The Tinderbox blog: understanding Israel Palestine
Gillian Mosely, creator of The Tinderbox.
As a historical documentary-maker I have long felt that putting some present day into my history films is important so that people understand how history relates to them. I decided that The Tinderbox would be made this way but I hadn’t counted on several things.
First, this was more than just a light-hearted reminder that history forms our present. The Tinderbox exposes a causality between the past and today in the Holy Land, which is deeply challenging.
Second, it became evident within six months that this would be an uncomfortably personal film. Descended from several rabbinical lines, I soon discovered that relatives of mine were involved in the formative history that has led to the situation we find on the ground today. Where does my own complicity begin and end? It is also clear that by default so many people I encounter prefer not to understand. Have we reached a point, I wonder, where such denial is no longer acceptable?
Although I had seen the problems first-hand in Israel Palestine before I began making the film, several themes started to emerge quickly. Who bears responsibility for creating this situation and how should this effect any just solutions to this problem? While ‘othering’ and indeed racism of all kinds are receiving wider understanding in the West, such issues taking place in the Holy Land lag behind. Is this democracy? And finally, where is the empathy, sympathy, and the most basic spiritual precept – treating others the way we want to be treated?
As a film-maker forming a bond of trust between myself and films main contributors is part of the job and I am grateful to all of my contributors for trusting me with their stories. But in thinking back, the Palestinian trust undoubtedly came from more precarious positions.
Through Muna and her priest, Rev. Imad, I saw first-hand that the Palestinian Christian population is diminishing. Almost 10% of the population a century ago, numbers are now closer to 1% or 2%. Although they have not experienced overt persecution, from what I witnessed in the Palestinian territories, there is clearly rarely enough to go round – jobs, electricity, even food – so minority populations surely go to the back of the queue?
Issa’s bravery is of a different type. With a court case hanging over him, Issa has escaped going to jail for his activism, thanks to a high-profile international campaign. Defying his own fear Issa runs a number of advocacy campaigns and services for his local community in Palestine, and arrests and indeed beatings, have done little to dampen his passion.
No less passionate was Kobi, long-standing advocate of peace and brother/sisterhood. While Israel’s reading of the Old Testament assures him that the Settler movement in the West Bank is God-given. These experiences underscored for me the importance of belief in the Holy Land, and indeed the question of where verifiable facts and beliefs do or don’t meet.
I chose to speak to all of the film’s contributors, whether I agreed with them or not, and here, my greatest challenge was myself. If I am advocating for peace, every human being deserves respect and to be listened to. And so, I did. Often this made me uncomfortable and I had to look closely at myself to work out why. In this day and age, we are so used to only mixing with people who hold similar opinions to our own. The sad truth is that if we remain in our echo chambers, we stunt our growth as human beings. It’s a choice.
In a similar vein I encountered a plethora of stereo-typing, not least in myself. The well-meaning liberal Jews who asked me if it was really safe to be in the West Bank. Young, often Western activists whose passion for the Palestinian cause has led them to stop speaking to Jews, all of whom are literally unspeakable. None of this is helpful and at times I felt like screaming, ‘we are all human beings!’
Physically the challenges I faced were largely existential. The horror of the checkpoints. Recoiling from troops in the street carrying guns. Witnessing appalling settler violence against Palestinian children on their way home from school. But these were not things happening to me. Rather they were done to others. I think of myself as brave. But it’s easy to be brave when this is not my daily reality.
By Gillian Mosely, filmmaker.