\n<\/p>\n
A lost boy walks slowly through Tel Aviv\u2019s central bus station. Two soldiers pass him, and he turns away to avoid being noticed. Yet there\u2019s nothing noticeable about him\u2014brown hair, blue eyes, a chin just beginning to widen into adolescence\u2014except the mix of fear and determination that shows when the camera zooms in on his face. He asks a passerby, perhaps too quietly to be heard, \u201cDo you speak Arabic?,\u201d but the man rushes by.<\/p>\n
The boy is Khaled, the main character of the new Israeli film The Sea. The day before the bus-station scene, Khaled\u2019s class in a West Bank village near Ramallah set out on a trip to the beach, a place that stands for all that is nearly out of reach for Palestinians living under occupation. When the children\u2019s bus reached the checkpoint to enter Israel, a soldier told the teacher that Khaled was barred from entering, an inscrutable dictate of the authorities. His classmates were allowed in. Brought home, Khaled decided to set off for the sea on his own, and crossed under the border fence with Palestinian men who work without permits in Israel. Thus begins a harsh yet delicately portrayed version of the classic journey of a boy into a dangerous, foreign world.<\/p>\n
The Sea is an Israeli production, even though it is one that blurs the line between \u201cIsraeli\u201d and \u201cPalestinian.\u201d The first frame of the film acknowledges funding from the Israel Film Fund, a nonprofit funded by the state\u2019s Ministry of Culture and Sport. The scenes set in Khaled\u2019s village were filmed in the West Bank, the rest in Israel. And it has just won the Ophir\u2014the Israeli equivalent of an Oscar\u2014for best picture, making it Israel\u2019s entry for best foreign film at the Academy Awards.<\/p>\n
Muhammad Gazawi, from the Arab Israeli town of Qalansawe, took best actor for playing Khaled, and at 14 is the youngest-ever winner of an Ophir in that category. Shai Carmeli Pollak, an Israeli Jew who wrote and directed the film, won for best screenplay. The Ophirs are awarded by the Israeli Academy of Film and Television, which has also received state funding.<\/p>\n
With these facts in mind, consider a recent call, on the part of more than 4,500 actors and other film personalities and workers from the United States and elsewhere, to boycott the Israeli film industry. As a means of achieving political change, the boycott is ill-conceived, targeting a vital source of artistic dissent rather than policy makers.<\/p>\n
First released on September 9, the boycott declaration commits its signatories \u201cnot to screen films, appear at or otherwise work with Israeli film institutions\u2014including festivals, cinemas, broadcasters and production companies\u2014that are implicated in genocide and apartheid against the Palestinian people.”<\/p>\n
A linked document defines those \u201cimplicated\u201d as including, among other bodies, Israeli film festivals that \u201cpartner with the Israeli government while it carries out what leading experts have defined as genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.\u201d It calls for avoiding all ties with production companies that operate \u201cin Israel\u2019s system of apartheid,\u201d but allows an exception for those that have endorsed the \u201cfull, internationally recognized rights of the Palestinian people.\u201d Unstated is whether, to qualify for exemption, a company must affirm the right to a Palestinian state next to Israel or in place of Israel.<\/p>\n
My guess is that those who signed the pledge are unlikely to make fine distinctions. The goal is to boycott Israeli cinema. Money that originated in the state budget will make a film an easier target. The Sea may get a pass because Palestinians were involved, and because the central figures in making it have denounced the war in Gaza. Or perhaps not: Advocates of BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) have previously called for shunning Standing Together, the left-wing movement of Jewish and Palestinian Israelis that opposes the occupation and calls for ending the war in Gaza.<\/p>\n
But even if The Sea is allowed a loophole, the film highlights the basic flaw in the boycott effort. Moviemaking in Israel relies in part on state funding. Yet cinema and television have become the media for engaging large audiences on the most fundamental issues, including militarism and the occupation.<\/p>\n
Making films in Israel depends partly on government funds because of the small core market for movies made in a language spoken by a small population. And even in a film telling a universal story, some cultural allusions speak most strongly to the home audience. In Israel, a country of 10 million people, cinema is not a Hollywood-style business. It\u2019s an art, dependent on public financing.<\/p>\n
State funding for Israeli cinema was mandated by a law that took effect in 1999. Four-fifths of the money goes to film projects; the rest goes to organizations such as the film academy and festivals. The money for movies is allocated indirectly, through independent foundations, such as the Israel Film Fund. Cinema professionals, not politicians, review proposals, listen to pitches, and decide which films to support. Producers still need to raise money from additional sources to meet budgets that are tiny by American standards.<\/p>\n
The film law is one reason Israeli cinema has flourished in the past 25 years and repeatedly tackled the toughest questions in Israeli life. Collaborations with foreign companies and grants from independent nonprofits have also contributed.<\/p>\n
This year\u2019s output also includes Oxygen, about an Israeli mother whose son has volunteered to stay in the army past his discharge date to go into battle with his unit. A millimeter beneath the film\u2019s surface is the biblical story of Abraham binding his son Isaac to the altar as an offering. That\u2019s a running motif in Israeli art. Anat, the mother, is a schoolteacher who has passed on to her pupils and to her child the ethos of military service in defense of the country. Now, though, she\u2019s no longer willing to sacrifice her only son, whom she loves\u2014to paraphrase Genesis\u2014in a war of uncertain purpose. In one scene, real footage of Benjamin Netanyahu appears on the television of Anat\u2019s father, who is suffering post-traumatic flashbacks from his own wars. \u201cWe are on our way to absolute victory,\u201d the prime minister declares\u2014his refrain throughout the current conflict in Gaza.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou think I\u2019m insane?\u201d Anat asks her father\u2019s partner, as she considers how to get her son out of the army.<\/p>\n
\u201cTruth is, I think you\u2019re the only sane person here,\u201d the other woman replies.<\/p>\n
Oxygen brings to the screen a question that countless Israeli parents are facing as the war in Gaza continues. It won the award for best Israeli feature film at this year\u2019s Jerusalem Film Festival\u2014one of the targets of the foreign boycott effort.<\/p>\n
While the boycott targets Israeli cinema from abroad, quality filmmaking in the country is also under attack from Netanyahu\u2019s populist government. Culture and Sports Minister Miki Zohar is the point man. The film law doesn\u2019t allow Zohar to set explicit political criteria for financing movies. Instead, he enacted new rules earlier this year for allocating the state film budget among the foundations that, in turn, distribute the funds to productions. Henceforth, the foundations that pick the most commercially successful movies will receive a greater share of the funds. Zohar appears to assume that the public will choose escapism, and that state money won\u2019t find its way to movies that ask hard questions. If lots of Israelis pay to see the movies he hates, these hopes will be dashed. After the success of The Sea at the Ophir awards, Zohar declared that he\u2019d cut off state funding for the ceremony. Whether he has the authority to do this is questionable, but the effort to intimidate is clear.<\/p>\n
Bizarrely, though, at the same moment that the government seeks to silence Israeli filmmakers, the boycott campaign aims to cut them off from foreign audiences and sources of support. People elsewhere in the world understandably want a way to stop the horrific war in Gaza and end the occupation. Signing on to a boycott is an easy way to show outrage, to perform it.<\/p>\n
Yet to change what Israel is doing, you have to change Israelis\u2019 minds about it. In some accounts of American history, the novel Uncle Tom\u2019s Cabin decisively turned public opinion against slavery, accomplishing what pamphlets and political rhetoric could not. Perhaps no single creative work could influence a country that way today. But contemporary film is a powerful medium, and the stories that appear on-screen have the potential to lead more Israelis to question the country\u2019s direction.<\/p>\n
If people who create movies believe in their own art form, the performance that matters to them should be that of actors on set. Instead of shunning Israeli filmmakers, they should be working with them, co-producing with them, making sure the industry survives. They should understand that the story of a soldier\u2019s mother slowly going mad, or of a Palestinian child lost in an Israeli city, will have far more impact than any boycott.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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