana-Menuhin herself and shots taken by other cinematographers, and the latter make up a greater part of the film. In fact, it seems as if the film focuses not so much on reality as perceived by Mara’ana-Menuhin with her camera lens as on the filmmaker herself, on her very body, as the object of the gaze of others. The disparity between the first-person narration and third-person visualization produces persistent apprehension: can what I say and how I look be reconciled? Moreover, the “third-person” camerawork less imitates Mara’ana-Menuhin’s point of view than seeks out the Israeli-Jewish (masculine) point of view and



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continuously examines whether or not Mara’ana-Menuhin passes: Does she stand out in her otherness, or does she successfully integrate herself into the scene? Does the Jewish gaze recognize her as an other and denounce her, or does it miss her? Is she able to join her neighbors, or can she observe them only from afar? 77 Steps deploys the filmmaker’s own body and voice in a refusal of simplified identity politics. Already the other of Israeli normative identity, constructed as it is by the intersection of gender, sex, religion, and ethnicity, Mara’ana-Menuhin endeavors to emplace herself. This effort is further complicated, however, when she encounters her Jewish neighbor Jonathan Ben-Dor, a recent immigrant from Canada, and starts a relationship with him, challenging both Israeli-Jewish and Israeli-Palestinian-Arab mores. Two nos consequently reverberate throughout the film: the ethno-religio-political no—“the no / law of the father,” if you will. This establishes the symbolic order of the state, as just noted: the exclusion of IsraelPalestinian-Arabs from the Israeli political (and preferably, public) space. The exclusion is complemented by “the no / law of the mother,” which supplements the external exclusion by internal withdrawal, no less stern and oppressive than the law of the father. The latter is embodied in the film by Mara’ana-Menuhin’s mother, who cannot reconcile herself to her daughter’s decision to leave her village and move to Tel Aviv. Throughout much of the film, Mara’ana-Menuhin’s mother is present only as a voice in phone conversations, a voice that continues to enumerate the filmmaker’s transgressions. Her mother views the filmmaker’s endeavors at assimilation as hopeless, as a nakedness that ironically conceals her true identity. In a hybrid of Arabic and Hebrew, Mara’ana-Menuhin painfully says, during one of these phone conversations, “Inti lo solachat” (“You do not forgive”). Only in the film’s penultimate scene does Mara’ana-Menuhin show her mother onscreen. The filmmaker, in the foreground of the frame, looks at her cell phone, whereas her mother sits in the background, praying, refusing to return her daughter’s gaze (Figure 7.5). Over and against these two nos, the documentary focuses on Mara’anaMenuhin’s and Ben-Dor’s very bodies and emotions as they are caught in Israeli identity politics. Filmed during Operation Cast Lead, the two are shown watching television broadcasts that feature images of torn bodies from Gaza and taking part in rallies against the war. At such rallies, she and her partner demonstrate their bodies, knowing full well that their bodies—in conjunction much more than separately—challenge not only the state of Israel but also, as the comments they receive from other participants evince, those who protest against the state.

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Figure 7.5  Ebtisam Mara’ana-Menuhin and her mother in 77 Steps. Screen grab by author.

The violent reactions directed at them by all underscore that the visibility of their bodies is closely related to the question of sovereignty: Israeli sovereignty, Palestinian sovereignty, as well as the question of Mara’ana-Menuhin’s and BenDor’s identities and relationship. The body that resists assimilation is perceived as a threat, for which the apt response is violence. In this sense, all of Mara’ana-Menuhin’s films seek to realize the representational logic of Darwish’s poem “Write Down, I Am an Arab.” In the film of the same title, the poet is heard saying (in Hebrew), “To my regret or pleasure, every Palestinian thinks I represent him.” Darwish’s “I” thus becomes the “I” under which Mara’ana-Menuhin probes her own condition as an Israeli-PalestinianArab. Shifting between archival interviews with Darwish in Hebrew and recordings from his poetry readings in Arabic, the film linguistically embodies the tension between Darwish’s Arabic poetic persona and his Israeli public persona for the Hebrew audience. Darwish’s Hebrew articulateness, as in exchanges with Israeli-Jewish interlocutors in the 1970s and 1980s, embodied for a few Israeli-Jews the possibility of Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation. As he says during one such exchange to a member of Kibbutz Yas’ur, established on the land of Al-Birwa, Darwish’s place of birth, “I cannot say we had a joint childhood, because you were born in the place I was expelled from. Still the encounter between us is both happy and sad: happy, because we can be friends; sad, because you can go back there, and I cannot.” Yet Darwish’s poetic persona also has far less palatable aspects for an Israeli-Jewish audience, and Mara’ana-Menuhin



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follows this elegiac yet comforting exchange with Darwish’s public reading of his poem ‫( أيها المارون بين الكلمات العابرة‬Ayuha Al-Marun Bayn Al-Kalimat Al-Abira; Those Who Pass Between Fleeting Words). A poetic reaction to the televised images of the First Palestinian Uprising, it unnerved many of Darwish’s IsraeliJewish friends and interlocutors when it appeared in translation in the Hebrew daily Ma’ariv in March 1988, and its lines still reverberate in the Israeli-Hebrew public sphere today: “It is time that you left / Live wherever you wish but not among us / It is time you left / Die wherever you wish but not among us.” The question Mara’ana-Menuhin poses is not whether these lines could, or even should, be excused or somehow ignored or elided, but whether an Israeli-Jewish audience could embrace, posthumously as it were, Darwish as an authentic, complex Palestinian-Arab, Israeli public voice: both sympathetic (toward IsraeliJews) and provocative, even belligerent. Yet, the axis of Write Down, I Am an Arab is neither the poet’s poetic persona nor public-intellectual persona but, rather, Darwish’s private persona and, most of all, his persona as a lover, which exasperated a number of critics on the left.23 Most prominently, the film features his Israeli-Jewish lover, Tamar Ben-‘Ami, and the love letters Darwish wrote her in Hebrew, which Ben-‘Ami, from her current residence in Berlin, makes public for the first time. At stake here, I would suggest, is not whether the love affair between Darwish and Ben-‘Ami was indeed as crucial to the development of Darwish’s poetic and public persona as Mara’anaMenuhin would have it. At stake, rather, is whether we can imagine the personal, or, to be more precise, the woman inflecting Darwish’s public and poetic personae. Could such an inflection be emplaced in Israel/Palestine, or could it take place only deterritorially, from Berlin or other elsewheres? Tamar Ben-‘Ami, and not Darwish, thus emerges as the true embodiment of the new Israeli subject whom Mara’ana-Menuhin seeks, unmarked by religion or ethnicity but gendered. In the recent op-ed “Mahmud Darwish’s honor silences Palestinian women,” published in Hebrew and in Arabic in the Israeli daily Haaretz, Rajaa Natur responds to a recent scandal that erupted after the Syrian novelist and poet Salim Barakat revealed that Darwish had had a daughter from a fleeting affair with a married woman. The heated responses, penned mostly by men, not only defended Darwish but also denounced Barakat for what they saw as a betrayal of Darwish and the Palestinian cause. Natur writes: Darwish made systematically present a masculine-victimized Palestinian narrative, and never tried to challenge the frightening, ugly, confusing, paralyzing aspects of this identity. I do not deny the collective Palestinian victimized identity

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or its legitimacy, but it should not be the essence nor the end. We, Palestinian women and men, must ask questions about politics, identity, and culture that are cut off from Darwish and his men poet colleagues, that from a national, masculine, and victimized aspects are the essence of the Palestinian narrative.24

It seems to me that Mara’ana-Menuhin would have signed on to this manifesto.

Notes 1 Hamid Dabashi, “Introduction,” in Dreams of a Nation: On Palestinian Cinema, ed. Hamid Dabashi (London: Verso, 2006), Kindle; Nurith Gertz and George Khleifi, Palestinian Cinema: Landscape, Trauma and Memory (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), ­chapter 2. 2 On Tantura, see, for instance, Alon Confino, “The Warm Sand of the Coast of Tantura: History and Memory in Israel After 1948,” History and Memory: Studies in Representation of the Past 27 (2015): 43–82. 3 Eric Rentschler, “How American Is It: The U. S. as Image and Imaginary in German Film,” The German Quarterly 57, no. 4 (1984): 603–20. 4 See also Haim Bereshit, “Gvulot hazikaron hafalastini: bayit vegalut, zehut vehe‘almut bakolno’a hafalastini hahadash,” Te’orya uvikoret 18 (2001): 77–102; Dan Shadur, “Tafsiki letsalem, lekhi lekalef tapuhey adama: ‘Al sirta shel ibtisam mara’ana ‘faradis—gan ‘eden avud,’ ” in Dokomentali: Ma’amarim ‘al kolno’a documntari yisra’eli, ed. M. Amir (Tel Aviv: ‘Am ‘Oved, 2007), 118–25; and Miri Gal-Ezer, “Ha-Masa’ shel Ibtisam Mara’ana,” Panim: Tarbut hevra vehinukh 49 (2010): 103–16. 5 Shadur, “Tafsiki letsalem,” 121–2. 6 Rhoda Kanaaneh, “Paradise Lost by Ebtisam Mara’ana,” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 1, no. 2 (2005): 163–64; Aida Nassarallah, “Yitsug ha’isha baseret faradis, gan ‘eden avud me’et Ebtisam Mara’ana,” Takriv 17 (2018), takriv.net/ article/‫אבוד‬-‫עדן‬-‫גן‬-‫פארדיס‬-‫בסרט‬-‫האשה‬-‫ייצוג‬/. 7 Yael Ben-Zvi Morad, Retsah av: migdar ule’umiyut bakolno‘a hafalastini (Tel Aviv: Resling, 2011), 44–6, 185–6. 8 Michal Friedman, “Ha-Mamad sheme’ever: otobiyografyot nashiyot bakolno’a Hayisre’eli,” Te’orya uvikoret 18 (2001): 223–36; Y. Munk, Golim bigvulam: hakolno’a Hayisra’eli bemifne ha’elef (Ra’nana: haUniversita haptuha, 2012), chapter 8. 9 Gertz and Khleifi, Palestinian Cinema, ­chapters 4, 6. 10 Yael Friedman, “Palestinian Filmmaking in Israel: Negotiating Conflicting Discourses” (PhD diss., University of Westminster, 2010), 96–100.



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11 Edward Said, “Preface,” in Dreams of a Nation: On Palestinian Cinema, ed. Hamid Dabashi (London: Verso, 2006), Kindle. 12 Dabashi, “Introduction.” 13 Ella Shohat, “The Cinema of Displacement: Gender, Nation, and Diaspora,” in Dreams of a Nation: On Palestinian Cinema, ed. Hamid Dabashi (London: Verso, 200), Kindle. 14 Hamid Nafici, An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001); Hamid Nafici, “Palestinian Exilic Cinema and Film Letters,” in Dreams of a Nation: On Palestinian Cinema, ed. Hamid Dabashi (London: Verso, 2006), Kindle. 15 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Kafka: Towards Minor Literature (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986). 16 See, for instance, Munk, Golim bigvulam; Nurith Gertz and Raz Yosef, I’kvot yamim sh’od yavo’u: tra’uma ve’etika ba-kolno’a hayisre’eli ha’akhshavi (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2017); and Ariel Schweitzer, Kolno’a yisra’eli hadash (Jerusalem: Karmel, 2017). 17 Eyal Weizman, David Tartakover, and Rafi Segal, eds., Civilian Occupation: The Politics of Israeli Architecture (London: Verso, 2003). 18 Dorit Naaman, “Unruly Daughters to Mother Nation: Palestinian and Israeli Firstperson Films,” Hypatia 23, no. 2 (2008): 27. 19 Miri Gal-Ezer, “haMasa’ shel ibtisam mara’ana”; and Raya Morag, “ ‘Roadblock’ Films, ‘Children Resistance’ films and ‘Blood Relations’ Films: Israeli and Palestinian Documentary Post-Intifada II,” in The Documentary Film Book, ed. Brian Winston (Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan on behalf of the British Film Institute, 2013), 9. 20 Ben-Zvi Morad, Retsah av, 75–6. 21 Nadia Yaqub, Palestinian Cinema in the Days of Revolution (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2018). 22 On the disciplinary gaze and the exhibition of the body in Israeli cinema, see Orly Lubin, “Gvulot ha’alimut: gvulot haguf,” Te’orya uvikoret 18 (2001): 103–38. 23 Yitzhak Laor, “Ma kol kakh ra’ baseret ‘al Mahmud Darwish,” Haaretz, June 13, 2014. 24 Natur, “haKavod shel Mahmud Darwish mashtik et kolan shel hanashim hafalastiniyot,” Haaretz, June 24, 2020.

Bibliography Ben-Zvi Morad, Yael. Retsah av: migdar ule’umiyut bakolno‘a hafalastini. Tel Aviv: Resling, 2011.

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Bereshit, Haim. “Gvulot hazikaron hafalastini: bayit vegalut, zehut vehe‘almut bakolno’a hafalastini hahadash.” Te’orya uvikoret 18 (2001): 77–102. Confino, Alon. “The Warm Sand of the Coast of Tantura: History and Memory in Israel after 1948.” History and Memory: Studies in Representation of the Past 27 (2015): 43–82. Dabashi, Hamid. “Introduction.” In Dreams of a Nation: On Palestinian Cinema, edited by Hamid Dabashi. London: Verso, 2006. Kindle. Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. Kafka: Towards Minor Literature. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986. Friedman, Michal. “Ha-Memad she-me’ever: otobiyografyot nashiyot bakono’a ya-yisra’eli.” Te’orya uvikoret 18 (2001): 223–36. Friedman, Yael. “Palestinian Filmmaking in Israel: Negotiating Conflicting Discourses.” PhD diss., University of Westminster, 2010. Gal-Ezer, Miri. “haMasa’ shel ibtisam mara’ana.” Panim: Tarbut hevra vehinukh 49 (2010): 103–16. Gertz, Nurith, and George Khleifi. Palestinian Cinema: Landscape, Trauma and Memory. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008. Gertz, Nurith, and Raz Yosef. I’kvot yamim sh’od yavo’u: tra’uma ve’etika ba-kolno’a hayisra’eli ha’akhshavi. Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2017. Kanaaneh, Rhoda. “Paradise Lost by Ebtisam Mara’ana.” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 1, no. 2 (2005): 163–4. Laor, Yitzhak. “Ma kol kakh ra’ baseret ‘al Mahmud Darwish.” Haaretz, June 13, 2014. Lubin, Orly. “Gvulot ha’alimut: gvulot haguf.” Te’orya uvkoret 18 (2001): 103–38. Morag, Raya. “ ‘Roadblock’ Films, ‘Children Resistance’ films and ‘Blood Relations’ Films: Israeli and Palestinian Documentary Post-Intifada II.” In The Documentary Film Book, edited by Brian Winston. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan on behalf of the British Film Institute, 2013. Munk, Yael. Golim bigvulam: hakolno’a hayisra’eli bemifne ha’elef. Ra’anana: haUniversita haptuha, 2012. Naaman, Dorit. “Unruly Daughters to Mother Nation: Palestinian and Israeli Firstperson Films.” Hypatia 23, no. 2 (2008): 17–32. Nafici, Hamid. An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001. Nafici, Hamid. “Palestinian Exilic Cinema and Film Letters.” In Dreams of a Nation: On Palestinian Cinema, edited by Hamid Dabashi. London: Verso, 2006. Kindle. Nassarallah, Aida. “Yitsug ha’isha baseret faradis, gan ‘eden avud me’et Ebtisam Mara’ana.” Takriv 17 (2018). Available online: takriv.net/article/-‫בסרט‬-‫האשה‬-‫ייצוג‬ ‫אבוד‬-‫עדן‬-‫גן‬-‫פארדיס‬/ (accessed June 1, 2020). Natur, Rajaa. “haKavod shel Mahmud Darwish mashtik et kolan shel hanashim hafalastiniyot.” Haaretz, June 24, 2020. https://www.haar​etz.co.il/gall​ery/galler​yfri​ day/arabis​tit/.prem​ium-1.8943​907.



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Rentschler, Eric. “How American Is It: The U. S. as Image and Imaginary in German Film.” German Quarterly 57, no. 4 (1984): 603–20. Said, Edward. “Preface.” In Dreams of a Nation: On Palestinian Cinema, edited by Hamid Dabashi. London: Verso, 2006. Kindle. Schweitzer, Ariel. Kolno’a yisra’eli hadash. Jerusalem: Karmel, 2017. Shadur, Dan. “Tafsiki letsalem, lekhi lekalef tapuhey adama: ‘Al sirta shel ibtisam mara’ana ‘faradis—gan ‘eden avud.’ ” In Dokomentali: Ma’amarim ‘al kolno’a documntari yisra’eli, edited by M. Amir, 118–25. Tel Aviv: ‘Am ‘Oved, 2007. Shohat, Ella. “The Cinema of Displacement: Gender, Nation, and Diaspora.” In Dreams of a Nation: On Palestinian Cinema, edited by Hamid Dabashi. London: Verso, 2006. Kindle. Weizman, Eyal, David Tartakover, and Rafi Segal, eds. Civilian Occupation: The Politics of Israeli Architecture. London: Verso, 2003. Yaqub, Nadia. Palestinian Cinema in the Days of Revolution. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2018.

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Identity (Ex)Changes, Gender, and Family Ties: Cinematic Representations of Israeli Jews and Palestinians Yael Zerubavel

The cinematic representations of identity changes and exchanges open up the possibility of exploring the perspective and experiences of those positioned across a national and religious divide from a different angle. This essay focuses on films made by Israeli/Jewish directors between 1988 and 2015 that address this topic. These films differ significantly in their portrayal of the circumstances, motivation, psychological impact, and outcome of such identity exchanges, and selectively dwell on some aspects more than others. Yet while they vary in their plots, points of view, and emphases, they share the reliance on the process of estrangement to explore the prejudice, tensions, and possibility of accommodation in moving across the national and religious divide, as well as the role of gender and family ties, in this process. The focus on the theme of identity change is not new to Israeli culture. Zionist vision advanced the goal of transforming exilic Jews into native Hebrews, and Israeli society cultivated the construction of a collective identity in its early decades.1 Identity politics extended the discussion to ethnic diversity and hybrid identities within Israeli society, most visibly in relation to Mizrahi (Middle Eastern Jews) in Israel and new immigrant communities, yet the focus remained within the bounds of Israeli Jewish culture. More recently, a surge in literature about Palestinian citizens of Israel has further enlarged the scope of the discussion.2 The films that this essay examines venture beyond this context to explore the theme of identity (ex)change by those who cross the divide between Palestinians and Jews. Whether they describe these developments as emerging from a deliberate action, incidental circumstances, or human error, they present

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characters who assume the identity of the other and thereby experience the present through the lens of this new identity. This discussion does not include forms of masquerade undertaken by undercover soldiers or security personnel for the sake of policing and espionage. The present discussion revolves around six films that were made within the span of two decades, by Jewish directors who are (with the exception of one) Israelis. Three of the films feature an identity change in the form of passing, and the other three address an identity exchange. The first group includes 1988’s ‫( נישואים פיקטיביים‬Nisuim Fictiviim; Fictitious Marriage), which was directed by Haim Bouzaglo, an Israeli Jew of Mizrahi descent, and features a Middle Eastern Israeli-Jewish man who passes as a Palestinian from the Occupied Territories; 2014’s ‫ זהות שאולה‬,‫( ערבים רוקדים‬Aravim Rokdim, Zehut She-Ula; A Borrowed Identity), which is based on fictional works by the Israeli Palestinian author Sayed Kashua and directed by Eran Riklis, an Israeli Jew of Ashkenazi origin, and focuses on an Israeli Palestinian boy who assumes the identity of an Israeli Jew; and 2015’s ‫ שם זמני‬,‫( נדיה‬Nadia, Shem Zmani; A.K.A. Nadia), which is directed by Tova Asher and portrays a Palestinian woman from Eastern Jerusalem who passes as an Israeli Jew. The three films portraying an identity exchange between two individuals include 2012’s Le fils de l’autre (The Other Son), by the French Jewish screenwriter and director Lorraine Lévy, which examines the discovery of a mistaken exchange of identities between the babies of an Israeli Jewish family and a Palestinian family from the West Bank and the process of adjusting to their newly revealed identities after they turn eighteen; another 2012 film, ‫( עלטה‬Alata; Out in the Dark), directed by Michael Mayer, an Israeli-born Jew who now lives in the United States, which follows a deliberate, if brief, identity exchange between two men, an Israeli Jew and a Palestinian from Ramallah; and 2014’s ‫( בורג‬Boreg; Self Made), directed by Shira Geffen, an Israeli Jewish screenwriter and actress, which focuses on two women whose identities are mistakenly interchanged. Three of these directors are male, and three are female, yet only two of these films, which are directed by female directors, center on female characters that go through identity changes. Even though the primary concern of this theme appears to be focused on the national/religious divide separating Palestinians and Jews, these films reveal that gender and sexual orientation may play a mitigating role in this context, perhaps more saliently in others’ responses to the identity change that the character undergoes.



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Transitioning into the Other: Passing Hayim Bouzaglo’s Fictitious Marriage3 presents an interesting exploration of an Israeli man’s foray into a double journey in his own country, undertaken from two estranged perspectives. The film opens with a farewell scene: a young man in Jerusalem is saying goodbye to his wife and two young children and about to catch a cab to the airport, where he’ll fly to New York. This first scene sets the stage for the hero’s planned voyage abroad, yet the plot subverts this expectation when the man abandons his briefcase at the airport and, after passing through the security checks, walks out of the airport and takes a cab to Tel Aviv. Following the discovery of a missing passenger and his deserted briefcase, the police investigation reveals only skimpy details about him: he is a high school teacher named Eldad Nattan who lives in a middle-class neighborhood in Jerusalem. The film remains vague about his decision to forgo his trip to New York, other than his wife’s reference to the impact of his recent experience during a military reserve service and his own comment about his state of confusion. The airport, the indiscreet “non-place,” serves as a liminal space of transition that allows for Eldad’s identity transition in his move from his home base to Tel Aviv, where he experiences his identity transformations.4 In brief and elusive phone conversations with his wife, he pretends to be calling from New York, but his lie contains a grain of truth since in one of his symbolic journeys Tel Aviv emerges as a stand-in for America. The taxi driver brings him to the California Hotel, where the young receptionist mistakenly identifies him as an Israeli who lives in America returning for a home visit, and he provides a fictitious New York address. Instead of being a tourist abroad, he has now become a tourist in his own country, and his trip to America is realized without leaving Israel.5 The hotel receptionist, Judy (ironically, the Americanized version of her Hebrew name, Yehudit, i.e., “Jewish”), who is obsessed with the United States, becomes his guide to Tel Aviv’s Americanized, consumer-oriented culture. When “the tourist” suggests that she may be able to get a green card in America through a “fictitious marriage,” she misinterprets the concept and takes it as a marriage proposal. Like the video game the two play together, their relationship is based on fantasy, on tempting images and misunderstandings, which he fails to acknowledge and she fails to grasp. This parodic subplot presents a critique of Israeli materialism and provincialism, yet in the larger scheme of the film it serves as a prelude to a more

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complex and powerful identity change. Revealing his state of disorientation to an old man he encounters in the park, Eldad receives the advice to find meaning in simple acts of daily living. When he next appears, early one morning, dressed in shabby clothes, holding a plastic bag, and eating an Arab “bagel,” Palestinian transitory workers who are gathered in that park misidentify him as one of their own. Eldad does not correct their mistake, and he goes along with this assumed identity and joins them. Given his Middle Eastern background and some knowledge of Arabic, he comprehends enough of their conversation but pretends to be mute in order to minimize the risk of being found out. The idea of a Jewish man seeking personal redemption through manual labor was an old cornerstone of the Socialist-Zionist pioneers’ ideology in the early days of the Jewish society in Palestine, but the film deliberately introduces here an ironic twist: in the post-1967 reality, the Jew experiments with this road to personal redemption by passing as a Palestinian laborer. From this point on, Eldad moves between his two fabricated identities,6 but it soon becomes clear that his journey as a Palestinian laborer is the more significant and challenging journey he undertakes. Through this identity, he observes his society from the perspective of an “illegal” Palestinian worker from the Occupied Territories, the ultimate marginalized “other.” As such, he experiences firsthand how Israeli Jews treat the Palestinians as “nonpersons” or as a group of people who lack individuality: They are loaded onto a truck to get to work and are locked in a storage place at night as if they are prisoners or animals, and Jews disparage their work in their presence, assuming they do not understand Hebrew or not caring if they do. Similarly, when a provocative female Jewish artist living next door to their construction site desires to have sex with a Palestinian, she lets the Palestinians choose the man, as if they are interchangeable. When Eldad is randomly selected, her intention to transgress ethnic boundaries is ironically undermined by the selection of a Jew who passes as a Palestinian, thus creating another fictitious relationship. The theme of passing thus allows Fictitious Marriage to suggest, but ultimately avoid, the portrayal of a sexual encounter between a Palestinian man and a Jewish woman.7 The Israeli Jew’s success in passing as a Palestinian worker culminates in being invited by a “fellow” Palestinian worker to come along on a trip to visit his family in Gaza. Thus, in another ironic twist, the Israeli Jew’s original plan to venture beyond the borders of Israel is realized when he crosses into the Occupied Territories, where he watches Israeli soldiers patrolling the streets from the perspective of the occupied. This journey into the Palestinians’ private



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space introduces a new phase in his relationship with them, yet it ultimately leads to the unraveling of his fictitious identity. Upon their return to the city, Eldad unwittingly shatters his assumed Palestinian identity while watching young kids and their mothers in a nearby playground and seeing a little boy swinging on a tire. He suddenly recalls spotting the Palestinian workers loading a similar tire onto their truck in Gaza and hearing them speak about the Jews. Seized with terror that the boy might be sitting on a tire filled with explosives, he runs outside in panic, screaming in Hebrew, “A bomb! A bomb!” and gesturing wildly for the kids and their mothers to run away from the swing. Nothing is found inside the tire, but the scream reveals his fake identity as a Palestinian and as a mute person. It also exposes the deep-seated suspicion of Palestinians as potential terrorists that can so easily erase the apparent camaraderie he has established with his coworkers, turning it into another fictitious relationship. The camera alternates between shots of the Palestinians standing on scaffolds, staring at him in speechless disbelief, and of the Israeli, who stares back at them without explanation or apology, as if they have all become mute. The sharp contrast between the scream and the commotion it triggers and the frozen silence that follows underscores the abrupt rupture caused by his action. The closing scene of the film corresponds to the opening scene as Eldad returns to his original identity and family home in Jerusalem, thus closing the circle of his double journey in assumed identities. The teacher keeps up the pretense of having returned from New York and proceeds to give his children gifts, unaware that the police have already informed his wife that he never left the country and that she even joined them on unsuccessful attempts to locate him. Regardless, his wife goes along with the pretense. Their collusion in maintaining the silence about what actually took place after he had left home reveals his marriage to be yet another fictitious bond. The intricate transitions in and out of identities that the film portrays serve as a commentary on the fluidity of the Israeli Jewish identity, constructed to a large extent by its contrast with that of the Diaspora Jew and the Palestinian. Yet the two identity exchanges indicate different forms of passing from an Israeli Jewish perspective. The first move, from native Israeli to émigré (i.e., yored, literally, “one who goes down”), represents a less dramatic transgression and, in the Israeli society of the 1980s, may even indicate “passing up.” In sharp contrast, however, the transition from middle-class professional Israeli Jew to illegal blue-collar construction worker from the Occupied Territories implies

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a double “passing down.” The lead character gives up his Israeli Jewish identity, middle-class comforts, and voice, in dramatic opposition to his occupation as a teacher for whom his voice is an essential tool. Moreover, in contrast to the stereotype of the determined and resilient mythological Sabra, Eldad appears to be led by circumstances and by others’ suggestions and initiatives, wandering in and out of his fictitious identities. Significantly, this balancing act between his two fabricated identities is abruptly broken because of a perceived security threat to his fellow Israeli Jews by his newly acquired Palestinian friends. Israelis’ suspicion of Palestinians and sense of collective responsibility around issues of survival is more deeply entrenched in his psyche than his loyalty to his family and own identity, which he seems to forgo by hiding in another city and under assumed identities. Ultimately, the identity changes that the film portrays are revealed to be brief experiments instead of profound transformations, and they fail to spur significant, long-term changes in the protagonist’s life or contribute a deeper understanding of either self or the other. His accidental tourism as Israeli émigré and Palestinian aims to critique the frailty of Israeli identity, the consumerism and anomie of contemporary Israeli life, and the corrupt impact of the occupation of the Palestinians. The film focuses on deconstructing Israeli Jews’ identity and lives by introducing a critical distance through the experience of identity changes, yet its engagement with the Palestinian experience remains distant and superficial, limited by the lead character’s gaze and brief foray into the Palestinian identity. The Israeli Palestinian writer and journalist Sayed Kashua wrote the script for A Borrowed Identity, which draws from two of his Hebrew novels,8 and the award-winning director Eran Riklis was selected to helm the film. The film revolves around the process of passing of a precocious Palestinian Israeli teenager named Eyad, who leaves his family in the Arab town of Tira to pursue his studies at an elite Jewish school in Jerusalem. The first part of the film is marked by Kashua’s signature parodic tone, portraying the tensions underlying Israeli Arabs’ position as a minority, which characterizes his earlier writing and his writing for the Israeli television sitcom ‫( עבודה ערבית‬Avoda Aravit; Arab Work, 2007–12). This approach is evident in an early scene at the local school, in which an Arab teacher discusses the Palestinian historical narrative only to quickly switch to the official Israeli map and narrative when a Jewish visitor steps into the classroom. A more poignant scene, which served as the inspiration for the title of Kashua’s 2004 novel Dancing Arabs (also the original name of this film),



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takes place during the Gulf War and depicts Arab Israelis dancing on rooftops after hearing about Iraqi Scuds directed at Tel Aviv. At the prestigious liberal boarding school and surrounded by privileged middle-class Israeli Jewish students, Eyad becomes deeply aware of his otherness, easily spotted by his Arabic name and accent, unfashionable clothes, and lack of familiarity with his Jewish peers’ culture. In one of the film’s most evocative scenes, he intervenes in a class discussion about Amos Oz’s literary heroine Hana Gonen, who fantasizes about the Arab twins who were her childhood playmates. Eyad asks the class to consider the twins’ perspective, repositioning them as the subject of discussion rather than the object of Hana’s fears and desire.9 As time passes, Eyad adjusts to his new school’s culture and acquires native fluency in Hebrew, though incidents of harassment outside his school continue to serve as grim reminders of his otherness. Eldad’s relationships with two of his peers ultimately shape his future. The school’s social service program assigns him to assist a Jewish boy his age, Yonatan, who suffers from muscular dystrophy. The two boys, who also share the experience of being different from their peers, become close friends. As Yonatan’s health deteriorates, his mother asks Eyad to move in with them to help care for her disabled son (Figure 8.1). At one point, Yonatan tells his friend, “Sometimes I forget you’re an Arab,” to which Eyad revealingly replies, “Me too.” At the same time, Eyad develops another close friendship with a classmate, Naomi, which soon turns into a secret romantic relationship. When Naomi’s mother finds out about them and threatens to transfer her daughter to another

Figure 8.1  Eyad taking care of Yonatan in A Borrowed Identity. Screen grab by author.

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school, Eyad volunteers to drop out instead in order for his girlfriend to be able to complete her studies there. Although the two continue their romantic relationship, unbeknownst to the family of Eyad’s girlfriend, Naomi eventually breaks off the relationship so that it will not undermine her chances of being assigned to military intelligence after graduation. Thus, where parental authority fails, the military service—mandatory for Israel’s Jewish citizens but not its Arab citizens—succeeds in separating them. Eyad finds work as a dishwasher at a Jewish restaurant, but when he realizes that Arabs have no chance of securing better positions, he uses Yonatan’s name and address on his application and is hired as a waiter. When Yonatan’s mother finds an envelope from the bank bearing her son’s name, she confronts Eyad about using her son’s identity without permission, but she understands his predicament and allows him to maintain this borrowed identity. The partial process of passing is completed when Yonatan dies and his mother takes his body to a Muslim cemetery to be buried as Eyad. Ironically, Yonatan’s body is wrapped in a Muslim pilgrim’s cloth that Eyad’s devout grandmother brought back from her pilgrimage to Mecca, in order to support his passing as a Muslim. A Borrowed Identity conforms to the more conventional pattern of “passing up,” when a member of a discriminated minority group desires to benefit from the majority’s privileged position and avoid the prejudice and obstacles directed at members of his group. The film goes beyond the conventional in constructing the secular, liberal Jewish mother as collaborating in this process, which begins with passing and turns into an identity exchange.10 Unlike Fictitious Marriage, this film shows the possibility of creating a personal bond and commitment between Jews and Palestinians, even in a society torn apart by conflict and ridden with prejudice and discrimination. As in his earlier films, Riklis chooses the personal and humanistic approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, focusing on individuals’ struggles and readiness to take personal risks in the face of prejudice, hatred, and inhumane bureaucratic procedures. In this respect, A Borrowed Identity evokes Elia Kazan’s Gentleman’s Agreement (1947) and its critique of postwar American society’s anti-Semitism, as experienced by a journalist who passes as a Jew. The plot of A Borrowed Identity notably centers on the Palestinian Israeli’s perspective, but it does not fully engage in the complexities of the process of passing and identity exchange. Indeed, Eyad’s biological family fades out of the picture, and the viewer never learns whether they are aware of his borrowed identity and whereabouts or believe him to be dead. Clearly, Eyad’s choice to pass as a Jew



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solves his immediate predicament, but it does not offer long-term solutions to the prejudice and discrimination that drove him to choose this option. His decision to leave the country, revealed at the end of the film, indicates that he cannot find his place in Israeli society, despite his close relationship with Yonatan’s mother. In summer 2014, the distributors of A Borrowed Identity faced extreme difficulties amid the violence that erupted from Palestinians’ capturing and killing three Jewish youth in the West Bank to Israel’s response in “Operation Protective Edge” in Gaza. The film, which was scheduled to premiere at the prestigious Jerusalem Film Festival, had its screening delayed to the late fall. Additionally, the distributors changed the English title of the film from the original Dancing Arabs to the more neutral title A Borrowed Identity; the Hebrew title was modified to combine both into a longer title (Aravim Rokdim, Zehut She-Ula). The film received mixed reviews from critics, and bloggers’ responses articulated anti-Arab statements on Israeli social media.11 Ironically, the bloggers’ statements illustrated the discriminatory and inflammatory attitude toward Palestinians and left-leaning, liberal Israeli Jews that the film sets out to explore. The theme of passing is also central to ‫ שם זמני‬- ‫( נדיה‬Nadia—Shem Smani; A.K.A. Nadia), the 2015 debut feature film of Tova Asher, a veteran film editor. The protagonist of the film is Nadia, a Palestinian woman who assumes an Israeli Jewish woman’s identity as a way to return to Israel after her husband, a Palestinian resistance activist, is arrested in London. The film is divided into three parts, each representing a different period in the lead character’s life. The first part introduces her as a young woman living in East Jerusalem and follows her relationship with a young Palestinian activist who is about to be sent to England by the movement. She secretly marries him before he leaves the country, and shortly thereafter joins him in England. Left on her own when her husband is identified as a terrorist and captured by British security forces, she evades the British police and then manages to procure the Israeli passport of a dead Jewish woman of her age and assumes her identity. The second, and major, part of the film, which picks up twenty years later, reintroduces Nadia, who is now living as an Israeli Jew named Maya in West Jerusalem with a doting husband and two children, all of whom are unaware of her borrowed identity. Maya has also become a successful choreographer who is portrayed as deeply engaged with her dancers. Her occasional secret meetings with her mother appear to be the only connection she has with her biological family and her Palestinian past. Arriving in West Jerusalem, her mother prepares

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and brings Nadia her favorite food, and the two share picnic lunches outdoors, unspotted by others. In these conversations, during which the mother speaks in Arabic and Nadia responds in Hebrew, the mother’s pleasure at seeing her daughter and her interest in the grandchildren she has never met stands in marked contrast to Nadia’s erasure by her brother, a fact alluded to in passing by her mother. An incidental encounter with her former husband, who has become an official in the Palestinian Authority, unsettles Nadia and threatens to shatter her carefully choreographed new life. Although their meeting is rather undramatic, her Jewish husband, worried about changes in her behavior, spots Nadia and her ex-husband meeting near her studio. After following the man and discovering he is a Palestinian returning home through the checkpoint, he gets ahold of the security forces’ file about him and uncovers his own wife’s true identity and past. When his lame attempts to get her to talk fail, he angrily confronts her with his knowledge about her identity as Nadia and the information that she has kept hidden from him during their twenty years of marriage. At this point, any attempts to communicate on her part fail to bring about meaningful conversation. The third part of the film is brief and serves as a fast-forward conclusion to five years later and features the heroine, who is now living alone in England, returning home to her apartment, with her daughter showing up unexpectedly at her doorstep. This ending suggests that the trans-generational mother-daughter bond has survived the latest family crisis, much as Nadia’s bond with her own mother survived her earlier identity change. The premise of the film could have been the basis for an interesting examination of the process of passing and the inevitable psychological and social dilemmas involved in the adjustment to the borrowed identity and the crisis of its later exposure. Such dilemmas are clearly heightened by the continuing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians and the Israeli occupation of the heroine’s family. Yet A.K.A. Nadia fails to engage these issues in a meaningful way. The temporal shifts in the film provide a technical excuse for not exploring these critical developments, and the film fails to address the inevitable social and psychological drama that involves such profound transitions, rendering its treatment superficial and dull.12 The viewer fails to grasp the difficulties Maya must have faced in adjusting to Jewish Israeli society upon her return to Israel, her choice to live with a husband who subscribes to blunt nationalist views, and her renewed contact with her mother. Similarly, the film fails to show Nadia reflecting on her choices after her former husband resurfaces, how she imagines



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explaining these choices to her husband and children or the people with whom she works at the dance studio, and her interaction with her Israeli-Jewish children following her husband’s angry rejection. The film’s vague ending makes it unclear whether she was officially expelled from Israel or she chose to leave for England to live away from it all. We similarly do not learn her Palestinian family’s response to her exposed act of identity exchange and the identity she assumed following her return to England. Finally, although the film appears to focus on a Palestinian woman’s experiences, its plot structure reveals that it is primarily interested in her life as an Israeli Jew, and evades the opportunity to engage in her internal processes from a Palestinian perspective. This bias is also apparent in the film’s choice of an Israeli Jewish actor, rather than a Palestinian actor, for this lead role, and in presenting her Palestinian name, Nadia, as “temporary” (the original Hebrew title, Nadia, shem zmani, literally means “Nadia, a Temporary Name”), rather than Maya, her adopted Jewish name. In contrast to these major shortcomings, the film highlights the mother-daughter bond, presenting it as the only relationship that withstands the pressures of opposing national and religious affiliations and ideologies. The sensitivity to this theme and its greater role in the film may reflect the fact that the filmmaker and her own daughter collaborated in the writing of the script.

Exchanging Identities: Israeli Jews and Palestinians Unlike the previous films, which examine voluntary acts of identity change, Lorraine Lévy’s The Other Son (Le fils de l’autre) explores the outcome of an accidental identity exchange between two babies during an emergency evacuation from a Haifa hospital that comes to light eighteen years later. The discovery follows the results of a medical test that the young man who has been raised as an Israeli Jew takes prior to the military draft, revealing that he is not the son of his parents. An investigation uncovers the mistake: the hospital staff handed the Jewish baby to a Palestinian family from the West Bank and the Palestinian baby to a Jewish family from Israel. The discovery forces the families and their sons to come to terms with this misidentification and renegotiate their respective identities, family ties, and national identification. The Other Son follows the unfolding of a situation that challenges the essentialized view of Palestinian-Muslim and Israeli-Jewish identities, and examines the possibility of

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fostering hybrid identities and developing familial bonds across a national and religious divide. The young men have grown up with a clear sense of identity in their respective communities: Yassin (the biological Jew) as a Palestinian, and Joseph (the biological Palestinian) as an Israeli Jew. At the age of eighteen, as they legally turn from children to adults, the new situation forces them to sort through their earlier and new identities and make sense of their multiple familial connections. This fluid situation also challenges their family members, who must navigate their own relationships with both the son they continue to raise as their own and their biological offspring, who has been raised with a different religious and national identity by another family and continues to live with it. The situation is further aggravated by the fact that the Palestinian family lives under Israeli occupation, and the Jewish father is a high-ranking military officer. The film, directed by a woman, presents gender as a more critical variable than national identity in determining the parents’ initial responses to their son’s mistaken identity. When they are summoned to the hospital to hear about the error made by the staff, the two mothers show a readiness to face the situation and learn about their “other son,” while the fathers appear more reluctant to accept this new information and to engage with the other couple. Later, when the Jewish mother calls the Palestinian mother and invites their family to come for a visit, the husbands grudgingly go along with this plan. At some point during the visit, the fathers’ conversation turns into a political debate, with other family members attempting to defuse the tension. The fathers are also less inclined to open up to their newly discovered biological sons. Yet the most extreme response on the Palestinian side comes from Yassin’s older brother, who accuses him for being “one of them” and criticizes his parents for going over to visit “the occupiers.” On the Jewish side, the most extreme view is articulated by the family’s rabbi, who informs Joseph that he must undergo an official conversion if he wants to be a Jew. When the shocked young man reminds the rabbi that he was his best student, the rabbi curtly replies, “This is the way it is,” without offering any spiritual guidance or support to the young man to assist him in dealing with this complicated situation. Joseph’s adjustment to his ambiguous circumstance is gradual. Although he had initially planned to volunteer for a select combat unit of the Israel Defense Forces, he now decides to forgo military service altogether, a choice that separates him from both his father and his own peers, who are about to be enlisted in the army. And when his family goes to the synagogue on the Sabbath, Joseph travels by himself to the West Bank to



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visit his newfound Palestinian family. Surprised by this unannounced visit, his Palestinian mother spontaneously invites him to join them for dinner. The scene around the family dinner table, with the son who is a stranger and does not speak their language, highlights the psychological, cultural, and political challenges they all face. The awkwardness dissipates when Joseph begins to sing an Arabic song he recently taught himself, signaling his desire to feel closer to them, and the others join him, singing and playing instruments. Their shared love of music thus provides an alternative language of intimacy, defusing the tensions that clouded their earlier interaction. The two sons, eager to learn more from each other about the life that could have been their own, and sharing the challenges of working through their ambiguous senses of self, develop a close relationship that helps them negotiate the difficult situation and the fluidity of their identities (Figure 8.2). Joseph intimates to Yassin his confused state about his identity: “I can’t feel Jewish anymore, but I don’t feel Arab.” Looking at their reflections in the mirror, one of them notes that they are like Isaac and Ishmael, the biblical half brothers considered the respective ancestors of Jews and Muslims. When Yassin begins to travel to Tel Aviv to visit Joseph, the beach becomes the unstructured, liminal space critical for their shared process of identity change. Gradually, even the more reluctant male family members, the two fathers and the Palestinian brother, accept the situation and open up to interacting with the “other son” and the “other family.” In time, the Israeli father, who is a senior military officer, arranges work permits for the Palestinian father. And when the

Figure 8.2  Yassin and Joseph, after having discovered that their identities were exchanged at birth, in The Other Son. Screen grab by author.

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Palestinian brother sees that the Jewish father is walking alone at night to their house to search for his son, who is late returning home, he shakes hands with him as a sign of reconciliation. The brother later joins Yassin on his visit to Tel Aviv, and when hooligans attack Joseph that night on the beach, both Yassin and his Palestinian brother come to his rescue. The following scene featuring Joseph in a hospital bed, surrounded by his Palestinian kin and rescuers, represents their new affinity as “brothers,” which traverses blood and national ties. The Other Son does not provide a sense of closure, and it leaves the viewer to imagine the future trajectory of these young men’s lives. The film suggests that the young people whose lives became entangled after an accidental identity exchange at birth are learning to accept the fluidity of their hybrid identities and family ties and that their families, especially their mothers, support them in this process.13 In contrast to the centrality of the theme of identity exchange in The Other Son, the film Out in the Dark, which was made the same year, introduces this theme only at the very end, choosing instead to focus on the developments that lead its characters to make this choice. The film follows the budding relationship between two young men—Nimr, a Palestinian student at Tel Aviv University who lives in the West Bank, and Roy [Ro’i], a young Jewish Israeli lawyer— who meet at a gay bar in Tel Aviv (Figure 8.3). The film shifts between their encounters in Tel Aviv and Nimr’s life at the home of his mother and siblings,

Figure 8.3  Nimr and Roy start a relationship in Out in the Dark. Screen grab by author.



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who are unaware of his sexual orientation. Whereas other gay men and women the lovers know in Tel Aviv accept and support their relationship, the two face increased pressure from others in their respective communities and the security forces, demonstrating the difficulties and risks such a relationship involves. The Jewish lawyer’s liberal parents, who accept his open identity as a gay man, nonetheless reject his romantic connection with a Palestinian man. The Israeli security forces attempt to blackmail Nimr into becoming an informant; when he refuses, they take away his permit to study at Tel Aviv University. When the security forces expel a queer Palestinian acquaintance of Nimr’s from Tel Aviv and return him to the West Bank, he is murdered by an underground resistance group that includes Nimr’s own brother. It does not take long for the group to learn of Nimr’s secret identity, and his family rejects him. His brother, assigned by his peers to kill Nimr, pretends to do so but lets him escape to Tel Aviv, where he joins Roy. A news broadcast on Israeli television shows Israeli security forces uncovering a weapons cache prepared by Nimr’s brother and his friends. When Roy learns that the suspect is his lover’s brother, he angrily confronts Nimr about hiding his brother’s activities from him, and following their argument, Nimr leaves him, remaining a fugitive living on borrowed time. In his growing desperation, he reconnects with Roy to ask for his help. When Roy realizes that he cannot secure legal protection for Nimr, he turns to a former client with a shady record to help organize a way for his partner to escape the country. The act of identity exchange is introduced at this point, when Roy, dressed up in his Palestinian lover’s jacket and hat, lures the security forces to chase after him, allowing Nimr to slip out unnoticed and reach a boat that takes him away, beyond Israel’s maritime border. The identity exchange thus appears as a tactical move to provide a solution to the predicament of the Palestinian gay man who becomes a double fugitive escaping both his own community and the Israeli authorities. Clearly, Roy exchanges places with his lover, knowing that he will be arrested and investigated for having aided a Palestinian to escape: the Israeli lawyer is likely to be accused for treason and disbarred, while the Palestinian student is able to sail away to freedom. Out in the Dark is not the first Israeli film to portray a gay relationship between an Israeli and a Palestinian man. But its sensitive portrayal of an evolving relationship between two individuals stands in contrast to an earlier cinematic portrayal of a homosexual encounter between an Israeli man and a Palestinian fugitive whose “identity is elided, dismissed, stripped of its uniqueness, becoming

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an abstract object of the Israeli examination, knowledge and pleasure.”14 Along with its focus on their relationship, Out in the Dark offers a critical perspective on both the Palestinians’ attitude about homosexuality and the Israeli security forces’ ruthless exploitation of these men’s precarious position as the dramatic forces that propel the plot and undermine the probability of their relationship in Palestine or Israel. The film Boreg, the second film directed by Shira Geffen, revolves around two female characters: Michal, a secular, progressive, and successful Jewish Israeli video artist who is married and lives in an upper-middle-class Jerusalem neighborhood with her husband, and Nadine, an unmarried Muslim Palestinian woman who lives in a Palestinian refugee camp and works at an Israeli-owned factory near the checkpoint (Figure 8.4). The film moves between the two lead characters, who appear to have little in common, as they go about their daily lives in parallel tracks. Yet as the film unfolds, the lives of the two women intersect, first indirectly and later more directly, culminating in the exchange of their identities. The opening shot of the film features a woman lying asleep in bed when her side of the bed suddenly collapses. This dramatic and symbolic beginning moves the plot forward but the surreal plot turns and ample use of symbolism and poetic allusions also suggest that the film shows Michal’s unfolding dream.15 As her husband sets off for a business trip abroad, the artist who bumped her head during her fall appears to be suffering from amnesia. Left on her own, Michal (and the viewers) collects pieces of information about her identity and life through a series of interactions with others who are unaware of her condition,

Figure 8.4  Nadine in Self Made, working in a factory. Screen grab by author.



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among them a boy delivering a bouquet of red flowers, a German television crew arriving to interview her about the forthcoming exhibition of her work at the Biennale, and a musician-chef arriving to discuss the surprise lobster dinner she ordered for her and her husband’s forthcoming anniversary. Between these various activities, her husband’s brief video calls are being interrupted by popups from a pornographic website that he accidentally left open on the laptop. These scenes contribute comical elements to the film but also allow us to learn about the artist’s life prior to her fall, revealing a woman who was independent, assertive, and radical in her views. At this point, however, Michal appears as if she is watching her life unfold before her eyes, much like the video art she makes. When the bed she has ordered from a large pre-assembled furniture store named Ithaca arrives miraculously quickly, Michal discovers that a screw is missing from the package. Her complaint to the store about “missing a screw” refers to the assembly kit, but it also hints at her own state of mental fragmentation and the challenge of piecing together her life. As a result of her complaint, the store fires the Palestinian woman whose job it is to count and package the screws, thereby introducing the first intersection of the two women’s lives. During her interview with the German TV crew, the artist learns about her earlier decision to have a hysterectomy because she does not want to bring children into the world, and she later hears herself in a recorded interview floating the provocative idea of exhibiting her womb turned into a purse. From the German interviewer, she also learns that she organized a women’s Machsom (checkpoint) Watch group to witness and protest Israeli soldiers’ treatment of Palestinians at the checkpoint and that she has been considering adopting a Palestinian child. Her brief and interrupted exchanges with her husband first reveal his anger at her for reaching the decision not to have children without consulting him and, later, his own plan to extend his stay abroad, disregarding their approaching anniversary. The first scene featuring Nadine, the Palestinian woman, shows her at her home looking pregnant, yet when her brother sees her and angrily pulls out a balloon from under her blouse, one realizes that she is only pretending. Walking to the Ithaca store where she works, which requires her to pass through the checkpoint, she seems totally absorbed in listening to hip-hop, unaware of her surroundings. In contrast to the Jewish artist’s public act against motherhood, the single Palestinian woman is consumed by her desire to have children, and she pursues a sexual encounter with a young, unmarried Palestinian neighbor, disregarding the personal risk she faces for violating her community’s traditional

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norms. Her partner, who is charged with the task of identifying “lost people” to send on suicide missions to Israel, sees her as having potential, but she rejects the idea, insisting that she is not a lost person. When Nadine becomes pregnant, she accepts her brother’s plan to send her to live with her aunt in Kuwait, an idea she resisted earlier. On their way to the airport, as they proceed through the checkpoint, she picks up a crying Palestinian baby and begins to walk away with it, and its parents’ angry response leads to a brawl between them and her brother. Held up in a nearby fenced area by the Israeli security until calm is restored, she is soon joined by Michal, the Jewish artist, who is brought there by the security forces after she is spotted wandering around the Separation Wall. Sitting there side by side (Figure 8.5), the women have their identities confused by a young Israeli soldier tasked with taking the famous artist back home, and the soldier picks up Nadine instead, while Michal, identified as the Palestinian, is freed to return home. The interweaving of nationalism and gender issues, which is implied in the Jewish artist’s feminist statements and peace activism prior to her loss of memory, becomes more salient after she assumes the Palestinian’s identity. Following the identity exchange, the film portrays the Israeli Jewish woman, now identified as Nadine the Palestinian, accepting the role of a “lost person” who is recruited for a suicide mission. Strapped with explosives around her waist and dressed in a long gown, Michal looks like a pregnant woman, evoking Nadine’s innocent image created with a balloon. Ironically, the Israeli artist, who opposed pregnancy in her own life and through her artistic work, goes along with what is being done

Figure 8.5  Nadine and Michal being held at the checkpoint in Self Made. Screen grab by author.



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to her with an air of detachment, which creates a highly disturbing incongruity with the violent act she is about to perform. She is driven by car, along with a teenage boy who is likewise to become shahid (a martyr), and although they manage to pass through the checkpoint undetected by the Israeli soldier, their suicide mission is inadvertently subverted when the boy stops the car and gets out with the woman in order to buy flowers for his mother for Mother’s Day and a passing Israeli security patrol orders the driver to drive away, leaving them behind. Mistaking the artist for the boy’s mother, the seller hands her a bouquet of red flowers, enacting her earlier fantasy of adopting a Palestinian child and echoing the earlier scene of a boy delivering a large bouquet of red flowers to her home. At the same time, the actually pregnant Nadine, now in the role of the Israeli woman, enters Michal’s home, where she finds a baby playpen that the Ithaca store has sent, unsolicited, to compensate Michal for the missing screw. The gift, although highly inappropriate for the artist, becomes a suitable and welcomed gesture for the expecting woman. When the German television team returns to continue their interview with the artist, their conversation devolves into a physical clash after Nadine’s answers are misunderstood, and the German photographer accuses her of being an aggressive Israeli underneath her human rights veneer. Nadine escapes from the TV crew into an open Ithaca truck still parked near the home, and the driver, unaware of her presence, drives the truck back to the store. At the end of the film, Michal walks from the checkpoint area to the Ithaca store, where she wanders aimlessly through the baby section, with explosives still strapped underneath her dress, while Nadine is met by a store administrator looking for a worker, who hires her on the spot. The end thus presents the two women symbolically contained within the same commercial space, though moving on the escalators in opposite directions. The two spaces where their lives intersect are the checkpoint, which represents the military occupation over the Palestinians, and the Ithaca store, which stands for industrial mass production and consumerism. Both spaces are marked by their impersonal, bureaucratic character and the hierarchical relationship between Jewish Israelis and Palestinians as occupiers/occupied, and employers/hired help, respectively. The choice of the name “Ithaca” (inspired by the IKEA superstores) may offer another allusion to the mythical framework of the film by evoking Homer’s Odyssey and its role as the point of departure and the destination of Odysseus’s journey following the Trojan War.

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The film’s mythical, dreamlike framework alludes to the symbolic journey undertaken by the two women, which leads them back to the same non-place. Interpreted within this framework, the two characters may be seen as different aspects of the same woman that mirror, invert, disrupt, and replace each other. This idea is visibly represented in the film’s poster, which features a composite portrait of the two women and may be implied in the selection of the same actor in the role of each woman’s respective male partner. Indeed, Shira Geffen relates to the use of magic realism and mirroring of female characters in ‫( מדוזות‬Meduzot; Jellyfish, 2007), her first film, which she codirected with her husband, the Israeli writer Etgar Keret.16 The film thus suggests that the fluidity of the characters’ identities challenges the predominant dichotomies of East/West, Jewish/Muslim, Israeli/Palestinian. At the same time, however, the mythical, dreamlike framework and the surreal, nonlinear nature of the plot weaken the significance of this message.17 The impact of the conflict and the Israeli occupation of the Palestinians is clearly a major theme in the film. It is manifested in the visible role of the checkpoint as sites of “arrest, a stop, and a meeting point of sorts” between the occupiers and the occupied,18 which sets the stage for the identity exchange between the two lead characters. It is also articulated in the visible role of the Israeli army and the mobilization of Palestinian suicide bombers for terrorist acts in Israel. Self Made thus uses both iconic symbols of the conflict and Israeli and Palestinian stereotypes to underscore the situation but also lightens it by introducing elements of comic relief. This approach is clearly visible in several vignettes at the checkpoint, culminating in the scene in which a young female soldier’s preoccupation with her birthday plans distracts her from properly fulfilling her role, thereby waving through the car with the potential suicide bombers.19 The use of satire also posits a critique of apathy toward Palestinians and the prospect of peace by younger Israelis who grew up in the post-1967 era, and the visible and invisible costs of the occupation. Gender issues may be seen as Geffen’s equally important, if not primary, concern. The two female characters embody contemporary women’s dilemma of motherhood by representing two extremes, perhaps alluding to an internal conflict within the same woman: the rejection of motherhood in a selfdirected act of violence, taking out one’s womb, versus the choice of embracing of motherhood out of wedlock despite the risk to one’s life. Setting gender (especially motherhood) against security issues as an act of defiance of the



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patriarchic military culture is not a novel idea. In doing so, the film aligns itself with a familiar trend in Israeli left-leaning protest culture.20 Yet the film also presents the misuse of motherhood as a vehicle for performing radical ideological positions: first, by taking out one’s womb, and second, by using the appearance of a pregnant woman to disguise a bomb.

Concluding Thoughts The six films discussed in this chapter, which illustrate different takes on the meanings and complexities of the processes of passing and identity exchange between Israeli Jews and Palestinians, were made by Jewish, mostly Israeli, directors. Through this lens, these films attempt to examine stereotypes of Arabs and Jews that feed into the “pervasive bifurcation”21 of Israeli society; in some cases, and to a more limited degree, they show the impact of prejudice and stereotypes in the context of Palestinian society. Whereas the earliest film discussed in this essay, Fictitious Marriage, dates back to 1988, the other five films were made between 2012 and 2015. This time gap may reflect a greater readiness to address this topic, although it does not necessarily suggest a willingness to fully explore the complex psychological and social aspects of the process of identity changes across the national and religious divide. Fictitious Marriage offers an innovative plot that explores an Israeli Jew’s passing as a Palestinian (and not on a national security mission). Yet the film remains close to its Jewish-Israeli lead character’s point of view and shows the Palestinians as an undifferentiated group and the object of his gaze.22 In doing so, the film conforms to the trend of the 1980s films that Dorit Naaman observes, even while advancing beyond the stereotypical approach of Arab characters typical of earlier films.23 The two other films engaged with passing relate to Palestinians who take on an Israeli-Jewish identity, though they differ in their approach to their subject. A Borrowed Identity features an IsraeliArab actor who plays the lead character of the same identity, and it proceeds to present a gradual process of change from his perspective. A.K.A. Nadia’s choice of an Israeli Jewish actor as a Palestinian who later passes up as a Jew articulates the filmmaker’s greater interest in her “Israeli Jewish” identity and life—a choice bluntly articulated by the film’s original Hebrew title. These choices clearly marginalize her identity and perspective as a closeted Palestinian.

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The films that feature an identity exchange between a Palestinian and an Israeli Jew are based on the premise of a dual process depicted by shifting from one’s experiences to the other’s as the films trace them in their respective homes and social environments. The three films also present a Jewish and a Palestinian actor who play their respective lead character, thereby providing greater credence to the characters and the processes they undergo. Yet while The Other Son (2012) and Self Made (2014) attempt to preserve a broad bifocal framework, their portrayal of the Jewish character and Jewish Israeli society is more nuanced and complex than the Palestinian’s, reflecting the directors’ greater familiarity with Israeli Jewish culture. By contrast, Out in the Dark (2012) dwells more closely on the Palestinian character and his experiences in Ramallah and in Tel Aviv, while the Israeli lead character occupies a more limited role. It is quite possible that this accounts, at least in part, for the film’s limited commercial success in Israel and its mixed reviews, in contrast to its broader appeal abroad. Israelis may have felt that its focus on a gay Palestinian character and his experiences led to its failure to sufficiently address the Israeli partner’s moral and social dilemmas.24 The films present a range of possibilities of identity (ex)changes, ranging from premeditated changes to those resulting from misidentification by others. Both A Borrowed Identity and A.K.A. Nadia feature a Palestinian who decides to pass as a Jew in Jewish Israeli society, but they differ in the process they depict. A Borrowed Identity traces the gradual process of cultural adaptation followed by a gradual identity change. The identity change starts from a limited passing for work purposes and evolves to other life domains, culminating in the official burial of the character’s Palestinian identity. Conversely, passing in A.K.A. Nadia is achieved by illegally obtaining an official Jewish Israeli passport, which formalizes Nadia’s identity change—yet this abrupt move requires a more gradual process of adjustment to living under an assumed identity: it entails not only constructing an appropriate biography but also confronting profound psychological, social, and cultural challenges negotiating the lead character’s relationships within Israeli Jewish society and with her Palestinian family. However, the film fails to address this process and engages only to a limited degree with how she copes with the later rupture, caused by the exposure of her Palestinian identity. Out in the Dark presents yet another case of a premeditated identity exchange, which, unlike the former films, is clearly planned to be just temporary, yet its implications are likely



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long-term for both characters—and perhaps more detrimental for the Israeli Jew who remains in Israel. At the other end of the spectrum of agency, The Other Son features an identity exchange that was committed as a human error and lasted for eighteen years, during which each lead character grew up with the other’s identity, family, and community. Like A Borrowed Identity, the film traces the gradual and challenging process of young men’s adjustment to a new social and cultural environment with which they are now affiliated; yet the situation of the boys in this film is more ambiguous, given that they have continued to live with the families who raised them while also navigating the reality of their new identities and attempting to reshape their lives accordingly. Thus, while A Borrowed Identity presents a linear, if gradual progression, The Other Son demonstrates a highly complex situation that would not necessarily lead to a linear development or be defined by a dichotomous construction of Israeli/Palestinian identities. Fictitious Marriage and Self Made too present identity changes associated with misidentification by others, but they are more ambiguous about their characters’ agency. Some critics emphasize that the lead character of Fictitious Marriage passively goes along with his mistaken identity as a Palestinian,25 yet I tend to see him as a subconscious accomplice who constructs an ambiguous situation and as a willing performer who takes pains to protect this mistaken identity. The Israeli Jew’s passing as a Palestinian is performed as a limited masquerade, a sort of experiment which he can undertake while away from his home and family. Although misidentification is also the source of the identity exchange in Self Made, the surreal quality of this transition renders the issue of the protagonists’ agency ambiguous, if not irrelevant. Family and gender play an important and interesting role in these films, given the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The female directors of two films, Self Made and A.K.A. Nadia, make a clear choice to focus on female lead characters and explore gender issues. In Self Made, both key protagonists are preoccupied with the possibility of future motherhood, yet they choose opposing paths. The theme appears throughout the film, conveyed in images of pregnancy, babies, and baby furniture, and through the teenage boy who buys flowers for his mother while on his way to become a shahid. A.K.A. Nadia underscores the strength of the mother-daughter relationship to overcome the animosity surrounding the national and religious divide between Palestinians and Israeli Jews. Although male family members, including her Palestinian

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brother and her Jewish husband, reject Nadia after they learn of her passing, both her mother and her daughter reach out to her at different points in her life. In The Other Son, the female director places male young adults at center stage and defines them in terms of their social role as “sons.” At the same time, she highlights the mothers’ lead in accepting both the son they raised and their biological son, in spite of the ambiguity of their national and religious identities. Like A.K.A. Nadia, The Other Son suggests that the mothers are less ideologically rigid and more open to accommodating the complex familial situation and its fluidity than the male members of the family, although in time the others come around as well. A Borrowed Identity portrays the Jewish mother’s readiness to support the Palestinian teenager in order to provide him opportunities that her own son’s terminal illness has denied him, even at the price of violating the law. These gendered responses stand in contrast to both the Jewish and the Palestinian mothers in Out in the Dark, who do not support their sons: the former for nationalist reasons, the latter for the shame of being exposed as gay. Interestingly, Nimr’s nationalist Palestinian brother taking the risk of letting him escape death in violation of his own ideological stance foreshadows Roy’s act of letting Nimr escape the Israeli security forces at the cost of breaking the law and at personal risk to himself. The films vary in the focus, the depth, and the perspective of their exploration of the challenges of passing and identity exchanges between Israeli Jews and Palestinians, yet they demonstrate the limits of such identity changes in the face of entrenched stereotypes and the pervasive violence of the national conflict.26 A borrowed identity is an inherently fragile construct that fails to provide a sense of security and stability, given the knowledge that its fabricated character might be exposed. Indeed, both Fictitious Marriage and A.K.A. Nadia suggest that the crisis of being exposed might lead to the dismantling of the fabricated identity and the relationships constructed on its basis. In the case of A.K.A. Nadia, the husband’s outrage at the discovery of his wife’s deception and apparent lack of desire to learn about her past and perspective and work through the crisis, in spite of his expressed love to her earlier, indicate the greater weight of his hostility and prejudice toward the Palestinians, along with a personal sense of betrayal. Whereas Nadia is penalized for her passing and ends up living alone in exile, Fictitious Marriage implies that after his acts of deception Elad returns to his former identity and life seemingly unscathed. The difference may be accounted for by the circumstances of their passing and its duration and the stronger



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sanction against passing up than passing down, but it may also indicate greater lenience toward men than women for violating trust in marriage. Yet even when passing or identity exchange appears to be successful, as in A Borrowed Identity, the Palestinian young man, transformed into an Israeli Jew, chooses to leave Israel, as does the Palestinian refugee in Out in the Dark. The Other Son ends too soon for us to know the choices of the young men and the ways in which their identity exchange impacts their lives. The films thus suggest that even when personal and family ties appear to withstand the powerful grip of negative stereotypes and support the key protagonists’ move across the national and religious divide, the mistrust, fear, and violence that the conflict generates undermine the possibility of living comfortably with these choices in Israel/Palestine. These cinematic works do not attempt to provide a sense of closure but rather to pose unsettling questions and existential problems, demanding the viewer to probe deeper into the discrimination and prejudice that lead to passing and identity exchanges and the implications of the continuing conflict and its costs for individuals as well as the people involved. It may be telling that the films that offer the most optimistic take on the possibility of creating strong personal ties across the national and religious divide were made by the French director Lorraine Lévy, drawing on her position as an outsider to the conflict, and Michael Mayer, an Israeli Jew who chooses to live and work outside Israel.

Notes 1 This essay draws, in part, on an earlier article that focused on three of the six films discussed in this essay. Yael Zerubavel, “Negotiating Difference and Empathy: Cinematic Representations of Passing and Exchanged Identities in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” in Rethinking Peace: Discourse, Memory, Translation and Dialogue, eds. Alexander Laban Hinton, Gorgio Shari, and Jeremiah Alberg (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2019), 93–107. I thank the editors and the press for the permission to draw on this earlier version. See also, Yael Zerubavel, “Memory, the Rebirth of the Native, and the ‘Hebrew Bedouin’ Identity,” Social Research 75, no. 1 (Spring 2008): 315–52; and Yael Zerubavel, “The Mythological Sabra and Jewish Past: Trauma, Memory, and Contested Identities,” Israel Studies 7, no. 2 (Summer 2002): 115–44.

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2 See, for example, Baruch Kimmerling, Immigrants, Settlers, Natives: The Israeli State and Society Between Cultural Pluralism and Cultural Wars (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2004) [In Hebrew]; Yehouda Shenhav, The Arab Jews: A Postcolonial Reading of Nationalism, Religion and Ethnicity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006); Yehouda Shenhav and Hannan Hever, “ ‘Arab Jews’ After Structuralism: Zionist Discourse and the (De)formation of an Ethnic Identity,” Social Identities 18, no. 1 (2011): 101–18; Nadim N. Rouhana, Palestinian Citizens in a Jewish Ethnic State: Identities in Conflict (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997); and Rouhana, ed., Israel and Its Palestinian Citizens: Ethnic Privileges in the Jewish State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). 3 The film received several awards and was recently included by a prominent Israeli film critic in a select list of Israeli films. Uri Klein, “Israeli Films Which Every Israeli Film Buff Should Watch,” Haaretz, Gallery, May 1, 2017, http://www.haar​etz. co.il/gall​ery/cin​ema/.prem​ium-1.4058​361. [In Hebrew] 4 See Marc Augé, Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity (London: Verso, 1995). For the role of the liminal space in the rite of passage, see Arnold Van Gennep, The Rites of Passage (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960). 5 Dean MacCannell, The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999). 6 Mattan Aharoni, “Cultural Encounter, Peeling off and Acquiring New Identities in the Film Fictitious Marriage,” Slil: A Digital Magazine for History, Film, and Television 3 (Summer 2009): 51–65. [In Hebrew] 7 Raz Yosef notes that the few cinematic presentations of heterosexual relationships between Israeli Jews and Palestinians in the 1980s involved Jewish men and Palestinian women. See Yosef, Beyond Flesh: Queer Masculinities and Nationalism in Israeli Cinema (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004), 119–20. 8 Kashua adopted his film script from two of his Hebrew novels, Dancing Arabs and Second Person Singular. Sayed Kashua, Dancing Arabs (Ben Shemen: Modan, 2002) [in Hebrew], trans. Miriam Shlesinger (New York: Grove Press, 2004); Sayed Kashua, Second Person Singular (Jerusalem: Keter, 2010), trans. Mitch Ginsburg (New York: Grove Press, 2012). 9 Hana Gonen is the protagonist of Amos Oz’s novel My Michael. Amos Oz, My Michael (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1968) [in Hebrew]. In his pathbreaking Hebrew novel Arabesques, the Palestinian Israeli writer Anton Shammas raises the question regarding the Arab twins’ perspective about the Jewish heroine’s fantasies about them. Anton Shammas, Arabesques (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1986), 76, trans. Vivian Eden (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001). See also Gil Z. Hochberg,



10

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12

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“To Be or Not to Be an Israeli Arab: Sayed Kashua and the Prospect of Minority Speech-Acts,” Comparative Literature 62, no. 1 (2010): 68–88. Although the burial technically involves an identity exchange between a Jew and a Palestinian, I categorize the film as revolving around passing because it more accurately articulates the spirit of the process, in which Yonatan himself does not take an active part, even if his mother collaborated to make it happen. For positive reviews of Borrowed Identity, see Shmulik Duvdevani, “Dancing Arabs: Leave the Populism, Watch the Film,” Ynet, November 30, 2014, http://www. ynet.co.il/artic​les/0,7340,L-4597​476,00.html [In Hebrew]; and Uri Klein, “Why It Is Important to Watch Dancing Arabs,” Haaretz, Gallery, November 27, 2014, https://www.haar​etz.co.il/gall​ery/cin​ema/movie-revi​ews/.prem​ium-1.2496​629 [In Hebrew]. Other critics wrote mixed or negative reviews. See, for example, Shani Kiniso, “Dancing Arabs/A Borrowed Identity: A Review,” Srita, December 6, 2014, http://srita.net/2014/12/06/danci​ng_a​rabs​_rev​iew/ [In Hebrew]; Ofer Libergal, “Without Cipralex: Dancing Arabs/A Borrowed Identity Suffers from Lack of Balance,” Walla, November 27, 2014, http://e.walla.co.il/item/2804​939 [In Hebrew]; and Oron Shamir, “Dancing Arabs: To Dance Between Identities,” Achbar Ha’Ir, November 27, 2014, http://www.mouse.co.il/CM.articl​es_i​tem,519,209,77464,.aspx [In Hebrew]. Social media was filled with negative and hateful responses to the film, triggered partly by its title. See Aviad Kalderon, “Facebook Protest Against the Film ‘Dancing Arabs/A Borrowed Identity,’ ” Walla, November 20, 2014, http://e. walla.co.il/item/2803​598. [In Hebrew] See also the critique by Uri Klein, “AKA Nadia: An Original Idea, a Simplistic and Improbable Plot,” Haaretz, February 14, 2017, https://www.haar​etz.co.il/gall​ery/ cin​ema/movie-revi​ews/.prem​ium-1.3855​675 [In Hebrew]; Hannah Brown, “A Palestinian Woman Lives Life as a Jew in Tova Ascher’s New Film,” Jerusalem Post, February 10, 2017, https://www.jpost.com/isr​ael-news/cult​ure/movie-rev​iew-nad​ ias-dile​mma-481​192; and Dvora Erez, “AKA Nadia: A Palestinian and a Jew in One Character,” Ynet, February 2, 2017, https://www.ynet.co.il/artic​les/0,7340,L-4921​ 409,00.html. [In Hebrew] The film has received positive reviews for its noted sensitivity to cultural differences and its focus on the personal dimensions of the conflict. See, for example, A. O. Scott, “ ‘The Other Son,’ About the Palestinian-Israeli Divide,” New York Times, October 25, 2012, http://www.nyti​mes.com/2012/10/26/MOV​ IES/THE-OTHER-SON-ABOUT-THE-PALE​STIN​IAN-ISRA​ELI-DIV​IDE. HTML?_R=1; Jordan Mintze, “The Other Son (Le Fils de l’autre): Film Review,” Hollywood Reporter, April 19, 2012, http://www.hollyw​oodr​epor​ter.com/rev​iew/ film-other-son-le-fils-de-l-3142​29U; Wesley Morris, “ ‘The Other Son’ Is a Switch from Usual Mideast Melodrama,” Boston Globe, October 25, 2012, http://arch​ive.

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bos​ton.com/ae/mov​ies/2012/10/25/the-other-son-swi​tch-from-usual-mide​astmelodr​ama/dFH​Srlr​4Ncq​cswF​u0EX​NuJ/story.html. 14 Yosef, Beyond Flesh, 133. Yosef makes this observation in reference to the film, ‫נגוע‬ (Nagu’a; Drifting, 1983), directed by Amos Guttman, which portrays a gay Israeli man who offers refuge to two Palestinian fugitives but in return demands to have sex with one of them at a later point. 15 Some critics have praised the artistic qualities and dreamlike framework of Self Made. See Yair Rave, “Self Made,” Cinemascope, April 30, 2015, http://cine​ masc​ope.co.il/archi​ves/20967 [In Hebrew]; Zohar Wagner, “Enigmatic, but Recommended,” Ha’Bama, May 3, 2015, http://www.hab​ama.co.il/Pages/Desc​ ript​ion.aspx?Subj=4&Area=1&Articl​eId=24438 [In Hebrew]. Others have noted Geffen’s excessive use of symbolism and the plot’s lack of coherence as significant weaknesses. See Shmulik Duvdevani, “Self Made: Shira Geffen Is Feverish, and the Screw Becomes Loose,” Ynet, May 4, 2015, http://www.ynet.co.il/artic​ les/0,7340,L-4653​195,00.html [In Hebrew]; Uri Klein, “Shira Geffen Tightens the Screw in the Wrong Place,” Haaretz, May 4, 2015, http://www.haar​etz.co.il/gall​ery/ cin​ema/movie-revi​ews/.prem​ium-1.2628​617 [In Hebrew]. 16 Pablo Utin, The New Israeli Cinema: Conversations with Filmmakers (Tel Aviv: Resling, 2008), 214–19. [In Hebrew] 17 Two examples of the film’s surreal framework and nonlinear elements are the bouquet of red flowers, which a boy delivers to the artist’s home at the beginning of the film and that reappears in a different setting near the end, and the Palestinian’s return to the Ithaca store after being fired earlier, as if she is appearing there for the first time. 18 Gil Hochberg, Visual Occupations: Violence and Visibility in a Conflict Zone (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015), 92; on the visual representations of the checkpoint, see 79–112. 19 Interestingly, this satirical approach to women’s military service is dominant in Israeli female filmmaker Talya Lavie’s debut film Zero Motivation [Efes be-yahasei enosh], released in 2004, the same year as Self Made. 20 The Four Mothers and Women in Black protest movements present two examples of the explicit use of female identity to promote the movements’ political goals. For a more elaborate discussion, see Simona Aharoni, Gender and the Israeli Palestinian Conflict: The Politics of Women’s Resistance (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1995); Sara Helman, “From Soldiering and Motherhood to Citizenship: A Study of Four Israeli Peace Protest Movements,” Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society 6, no. 3 (1999): 292–313. See also Edna Lomsky-Feder and Orna Sasson-Levy, Women Soldiers and Citizenship in Israel: Gendered Encounters with the State (London: Routledge, 2018), 114–16.



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21 Hochberg, “To Be,” 68. 22 On cinematic cross-casting, see Dorit Naaman, “Orientalism as Alterity in Israeli Cinema,” Cinema Journal 40, no. 4 (2001): 46–49; and Ella Shohat, Israeli Cinema: East/West and the Politics of Representation (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989). Carol Bardenstein points out that passing is more easily achievable between those who are placed closer to one another on the identity continuum of European (Ashkenazi) Jews, Middle Eastern (Mizrahi) Jews, Palestinian citizens of Israel, and other Palestinians. Carol Bardenstein, “Cross/Cast: Passing in Israeli and Palestinian Cinema,” in Palestine, Israel, and the Politics of Popular Culture, eds. Rebecca L. Stein and Tel Swendburg (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005), 100–4. Fictitious Marriage follows these norms, casting an Israeli-Arab actor, Adib Jahschan, as a Palestinian from the Occupied Territories and the Mizrahi comedian Eli Yatzpan in the role of an Israeli-Arab bellboy. 23 Naaman, “Orientalism as Alterity,” 49–51. See also Anat Preminger, “The Arab Other in Israeli Cinema and Discourse,” Journalism and Mass Communication 2, no. 2 (2012): 412–20. 24 According to the film’s producer, the director and the scriptwriter conducted interviews and research to learn about the experiences of gay Palestinians in their home communities and in Israel. He further acknowledges that they expected the film to be more favorably received abroad than in Israel, with the exception of Tel Aviv, given its focus on a gay Palestinian man. The film was ignored by the prestigious Israeli Ophir awards but received (along with another film) the Haifa Film Festival’s 2012 award. See Ina Shender, “Light in the Darkness,” Beit Avi Chai, April 30, 2013, http://www.bac.org.il/soci​ety/arti​cle/avr-baal​tha [In Hebrew]; and Orr Sigoli, “Out in the Dark: This Year’s Discovery of Israeli Cinema,” Achbar Ha’Ir, March 2, 2013, http://www.mouse.co.il/CM.articl​es_i​tem,519,209,72478,. aspx [In Hebrew]. For negative reviews of the film, see Shmulik Duvdevani, “Out in the Dark: The Conquerors Cry at Night,” Ynet, March 1, 2023, http://www.ynet. co.il/artic​les/0,7340,L-4350​664,00.html [In Hebrew]; and Uri Klein, “Remains in the Dark,” Haaretz, March 10, 2013, http://www.haar​etz.co.il/gall​ery/cin​ema/ movie-revi​ews/.prem​ium-1.1958​337 [In Hebrew]. By contrast, a review published abroad by a non-Israeli praised the balanced perspective of the film. See David Rooney, “Out in the Dark: Toronto Review,” Hollywood Reporter, September 19, 2012, http://www.hollyw​oodr​epor​ter.com/rev​iew/dark-toro​nto-rev​iew-film-festi​ val-371​707. 25 Naaman, “Orientalism as Alterity,” 49; Aharoni, “Cultural Encounter,” 56–7; Bardenstein, “Cross/Cast,” 111. 26 See also Hochberg’s observations about Sayed Kashua’s writing as aiming to expose the limits of passing and masquerade. Hochberg, “To Be,” 69–70.

226

Reel Gender

Bibliography Aharoni, Mattan. “Cultural Encounter, Peeling off and Acquiring New Identities in the Film Fictitious Marriage.” Slil: A Digital Magazine for History, Film, and Television 3 (Summer 2009): 51–65. [In Hebrew] Aharoni, Simona. Gender and the Israeli Palestinian Conflict: The Politics of Women’s Resistance. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1995. Augé, Marc. Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. London: Verso, 1995. Bardenstein, Carol. “Cross/Cast: Passing in Israeli and Palestinian Cinema.” In Palestine, Israel, and the Politics of Popular Culture, edited by Rebecca L. Stein and Tel Swendburg, 99–125. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005. Brown, Hannah. “A Palestinian Woman Lives Life as a Jew in Tova Ascher’s New Film.” Jerusalem Post, February 10, 2017. Available online: https://www.jpost.com/isr​ ael-news/cult​ure/movie-rev​iew-nad​ias-dile​mma-481​192 (accessed August 3, 2020). Duvdevani, Shmulik. “Dancing Arabs: Leave the Populism, Watch the Film.” Ynet, November 30, 2014. Available online: http://www.ynet.co.il/artic​les/0,7340,L-4597​ 476,00.html (accessed July 18, 2020). [In Hebrew] Duvdevani, Shmulik. “Out in the Dark: The Conquerors Cry at Night.” Ynet, March 1, 2013. Available online: http://www.ynet.co.il/artic​les/0,7340,L-4350​664,00.html (accessed December 28, 2020). [In Hebrew] Duvdevani, Shmulik. “Self Made: Shira Geffen Is Feverish, and the Screw Becomes Loose.” Ynet, May 4, 2015. Available online: http://www.ynet.co.il/artic​ les/0,7340,L-4653​195,00.html (accessed July 31, 2020). [In Hebrew] Erez, Dvora. “AKA Nadia: A Palestinian and a Jew in One Character.” Ynet, February 2, 2017. Available online https://www.ynet.co.il/artic​les/0,7340,L-4921​409,00.html (accessed August 3, 2020). [In Hebrew] Helman, Sara. “From Soldiering and Motherhood to Citizenship: A Study of Four Israeli Peace Protest Movements.” Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society, 6, no. 3 (1999): 292–313. Hochberg, Gil Z. “To Be or Not to Be an Israeli Arab: Sayed Kashua and the Prospect of Minority Speech-Acts.” Comparative Literature 62, no. 1 (2010): 68–88. Hochberg, Gil Z. Visual Occupations: Violence and Visibility in a Conflict Zone. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015. Kalderon, Aviad. “Facebook Protest against the Film ‘Dancing Arabs/A Borrowed Identity.’ ” Walla, November 20, 2014. Available online: http://e.walla.co.il/item/2803​ 598 (accessed July 18, 2020). [In Hebrew] Kashua, Sayed. Dancing Arabs. Ben Shemen: Modan, 2002 [in Hebrew]. Translated by Miriam Shlesinger. New York: Grove Press, 2004.



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Kashua, Sayed. Second Person Singular. Jerusalem: Keter, 2010 [In Hebrew]. Translated by Mitch Ginsburg. New York: Grove Press, 2012. Kimmerling, Baruch. Immigrants, Settlers, Natives: The Israeli State and Society Between Cultural Pluralism and Cultural Wars. Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2004. [In Hebrew] Kiniso, Shani. “Dancing Arabs/A Borrowed Identity: A Review.” Srita, December 6, 2014. Available online: http://srita.net/2014/12/06/danci​ng_a​rabs​_rev​iew/ (accessed July 18, 2020). [In Hebrew] Klein, Uri. “AKA Nadia: An Original Idea, a Simplistic and Improbable Plot.” Haaretz, February 14, 2017. Available online: https://www.haar​etz.co.il/gall​ery/cin​ema/ movie-revi​ews/.prem​ium-1.3855​675 (accessed August 3, 2020). [In Hebrew] Klein, Uri. “Israeli Films Which Every Israeli Film Buff Should Watch.” Haaretz, Gallery, May 1, 2017. Available online: http://www.haar​etz.co.il/gall​ery/cin​ema/.prem​ ium-1.4058​361 (accessed August 8, 2020). [In Hebrew] Klein, Uri. “Remains in the Dark.” Haaretz, March 10, 2013. Available online: http:// www.haar​etz.co.il/gall​ery/cin​ema/movie-revi​ews/.prem​ium-1.1958​337 (accessed December 28, 2020). [In Hebrew] Klein, Uri. “Shira Geffen Tightens the Screw in the Wrong Place.” Haaretz, May 4, 2015. Available online: http://www.haar​etz.co.il/gall​ery/cin​ema/movie-revi​ews/.prem​ ium-1.2628​617 (accessed July 31, 2020). [In Hebrew] Klein, Uri. “Why It Is Important to Watch Dancing Arabs.” Haaretz, Gallery, November 27, 2014. Available online: https://www.haar​etz.co.il/gall​ery/cin​ema/movie-revi​ews/. prem​ium-1.2496​629 (accessed July 18, 2020). [In Hebrew] Libergal, Ofer. “Without Cipralex: Dancing Arabs/A Borrowed Identity Suffers from Lack of Balance.” Walla, November 27, 2014. http://e.walla.co.il/item/2804​939 (accessed July 18, 2020). [In Hebrew] Lomsky-Feder, Edna, and Orna Sasson-Levy. Women Soldiers and Citizenship in Israel: Gendered Encounters with the State. London: Routledge, 2018. MacCannell, Dean. The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Mintze, Jordan. “The Other Son (Le fils de l’autre): Film Review.” Hollywood Reporter, April 19, 2012. Available online: http://www.hollyw​oodr​epor​ter.com/rev​iew/fil m-other-son-le-fils-de-l-3142​29U (accessed June 12, 2020). Morris, Wesley. “ ‘The Other Son’ Is a Switch from Usual Mideast Melodrama.” Boston Globe, October 25, 2012. Available online: http://arch​ive.bos​ton.com/ae/mov​ ies/2012/10/25/the-other-son-swi​tch-from-usual-mide​ast-melodr​ama/dFH​Srlr​4Ncq​ cswF​u0EX​NuJ/story.html (accessed June 12, 2020). Naaman, Dorit. “Orientalism as Alterity in Israeli Cinema.” Cinema Journal 40, no. 4 (2001): 46–9. Oz, Amos. My Michael. Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1968. [In Hebrew]

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Preminger, Anat. “The Arab Other in Israeli Cinema and Discourse.” Journalism and Mass Communication 2, no. 2 (2012): 412–20. Rave, Yair. “Self Made.” Cinemascope, April 30, 2015. Available online: http://cine​masc​ ope.co.il/archi​ves/20967 (accessed June 12, 2020). [In Hebrew] Rooney, David. “Out in the Dark: Toronto Review.” Hollywood Reporter, September 19, 2012. Available online: http://www.hollyw​oodr​epor​ter.com/rev​iew/dark-toro​nto-rev​ iew-film-festi​val-371​707 (accessed December 28, 2020). Rouhana, Nadim N. Palestinian Citizens in a Jewish Ethnic State: Identities in Conflict. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997. Rouhana, Nadim N., ed. Israel and Its Palestinian Citizens: Ethnic Privileges in the Jewish State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Scott, A. O. “ ‘The Other Son,’ About the Palestinian-Israeli Divide.” New York Times, October 25, 2012. Available online: http://www.nyti​mes.com/2012/10/26/MOV​IES/ THE-OTHER-SON-ABOUT-THE-PALE​STIN​IAN-ISRA​ELI-DIV​IDE.HTML?_R=1 (accessed June 12, 2020). Shamir, Oron. “Dancing Arabs: To Dance Between Identities.” Achbar Ha’Ir, November 27, 2014. Avaialable online: http://www.mouse.co.il/CM.articl​es_i​ tem,519,209,77464,.aspx (accessed July 18, 2020). [In Hebrew] Shammas, Anton. Arabesques. Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1986. Translated by Vivian Eden. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. Shender, Ina. “Light in the Darkness.” Beit Avi Chai, April 30, 2013. Available online: http://www.bac.org.il/soci​ety/arti​cle/avr-baal​tha (accessed July 18, 2020). [In Hebrew] Shenhav, Yehouda. The Arab Jews: A Postcolonial Reading of Nationalism, Religion and Ethnicity. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006. Shenhav, Yehouda, and Hannan Hever. “‘Arab Jews’ After Structuralism: Zionist Discourse and the (De)formation of an Ethnic Identity.” Social Identities 18, no. 1 (2011): 101–18. Sigoli, Orr. “Out the Dark: This Year’s Discovery of Israeli Cinema.” Achbar Ha’Ir, March 2, 2013. Available online: http://www.mouse.co.il/CM.articl​es_i​tem,519,209,72478,. aspx (accessed July 18, 2020). [in Hebrew] Shohat, Ella. Israeli Cinema: East/West and the Politics of Representation. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989. Utin, Pablo. The New Israeli Cinema: Conversations with Filmmakers. Tel Aviv: Resling, 2008. [In Hebrew] Van Gennep, Arnold. The Rites of Passage. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960. Wagner, Zohar. “Enigmatic, but Recommended.” Ha’Bama, May 3, 2015. Available online: http://www.hab​ama.co.il/Pages/Desc​ript​ion.aspx?Subj=4&Area=1&Articl​ eId=24438 (accessed July 31, 2020). [In Hebrew] Yosef, Raz. Beyond Flesh: Queer Masculinities and Nationalism in Israeli Cinema. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004.



Representations of Israeli Jews and Palestinians

Zerubavel, Yael. “Memory, the Rebirth of the Native, and the ‘Hebrew Bedouin’ Identity.” Social Research 75, no. 1 (Spring 2008): 315–52. Zerubavel, Yael. “The Mythological Sabra and Jewish Past: Trauma, Memory, and Contested Identities.” Israel Studies 7, no. 2 (Summer 2002): 115–44.

229

230

Filmography Abbas, Laila: ‫( خمس فناجين وفنجان‬Khams Fanajeen wa Finjaan; Five Cups and a Cup; 2011) Abu Eid, Areej: ‫( إنفصال‬Infisaal; Separation; 2012) Al-Ghazali, Riham: ‫( مادلين‬Madleen; 2011) Alderman, Naomi: Disobedience (2017) Al-Mansour, Haifaa: ‫( وجدة‬Wadjda; 2012) Al-Mansour, Haifaa: ‫( المرشحة المثالية‬Al-Murashahat Al-Mathalia; The Perfect Candidate; 2019) Anger, Kenneth: Scorpio Rising (1963) Arraf, Suha: ‫( نساء حماس‬Nisaa Hamas; Women of Hamas; 2010) Arraf, Suha: ‫( فيال توما‬Fila Tuma; Villa Touma; 2014) Asher, Tova: ‫ שם זמני‬,‫( נדיה‬Nadia, Shem Zmani; A.K.A. Nadia; 2015) Badr, Liana: ‫( زفاف رنا‬Zifaf Rana; Rana’s Wedding; 2002) Ben-Dov, Ya’acov: ‫( יהודה המשוחררת‬Yehuda Ha-Meshuchreret; Judea Liberated; 2018) Bouzaglo, Haim: ‫( נישואים פיקטיביים‬Nisuim Fictiviim; Fictitious Marriage; 1988) Burshtein, Rama: ‫( למלא את החלל‬Le-Maleh et Ha-Halal; Fill the Void; 2012) Burshtein, Rama: ‫( לעבור את הקיר‬La-Avor et Ha-Kir; The Wedding Plan; 2016) Dekel, Ayelet: ‫( לאהבה ביי ביי‬Bye Bye Le-Ahava; Bye Bye Love; 2006) Dickinson, Thorold: ‫ עונה אינה‬24 ‫( גבעה‬Giv’a Essrim-Ve-Arbah Eina Ona; Hill 24 Doesn’t Answer; 1955) Dor, Gidi and Rand, Shuli: ‫( אושפיזין‬Ushpizin; 2004) Elon, Ori and Indursky, Yehonatan: ‫( ׁשטיסל‬Shtisel; 2013) Elon, Ori and Indurksy, Yehonatan: ‫( אוטונומיאות‬Autonomiot; Autonomies; 2018) Fox, Eytan: ‫( הבועה‬Ha-Buah; The Bubble; 2006) Geffen, Shira: ‫( מדוזות‬Meduzot; Jellyfish; 2007) Geffen, Shira: ‫( בורג‬Boreg; Self Made; 2014) Gitai, Amos: ‫( קדוש‬Kadosh; 1999) Golan, Menahem: ‫( קזבלן‬Casablan; 1973) Habiby, Emile: ‫( سرايا بنت الغول‬Sarayah Bint Al-Ghoul; Sarayah, the Ghoul’s Daughter) Haj, Maha: ‫( أُمور شخصيَّة‬Omor Shakhsiya; Personal Affairs; 2016) Hamoud, Maysaloun: In Between (Bar Bahar‫ ; بَر بَ َحر‬Lo Po, Lo Sham ‫ לא שם‬,‫ ;לא פה‬2016) Hassan, Nizar: ‫( ياسمين‬Jasmine; 1996) Hawa, Kassem: ‫( عائد إلى حيفا‬A-Idula-Haifa; Return(ing) to Haifa) Jacir, Annemarie: ‫( ملح هذا البحر‬Milh Hada Al-Bahr; Salt of This Sea; 2008) Jacir, Annemarie: ‫( لما شفتك‬Lamma Shoftak; When I Saw You; 2012) Jacir, Annemarie: ‫( واجب‬Wajib; Duty; 2017)

232 Filmography Khleifi, Michel: ‫( الذاكرة الخصبة‬Al-Dhakira Al-Khasiba; Fertile Memory; 1980) Khleifi, Michel: ‫( عرس الجليل‬Urs Al-Jalil; Wedding in Galilee; 1987) Khoury, Buthaina: ‫( نساء في صراع‬Nisaa fi Siraa; Women in Struggle; 2004) Khoury, Buthaina: ‫( مغارة ماريا‬Mgharat Maria; Maria’s Grotto; 2007) Landsmann, Avi: ‫( בגרות לוחמים‬Bagrut Lochamim; Soldier/Citizen; 2012) Landsmann, Silvina: ‫( הוטליין‬Hotline; 2015) Lavie, Talya: ‫( אפס ביחסי אנוש‬Efes Beyahasei Enosh; Zero Motivation; 2014) Lévy, Lorraine: Le fils de l’autre (The Other Son; 2012) Manna, Jumana: ‫( مبارك مبارك النسيان‬Mbarak Mbarak Alnisyaan; Blessed, Blessed Oblivion; 2010) Mara’ana-Menuhin, Ebtisam: ‫ الفردوس المفقود‬،‫( الفريديس‬Al-Fureidis, Al-Firdus Al-Mafqud; Paradise Lost; 2003) Mara’ana-Menuhin, Ebtisam: ‫( الجسر‬Al-Jisr; The Bridge; 2004) Mara’ana-Menuhin, Ebtisam: ‫( بدل‬Badal; Exchange Marriage; 2006) Mara’ana-Menuhin, Ebtisam: ‫( غرفة في تل أبيب‬Ghurfa Fi Tal-Abib; A Room in Tel Aviv; 2007) Mara’ana-Menuhin, Ebtisam: ‫( طالق بالثالث‬Taliq Bi-Althalath; Three Times Divorced; 2007) Mara’ana-Menuhin, Ebtisam: ‫( ليدي كل العرب‬Lady Kul Al-Arab; Lady of All Arabs; 2008) Mara’ana-Menuhin, Ebtisam: 77 ‫( درجة‬77 Daraja; 77 Steps; 2010) Mara’ana-Menuhin, Ebtisam: ‫ أنا عربي‬،‫( سجل‬Sajil, Ana Arabi; Write Down, I Am an Arab; 2014) Mara’ana-Menuhin, Ebtisam: ‫( بال مؤاخذة‬Bila Mu-Akhadha; You Cannot Ask That; 2019) Masri, May: 3000 ‫( ليلة‬Thalat Alaf Layal; 3000 Nights; 2015) Mayer, Michael: ‫( עלטה‬Alatah; Out in the Dark; 2012) Mograbi, Avi: (…‫( אוגוסט (רגע לפני‬Ogust (Rega Lifnei) …); August: A Moment Before the Eruption; 2002) Mograbi, Avi: ‫( נקם אחת משתי עיני‬Nekam Achat Mishtey Eynay; Avenge but One of My Two Eyes; 2005) Mograbi, Avi: ‫( בין גדרות‬Bein Gderot; Between Fences; 2016) Nesher, Avi: ‫( הסודות‬Ha’Sodot; The Secrets; 2007) Nesher, Avi: ‫( סיפור אחר‬Sipur Acher; The Other Story; 2019) Ninio, Ronnie and Kapon, Shai: ‫( עבודה ערבית‬Avoda Aravit; Arab Work; 2007–2012) Perlstein, Dina: ‫ילדתי‬ ‫על‬ ‫( שמור‬Shmor Al-Yaldati; Watch Over Her; 2010) Riklis, Eran: ‫ זהות שאולה‬,‫( ערבים רוקדים‬Aravim Rokdim, Zehut She-Ula; A Borrowed Identity; 2014) Rothschild, Brad: African Exodus (2014) Salaheldin, Fadya: ‫( هيك القانون‬Hayk Alqanoon; This Is Law; 2012) Schrader, Maria: Unorthodox (2020) Shayo, Keren: ‫( כופר נפש‬Kofer Nefesh; Sound of Torture; 2013) Suleiman, Elia: ‫( سجل اختفاء‬Sijil Ikhtifa’; Chronicle of a Disappearance; 1996) Suleiman, Elia: ‫( يد إلهية‬Yadon Ilaheya; Divine Intervention; 2002)

Filmography

233

Suleiman, Elia: ‫( يد إلهية‬Yadon Ilahiyya) Suleiman, Elia: ‫( الزمن الباقي‬Al-Zaman Al-Baqi; The Time That Remains; 2009) Suleiman, Elia: ‫‘( إن شئت كما في السماء‬Inn Shi’it Kama fi Al-Sama; It Must Be Heaven; 2019) Tarachansky, Lia and Freeston, Jesse: Ethnocracy in the Promised Land: Israel’s African Refugees (2015) Yedaya, Keren: ‫( אור האוצר שלי‬Or Ha-Ozar Sheli; Or My Treasure; 2004) Ziv, Ra’anan: ‫( לב טהור‬Lev Tahor; Pure Heart; 2007) Zohar, Uri: ‫( חור בלבנה‬Hor B-Levanah); Hole in the Moon; 1965) Zuria, Anat: ‫( מקודשת‬Mekudeshet; Sentenced to Marriage; 2004)

Contributors Sa’ed Atshan, Emory University, USA Anna Ball, Nottingham Trent University, UK Greg Burris, American University of Beirut, Lebanon Katharina Galor, Brown University, USA Shai Ginsburg, Duke University, USA Gil Hochberg, Columbia University, USA Kamran Rastegar, Tufts University, USA Lema M. Salem, independent scholar Karen E. H. Skinazi, University of Bristol, UK Yael Zerubavel, Rutgers University, USA

Index 3000 Leila; 3000 Nights (Masri) 99 n.7 Abbas, Laila Khams Fanajeen Wa Finjaan; Five Cups and a Cup 74–6 Abdulhaq, Najat 13 Abu-Lughod, Lila 34, 61 Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film 30 Adham-Abdo, Babikir Ali 148 Africa/Africans anti-African bigotry 154 anti-African protesters/hatred 148, 150 asylum-seekers 148–9, 164 n.38 infiltrators 155 Israeli colonization 152 performers 156–7 presence in Israel 149 refugees 147, 149–50, 152–4, 157–9 Uganda Plan 151 African Exodus (Rothschild) 149–50, 161 n.151 Ahava Colombianit; Columbian Love (Kanot) 99 n.1 Ahmed, Leila 34 Ahmed, Riz 41 A-Idula-Haifa; Return(ing) to Haifa (Hawa) 8 Alata; Out in the Dark (Mayer) 13–14, 198, 210–12, 218, 220–1 Alderman, Naomi Disobedience 41 Al-Dhakira Al-Khasiba; Fertile Memory (Khleifi) 9 Al-Faqeeh, Kholoud 76 Al-Fureidis, Al-Firdus Al-Mafqud; Paradise Lost (Mara’ana-Menuhin) 50, 173–5, 178–80, 188 Al-Ghazali, Riham Madleen 72–3 Al-Jisr; The Bridge (Mara’ana-Menuhin) 178 Allama, Ragheb 117

Al-Mansour, Haifaa Al-Murashahat Al-Mathalia; The Perfect Candidate 31 Wadjda 30–1 Alon, Chen 156 Al-Qiyada Al-Muwhhada 140 n.10 Al-Zaman Al-Baqi; The Time That Remains (Suleiman) 99 n.4, 111, 120 American New Hollywood 6 Amireh, Amal 112 Anderson, Joyce Rain 114 Arabesques (Oz) 222 n.9 Arab-Israeli War of June 1967 8 Arab Muslim 49, 76 aristocratic Christian family 10, 84, 90, 92 Arraf, Suha 86, 96, 102 n.37 Fila Tuma; Villa Touma 10, 21 n.35, 50, 83–6, 90–6, 97–8 Nsaa Hamas; Women of Hamas 97 Villa Touma 50 Asher, Tova Nadia, Shem Zmani; A.K.A. Nadia 198, 205–6, 217–20 Ashkenazi Jew 6 Ashkenazim 11 Atshan, Sa’ed 13 Augustin, Ebba Palestinian Women: Identity and Experience 77 n.8 Austen, Jane 30, 51 n.2 Pride and Prejudice 35 Autonomiot; Autonomies (Elon and Indurksy) 42, 49 Avishai, Orit 33 Avoda Aravit; Arab Work (Kapon) 202 Ayuha Al-Marun Bayn Al-Kalimat Al-Abira; Those Who Pass Between Fleeting Words (Darwish) 191 badal 180–2 Badal (Mara’ana-Menuhin) 180–1

236 Index Badr, Liana Zifaf Rana; Rana’s Wedding 10 Bagrut Lochamim; Soldier/Citizen (Landsmann) 153 Bakri, Mohammad 87 Bakri, Saleh 87 Ball, Anna 50, 112, 119 Bar, Sendi 54 n.31 Bar Bahar; In Between (Hamoud) 1–2, 10, 32 Bardenstein, Carol 225 n.22 Barthes, Roland Empire of Signs 118 Basir, Rawda 67–9 Bathish, Raji Giborey Tarbut; Cultural Heroes 185 Beauvoir, Simone de The Second Sex 52 n.8 Bechdel, Alison 41 Bechdel Test 41 Bein Gderot; Between Fences (Mograbi) 149–50, 153, 156–9, 165 n.40, 165 n.43 Ben-Ari, Michael 148 Ben-Dov, Ya’acov Yehuda Ha-Meshuchreret; Judea Liberated 5 Bergner, Gwen 115 Bewes, Timothy 74 Beyond Flesh (Yosef) 224 n.14 Be-Zdei Ha-Derech; On the Side of the Road (Tarachansky) 165 n.41 Bhabha, Homi 97 Bila Mu-Akhadha; You Cannot Ask That (Mara’ana-Menuhin) 177 Birthing the Nation: Strategies of Palestinian Women in Israel (Kanaaneh) 98 n.1 bisexual relationships 6 Bitaqat Al-Huya; Identity Card (Darwish) 173 Black Israeli-Palestinian-Arabs 177 Black Mirror 42 Black Panther Party 147 Boreg; Self Made (Geffen) 198, 212, 214, 216, 218–19 Bourdieu, Pierre 63 Bourekas films 5 Bouzaglo, Haim Nisuim Fictiviim; Fictitious Marriage 198–200, 204, 217, 219

Boyarin, Daniel 162 n.23 Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement 17 n.6 Breaking through the Lens (initiative) 21 n.37 Brown, Wendy 149–50, 165 n.43 Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island 13 Burris, Greg The Palestinian Idea: Film, Media, and the Radical Imagination 16 n.3 Burshtein, Rama 29–51 about 29 Haredi women in film 41–4 La-Avor et Ha-Kir; The Wedding Plan 30–1, 33, 35–6, 40, 43, 49 Le-Maleh et Ha-Halal; Fill the Void 29–34, 36–8, 40, 44, 46, 50, 54 n.27 marriage plot 34–41 religious feminist 44–8 transcultural feminist solidarity 48–51 Butler, Judith Gender Trouble 92 Bye Bye Le-Ahava; Bye Bye Love (Dekel) 35 Cabral, Amílcar 151 Canada 161 n.15, 189 Carty-Williams, Candice Queenie 53 n.12 Carver, Raymond 117–18 Casablan (Golan) 6, 18 n.15 certain uncertainty 115–16 Chamarette, Jenny 120–1 Christian-European 5, 18 n.11 Chyutin, Dan 16 n.3, 45, 54 n.27 Cinema Law 12, 21 n.34 cinema of transgression (Palestine) 57–77 Mgharat Maria; Maria’s Grotto 61–6 Nisaa Fi-Siraa; Women in Struggle 66–76 cinematic representations 3 cross-casting 225 n.22 culture cinematic 10 exchange 15 gay leather 134

Index Haredi 33, 49 hypermasculine 128 Israeli Jewish 197 Israeli queer 19 n.17 Jewish 51 n.4, 53 n.22 Palestinian 99 n.44, 114, 131, 137 patriarchal 182, 217 phallocentric 45 production 3, 14–16, 57, 149, 174 thug 131, 134, 138 Daraja; 77 Steps (Mara’anaMenuhin) 188–90 Darfur 147–8 Darwish, Mahmoud 190 Ayuha Al-Marun Bayn Al-Kalimat Al-Abira; Those Who Pass Between Fleeting Words 191 Bitaqat Al-Huya; Identity Card 173 Dayan, Dror 166 n.47 Dekel, Ayelet Bye Bye Le-Ahava; Bye Bye Love 35 Deleuze, Gilles 178 Diasporic Jew 5 Dickinson, Thorold Giv’a Essrim-Ve-Arbah Eina Ona; Hill 24 Doesn’t Answer 5 Disobedience (Alderman) 41 docu-drama 4 docu-fiction 4 documentary 4, 149, 156 ethnographic 134, 138 fiction and 59 narrative and 177 domestic violence 1, 69, 71–2 Dor, Gidi Ushpizin 40, 42 Dushi, Nava 42 East Jerusalem 130–1, 134–6, 139, 185, 205 economic migrants 147 Efes Beyahasei Enosh; Zero Motivation (Lavie) 7 Egypt 39, 100 n.11, 118, 133, 137, 147 Eid, Areej Abu Infisaal; Separation 69–72 Elkabetz, Ronit

237

Get: Ha-Mishpat Shel Vivian Amsalem; Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem 99 n.1 Elkabetz, Shlomi 1 Get: Ha-Mishpat Shel Vivian Amsalem; Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem 99 n.1 Ellison, Ralph Invisible Man 120 Elon, Ori Autonomiot; Autonomies 42, 49 Shtisel 35 Empire of Signs (Barthes) 118 Enav, Zalman 152 “epoch of silence” 8 Eritrea/Eritrean 147–8, 150 Esty, Hasidic 54 n.24 Unorthodox 41 ethical impassivity 114, 120–3 Ethiopia 152 Ethiopian Jewish 147 ethnic communities 2 Ethnocracy in the Promised Land: Israel’s African Refugees (Tarachansky) 149, 161 n.15, 165 n.41 Europe 6, 13, 150 cinema 9 colonists 151 directors in 9 Jews 150 masculinity 87 pageants 187 familial feminism 96–8. See also feminism Fanon, Frantz Black Skins, White Masks 115 feminine aesthetics 113–14 femininity 61, 71, 129 arts of 93 aunts’ performances of 92 and masculinity 65–6, 112, 129 modern-day 91 Palestinian 92, 112, 124 feminism (Al-Nasawiyya) 2, 76, 101 n.37, 155, 164 n.39 colonial 34 familial 96–8 intersectional 34

238 Index liberal 33 organizations 50 secular vision of 44 Western 50 feminist critiques 33, 112 discourses 4 film 4, 15, 42 Jewish artist 214 and queer films 3 religious 44–8 transcultural solidarity 48–51 transnational 102 n.37 working women 75 feminized land 101 n.25 Fernbach, David How I Stopped Being a Jew 166 n.46 fiction 4, 42, 74, 111, 198 fida’i (resistance fighter) 119 Fila Tuma; Villa Touma (Arraf) 10, 21 n.35, 50, 83–6, 90–6, 97–8 Foster, Alana 129 Four Mothers and Women in Black protest movement 224 n.20 Fox, Eytan Ha-Buah; The Bubble 6 Freeston, Jesse Ethnocracy in the Promised Land: Israel’s African Refugees 149 Freiland (Hertzka) 151 French New Wave 6 Galor, Katharina 13 Gamal, Ahmed 91 Garden of Eden 175 gay Palestinians 218, 225 n.24. See also Palestine Gaza Strip 57–8, 69, 71–2, 100 n.11 Gaza War 6, 17 n.3 Geffen, Shira Boreg; Self Made 198, 212, 214, 216, 218–19 Meduzot; Jellyfish 216 gender/gendering analyses 5 binaries 112, 119, 134 cinematic narrative 9 conflicts 73

critique 102 n.37 dynamics 60, 150 economy 128 expectations 113 hierarchies 150, 153 identity 112 inequalities 52 n.8 Israeli film 5–7, 12, 16 and masculinity 15, 114 normativity 112 orientation 198 Palestinian film 7–10, 12, 16 positionalities 97 relations 112 segregation 45 and sexuality 1–4 theory 3 Gender Trouble (Butler) 92 Genem, Suaad 175–6 Gentleman’s Agreement (Kazan) 204 Gertz, Nurith 54 n.36, 86 Palestinian Cinema: Landscape, Trauma, and Memory 8, 16 n.3, 99 n.4 Gesher Fund 12 Get: Ha-Mishpat Shel Vivian Amsalem; Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem (Elkabetz and Elkabetz) 99 n.1 Ghurfa Fi Tal-Abib; A Room in Tel Aviv (Mara’ana-Menuhin) 185 Giborey Tarbut; Cultural Heroes (Bathish) 185 Ginsberg, Terri Visualizing the Palestinian Struggle: Towards a Critical Analytic of Palestine Solidarity Film 17 n.3 Ginsburg, Shai 40, 166 n.44 Gitai, Amos 44 Kadosh 42, 45 Giv’a Essrim-Ve-Arbah Eina Ona; Hill 24 Doesn’t Answer (Dickinson) 5 Globus, Yoram 162 n.22 Golan, Menahem 5, 162 n.22 Casablan 6, 18 n.15 Gonen, Hana 203, 222 n.9 Grainge, Paul Memory and Popular Film 68 Grech, Joyoti 66 group movies 5

Index The Guardian 51 n.2 Guattari, Félix 178 Gubele, Rose 114 Gulf War 203 Guttman, Amos Nagu’a; Drifting 224 n.14 Guy-Blaché, Alice 4 Haaretz 191 Habiby, Emile Sarayah Bint Al-Ghoul; Sarayah, the Ghoul’s Daughter 90 Ha-Buah; The Bubble (Fox) 6 Hage, Ghassan 149 Haj, Maha Omor Shakhsiya; Personal Affairs 13– 14, 99 n.7 Halberstam, Jack 98 Hamoud, Maysaloun In Between 1–2 Bar Bahar; In Between 1–2, 10, 32 Haredi cinema 6 community 37 lifestyle 43 women/womanhood 29–30, 38– 44, 49–50 Harris, Rachel S. 42, 45, 47 Warriors, Witches, Whores 54 n.24 Hasidism 29 Ha-Sodot; The Secrets (Nesher) 43 Hassan, Nizar Jasmine 9 Hatikva, South Tel Aviv 148 Hatuna Meuheret; Late Marriage (Koshashvili) 99 n.1 Hawa, Kassem A-Idula-Haifa; Return(ing) to Haifa 8 Hayk Alqanoon; This Is Law (Salaheldin) 76 Hebrews 5, 157, 159, 178, 188, 190–1, 197, 202 Hertzka, Theodor Freiland 151 Herzl, Theodor 151, 162 n.22–3, 162 n.25 Old New Land 163 n.30 Herzlian Zionism 162 n.23 heterosexual relationships 222 n.7 Hezbollah 157

Holocaust 5, 18 n.14, 147, 149 Holot Detention Center, Negev Desert 147 Holt, Maria 129 honor killing 61–3, 65 hooks, bell 165 n.43 Hor B-Levanah; Hole in the Moon (Zohar) 6 Hotline (Landsmann) 149–50, 153–5 Hotline for Refugees and Migrants (nonprofit organization) 153 House of Zion 147–59 hypermasculinity 5, 128, 130–1, 139 Ibrahim, Sonallah 117–18 identity changes 197–8, 200, 202, 206–7, 209, 217–20 exchange 197, 207–17, 223 n.10 politics 189, 197 Indurksy, Yehonatan Autonomiot; Autonomies 42, 49 Indursky, Yehonatan Shtisel 35 inequality collective struggle 165 n.43 and oppression 50 and power 3 infiltrators (Mistanenim) 147 ‘Inn Shi-it Kama Fi Al-Sama; It Must Be Heaven (Suleiman) 111 intersectionality 14, 150, 161 n.19 interstitial relations in women’s cinema 83–98 failure 96–8 family 86–90 unmarried 90–6 Invisible Man (Ellison) 120 Islamic Movement in Israel 52 n.10 Israel 1954 Anti-Infiltration Act 153 African refugees in 147 cinema 98 n.1 colonization 152 culture 197 film/cinema 1–7, 10, 12–13 filmmaker 13 gay cultural visibility 6

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240 Index Israel Defense Forces 148, 208 Israeli Jews 158, 175, 177, 197, 207–17, 222 n.7 materialism 199 occupation 85 politicians 4 power asymmetries between Palestinians 15 provincialism 199 societies 5, 7 supremacist hierarchies 149 women filmmakers 3 Israel Film Council 12 Israel Film Fund 12–14 Israeli Cinema: East/West and the Politics of Representation (Shohat) 16 n.3 Israeli Cinema: Identities in Motion (Peleg and Talmon) 16 n.3 Israeli Haredi 34, 51 n.2 Israeli-Palestinian 13 love affair 14 politics 11 relations 14 society 2 Israeli-Palestinian Arab 173, 176, 185 Italian neorealism 6 Ivory Coast 152 Jacir, Annemarie 85–6, 97, 102 n.37, 165 n.42 Lamma Shoftak; When I Saw You 31 Milh Hada Al-Bahr; Salt of This Sea 96 Wajib; Duty 83–4, 86–90 Jaffa 8 Jasmine (Hassan) 9 Jean, Louis 4 Jerusalem 8, 116, 199 Jisr Az-Zarqa 178–9 Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 52 n.10 Judaism 48, 178 Junka-Aikio, Laura 113 Kadosh (Gitai) 42, 45 Kamin, Debra 30 Kanaaneh, Rhoda Ann Birthing the Nation: Strategies of Palestinian Women in Israel 98 n.1 Kanot, Shay

Ahava Colombianit (Columbian Love) 99 n.1 Kapon, Shai Avoda Aravit; Arab Work 202 Kashua, Sayed 198, 225 n.26 Katz, S. H. 64 Kazan, Elia Gentleman’s Agreement 204 Kenya 151 Keret, Etgar 216 Khaddash, Ziad 185–6 Khalidi, Rashid 88 Khams Fanajeen Wa Finjaan; Five Cups and a Cup (Abbas) 74–6 Khleifi, George 86 Palestinian Cinema: Landscape, Trauma, and Memory 8, 16 n.3, 99 n.4 Khleifi, Michel Al-Dhakira Al-Khasiba; Fertile Memory 9 Urs Al-Jalil; Wedding in Galilee 9, 50, 54 n.36, 85, 99 n.4 Khoury, Buthaina 58 Mgharat Maria; Maria’s Grotto 60, 61–6 King, Lisa 114 King Solomon’s Mines (Thompson) 162 n.22 Knesset (the Israeli parliament) 12, 148, 153, 155 Koenig, Leah 54 n.31 Kofer Nefesh; Sound of Torture (Shayo) 149 Koshashvili, Dover Hatuna Meuheret; Late Marriage 99 n.1 Kraus, Karl 117 Ktzi’ot 153 La-Avor et Ha-Kir; The Wedding Plan (Burshtein) 30–1, 33, 35–6, 40, 43, 49 Lady Kul Al-Arab; Lady of All Arabs (Mara’ana-Menuhin) 186 Lamma Shoftak; When I Saw You (Jacir) 31 Landsmann, Silvina 153 Bagrut Lochamim; Soldier/Citizen 153 Hotline 149–50, 153–5 La Traviata 40 Lavie, Talya Efes Beyahasei Enosh; Zero Motivation 7 Lazreg, Marnia 34 Lebanon War 6

Index Leitersdorf, Thomas 152 Le-Maleh et Ha-Halal; Fill the Void (Burshtein) 29–34, 36–8, 40, 46, 50, 54 n.27 Lev Tahor; Pure Heart (Ziv) 7 Lévy, Lorraine The Other Son (Le fi ls de l’autre) 198, 207, 209–10, 218, 220 liberal feminism 33. See also feminism (Al-Nasawiyya) Lionis, Chrisoula 90 Lipsitz, George 148 Lumière brothers 4–5 Ma’ale Adumim 152 Ma’ariv (newspaper) 191 MacKenzie, Magen 129 Madleen (Al-Ghazali) 72–3 Mahmood, Saba Politics of Piety 34 mainstream Palestinian films 77 n.1 Makor Foundation 12 Manna, Jumana Mbarak Mbarak Alnisyaan; Blessed, Blessed Oblivion 127–39 manslaughter 148. See also honor killing Mara’ana-Menuhin, Ebtisam Al-Fureidis, Al-Firdus Al-Mafqud; Paradise Lost 50, 173–5, 178–80, 188 Al-Jisr; The Bridge 178 Badal 180–1 Bila Mu-Akhadha; You Cannot Ask That 177 Daraja; 77 Steps 188–90 Ghurfa Fi Tal-Abib; A Room in Tel Aviv 185 Lady Kul Al-Arab; Lady of All Arabs 186 Sajil, Ana Arabi; Write Down, I Am an Arab 173–92 Taliq Bi-Althalath; Three Times Divorced 182–4 marriage plot 34–41 The Marriage Plot: Or, How Jews Fell in Love with Love, and with Literature (Seidman) 51 n.4 masculinity 109–24 aesthetics 114 and crisis 127–9

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cultural attributes of 63 ethical impassivity 120–3 Europe 87 and femininity 65–6, 112, 129 and gender 15, 114 Mbarak Mbarak Alnisyaan; Blessed, Blessed Oblivion (Manna) 127–39 nostalgia 129 paradigm 6 and queer/queerness 15 strategic invisibility 115–20 studies 2, 124 n.6 survivance 112–14 Masri, Mai 3000 Leila (3000 Nights) 99 n.7 Thalat Alaf Layla; 3000 Nights 10–11 Massad, Joseph 128 Mayer, Michael Alata; Out in the Dark 13–14, 198, 210–12, 217, 220–1 Mazor, Yael 16 n.3 Mbarak Mbarak Alnisyaan; Blessed, Blessed Oblivion (Manna) 127–39 McNay, Lois 70 Meari, Lena 68 Meduzot; Jellyfish (Geffen) 216 Meir, Golda 152 Memory and Popular Film (Grainge) 68 Mernissi, Fatima 83 Mgharat Maria; Maria’s Grotto (Khoury) 60, 61–6 Milh Hada Al-Bahr; Salt of This Sea (Jacir) 96 Mizrahi 6 Jews 6, 147 prostitutes 19 n.20 women 155 Mograbi, Avi 156, 166 n.44, 166 n.47 Bein Gderot; Between Fences 149–50, 153, 156–9, 165 n.40, 165 n.43 Nekam Achat Mishtey Eynay; Avenge but One of My Two Eyes 158 Nichnasti Pa’am Lagan; Once I Entered a Garden 166 n.45 Ogust (Rega Lifnei) …; August: A Moment before the Eruption 157 Moore, Lindsey 76 Morocco 117

242 Index Moshe Rabbeinu 39 My Michael (Oz) 222 n.9 Naaman, Dorit 180 Nadia, Shem Zmani; A.K.A. Nadia (Asher) 198, 205–6, 217–20 Nafici, Hamid 178 Nagu’a; Drifting (Guttman) 224 n.14 Nakba (disaster) 8, 100 n.11, 153 Naksa (setback) 85, 100 n.11 Nattan, Eldad 199 Natur, Rajaa 191 Nazareth, Israel 14, 86, 185 Nekam Achat Mishtey Eynay; Avenge but One of My Two Eyes (Mograbi) 158 Nesher, Avi Ha-Sodot; The Secrets 43 Sipur Acher; The Other Story 43–4, 49 Netanyahu, Benjamin 4 boycott Israeli producers of Our Boys 17 n.5 deportation policy 149 New Fund for Cinema and Television 12 New Jew 5 New Sensibility 6 New York 199 New York Times 51 n.2, 53 n.23 Nichnasti Pa’am Lagan; Once I Entered a Garden (Mograbi) 166 n.45 Nicolas, Auguste Marie Louis 4 Ninio, Ronnie Avoda Aravit; Arab Work 202 Nisaa Fi Siraa; Women in Struggle 66–76 normalization 3, 14–15 North America 9 Nsaa Hamas; Women of Hamas (Arraf) 97 Occupied Territories 200 Odeh, Aysha 67–8 Odeh, Rasmea 67, 69 Ogust (Rega Lifnei) …; August: A Moment before the Eruption (Mograbi) 157 Old New Land (Herzl) 163 n.30 Omor Shakhsiya; Personal Affairs (Haj) 13–14, 99 n.7 Or Ha-Ozar Sheli; Or My Treasure (Yedaya) 6–7 Orthodox

communities 6, 33 Jewish 30, 33, 44 patriarchal society 19 n.20 women 41, 44 Oslo Peace Accords 6 The Other Son; Le fi ls de l’autre (Lévy) 198, 207, 209–10, 218, 220 Oz, Amos 203 Arabesques 222 n.9 My Michael 222 n.9 Palestine 207–17, 222 n.7. See also Israel directors in 9 films/cinema 1–5, 9–10, 12–13 gay men 6 identity 87 Israeli oppression of 177 marginalized 11 narrative film 8 Palestinian-Arabs 176 Palestinian Authority 206 Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics 71 Palestinian-Israeli 1, 10–16 Palestinian National Theater 116 power asymmetries between Israelis and 15 societies 3, 5 women filmmakers 3 Palestinian Cinema: Landscape, Trauma, and Memory (Gertz and Khleifi) 8, 16 n.3, 99 n.4 The Palestinian Idea: Film, Media, and the Radical Imagination (Burris) 16 n.3 Palestinian Third Cinema 8 pathological behavior 129 Peleg, Yaron 16 Israeli Cinema: Identities in Motion 16 n.3 Peleg, Yuval 6 Perlstein, Dina 54 n.31 Shmor Al-Yaldati; Watch Over Her 49 Personal Status Law 76 Petah Tikva 148 Peteet, Julie 63, 66 Pisters, Patricia 111, 123 Politics of Piety (Mahmood) 34 postcolonial theory 2

Index post-feminism 2. See also feminism (Al-Nasawiyya) postmodern cynicism 74 Pride and Prejudice (Austen) 35 Qamar, Mustapha 117 Queenie (Carty-Williams) 53 n.12 queer/queerness 136–9 and masculinity 15 theory 2 visions 6 racial discrimination 147 racial dynamics 150 racial identity 115, 128, 152 Rahman, Najat 111 Ramallah 92, 185 Rancière, Jacques 165 n.43 Rand, Shuli Ushpizin 40, 42 A Ravim Rokdim, Zehut She-Ula; A Borrowed Identity (Riklis) 198, 202–5, 217–18, 219–21 Razel, Yonatan 43, 53 n.22 Regev, Miri 4, 148 religious feminist 44–8. See also feminist Riklis, Eran A Ravim Rokdim, Zehut She-Ula; A Borrowed Identity 198, 202–5, 217–18, 219–21 Riz Test 41 A Room of One’s Own (Woolf) 185 Rosetta Stone 30 Rothschild, Brad African Exodus 149–50, 161 n.151 rujulah (Arab masculinity) 63, 87 Rwanda 152 Sa’ar, Amalia 89, 127 Saharonim Prison 149 Said, Edward 61, 88, 163 n.28 Said, Samira 117 Sajil, Ana Arabi; Write Down, I Am an Arab (Mara’ana-Menuhin) 173–92 Salaheldin, Fadya Hayk Alqanoon; This Is Law 76 Salazar, António de Oliveira 152, 162 n.26 Salti, Rasha 119

243

same-sex marriage 52 n.8 Sam Spiegel Film and Television School 29 Sand, Shlomo 158 How I Stopped Being a Jew 166 n.46 Sarayah Bint Al-Ghoul; Sarayah, the Ghoul’s Daughter (Habiby) 90 Saudi Arabia 30–1 Schrader, Maria Unorthodox 37 Scott, A. O. For a Hasidic Woman, Weighing the Personal Against Larger Duties 51 n.2 The Second Sex (Beauvoir) 52 n.8 The Secrets 53 n.23, 54 n.24 Seidman, Naomi The Marriage Plot: Or, How Jews Fell in Love with Love, and with Literature 51 n.4 Seifert, Ruth 67 self-identification 85, 102 n.37, 115 Sephardim 11 sexuality and agency 32 and gender 1–4 orientation 198 sexualized land 101 n.25 sexual violence 67 Shadi 88 Shammas, Anton 222 n.9 Sharabi, Hisham 87 sharaf (honor) 63, 83 Sharia Court in Beersheba 183 Sharon, Ariel 152 Sharon, Tali 54 n.31 Shashat (organization) 58 Shayo, Keren Kofer Nefesh; Sound of Torture 149 Shitrit, Lihi Ben 52 n.10 Shmor Al-Yaldati; Watch Over Her (Perlstein) 49 Shofar 52 n.10 Shohat, Ella 9 Israeli Cinema: East/West and the Politics of Representation 16 n.3 shorts 4, 133, 138 Shtisel (Elon and Indursky) 35 Sijil Ikhtifa’; Chronicle of a Disappearance (Suleiman) 109–24, 124 n.2

244 Index silent film 8 Sipur Acher; The Other Story (Nesher) 43–4, 49 Sirhan, Ibrahim Hassan 8 South Africa 152 South Sudan 147 Spivak, Gayatri 34 Stam, Robert 9 Stanley, Henry Morton 151 strategic invisibility 114–20 Studio Palestine 8 Sudan, asylum-seekers in 150 Suleiman, Elia 15, 124 n.3 Al-Zaman Al-Baqi; The Time That Remains 99 n.4, 111, 120 ‘Inn Shi-It Kama Fi Al-Sama; It Must Be Heaven 111 Sijil Ikhtifa’; Chronicle of a Disappearance 109–24, 124 n.2 Yadon Ilahiyya; Divine Intervention 86, 111, 113, 119–23 sumud (steadfast resistance) 83 survivance masculinity 112–14. See also masculinity Syria 163 n.26 Taliq Bi-Althalath; Three Times Divorced (Mara’ana-Menuhin) 182–4 Talmon, Miri 6, 16 Israeli Cinema: Identities in Motion 16 n.3 Tarachansky, Lia Be-Zdei Ha-Derech; On the Side of the Road 165 n.41 Ethnocracy in the Promised Land: Israel’s African Refugees 149, 161 n.15, 165 n.41 Tehillim (Psalms) 38 Tel Aviv 2, 31, 51 n.2, 116, 149, 178, 185–6, 188, 199, 209 Tel Aviv International Colloquium on Cinema and Television Studies 11 Thalat Alaf Layal; 3000 Nights (Masri) 10–11 Thompson, J. Lee King Solomon’s Mines 162 n.22 thug culture 129–35. See also culture Touma family 92–3

toxic masculinity 128. See also masculinity transcultural feminist solidarity 48–51 transgender relationships 6 transitioning 199–207 Tropper, Yehiel 12 Uganda 152 Uganda Plan 151 ultraorthodox 6, 19 n.20. See also Orthodox Unified National Leadership of the Uprising (UNLU) 140 n.10 United Nations 1951 Refugee Convention 147 United States 9, 88, 149, 187, 198–9 Unorthodox (Esty and Schrader) 37 Urs Al-Jalil; Wedding in Galilee (Khleifi) 9, 50, 54 n.36, 85, 99 n.4 Ushpizin (Dor and Rand) 40, 42 Variety 30 Venice Film Festival 29 video art 4 Visualizing the Palestinian Struggle: Towards a Critical Analytic of Palestine Solidarity Film (Ginsberg) 17 n.3 Vizenor, Gerald 114 Vogue Magazine 1 Wajib; Duty (Jacir) 83–4, 86–90 Warriors, Witches, Whores (Harris) 54 n.24 West Bank 12–14, 57, 58, 67, 72, 85, 90–1, 95, 100 n.11, 129, 150, 152–3, 158, 159 n.2, 161 n.15, 198, 205, 207–8, 210–11 Wiseman, Frederick 153 Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counselling (WCLAC) 66 Women’s Studies Centre (WSC) 66 women/womanhood 29–30, 38–44, 49–50 cinema 83–98 filmmakers 3, 57–8 Mizrahi 155 sexuality and agency 32 silence and marginalization 45 working 75 Woolf, Virginia A Room of One’s Own 185

Index Yacobi, Haim 152 Yadon Ilahiyya; Divine Intervention (Suleiman) 86, 111, 113, 119–23 Yahia-Younis, Taghreed 89, 127 Yaqub, Nadia 50 Yedaya, Keren Or Ha-Ozar Sheli; Or My Treasure 6–7 Yehoshua Rabinovich Foundation for the Arts 12 Yehuda Ha-Meshuchreret; Judea Liberated (Ben-Dov) 5 Yishai, Eli 148 Yosef, Raz 222 n.7

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Beyond Flesh 224 n.14 Younis, Rami 13 Zangwill, Israel 163 n.27 Zifaf Rana; Rana’s Wedding (Badr) 10 Zionism 5, 11, 123, 148, 153, 161 n.151, 165 n.41 Zionists 5–6, 120, 128, 150 Ziv, Ra’anan Lev Tahor; Pure Heart 7 Zohar, Uri Hor B-Levanah; Hole in the Moon 6 Zuria, Anat Mekudeshet; Sentenced to Marriage 184

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