Carolyn Cooper | Destroying enemies in Israel by making them family

In my online Zumba class last Friday, we cooled down to Agent Sasco and Stephen Marley’s duet, Grateful. Marley asks a profound question: “Do I destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?” The answer appears to be a resounding, “Yes.” This destruction of the enemy is not annihilation. It’s a remarkably optimistic affirmation of the healing power of friendship.

Marley’s question reminded me of a brilliant film by the French writer-director Lorraine Lévy, The Other Son, which was released in 2012. For Lévy, Marley’s question becomes even more intimate: “Do I destroy my enemies when I make them my family?” The Other Son tells the emotional story of two boys in Israel accidentally switched at birth. Joseph is Jewish and Yassin is Arab. The mix-up at a hospital in Haifa occurs on a night when there was a bombing. In the rush to find shelter, a disastrous error is made.

Lévy employs a familiar literary device which is a constant feature of melodrama. It recurs in soap operas. Even a respectable writer like the American novelist Mark Twain used this plot line in his 1893 novel, The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson. A black and a white baby are switched at birth and end up passing for each other’s race. The story of Joseph and Yassin is not quite black and white. But the contrast in their lives is just as striking.

The boys are raised by the enemy. Lévy, who is Jewish, turns melodrama into a complex portrayal of the human scale of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The title of the movie in French is Le Fils de L’Autre – the son of the other. The meaning of the French title is much more subtle than the English translation. Jews and Arabs usually see each other as ‘other.’ They do not seem to think of themselves as sharing a common humanity. To become the son of the alien other is an unspeakable catastrophe.

I won’t give many more spoilers, except that Joseph’s assumed father is an Israeli army commander. You can just imagine how he feels about having claimed an Arab as his son. Yassin’s father, an auto mechanic, is just as devastated to have inherited a Jew. It is the mothers who are willing to accept both of their sons and to see the possibility of an extended family beyond the limits of trauma. This must-see film is available on several streaming services. Here’s the link to the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65Xk7_Jk0TA&t=122s

“THINGS WE DON’T SAY TO JEWS”

The Other Son is hopeful fiction. There’s another positive story from Haifa that’s completely factual. Last Thursday, the BBC World Service released a programme in its Assignment series: “The Jews and Arabs coexisting in crisis.” Here’s the link: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct4m7x. It opens with three messages on flyers in both Arabic and Hebrew that are being posted on trees by members of the group, “Standing Together.” The first is “We’ll go through this together.” Then, there’s “No to racism.” The third is “Only peace will bring security.”

Freelance journalist Emily Wither interviews Sally Abed, an Israeli Arab, who says, “You know, the tension is very heightened. Even on the streets, I’ve been driving and, you know, if I have like Arabic radio on I would put it down .... My mom is telling me, like yeah, we need to be obedient right now. ‘Don’t talk!’ That’s literally how it feels. We’re just the good Arabs that are only hurting for Jews. We are not Palestinian. We are not allowed to sympathise with our people right now.”

Sally does talk to Emily about a revelation she had as a child. She had asked her grandmother to tell her Jewish friend, Rita, about what it was like in the Nakba, the calamity of Palestinians displaced from their homeland. For Sally, these were just exciting stories. She did not understand the politics of the times. She was surprised by her grandmother’s response: “And then my grandma shouted at me, probably for the first time ever. I was like 11, 12. And she was like, ‘We don’t tell these stories to Jews.’ I think that was like my very first, like memory, of like otherness. Like ok. There are things we don’t say to Jews.” Sally’s recognition of otherness echoes the French title of Lévy’s film.

AN ALARMING ADMISSION

One of the Jewish men interviewed, whose name I did not catch, is 35 years old. He made an alarming admission: “I don’t think I spoke to an Arab or Palestinian person in the twelve years of my education, for sure.” He eventually became friends with Nasir, an Israeli Arab, who was a union leader fighting for the interests of both Jews and Arabs. He comes to understand that he must reach out to the other: “And something clicked in my mind. First, that there’s a lot of racism in Israel. But there is also an answer. And this answer is a shared struggle. This answer is a shared future.”

The “Standing Together” movement has approximately 6,000 members. The population of Israel is 9.73 million, as of March 2023. There are approximately two million Israeli Arabs. The struggle for a shared future for Jews and Arabs in Israel requires far more than the persistence of a small band of visionaries.

Both groups must recognise that the enemy which must be destroyed is not each other. It is the mutual ignorance that breeds hatred. Both Jews and Arabs must answer Stephen Marley’s question in the affirmative. And they must acknowledge the wisdom of Lorraine Lévy’s unsettling proposition. The sons and daughters of the other must claim their shared humanity. As family!

Carolyn Cooper, PhD, is a teacher of English language and literature and a specialist on culture and development. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and karokupa@gmail.com.