I'd been hoping to make a sound recording like the one below (soundtrack for the short film) while I was in Jerusalem. To do so required some hanging around near the Wailing Wall and outside the al-Aqsa Mosque (it was closed). I felt like I was lingering for a chance to spot a rare bird. I asked the security guard outside the Wailing Wall complex if he knew what time the muezzin usually began the day's second call to prayer. He said he wasn't sure but that, if I wished, he'd call Allah and ask Him, which was perhaps a gentler way of saying, "Stupid tourist, you realize my job is to keep terrorists from getting in here, right? Now move along."

HOMEWARD BOUND

It’s time to say goodbye to Israel—until we meet again. My stay here was brief but productive, and I was able to explore Jerusalem a little bit. If you’ve been reading this blog, you know that I have refrained from delving directly into the political situation. I figure you hardly need me for political commentary when you can access, at the click of a button, volumes of commentary on what’s happening among and between, say, Washington, Teheran, Israel, and Palestine. I have been tempted to step onto the soapbox, though, as my time here has coincided with a spate of events on the world scene involving Israel. To wit:

• At the start of the week, as news outlets were reporting that Taliban fighters had killed nine U.S. soldiers, French President Nicolas Sarkozy was brokering improved diplomatic relations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

• Israel exchanged five Hezbollah prisoners of war and the bodies of some 200 other terrorists for the bodies of Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, whom Hezbollah agents abducted across the Israel-Lebanon border. The kidnapping ignited the month-long Lebanon war in summer 2006. (IDF soldier Gilad Schalit remains in Hamas custody in Gaza.)

• Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is under intense scrutiny for allegedly accepting cash donations from U.S. businessman Morris Talansky and others. Olmert, a former mayor of Jerusalem, has yet to be indicted, but the scandal has severely damaged his public standing.

• The Bush administration took a tentative diplomatic step toward relations with Iran by sending Undersecretary for Political Affairs William Burns to nuclear talks between Iran and the European Union in Geneva.

WHAT'S FILM GOT TO DO WITH IT?

The above bullet points were/are the political matters of the moment during my stay. My chief concern has been with more general political conditions that characterize life in this region, creating backdrops for film narratives and subjects drawn into focus in documentary films. Taking all of my conversations with filmmakers, critics, and scholars into consideration, I arrive at few stable conclusions about what’s going on here and why. I might go so far as to say that my perspective on Israel/Palestine has been complicated by the insights of those who live here. Perhaps this is as it should be.

What has impressed me most about the Jerusalem International Film Festival is the way this cultural event fosters dialogue on some of the most pressing issues facing this country. Israeli filmmakers are willing to present films critical of such things as IDF actions in the Palestinian territories and discrimination against Arab Israelis within Israel’s national borders. Audiences attend the films, applaud them, and discuss them. The freedom of speech, or whatever they call it in Hebrew, thrives here (although the news media is censored for issues sensitive to national security). Some of the most compelling films, however, are pure fictions focusing on the personal—love stories, comedies, and dramas about, as Ha’Aretz newspaper film critic Uri Klein noted in our conversation (see Day 7), finding a place in a society of “others.” Or maybe I should spell it Others. You know what I mean.

The story of Israel, whether I “get” it or not, holds me in its thrall. To be in a place such as Jerusalem, a kind of crucible of coexistence among Jews and Arabs of all religious affiliations and political persuasions, is to behold the drama of a nation coming of age. That this nation’s military is the envy of the Middle East, and some of its neighbors seek its destruction, make the stakes in this evolution rather high.

Adding to the dramatic tension in this scenario is the prevailing attitude here that Israel need not seek anyone’s permission to defend itself. The country's track record in this area is very good. While I find the recent op-ed piece in the New York Times by Ben-Gurion University Professor Benny Morris a bit alarmist, he conveys clearly Israel's command of their fate. (Thanks, Tom French, for the link.)

To sum things up then, I believe that Israel is an increasingly important story to follow. I daresay this little country roughly the size of New Jersey has more control over what will happen between the U.S., Iran, and nations throughout the Middle East than U.S. media reports would indicate.

A course on political cinema in Israel/Palestine and Iran, such as the one I've proposed to teach in fall 2009, will, I hope, illuminate dimensions of this unfolding narrative that are overlooked or obscured by simplistic, skewed media accounts and misconceptions about this region. This visit to Jerusalem has inspired me anew and generated many good ideas.