SCREENING FOR CONFLICT
Sarah Miller speaks to documentary-maker Gillian Mosely about her new film, The Tinderbox
A deep look into the Israel-Palestine conflict, where ‘everyone thinks they’re right’, was never going to make for comfortable movie viewing.
But for filmmaker Gillian Mosely the discomfort level was at an all-time high as she sought to do just that while untangling her own complex feelings about her heritage.
A British-American Jew raised in a Zionist family, Mosely (pictured left) can lay claim to descending from eminent rabbinical families, as well as from renowned Ukrainian cantor Gershon Sirota, who died in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and Herbert Samuel, the first High Commissioner for Palestine. There’s even a link to the Zionist-supporting Rothschilds.
But so too is she descended from MP Edwin Montagu, who vehemently opposed the creation of a Jewish homeland.
Perhaps this dichotomy meant she was well-placed to see all sides of the debate, the compelling result being her absorbing documentary The Tinderbox, which opened in cinemas last week.
It’s a 90-minute film that in her own words tries to “come from the middle”, bringing forth voices spanning the entire political spectrum.
There’s Yisrael (pictured right), a sincere American-Jewish settler in his mid-60s, who was
involved in the Zionist move across the Green Line into the West Bank. He feels he has every right to live where he does, but then so does Issa, a human rights activist born and raised in Hebron, just like generations of his family before him.
In the midst of it all is Muna, one of the largely forgotten Palestinian Christians caught up in this long-running conflict, a minority within a minority.
Meanwhile, Israeli Kobi and Palestinian Abed (pictured below) are the front faces of Orphaned Land, a well-known heavy metal band that attracts Orthodox Jews and Muslims alike within its fanbase. Music has brought them and their followers together, they say, but so too has open dialogue about their situation. “If we all talked and listened there could be a lasting peace,” says Kobi optimistically.
Mosely has painstakingly tried to ensure an equilibrium of views – a task in itself that was never going to be easy to achieve, given that the Israel-Palestine conflict is one that often evokes strong emotion.
“I made it clear [to the producers] that in order for this to have the sort of impact I hoped it would have, it would need to be balanced,” explains the award-winning documentary maker. “We showed it along the way largely to academics and people from all sides, just to make sure that everything that we were talking about was 100 per cent correct, but also that we weren’t stirring up any unnecessary ire.”
Her starting point for making the film in the first place was a search for what she calls “the critical truth”. She admits to accepting for most of her younger life the pro-Israel stance taken by her family, but that slowly began to unravel during her teenage years after meeting Tamir, a young Muslim Palestinian gay man.
Through her new friend, Mosely learned more about what happened to the thousands of Arab families who became displaced when Israel became a state – and for the first time, she began questioning whether Jews really had any more right than other religions to claim Israel as their home.
While the film doesn’t attempt to definitively answer that question, for all the obvious reasons, The Tinderbox does bring another valuable element to the table and one that has perhaps not been discussed enough – that of the role Britain played in the conflict.
“I felt that so many of the historical facts of this situation have been completely lost in the midst of time – not least, as a Brit, the role that Britain played in the 30 years running up to the foundation of the State of Israel. In one sense it’s got absolutely nothing to do with Zionists and their aspirations and more to do with geopolitics, European colonialism and white racism on many different levels.”
In one stark example, the documentary shows how in 1915, letters exchanged between Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca and Lieutenant Colonel Sir Henry McMahon, the British High Commissioner to Egypt, agreed to recognise Pan-Arab independence in return for Allied support during the First World War.
But in 1916, the Sykes-Picot Agreement was made between Britain, France and Russia to carve up Ottoman territory before the empire fell – and just a year later, the Balfour Declaration was signed. Britain, it seems, unsympathetically reneged on her promises to the Arabs.
“We felt the world was ours to do with as we wanted,” explains Mosely, adding that “the history is really layered and quite murky”.
She adds: “Even though a small percentage of Jews were in Palestine already and had more experience on the ground, those who had the loudest voices about the creation of Israel were actually from Europe. It sounds horrible, but on a certain level this is also about what white people wanted versus non-white people.”
The film highlights how these rocky beginnings led to regional discontent before and in the many decades since Israel was founded and does not shy away from the violence, terrorism or military retaliation that has followed ever since.
Nor does it hide the distrust, blame and fear that each side shows for the other.
“If nothing else, I wanted to show the disruptive nature of ‘othering’,” says Mosely. “We can’t just keep pointing fingers at each other, because at the end of the day it’s destroying us all.”
The Tinderbox – Israel and Palestine: The Untold Story is on release in cinemas and available from Curzon Home Cinema now
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