"Nations and peoples are largely the stories they feed themselves. If they tell themselves stories that are lies, they will suffer the future consequences of those lie... more >
"Nations and peoples are largely the stories they feed themselves. If they tell themselves stories that are lies, they will suffer the future consequences of those lies. If they tell themselves stories that face their own truths, they will free their histories for future flowerings." (Ben Okri, The Joys of Storytelling III)
By the end of this film, after hearing words of indoctrination, words of destruction, words of revenge, words of refusal beyond all reason, you want to shout: No more words used like this. Please. This is not what language should be for. Better silence than this misuse.
By listening to guides at Masada on ‘birthright tours’, by listening to teachers, youth and parents glorifying Samson and his deeds, by listening to right-wingers talking and singing of the need to avenge, by himelf confronting soldiers at check points, Israeli filmmaker Avi Mobgrabi shows how deeply rooted are the seemingly intractable problems of the region. Even Mograbi doesn’t know if there is any way through the thickets of persecution and grudge, but at least he is trying; one of the scenes that recurs throughout the film is him on the telephone to a Palestinian acquaintance trying to make sense of the situation, and above all, listening.
Other encounters between Israelis and Palestinians are not so fruitful. Schoolchildren wait for a gate to be opened so they can get home from school while soldiers stand uselessly by their armoured vehicle on the other side of the gate. Other situations here would be absurd if they were not so shameful or threatening. A family with a relative needing hospitalisation try and have a conversation with the loudpseaker of an armoured troop vehicle. An army Humvee goes up and down a dirt road – accelerating and braking in the dust, back and forward for no apparent reason. People wishing to pass at a border tower must have a conversation with a man on high with binoculars and a megaphone. As Jeff Reichert notes, it looks like something that could have come from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Except this is daily reality and not so damned funny.
Avi Mograbi has made an important film about borders. Time and again he films at physical borders and check points, often confronting the ‘public servants’ of the soldiers who act like anything but, and time and again he shows the mental borders and barriers of history, rooted in people’s minds and that drive their words. Time and again too he hears from Palestinians talking of how living under such conditions makes them consider another border entirely – the one between life and death. Because of this, Avenge but one of my two eyes is an important film that demarcates a landscape – both physical and mental – and shares its sense of profound frustration. Hope is symbolised only by the thinness of a telephone line as Mograbi, in his home, talks and jokes with a Palestinian man, under curfew, in his. < less
