Cinema Canada (Oct 1976)

REVIEWS OF SHORT FILMS The Arab Jews d. Mark Dolgoy, se. Mark Dolgoy. ph. Hanania Bair. ed. Harold Tichenor, sd. Don Paches, p. Lyla Lebane, p.c. Vertite Productions, col., running time 27 minutes. dist. Vertite Productions. 10237 125th St.. Edmonton, Alberta. There is little room for advocacy cinema these days. Television documentaries skim off the sensational and then retreat behind a wall of feigned objectivity. (You know the scene — the priest and the abortionist ‘“confronting” each other on a panel.) The net result is that nothing gets said and the toothpaste people are kept happy. The Arab Jews by contrast is a short documentary that you will never see on _ television. It is consciously, actively and powerfully trying to make a point and it does so with conviction and believability. There doesn’t seem to be much left to say about the whole Middle East mess. Like the tragic events in Northern Ireland, the fratricide has gone on for so long and with such a tortured interweaving of loyalties, that most of us in North America are simply sick of the whole affair. It is therefore surprising that this film is able to add new insight into this tragic situation. It does so by approaching the problem from a completely new angle. Much has been said about the Palestinian refugees and their displacement from their homeland with the formation of the state of Israel. The Arab contention is that Israel is, in fact, a European state settled mainly by European Jews and imposed on the Middle East for imperialistic aims. The slick propaganda film We Are the Palestinian People* forcefully asserts this viewpoint to the extent of suggesting that German Zionists acted in collusion * Available in Canada through DEC Films, 121 Avenue Rd., Toronto, 52 minutes, B& W. with the Nazis in their callous greed for power. The Arab Jews brings up the fact that Jews have inhabited the entire Middle East for the past several thousand years and, for the past thousand years, they have been outcasts in their own countries. Before the formation of Israel, there were almost one million Jews living in Syria, Morocco, Algeria and_ Iraq. As in Europe, being a minority group they were the subjects of frequent persecution. There are now 600,000 Jews in Israel who are refugees from surrounding Moslem countries. The film tells their harsh story in their own words. “They hung my husband in public,” says a well-dressed middle-aged woman formerly from Iraq. ‘They displayed his body in public and there was great rejoicing. I can’t blame the people; their leaders told them that the Jews were spies who poisoned the drinking water.’’ A simple Jewish-Arab peasant (looking very much like his Palestinian counterpart on the other side of the bloody border) says his morning prayers and then shouts into the camera, ‘In Syria, a Jew is for beating! As we walked to the synagogue, they lined the streets and spit on us.” The persons interviewed are from all strata of society, all having the common denominator of being both Jew and Arab. They express their hurt with a directness and intensity that comes from many years of suffering. “Imagine that you were born a refugee, that your father was born a refugee, that your grandfather and_ great-grandfather were all refugees in their own country. That is what it was like to be a Jew in Iraq.” The power of this film is that it is just that, a film. So often political pieces of this nature turn out to be illustrated radio shows or _hard-hitting diatribes with little respect for the sensibilities of either the viewer or the medium. Although the issues are complex and abstract, the approach of the film is direct and emotional. Edmontonian Mark Dolgoy Ascene from The Arab Jews developed the subject himself and, using private funding, shot the film in Israel, supplemented with rich archival material both from England and the Middle East. It is an impressively personal statement, produced with a conviction which makes it at once both convincing and very moving. It is to the credit of the film that the audience is allowed to think through the problem. We are presented with the heartbreaking stories of divided loyalties, the refugees now citizens of Israel with their roots in countries that never wanted them. “Would you go back if you could?” asks the interviewer. The _ replies range from tears to an impotent shrug. ‘This is the country that killed my husband. I left behind a lot — memories, a lifetime, a country I loved. I was born and raised there but October 1976/55