I was recently accused by a friend of disappointing him with my “thinly veiled anti-Israeli views.” This got me thinking.

The trouble with finding oneself involved with any political debate or struggle, is that objectivity often seems to vanish into the ether when emotions and family histories are at stake. When it comes down to it, I have no problem with the Israeli individual. I have family living in Israel. I have friends from Israel. I met some really awesome people when I visited Israel. My problem is that the ideology that underlies the Israeli mindset is, very sadly, a racist one. Israel, as a whole, isn’t doing anything to alter that perception, or to change the reality of what this means.

The idea of Israel, in essence, is a wonderful one. For a persecuted group of people to finally have a place to call home, after thousands of years of diaspora, ghettoization and oppression is a wonderful thing. When the UN announced the partitioning of Israel, the Jews would finally have a place to call home. Although other locations had been discussed, this place would not be in Uganda, in South America, or somewhere else in the New World. It would be the Holy Land. The Jews would finally be able to go back to their ancestral home.

The only problem with this was that there were already people living there.

That this was a problem is unfortunate. That this continues to be a problem makes it even worse.

When I was about three years old, my cousin married an Israeli. We were living in South Africa at the time. I remember later on, once we had immigrated to Canada, my dad talking about Israel as somewhere just as bad as South Africa in terms of its insane political ideologies. He, as a Jew, was embarrassed by the ways the Israeli government and army were going about dealing with “the problem” of the native population, just as he, as a white man, had been embarrassed and enraged by the way that the South African government had dealt with the native people there. I had wondered why my cousins had chosen to live in SA rather than in Israel, not realising that the situations in these countries were comparable.

Now that I am older, and having spent time in Israel and in the West Bank, I find that my own emotional make-up clouds the objectivity I would like to attempt. I am someone who has lived through tragedy in my family due to violence. I know what it is like to live in fear. Most kids growing up in the Western World, or at least those in a similar socio-economic position to my family, living in Canada, America, Australia, England, have no idea what it is like to be afraid every time you leave your home. I know what it is like to make split-second judgments based on people’s appearances. And it disgusts me that this is something that I ever had to live with.

I feel saddened by the man who raped and murdered my grandmother. What makes me saddest is that the only reason one might have to rape an 83-year-old woman, is hatred. This man had obviously lived through pain and suffering unlike anything I can imagine, and as a consequence, something in him led him to rape and beat up and old white woman. I do not hate him. I believe that like a pressure cooker, there is only so much that one can take, before an explosion is imminent. Tragedy can make people snap. It can also, regrettably, reinforce people’s beliefs that the other is evil.

The situation I found in Israel and Palestine when I visited, was one of a complete lack of objectivity and understanding on each side. When you talk to Israelis, it is easy to understand how they feel about the Palestinian people. It is natural to fear and hate these Arabs who relentlessly fire rockets from Gaza, whose “terrorist” attacks can come at any time and threaten their safety. I remember when I was about thirteen, there was a bomb at the Planet Hollywood in the biggest shopping centre in Cape Town. We didn’t call it a terrorist attack, because in South Africa in the mid-nineties, the violence that was perpetrated against the white South African elite, was understood in the larger context to be a case of those who were oppressed speaking out against the inequities of their situation. I was definitely afraid of being hurt or raped, or worse, but my parents had taught me that prejudice and hatred are not a solution. The black South Africans were certainly not terrorists.

I do not condone violence. I do, however, understand why it can erupt. I don’t think that problems can or will be solved with violence, and this is another reason why I have such a hard time with Israeli policies and the actions of the IDF. I guess when it comes down to it, having spent time meeting and living with Palestinian people in the West Bank, I lost much of the sympathy I may have had for the fear that Israeli people live in. The reason we left South Africa is because of the way in which fear eats away at people, and makes them susceptible to propaganda and the support of extreme measures. Fear is a dangerous and powerful tool.

When I was in the West Bank, I saw the poverty the people are forced to live in. I saw how discriminatory policies can act to make people even more hate-filled and extreme. Water restrictions, house demolitions, illegal land confiscation and the barring of free movement will make someone feel like a caged animal…and sometimes act as such. I was absolutely disgusted by the way the 18- and 19-year old IDF soldier treated the Palestininan people like animals. This was worse than South Africa. At least there it was acknowledged that non-whites were people.

So, yes, perhaps my views seem a little clouded. I get angry when people try to excuse Israel’s actions because I would never ever excuse any of the actions of the South African government under apartheid. When there is an oppressor wielding weapons to control another group of people, resistance to this is absolutely understandable, if not necessary for change. If anything, my experience in Palestine illuminated the many ways the IDF uses violence to increase the hatred of the Palestinian people, forcing them to react, and then using this as an excuse to continue acting so abhorrently.

The only way there will ever be peace in the region is if the Israeli government is willing to grant Palestinian people equal rights, allow free movement throughout the entire country, and live in a truly democratic state. Things will get worse before they get better. South Africa is a perfect example of this. No one can ethically argue that abolishing the pass laws in SA was a bad thing, even though this led to an upsurge of violence when black people were finally allowed to freely move in the urban centres. It takes generations to work through hatred and fear. But the sooner change comes, the sooner things can have the potential to get better.

The last thing I need to address is the problem of grouping people together and labelling them. Yes, there are Arabs who hate Jews. There are certainly also Jews (and lots of other white people) who hate and fear Arabs. But the Palestinian people I encountered were, as a whole, some of the most generous and dignified people I have ever met. The fact that I told people that I was Jewish did not affect our relationship. I do not agree with extremists or fundamentalists; these are not the people I support. I support those who have no voice, those who are being ignored by their governments. I do not support Hamas. I do not think that firing rockets from Gaza is in any way helpful or effective. But just because there are extreme people making waves, doesn’t change the fact that there are thousands of people who are simply calling for equality and human dignity.

I have just finished making the trailer for my film.

Very shortly after getting back from Israel and Palestine, I got pregnant, and had to decide whether or not I wanted to impose all of the stress and frustration I feel regarding this issue on the little person growing inside me. I don’t want to have an angry child. So I took a bit of time off, and while staying reasonably well-informed, I didn’t live inside the conflict day and night.

Deadlines as they are, I had to finish a demo, which will hopefully enable me to get the funding I will need to finish the film. And then, when I was home for the holidays, war broke out again. This time, it is all the same. The same rhetoric, the same flawed logic. Thankfully, this time the Western media is more critical of what is happening over there, although it seems that there are still a large number of people who can’t quite see beyond the Zionist propaganda they have been fed all their lives.

The other day, a young man from the group I toured  around Israel with told me I needed my head checked when I changed my status on Facebook to “Israel is not a normal country, it is an occupying country, a colonial country and the people of Gaza are under siege.” The sad thing about his remark is that because he was only there for ten days, and during those ten days, he only saw the side of Israel that is glitsy and fun, a homeland for all Jews, he couldn’t possibly imagine that this place, this Palm Beach in the middle of the desert, is really a terrible place for those who are not Jewish.

Forget all of the other racism that exists within Israel — forget that the Russian Jews, the Ethiopians, the Arab Jews, are discriminated against by their Ashkenazim brethren. Forget that the government sends these people to the front lines, makes them hate and fear the Palestinian people even more. For those who have lived on this land for generations but are not Jewish, life is a terrible thing. Life is full of fear, fear that your home might be demolished. Fear that you could be harrassed by settlers who want nothing more than to see you leave. Fear that your child, your mother, your sister may be shot for no reason by the IDF, and then their existence wiped out, ignored, because while Israel repeatedly breaks international laws and commits war crimes, the laws of the rest of the world do not count in this place.

As long as the US stands behind Israel, this rogue state will be allowed to do whatever it likes. It will be allowed to continue treating Palestinian people as though they are animals, the way the Jews’ ancestors were treated by other ignorant, indoctrinated and hate-filled people around the world. And people like me, with Jewish blood, will cry out in protest in other parts of the world, devastated that the very same tactics used against my family are being used by people who told me that they are my brothers and sisters. And then, when I protest these actions, I am told that I am anti-semitic, because I cannot condone the ethnic cleansing of a people who simply don’t agree that their land should have even been taken away from them.
Why is it so hard to share?

Something that I cannot help but notice being over here is how effective indoctrination is. I know that this is perhaps an obvious statement. Indoctrination is, after all, a subtle and effective way of controlling masses, and something that has been successful for as long as people have gathered together in societies. The big man telling all of the plebs what to be or do. How original.

It is something painfully obvious here. Somehow as an outsider, I am able to see through the propaganda that is being spoon-fed to all of the Israelis. And it isn’t a question of racism per se. They truly believe all of the lies they are being told. I am sorry to say it, but for those of you who buy into a lot of the Zionist nonsense about all Arabs being terrorists who just want the Jews to be out of the Middle East, the situation here is just a teeny little bit more complicated than that.

What really gets me is the level of misinformation that is spread from person to person. It is the use of the term fact and the way it is thrown around in order to justify the ethnic cleansing of a people. Palestinians don’t really exist. Didn’t you know? The label was invented in the 80s. Before that they were just Arabs. The fact that they were Arabs who lived on this land seems to be irrelevant.

But don’t you know, the Jews were here hundreds, thousands of years before the Arabs. Islam was only invented just over a thousand years ago. This, obviously, justifies the idea that the Jews should be the ones living in this land. They were here first.

But hang on a sec. What about the aboriginal peoples of the world? If we pay attention to Israel’s insistence that the Jews deserve to have this land, should we not be giving the rest of the world back to the natives of the Americas, Australia, Africa… everywhere else? Oh, don’t be silly. They’re not the chosen people. God didn’t tell them that this was their land. See, it’s written in the bible. It must be true.

It is really frustrating being here. After the indoctrination camp that was my first 10 days in Israel, I can’t help getting tired and frustrated with arguing with Israelis about the facts. For them the facts are the things that make their lives in this country livable. If they don’t have to think about the Palestinian who has zero access to the rest of the country, whose house was just demolished last week because the land was appropriated by the settlers in the name of security, and can just imagine the problem as a bunch of faceless Jew-haters, all in the world is as it should be.

I just hope that once I finish this film I don’t get a bunch of idiots labelling me as an anti-semite. I have no problem with Jews. I am Jewish! What I have issue with is the thoughtlessness of a nation that has decided that a certain group of people are lesser human beings. Institutionalized racism makes me sick.

I am in the unusual position of having to type with a keyboard on which the apostrophe does not work. Consequently I cannot use any contractions, so this post may sound a lot more formal than I would usually tend toward. This is a disclaimer!

I am in Palestine. I am sitting in the apartment that Dina is renting, in her bed, in Ramallah, feeling somewhat stuffed up and sore-throated and consequently planning on taking it easy for the day. I was going to go to Jerusalem this morning to meet with a man who lives in the West Bank, but is a Jew (i.e. is a settler) but I am not feeling up to doing anything this morning. So I will have to leave it until tomorrow.

Am I capable of condensing the past few weeks into a succinct journal entry? I have all the time in the world, so perhaps I will be able to do it. It has been a whirlwind of a time. I have cried, I have laughed, I have been afraid. I have felt deceived, felt disgusted, felt inspired.

I suppose I should start at the very beginning.

June 26, 2008

I was a little nervous when I arrived in Pearson Airport in Toronto. I would be spending ten days with a group of Jewish people — aged 22 to 17 — in Israel. I would be spending ten solid days, sleeping, eating, breathing, living with this group of people with whom I could not be certain that I would have anything at all in common. Arriving at the airport, I saw a cluster of kids near the El Al check-in. Introducing myself to the tour leaders, I got a name tag and a quick impression of the people who would be travelling with me. All I could do was try to guess the ages of the people I saw, and hope that the annoying jappy-looking girls would be in the younger group. Luckily I was right.

This is when first impressions count. I was wearing my navy blue and white polka dot short shorts, with a decidedly Montreal, borderline hipster sweatshirt. I did not look like a princess. I did not look particularly Jewish, or girlie, for that matter. A girl came into the line behind me. In contrast to the skinny, made-up, manicured, legging-donning divas ahead of me, this girl was wearing a loose button-up shirt, and some causal shorts. Birkenstocks. A sure sign of something better. We started chatting, and I discovered that she is studying environment, was clearly open-minded, and was a person I could rant with about organic food, the horror of mass energy consumption, and my desire to fall off the grid and live sustainable. I admitted to her how concerned I had been about the people on the trip.

<Yeah. To be honest, my sister saw you and said: the girl with the polka dots. Go talk to her.>

Apparently our alternative dress sense was a sign post for more things that just who I should be friends with. Because we were flying El Al, the security check took place at Pearson, before leaving Canada, rather than once we would land at Ben Gurion in Tel Aviv. The interview felt more like an interrogation. I did not feel that I had anything that I should need to be nervous about; however, simply speaking with the woman (who herself was nervous as she was just training) was pretty painful. I felt my heart speeding up and started worrying about her questions.

<Do you have relatives in Israel? With whom will you be staying when you get there?>

I was not about to say that I would be staying with my Palestinian best friend in Ramallah, so I said that I had family. Which is not a lie.

<What is their name?>

Why do you need to know this? That is what I thought. I said the name of my cousin.

<What is the last holiday you celebrated?>

Um… I racked my brain. What was the last Jewish holiday? I have no idea. <I don’t really celebrate holidays.>

She took my passport and went and spoke with someone over at the side. When she came back, she told me that they would be taking my hand luggage for a security check, and then gave me little coat-check tags to hold on to. I was allowed to check in my stowed luggage and return to the group.

<Hey! They didn’t take your bags?> I had been led to assume that they took all hand luggage. Turns out that the only people whose hand luggage was deemed suspicious were those of us dressed similarly alternatively. Turns out that Erin’s Birkenstocks tagged her as a potential threat. Uh oh! We may be activists.

Bagless, I sit on the cold tiled airport floor and wait for others from the group to join. <Group 705?> Everyone who came up to speak with us seemed surprisingly lower maintenance than I had suspected. A cute little elf of a girl with shorts as short as mine and chin-length bleached blonde hair dropped down beside me on the ground. I cannot remember how we started to conversation, but I do know that within moments it was evident that there was a connection. Sarah is essentially my twin. Working in holistic health care, we just started babbling about food, allergies, yoga, meditation, lifestyles. Thanks to Sarah, the whole travel part went smoothly. Being searched for bombs at the gate was less freaky than I had expected. We switched seats to sit together, and talked, ate sprouts and other delicious veggies she had packed for the journey, gushed about our respective lovers, and just found ourselves at ease with one another right from the start.

***

My last week at PMA was rather hectic. There was a lot to finish on Thursday, as Terri (the researcher I’ve been working with) came in to look at the archiving I’ve done, and figure out if there’s anything else that she needed to get from me before I left.

I had meetings with Kenneth and Agata during which time they told me about the documentary industry from their different standpoints — Kenneth very much working within the broadcasting, bigger budget realm, and Agata coming from the independent film side. The best part of all of this is that I do think that I have a future in documentary, even if it isn’t going to be what I’m doing all of the time.

This is where I leave off and pick up in my paper. Is being a documentary filmmaker a viable profession for someone in my current position?

We’ll see…

(I’ll post my paper on here in a few days… don’t worry!)

I am going on Birthright to a homeland I have never considered home. My father is Jewish, but we were never raised with religion. I have been to a synagogue three times. Two weddings and a Bar Mizvah. I always felt as though I was on the outside of a special clique with my Jewish friends at high school in Toronto. They went to Jewish camp, had huge parties for their Bar and Bat Mizvahs and had a family and social dynamic that I could never relate to. I don’t look Jewish. My dad certainly doesn’t act Jewish. It was only as I became older and started exploring my family history and spending time with my Jewish relatives in Australia that I have really connected with this part of myself.

When I was in my second year of university at McGill in Montreal, I met a Lebanese-born Canadian girl of Palestinian heritage. Dina is bright and driven and passionate. She is currently working in Ramallah in the West Bank for the Negotiations Affairs Office of the Palestinian Liberation Organization. She co-edited an Arab-Israeli Journal focusing on peace in Israel and Palestine. She is one of my best friends. It was her suggestion that I go on Birthright. She wants me to visit her.

The conflict in Israel is something I have always skirted around. As much as I read about the topic, I can never decide how I really feel. I don’t believe in violence. Yet when a people have been oppressed, discriminated against, exterminated, because of ignorance and prejudice, I can understand when violent measures are taken. But then, driving people out of their land, and discriminating against them in the very same senseless way, seems counterintuitive to me. I just don’t know.

So there it is. I am a not-very-Jewish girl going on a programme for Jewish youth, a trip that I have been told before is unapologetically pro-Zionist (and borderline emotionally manipulative). After the trip, I will be staying with my impassioned Palestinian friend in the West Bank, and travelling around with her and her equally active boyfriend. Will I be able to stay where I am, sitting on the fence? Or will this trip prompt something to change in me? Can I possibly get a clearer idea of how to feel about an inherently incomprehensible and complex situation?

***

My trip to Israel begins here, in Montreal, with the preparations. I will film myself while I am packing, as I speak to a friend about my thoughts on what the trip will be like.

When I arrive in Israel, I will be travelling all over with Birthright. I will be filming every step of the way, and I intend to interview my fellow travellers, as well as the people we meet along the way. I’m sure I will be able to get some great interviews with people from the Israeli side promoting the actions of the country/government. (And I know that I will need to be careful not to be labelled a shit-disturber and get kicked off the programme!)

I also want to speak to Israeli locals about how they feel about the violence, the possibility of peace, and what sort of threat they are under from the Arab world. I’m going to try to be as impartial as possible. I am a humanist and I don’t believe that the violence that has been used and continues to be used is the only way. I really don’t have issue with Israel per se. I just can’t align myself with policies that wilfully ignore logic in favour of violence.

After ten days of whirlwind travelling around Israel with the trip, I will be starting on the second leg of my journey. I will take a bus to Ramallah in the West Bank to stay with Dina. She and her boyfriend, Hazem, who lives and works in Bethlehem, are going to show me Palestine and introduce me to many people in the communities of activists with whom they interact. Dina volunteers at a refugee camp where she teaches English and French. Hazem is making a documentary himself, and has promised to organize interviews with various interesting people with whom he interacts. I have no idea what will really happen. I just want to go into this with an open mind.

I’d like to tie in history and current affairs as much as possible, although this is more about me learning first-hand about a place and situation, than about informing the world about what I think is going on. I want to get a wide range of people’s opinions. It will be interesting to see how accurately the reality of the region is actually portrayed in the media. What do we, in the West, really know?

I am going to include myself in the footage (i.e. speaking to the camera as I shoot, turning the camera on myself to discuss what I am seeing/learning/feeling.) I’m not going to try to make a film that’s out of my reach. What I want to make is a film that enables the viewer to see a situation through the eyes of someone who is learning, and trying to figure out how she feels about an incredibly complex situation, rather than someone whose mind is already made up.

Talk about whirlwind. I haven’t even had a chance to think this week, never mind write about what I’ve been doing!

Last weekend we filmed for our film and video class, which means that this week we’ve been editing. Kenneth was extremely kind and lent me a really great camera to film with, in addition to the one we were provided with at school, which meant that we could get a whole lot more footage than we could have just with the one (as we were filming on the mountain on Sunday and it was time sensitive).

This week I have continued with archiving photographs and images for Plague, as well as finding more images for the Emily Carr show, which I sent to be digitized so that they can be included in the episode. There was a bit of a mix up with the rights and cost of the images. Emily Carr’s paintings are in the public domain, but the Vancouver Art Museum, which possesses the majority of her works, charges an obscene amount of money for high res. digital images. So apparently we’re just going to scan pictures ourselves and put them in the film. That said, the museum has the most incredible website which contains pretty much every extant image by Carr, which can be searched in various ways, and made all of my work a lot easier!

Archiving images from the BANQ was also facilitated by a shortcut I discovered. The image number (which I already had) could just be copied and pasted into the URL. After doing a hundred or so images manually, searching through the website, waiting for various pages to load, I discovered this. It definitely made a drawn-out task a little less tiresome!

I have had a couple of meetings with Kenneth this week. The first involved our talking about my trip to Israel and how I’m going to approach the film I want to make. He asked me to write up and outline of the film (which I will post here), emphasising how important it is that I make a film about myself, as that’s something that I can do that no one else could, and it will therefore be more fresh and exciting. That said, this is a first film, so I need to do something within my reach. I’m so excited!

The meeting we had yesterday was highly informative. We discussed different options for funding in the documentary film industry and he told me about the various ways in which the projects at PMA are being funded. But I’ll get into that more in my paper on the industry…

Next week will be my last. I really can’t believe it. This has been an incredible experience so far. I will be very sad to leave!

This week has simply disappeared. I actually came in yesterday when I had an extra hour to spare to get some extra work done.

I have been learning so much about the business just by being here. The work that I’ve been doing this week has involved the Emily Carr biography that’s being made for the Extraordinary Canadians series (the same one with Nellie McClung that I was researching for). What I’ve been doing is going through the Carr paintings in the show, figuring out what they are and when they were painted, and compiling a document of these. A rather time-consuming process, but Kenneth seemed really pleased when I sent him my work.

I’ve also been working on more archiving of photographs for Plague, as well as going through Jefferson (the director)’s shooting notes and finding other images and documents that we wants to include in the film.

The shooting last week was really great. I got to see a small film crew in action — from filming in a studio with a dolly to filming on location with and without a tripod. Watching the DOP and her assistant in action is incredible. They don’t even need to speak to one another to communicate. They clearly work together so much that all communication is physical. It’s like watching a well-oiled machine. They are also really nice people, which is a great bonus when working non-stop for 5 days with the same little group.

I only have two more weeks left here. I can’t really believe it!

Kenneth wants to meet next week to talk about the Nellie McClung research I did, and also to discuss what I’m planning for my documentary in Israel. We’re also going to have an informational meeting in which he and Agata are going to debrief me on the industry, on funding and broadcasting in Canada — all information I’m desperate to get.

As I’ve said before, I’m extremely pleased to be working in a smaller production company. I’m really getting a good idea of how things work, and most definitely think that I’ve chosen an industry very well-suited to my interests!

Assisting on a shoot — a documentary shoot at that — is something that I had very little knowledge of before Wednesday.

My job, of course, was to do whatever I was asked. Yes, I did get everyone coffees. Running errands is the best part of being an intern. Isn’t it?

Actually, I have been doing some pretty cool things. I have been in charge of release forms and make-up. The release forms are good because I get to chat with the interviewees, and all of the people we have spoken to are extremely interesting. The shooting is for The Year of the Plague and consequently, doctors and other experts have been our subjects. While we started out with interviews at the McGill studio (black backdrop, great lighting, focusing on what is said rather than what’s going on), we moved on to the Children’s Hospital to shoot the microbiology labs and then up to the General to interview another doctor and nurse in the ER. The PR woman for the hospital was also really interesting and I got to chat with her about what she does — another interesting job in the field of communications. It’s incredible how many possibilities there are in this field!

Today I’m not at the shoot because Kenneth needs me to work on the Emily Carr show. I am going through itand taking note of the names and dates of each painting that was used. This is labour intensive. I also have to find a chronological list of all of Carr’s paintings which is proving easier said than done. However, I do get to look at Carr’s pictures and read about her in the process. I’m very pleased that I chose this industry. And that I managed to land an internship at PMA. There is nothing better than enjoying one’s work.

Two hours later, I did end up going to the shoot this morning because I was needed for make-up. Michael Bliss had some extremely interesting things to say. I’m really excited to see this film take shape!

This week is going to be really exciting. We are scheduled to shoot interviews tomorrow through Saturday, and I’m really keen to be involved with the actual process of making the film, as I’ve never been present for the filming of a professional calibre documentary. I met Jefferson, the director, this morning and asked him what I’ll be doing. His response: “All the fun stuff.” I think that means everything that anyone else doesn’t have time to do.

This past Thursday I had another good day. I finished archiving the pictures for Plague from the McCord Museum archives, and then made a trip up to the Montreal General Hospital to look for pictures of the hospital during the time of the smallpox epidemic. I like doing research.

I will be posting a second time this week. I am certain that the days of shooting will be an incredible learning experience!