Amal, by Sharon Azulay-Eyal, David Ofek, Nahad Bashir, is a new Israeli feature film which premiered this week at the Jerusalem Film Festival. The film deals with violence within the Arab community.
Today, when we think about violence in the Arab community,
we think about gangs extorting businesses for protection money and shooting
anyone who refuses to cooperate. But
this film is about something else – the cycle of revenge shootings between two
families who have a long-standing disagreement between them. Unfortunately, it leaves out this wider
context, which might have helped viewers in Israel and abroad get a fuller
understanding of this serious problem in Israeli society today.
Amal and Hassan are happily married with three children,
living in a village in the Galilee. They both work at a nearby moshav for a
Jewish family which runs B&B units. Hassan’s brother was murdered a number
of years ago. When the murderer is released from prison, violence and revenge
begin to endanger Amal and Hassan and their family and even overwhelm their
lives.
It’s important to note that the Arabic name “Amal” means
“hope”. However, this film does not offer much hope. Just pain. One feels
empathy for those who suffer in this film, especially for the women and
children, but the film ends on a note of despair.
Some feel that there is not much than can be done to solve
this problem in Arab society. Actually, the great rise in crime in the Arab
communities of Israel in recent years is due to the policies of the current government,
especially those of Itamar Ben Gvir, Minister of National Security, and by his
policy of non-enforcement by the Israeli Police, thereby permitting most murder
cases in the Arab community to go unsolved.
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