TV Eye
War and Peace
By Belinda Acosta, Fri., Dec. 7, 2001
It's been a long time since I've regularly been around children, so when I see them saying or doing things beyond their years, I find myself wondering: Is it the child or the circumstances? In the case of the seven children featured in the documentary Promises, it may be both. Living in and around Jerusalem, the children worry about suicide bombers on their way to school. They wonder if a brother, a mother, or a friend will be around for their next birthday, or if a stray bullet or a terrorist act will kill them. These are everyday concerns for the children -- some Israeli, some Palestinian, some devoutly religious, others not -- interviewed by filmmakers B.Z. Goldberg, Justine Shapiro, and Carlos Bolado in Promises, presented as part of the P.O.V. documentary series on PBS.
The filmmakers traveled to Jerusalem between 1997 and the summer of 2000, a time of relative calm in the eternally troubled region, to ask children what they thought of their life, war, and the potential for peace in the Middle East.
"When I was covering the first Intifada in 1988 as a journalist," says co-director/producer Goldberg, "I was stunned the first time I saw Palestinian children play the 'Intifada game.' Some would play 'Israeli soldiers' and others 'Palestinian protestors,' and they would re-enact the whole thing -- stone throwing, arrests, beatings. That planted a seed to make a film about the kids on both sides."
The children include 10-year-old Moishe, the son of a settler family who dreams of becoming Israel's first "religious" prime minister. Mahmoud is an 11-year-old Palestinian living in Jerusalem's old city. He's able to move more freely than other Palestinians and prays for Palestinian liberation at the holy Islamic Al-Aqsa Mosque. Shlomo is a 13-year-old rabbi-in-training, who prays at the Western Wall -- located just below the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Yarko and Daniel are 11-year-old twin brothers growing up in a secular Israeli family. They live 15 minutes from Faraj, who lives in the Deheishe Palestinian refugee camp, as does Sanabel, a secular Palestinian girl whose journalist father languishes in an Israeli prison for an unexplained crime. Though all the children live within miles or even walking distance of each other, heavily guarded checkpoints and deeply held beliefs including outright expressions of hatred keep them worlds apart.
As inheritors of a complex history steeped in the struggle for land, power, recognition, and religious freedom, the children have much to say on the subject. As expected, they share their parents' opinions. But it's their childlike candor coupled with a mature grasp of their world that is sobering and very often poignant.
In spite of the serious subject matter, there are several moments of lightheartedness, as when filmmaker Goldberg reveals to Palestinian Faraj that he is Jewish. Faraj, his ideas about Jews thoroughly entrenched, finds himself struggling to understand how he could possibly like and trust Goldberg. The puzzlement played out on his young face is both humorous and instructive on the power of human contact and understanding to dismantle hatred. Perhaps it is this moment that inspires Faraj to invite the twin Israeli boys, Yarko and Daniel, for an afternoon get-together. The meeting, nervously discussed by the children's parents and arranged by the filmmakers, is one of the high points of the film. After some moments of awkwardness, the children end up doing what all children do best: playing, roughhousing, getting dirty, and eating.
"My deepest motivation for making this film was I wanted to convey to an audience that 'Palestinian' does not mean 'terrorist' and 'Israeli' does not equal 'soldier' and the people living in Israel and the Palestinian territories are not monsters," says co-director/producer Shapiro.
To the filmmakers' credit, Promises is not a children's chorus of "We Are the World." Instead, it offers refreshing insight that "experts" on news programs fail to deliver. Given the recent flare of violence in the Gaza Strip, Jerusalem and other parts of Israel, Promises is particularly timely. It airs Thursday, Dec. 13, at 9pm on PBS.
Other Good Stuff
The Discovery Channel presents another chapter in its award-winning Walking With Dinosaurs specials. Using award-winning digital technology and animatronics, the new special, Walking With Prehistoric Beasts, features the bizarre animals that evolved after the dinosaurs. Walking With Prehistoric Beasts airs Sunday, Dec. 9, at 6pm on the Discovery Channel.
Current and up-and-coming poets, rappers, and other spoken wordsmiths star in a new, four-part series, Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry. Scheduled performers include Benjamin Bratt (who plays Nuyorican poet/playwright Miguel Piñero in the upcoming film Piñero), Cedric the Entertainer, Jewel, and poets Nikki Giovanni, Black Ice, Dr. Sonia Sanchez, and others. Rapper Mos Def hosts. The series premieres Friday, Dec. 14, 11pm, and airs Sundays on HBO.
