Udi Aloni reflects on his new film, “Why is We Americans?” and how meeting the Baraka family in Newark, NJ gave him the opportunity to finally learn about the America he wanted to be a part of.
Eleven years ago filmmaker Udi Aloni moved to the Jenin refugee camp to work at the Jenin Freedom Theater. During that time he lived in Zakaria Zubeidi’s house. Here, Aloni recalls several stories from him time with Zubeidi on the nature of art and resistance.
In light of recent headlines filmmaker Udi Aloni reflects on violence in Israel/Palestine: “As an individual sovereign human being I oppose all violence. This is the reason why I’ve supported BDS, and I’ll never collaborate with violence, but when I think with the aid of Walter Benjamin I can say that the violence of the Israeli Jews is institutional violence that represents the Israeli will for hegemony and oppression, while the violence of the Palestinian Jerusalemites and citizens of the state is the violence of oppressed subterranean streams seeking a place to erupt and to utter a strong outcry against injustice and for justice.”
Hisham Suleiman is an Palestinian Israeli actor from Nazareth and one of the stars of “Fauda” a political thriller television series that is the most popular show in Israel. An interview with him published last weekend in Yedioth Ahronoth, he is reported as having said that injuring a soldier inside the Occupied Territories is not a crime because the soldier shouldn’t be there. The interview has provoked outraged responses, and Suleiman has responded in turn.
Udi Aloni writes: “I’m simply sick and tired of the self-righteous internal Jewish-Israeli discourse where in the end it seems a Jew only argues with a Jew so that they can make up later that evening and go demolish an Arab home together.”