{"id":2869,"date":"2014-03-04T05:34:22","date_gmt":"2014-03-04T13:34:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=2869"},"modified":"2014-04-05T19:17:14","modified_gmt":"2014-04-05T11:17:14","slug":"oscar-nominated-palestinian-film-omar-highlights-complex-status-of-israels-arab-minority","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2014\/03\/04\/oscar-nominated-palestinian-film-omar-highlights-complex-status-of-israels-arab-minority\/","title":{"rendered":"Oscar nominated Palestinian film ‘Omar’ highlights complex status of Israel’s Arab minority"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo<\/a>
Photo from screendaily.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

JERUSALEM\u2014In the Holy Land, the state of Palestine does not yet exist. But in Hollywood, it already has an Oscar finalist.<\/p>\n

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences\u2019 announcement that \u201cOmar,\u201d one of this year\u2019s candidates for best foreign language film, hailed from \u201cPalestine\u201d has raised eyebrows in these parts, where Israelis and the Palestinians are engaged in peace talks aimed at establishing just such a state.<\/p>\n

For starters, much of the drama was shot in the Israeli city of Nazareth, home of director Hany Abu-Assad and many of the movie\u2019s actors, rather than in the West Bank, where much of the movie is set. In contrast, Abu-Assad\u2019s 2005 film \u201cParadise Now,\u201d which was also nominated for an Oscar, was billed at the time as coming from the \u201cPalestinian Territories\u201d to avoid the inevitable political saber-rattling over sovereignty.<\/p>\n

The United Nations General Assembly\u2019s 2012 recognition of Palestine as a non-member state, over fierce Israeli objections, paved the way for the Academy to change its definition this time around. Abu-Assad also said the film qualified as such because it was the first to be almost completely financed by Palestinians. In any case, he added, the film\u2019s nationality, like his own, was a matter of identity, not geography.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs long as we are under occupation, it doesn\u2019t matter what it is called,\u201d said Abu-Assad, 52, who, like many Israeli Arabs, considers himself Palestinian even though he holds Israeli citizenship. \u201cThat doesn\u2019t make us Israeli. As long as the state is exclusive, you can\u2019t identify with the state as long as it doesn\u2019t recognize you as equal.\u201d<\/p>\n

The debate over the film\u2019s land of origin touches on the complex status of Israel\u2019s Arab minority, who make up about a fifth of Israel\u2019s 8 million citizens.<\/p>\n

Israeli Arabs remained in the country during the war surrounding Israel\u2019s establishment in 1948, in contrast to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled or were driven out during the fighting and later came under Israeli occupation when it captured the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the 1967 Middle East war.<\/p>\n

Israeli Arabs hold full citizenship rights, generally enjoy a higher standard of living and more civil liberties than in neighbouring Arab countries, and in many ways have become integrated into Israeli society. Yet they often suffer discrimination and complain of second-class status and frequently identify with their Palestinian brethren. Abu-Assad said he considers all of Israel \u201cunder occupation\u201d since Arabs do not have full equality with the Jewish majority.<\/p>\n

Yousef Abu Wardi, a veteran Israeli film actor, said he could relate to the identity crisis many of his fellow Arabs felt. \u201cTo be Israeli, does that mean I have to stop being an Arab?\u201d he asked. \u201cUntil the final borders are defined here, it is going to be very hard to define who is Israeli and who is Palestinian.\u201d<\/p>\n

In \u201cOmar,\u201d a love story set against the backdrop of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Abu-Assad explores some of these elements by focusing on the plight of Palestinians who collaborate with Israel.<\/p>\n

The title character, a Palestinian baker, routinely climbs over Israel\u2019s West Bank separation barrier to visit his beloved Nadia. In one of his escapades he is attacked by an Israeli soldier, after which he and his friends decide to kill another soldier in revenge.<\/p>\n

After being arrested he is pressured into becoming an informer, setting off a chain reaction of deceptions and betrayals that will test Omar\u2019s loyalty to Nadia, his friends and his people.<\/p>\n

Interestingly enough, Israel\u2019s own 2014 Oscar entry, \u201cBethlehem,\u201d deals with the same theme of collaboration but focuses more on the intimate relationship between the Palestinian informant and his Israeli handler.<\/p>\n

Abu-Assad said he made no effort to tell Israel\u2019s side of the story.<\/p>\n

\u201cI find any kind of balance between the occupied and the occupier a little false,\u201d he said in a phone call from Los Angeles, where he is awaiting Sunday\u2019s ceremony. \u201cA balance makes it less impressive as a movie. All good movies are told from one point of view.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yair Raveh, a film critic from Israel\u2019s leading entertainment magazine Pnai Plus, said both films were equally impressive. While Israel\u2019s \u201cBethlehem\u201d made an effort to portray both sides and included some national soul-searching, he said the Palestinian \u201cOmar\u201d drew its strength from the rage it projected.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not an anti-Israeli film per se. It just has a lot of anger and anger is good for cinema,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOmar\u201d has mostly played before art house-type theatres in Israel while in the West Bank it has had only limited viewings. That has not stopped passions from rising over the film\u2014and the Academy\u2019s stance on its origins.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe policy of the government of Israel, among other things, is to establish a Palestinian state. But one doesn\u2019t exist right now,\u201d said Paul Hirschson, a spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry. \u201cUnfortunately, this does not contribute, to say the least, toward conflict resolution because it doesn\u2019t nurture intellectual honesty in the conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Palestinian culture minister, Anwar Abu Aisheh, called the film a \u201cqualitative step\u201d for the Palestinian film industry. \u201cI\u2019m very proud of this movie. It succeeded in introducing the world of our problems under occupation, of our tragedy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The movie, which opened in the U.S. on Feb. 21, is the latest in a recent run of Israeli and Palestinian films that have enjoyed success internationally.<\/p>\n

Last year, two films were nominated for best documentary; \u201cThe Gatekeepers,\u201d which included interviews with all the living former heads of Israel\u2019s Shin Bet security service, and \u201c5 Broken Cameras,\u201d a firsthand account of the protests of a West Bank village affected by Israel\u2019s separation barrier. The latter, co-directed by an Israeli and a Palestinian, also faced questions over how the academy should identify it.<\/p>\n

Israeli films were finalists for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film four times between 2008 and 2012, giving Israel more nominations during that period than any other country.<\/p>\n

All but one of the films dealt with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, creating a counterintuitive \u201cgolden age\u201d of Israeli film in which the government has bankrolled movies that have often shined a critical light on Israeli policies and society.<\/p>\n

Abu-Assad said the Palestinians were not yet ready for such introspection.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Israelis have less problems with it because it (the conflict) does not control their life,\u201d he said. \u201cWe have less luxury to deal with other topics even though I would love to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, he said he made an effort to create a movie that was about love and friendship in which the conflict was only part of the background.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do not want to make a movie that will die with the occupation,\u201d he said. \u201cYou want to make a movie that will live forever and the occupation will die one day.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

JERUSALEM\u2014In the Holy Land, the state of Palestine does not yet exist. But in Hollywood, it already has an Oscar …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":3386,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[558,559],"class_list":["post-2869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-art-and-culture","tag-omar","tag-palestine","mauthors-aron-heller","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2869\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}