sex in the cities

black widows in tel aviv

There is an incredible film festival going on in my city called DocAviv – The Tel Aviv International Documentary Film Festival. Out of the Israeli and Palestinian films showing, nearly all are critical of Israel through some political lens or another – and I’m proud to be a part of any festival that openly supports municipally critical art. The other night I saw a particularly difficult film called “Brides of Allah” in English – although the original Arabic title is “Shahidah” (“Martyr”). The film follows Palestinian women serving time in Israeli prisons for aiding or attempting suicide bombings. In dealing with a subject so deeply emotional to anyone who has even touched the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the film manages to walks an incredibly fine line of showing the humanity of these woman while certainly not backing down from the frighteningly unapologetic rhetoric that motivates them to stare into the camera, smiling, as they talk about “spraying Jew blood,” across downtown Jerusalem.

The translation of the title is in itself an interesting examination of how films about Palestinians are filtered into a (-even a liberal, left-wing-) Israeli audience. The term “Shahidah” comes originally from the term “Shahidka,” (a term in Russian loosely translated to “Black Widow”) used for female Chechen suicide bombers in 2002. I don’t know where the impetus came from the change the title for this film, but already in the title we’re seeing the strong religious angle on suicide-bombing motivations. “Brides of Allah” carries with it something perversely hopeful, something full of dedication, an image of a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed young woman turning her face to the sky. One woman in the film — who appears as the rebel-of-sorts in the ward due to her lack of allegiance to a terrorist group – insists time and time again that the motivations behind these women’s actions are personal problems in their homes and societies, and that their religio-political ideology simply provides a good excuse for escape. This woman speaks of the deep isolation and scorn she feels from her fellow women because of her refusal to join “an organization” – meaning Hamas or Islamic Jihad. The film poses several other deeply disturbing and unresolved questions throughout, including the question of whether children born to mothers imprisoned should – as is allowed under Israeli law – be allowed to raise their children for two years inside of the prison in order to avoid separating mother and child. Natalie Assouline, the film’s director, is somehow able to gracefully and bluntly place these kind of choices in front of her viewer and leave them there, balancing them on the edge of the question, refusing to push them to one side or another. Though there were plenty of reasons for it, I’m fairly certain the nausea I felt throughout the entire film was rooted here, in that odd and incredibly powerfully dangling of the unanswerable questions in this conflict.

-LSF 

post-attack texting, or; Sabra-cizing care

The “feminine” reaction to a suicide bomb is particular. They say lots of things about Israeli women (Sabras are prickly, tough, uninterested in sensitivity — ) but the women around me on the bus look coolly at their cell phones just long enough to make sure no one in danger has text-messaged them the news. The name of the yeshiva that was hit by the sniper gets tossed around a few times in light, quiet voices between stops, tightening the news and balling it in to small, swallow-able chunks. It’s the unspoken rule that mothers will call you within fifteen minutes of a terrorist attack, and if you don’t pick up your phone you’ll begin to be suspected dead. My adopted mothers here even call me, scold me mildly for hanging around downtown Jerusalem, wish me safety, and fade away into the night traffic. The voices are not shrill, their comments deliberate – “just checking,” “I figured, but, “ – no extra emotion wasted. It’s been half an hour since the attack and already we’re managing to put it behind us. The mourning mothers will be considered tomorrow.

-LSF