PROMISES
A film about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict
as seen through the eyes of its children
PROMISES, an award-winning documentary about seven Palestinian and Israeli children living in Jerusalem and the nearby Deheishe refugee camp, was shown at UMass Amherst on April 30, 2002 to a capacity crowd in the Campus Center Auditorium.
Produced by filmmakers Justine Shapiro, B.Z. Goldberg and Carlos Bolado, PROMISES speaks to the heart of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as seen through the eyes of its children.
The film was nominated for an Academy Award and, after being broadcast by PBS on its P.O.V. show, won two Emmy Awards in 2001—for Outstanding Background Analysis and Best Documentary.
A discussion with director B.Z. Goldberg and one of the Palestinian youths featured in the film, Faraj Faraj, followed the screening.
Before deciding to show PROMISES at UMass, Office of Jewish Affairs director Larry Goldbaum invited a Palestinian colleague in Campus Activities and students from the Arab Students Club, the Student Alliance for Israel, and the Black Student Union to preview the film at the Boston Jewish Film Festival. We travelled to Brookline in a van, saw the film while sitting side by side, and afterwards discussed it over a meal of shwarma and felafel. On the drive back to Amherst, we decided it would make sense to show the film on campus—a genuine collaboration in the best sense!
Rather than focusing on hard news and political events, this award-winning film looks at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and prospects for peace by drawing viewers into the hearts and minds of Jerusalem’s children.
The film focuses on seven Palestinian & Israeli children. Each child offers dramatic, emotional, and sometimes hilarious perspectives on issues that lie at the heart of the Middle East conflict. The children in PROMISES are between the ages of 9 and 13, an age group that rarely speaks for itself. Neither as self-conscious as teen-agers nor as polite as adults, they communicate without self-censorship. Although they live no more than 20 minutes apart, the children are locked in separate worlds. Promises explores the boundaries that lie between these children and tells the story of a few who dared to cross the lines to meet their neighbors.
Few visitors to the Middle East (or for that matter few locals) venture to the places that PROMISES explores. Viewers who think they "get" this conflict, and those who feel they’ve "had enough" of it, have been repeatedly surprised by what they learn from these children.
PROMISES was produced and directed by Justine Shapiro, host of the award-winning "Lonely Planet" series and B.Z. Goldberg, an American/Israeli who grew up in Jerusalem and was a journalist during the [first] intifada (uprising). It was co-directed and edited by Carlos Bolado, director of award-winning "Bajo California" and the editor of numerous films including "Like Water For Chocolate." Most of the photography was done between 1997 and early 2000, before the [second] Palestinian uprising began in the fall of 2000.
SYNOPSIS
In 1997, 34-year-old B.Z. GOLDBERG returns to Jerusalem where he was raised, driven by a curiosity to meet kids who are growing up in present day Israel/Palestine. It is a time of relative calm, after the Oslo Accord has been signed and before the intifada (uprising) of 2000. Emboldened by his earlier work as a reporter in the Middle East, Goldberg travels to Palestinian communities and settlements in the West Bank—places he never ventured as a child—and to the familiar neighborhoods of Jerusalem. Joined by a filmmaking crew, Goldberg meets and befriends seven children between the ages of nine and thirteen:
YARKO & DANIEL are secular Israeli twins concerned with the army, religion and volleyball. They spend time with their grandfather, grilling him for details of his experiences in the German death camps. They also try to nail him down on a question they themselves wrestle with: does he believe in God?
MAHMOUD, blond, blue eyed, and a supporter of Hamas. In his school, the Koran is taught as a manifesto for Palestinian emancipation. Mahmoud takes us to the Muslim Quarter in the Old City where his family has owned a spice and coffee shop for 3 generations. Just a few minutes from the shop is the Al Aqsa mosque—one of Islam’s holiest shrines—where Mahmoud comes to pray.
SHLOMO, an ultra-orthodox Jewish boy prays at the Western Wall. Shlomo studies Torah 12 hours a day. One evening, walking between the Jewish and Muslim Quarters in the Old City, Shlomo has a run-in with a Palestinian boy. What could be a fistfight turns into a metaphorical sequence as the kids reveal their hostility and curiosity about one another in a burping contest.
SANABEL is a third-generation Palestinian refugee. She comes from a family of "modern" secular Arabs. She is a dancer and uses traditional Palestinian dance to tell the story of her people. Her father, a journalist, has been held in an Israeli prison for two years without trial. We rise with Sanabel's family at dawn to travel to the prison for their monthly visit.
FARAJ is a Palestinian refugee living in the Deheishe refugee camp. At age five, he saw a friend killed by an Israeli soldier. After marching in an anti-Israeli rally, Faraj and his grandmother sneak across a checkpoint into Israel to visit the village she fled in the 1948 war. Sitting on stones that were once his family home, Faraj vows to return one day to rebuild.
MOISHE, a right wing Jewish settler, spells out the essence of the conflict. "God gave Abraham the land but the Arabs came and took it away! " Though he has never met an Arab, Moishe assures us when he becomes Prime Minister, he’ll "clear them all out of Jerusalem!" Visiting the grave of a friend killed by Palestinian terrorists, Moishe swears revenge.
When B.Z. shows Yarko and Daniel a Polaroid of Faraj, they ask, "Why don’t we visit him? " Faraj will have nothing to do with Israeli children until Sanabel challenges him: "I don’t know of one Palestinian child who tried to explain our situation to an Israeli."
The twins travel to the camp. This is the first time any of them has met someone from "the other side." They share a meal, play soccer and begin to get close. But the promise of friendship is short-lived as physical and cultural obstacles intercept their hopes of becoming closer.
Two years later... In a sobering yet honest epilogue, the children, now 13-15 years old, talk about their views on the "other," their thoughts about the possibility of meeting and their dreams for the future.
For more information...
THE PROMISES PROJECT (the filmmakers' web site)
PROMISES (PBS "P.O.V.")
Israeli and Palestinian children show promise for peace (Massachusetts Daily Collegian, 5/1/02)
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