One of my mentors in Israel/Palestine issues is Boston-area activist Hilda Silverman. She is at once very Jewish (which gives me great comfort) and very concerned with Palestinian human rights. The other day she sent out the following note to friends after seeing a tourism ad in The New Yorker:
To my horror, the Israeli government tourist people have revived their ads claiming, "Israel: No one belongs here more
than you," which drove me up the wall years ago. Only now the tag line at the bottom is, "Come celebrate our 60th anniversary in 2008." I think we
need to find a sugar mommy or sugar daddy to help fund some counter ads to this one, maybe playing on the idea of who "belongs" and using great
photos of Palestinian refugees in camps–especially, perhaps, including older people who might once actually have *lived* in what is now Israel. And another ad could tell the story of the internally displaced. I think the chutzpah of this series needed to be challenged a long time ago. Maybe the 60th anniversary is the time? I’ve been looking for years for an appropriate project to approach the Paul Newman Foundation about funding (because of his contribution to the problem by playing the romantic
Israeli hero, Ari Ben Canaan, in Exodus), and I’m wondering if this is it. Hmmm. .
.
I told Hilda that I had lately been reading Exodus, and was surprised by the Ari Ben Canaan figure. He’s so macho and tall and tough and nonverbal, a shadow image of the shtetl Jews of Eastern Europe who were thought to have been way too sensitive and passive. Hilda wrote back:
As recently as 1993, when I taught a course in the Experimental College at Tufts
about the conflict using primarily first person accounts on both sides, several
of my students told me how much they had been influenced by the film. My argument to get funds from Newman is that having contributed (albeit unwittingly) to the cause of Nakba denial and glorification
of the founding of Israel, he should help support efforts to tell “the other side of the story.” (My secondary argument is that I’ve
purchased enough Newman oil and vinegar salad dressing over the years that some
of that Foundation money is *my* money…). Anyway, I always
assumed that the appropriate project would be something like a feature film,
but maybe it wouldn’t have to be so ambitious. Lately I’ve
had a fantasy of a series of TV ads, where Paul Newman comes on screen and
starts out, “This is Ari Ben Canaan” and then goes on to describe
some incident that is indicative of the real story of what happened—and
is still happening–to Palestinians. Ideally, he would also in some way
allude to the almost-60-year cover-up, in which, however innocently, he
played a significant part.
Now she’s got me Hmmmm’ing.
