Abstract
My So-called Enemy, directed by Lisa Gossels, follows six Palestinian and Israeli teenage girls over a period of seven years (2002–2009). These women participated in a woman’s leadership program called Building Bridges for Peace back in 2002. The girls come from various religious backgrounds and have varying experiences of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The girls, who live only a few hours from each other in the Middle East, travel to Bridgeton, New Jersey, to rediscover the humanity of their “enemy” and learn about the narrative(s) of the “other” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Even though the girls live close to one another geographically, they have never had an open dialogue with one another, nor had they interacted with one another outside the context of the conflict. They never had the chance to discover their commonalities among one another in a peaceful environment through normal interactions. New Jersey became the space where the girls overcame their sense of insecurity and realized the possibility of a different reality where all of them could coexist.
The film is about empathy as a tool to overcome “othering” and a bridge between various individuals from different sides of the conflict. The group of girls includes Christian and Muslim Palestinians as well as Jewish girls from secular and religious backgrounds. The girls develop relationships that cross the boundaries of their ideological, cultural, and political divides. My So-called Enemy provides the audience with a profound message about the vital role of women, empathy, storytelling, and personal narratives in peacemaking. It sheds light on the importance of women for the peace-building process in the region. Melodye, founder of Building Bridges for Peace, states in the documentary, If peace is going to happen in the Middle East, women have to be part of the process. Women have a different way of communicating. At Building Bridges, we are teaching our girls how to be leaders in communities that don’t give equal voice to women. So, the question becomes, how do we empower them to change the world?
The film attempts to present the multiple Israeli and Palestinian narratives of the conflict. For instance, when reporting on suicide bombing incidents in Israel, the film provides background on what happened on the Palestinian side that resulted in this response. Additionally, when providing background on the political situation in 2002, the second year of the Second Intifada, the film shows images of dead soldiers on the Israeli side and dead bodies of civilians on the Palestinian side. Following Adi, Gal, Hanin, Inas, Rawan, and Rezan during the program and after they go back home sheds light on the complexity of the conflict and the difficulty of navigating life back home after one makes profound friendships with the enemy.
Gal, a Jewish Israeli woman, develops a strong friendship during the program with Rezan, a Christian Palestinian, which lasts even after Gal starts her service in the Israeli Defense Forces. Both Gal and Rezan show a deeper understanding of the conflict and an openness to listening to one another from the beginning of the film. Gal came to the program despite the objection of her orthodox religious family, who thought that the Palestinian participants would kill her. Gal shows an understanding of how the media shapes the views of individuals on the conflict. She talks about how the Israeli media brainwashes by projecting a false image that 90 percent of Palestinians want to kill Israelis. Rezan shows a humanist understanding of the conflict at various points in the film. For example, she notes, “It is not their fault that they are Israelis and it is not my fault that I am a Palestinian. The borders are setting us apart.”
Hanin, a Palestinian Israeli from Haifa, has more radicalized views because of the conflict than Rezan. Unlike the other girls, Hanin was forced to come to the camp by her parents, who have Jewish friends and believe in peace. Hanin’s parents have more liberal views than their daughter. Hanin is vocal about her opinions and support for Palestinian resistance, including suicide bombings, which she refuses to see as terrorism. Her position highlights a central tension: what some see as terrorism is seen as resistance by others. Inas, a Palestinian Christian woman who lost her father before coming to the program and her teacher after going back home due to the conflict, takes Hanin’s position further. She critiques the Western perception of Palestinians as terrorists and expresses confusion as to why they are considered that way. She sees these actions as legitimate actions to defend her homeland. The fact that the Israeli state’s actions, which took the life of two people close to her, is not considered as terrorism, whereas the Palestinians’ response to these actions is considered terrorism, is at the core of her confusion. The question of who is constituted as a terrorist versus a resistance fighter and by whom is not unique to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but Western perceptions of and involvement in this and other conflicts in Middle East have exacerbated this definitional struggle.
During the program, the girls navigate hard conversations on religion, politics, gender, resistance, and terrorism. One conversation addresses the question of how to resolve the conflict. The girls in the program have various opinions on what the solution for the conflict should be, ranging from the two-states solution to the return of all Palestinians to the borders of 1948. The challenge of these girls to agree on one solution reflects the dilemma at the leadership level on both sides and the difficulty of finding an acceptable resolution. Hanin suggests that the conflict will not be over until all the Palestinians come back to their land that was taken away from them in 1948. Gal responds emotionally by explaining to Hanin that she has no other place to go. This conversation addresses the issue of ownership over the land. What is home, and who decides what homes/lands we should inhabit and when? This question shows the complexity of the conflict because both Jewish-Israelis and Palestinians view this land as theirs and as their only home.
Gender was the subject of another difficult exchange between Hanin and her cousin, Nadia. Hanin prefers men over women because she thinks that “men suffer more because they die from politics and war . . . they fight, they work hard . . . girls don’t do anything for this world.” She continues, “If I have a girl that would be sad for me. Women don’t work for anything.” In a demonstration of the diversity of Arab women’s perspectives and their sense of agency, Nadia rejects this view. She says, “We are not saying men are better than women, or women are better than men. We are saying that they are equal.” Such a statement challenges Western ideas about Arab and particularly Muslim women as oppressed, while the exchange underscores differences among Arab women in terms of how their differing religions and politics shape their gender ideologies.
Another conversation addresses the reasons behind the misperception and dehumanization of the enemy on both sides. A typical Israeli narrative presented by one of the Jewish girls is that when Palestinian children throw stones, this translates into the perception that even “their” children are inherently violent. She adds, “You know, so that’s why there is so much hate in Israel and I am sure the Palestinians don’t put enough effort to understand where this hatred is coming from, and that’s a problem.” Inas represents the Palestinian counternarrative. She states that children’s resistance comes from the fact that Palestinian “children didn’t live their childhood, they couldn’t play, [or] go to school.”
Another theme that comes up in the film is suffering and how to measure it. Whose suffering is more important than others? For Instance, Rawan realizes that “misery is misery. There is death on both sides.” Moreover, Rezan suggests that “the bomb doesn’t choose you if you are Israeli or Palestinian. It will explode.” Hanin says, while addressing how the events of 9/11 changed her life, “Americans mourn the loss of life on their side, but we also have to mourn the life on our side. . . . They didn’t do this attack to just kill people, but they wanted to say something and show something to the world.”
After the participants return home, they feel isolated and some of them have hard time sharing their experiences with people from their communities. Their experience at the program make it hard for most of the participants to fully demonize their enemy and be on one side of the conflict. It blurs previously clear boundaries between the Palestinian and Israeli girls. As the director, Lisa Gossels (2017), states, “We see in the film how living with knowledge of the ‘other’ is much harder than living in ignorance.” Inas, who is Christian, admits in the film that she supported Hamas. This an important point to highlight for students who are watching the film because it questions the assumption that the support for Hamas is only among Muslim Palestinians. She wanted to be a suicide bomber but later changed her mind after recalling her experiences in the program. Every time she hears about a bombing in a café, she worries about her Jewish friends. Inas also states that she cannot talk to people about her experience in the program. She states, “I can’t tell them Israelis are human too. They only see the damage caused by Israelis.”
The film could be useful for various undergraduate sociological courses dealing with peace and violence, conflict management, gender and society, feminist activism, social movements, religion and society, political sociology, and gender and war. Before showing the film, it would be helpful to ask students what they know about the historical context of the conflict. The questions that could be asked include the following: What is the Israeli Palestinian conflict? What are the causes of the conflict? Why has not there been a solution to the issue?
These questions might be followed by a quick overview of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, filling the gaps in their knowledge of historical facts. After viewing the film, students will be left with more questions than answers. Some of them might feel uncomfortable with the views of some of the participants, especially Hanin. But students need to be reminded that the views of the girls are a product of their sociopolitical and geographic locations and thus their experiences. The film will make them question their own presumptions about the “other.” It will show them how there are different perspectives among women on the conflict across religions, regions, and classes. Categories and definitions that we take for granted, such as terrorism and resistance, good and evil, us and them, will be problematized.
To further illustrate the difference in perspectives from both sides, the students may be asked to work in small groups to examine the language used in articles describing the same incidence from the conflict. These articles could be obtained from diverse news sources, such as Wafa, a Palestinian news agency; Aljazeera, pro-Palestinian news agency; The New York Times, a more neutral source; Haaretz, a left-wing Israeli news agency; Ynet, a centrist Israeli news agency; and the Times of Israel, a right-wing news agency. Questions may be posed to students in relation to the definition of terrorism and its causes, the definition of victimhood, and questions on how the media reproduces and strengthens certain narratives over other. Other issues that could be discussed are the role of women in conflict resolution and women’s political agency and activism. Finally, the film may challenge some of their views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Middle East. It sheds light on how important interpersonal and gendered narratives for understanding and changing attitudes and conditions that drive conflict.