Palestine

Touch

andrea — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 16:00:00 +0000

Touch is a slim volume wherein each carefully-chosen word comes together to create cinematic imagery. Written by Palestinian author Adania Shibli, Touch centers on the youngest of nine sisters, and it is divided into five sections: colors, silence, movement, language, and finally, only a page long, the wall.

None of the characters in the story are named. Instead, we meet the girl, the mother, the father, the third sister. I have never been able to read a book without names; somehow a lack of names prevented me from connecting with the characters. Here, that was not an issue. To my surprise, the careful observations of this little girl had me looking through her eyes, and the pains of this unnamed little girl had me near tears.

While I am unable to read the original in Arabic, I sense that translator Paula Haydar has done a tremendous job. The words are spare, creating a powerful sense of tension and suspense, as only a few words serve as a vehicle for weighty emotions. The verbs are perfect, and the voice is strong.

This is not a book where I can read a sentence aloud and say, “Isn’t that beautiful?” This is a book where layers of imagery build up over several sentences, so that the reader is watching this little girl as a guest inside her home and her mind. This is a book that works the way my own memory does, where a happy memory, when put into words, turns out to be no more or less that the pattern of light on the floor, the purple of violets on the windowsill, and the fragrance of lotion on a loved one’s skin.

Shibli has created beautiful, poetic vignettes, small spaces in which a surprising amount can occur. A child learns to read, fights with her siblings, attends a funeral, overhears confusing news. A child swallows impossible sorrows and witnesses hidden beauty. I look forward to reading the lives of Shibli’s characters when they have a whole novel in which to grow.

Written by: Lisa Rand, October 31st 2010

Murder Under the Bridge: A Palestine Mystery

admin — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 00:21:00 +0000

By Kate Raphael

Political intrigue is a great backdrop for a mystery. Look at The Manchurian Candidate, The Third Man or any of Henning Mankell’s wonderful Wallander mysteries. A murder can highlight the struggles for power, the needs of the many versus the needs of the few, and the ways people hurt each other at both the micro and macro levels. If they are written well. If they aren’t, the work feels something like Murder Under the Bridge by Kate Raphael.

Set in modern day Israel and the Occupied Territories, Murder Under the Bridge opens with the death of a young woman found in a field near the wall between the two countries. Rania, a Palestinian police officer, and Chloe, an American peace activist, work together (or in parallel) to solve the case, which winds along both sides of the wall through various political ideologies and into human trafficking and war crimes. One of the most important aspects of a good mystery is that all of the pieces have to be put on the table, and then put together. The complexity of the crime is inverse to the number of subplots.

If the victim dies in a locked room from a bee sting when they aren’t allergic to bees, confining all of the players to a big country house focuses the narrative enough to allow the reader to follow the plot twists. When it takes five pages to get from one side of the city to the other, the crime can’t have too many twists, or the reader gets lost. Murder Under the Bridge falls into the second category. An unfamiliar setting, new characters, and a complicated murder with at least fifteen named characters present too many strands for Raphael to weave together coherently. There is not even time for an ending.

I wish Raphael had focused solely on Chloe, the character she cares the most about. Her scenes are dynamic, interesting, and fleshed out. As an outsider, Chloe would be a good introduction to the setting. Not one of the other characters does anything special, exciting, or interesting; everyone starts out as a cliché and ends the same way.

The scenes with Rania are rushed and poorly drawn. When the Israeli police officer was introduced as Rania’s partner, I was hoping that the narrative would focus on them and use their similarities as way for each of them—both very bigoted characters—to evolve. Instead, the longest, most lovingly written scene is of graphic sex that is only tangentially related to the murder. The discussion of finding the dead body is only half as detailed.

Perhaps a good mystery is hidden in this book. Right now, it’s stuck under the layers of useless detail, pointless scenes, and cliché.

Written by: Taylor Rhodes, July 21st 2010

For My Father

admin — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Directed by Dror Zahavi

Israfilm, Relevant F!lm

Centering on the chaste love affair between a Palestinian and an Israeli, For My Father offers the viewer a Middle Eastern re-telling of Romeo and Juliet while trying to spell out the complexities of post-intifada Israel.

The film opens up on Tarek (Shredi Jabarin), a Palestinian who has decided to act as suicide bomber. He’s ambivalent about the state of Israel—as well as Palestinian resistance to it—but takes action in order to salvage his yet-unseen father’s sullied reputation. After unsuccessfully trying to set off his bomb, he realizes that the device fails due to faulty wiring in the detonator, a jerry-rigged switch. Panicking, he flees, ending up in one of the scruffier areas of Tel Aviv. He ducks into an electronic repair shop, encountering Katz (Schlomo Vishinsky), an elderly Romanian Jew with a chip on his shoulder and a leaky roof. Tarek agrees to fix the hole in Katz’s roof in exchange for a new switch, which has to be ordered. As Shabbat is celebrated the next day, Katz’s shop will be closed until Sunday. Tarek is then forced to spend the weekend with the very people he was planning to kill.

During his sojourn, he interrupts the half-hearted suicide attempt of Mrs. Katz. He also befriends Keren (Hili Yalon), a beautiful tough-cookie who has fled her Orthodox Jewish community after an out-of-wedlock pregnancy. After saving her from a group of Orthodox toughs who object to her independent living and emo clothing, the two spend most of the following two days together, enjoying an easy rapport. Tarek rediscovers a passion for life which deepens his ambivalence about his mission. The fact that his handlers can detonate the bomb with a cell phone—and have threatened to harm his parents—only intensifies Tarek’s dilemma.

Yes, the movie did have its manipulative moments and the director unquestionably downplays the hostilities between Arabs and Jews in Israel. (The “Death to Arabs” graffiti scribbled on a building seemed downright contrived.) I found it odd that the Israeli characters never once questioned the very noticeable lump under Tarek’s clothes. For that matter, Keren and the Katzes seem too accepting of Tarek’s explanation for his very presence in Tel Aviv, a city that has kept Palestinians out via roadblocks for years. I also found myself questioning whether Israelis as a group are as averse to racial profiling as the Katzes and Keren are, and if the decision to paint Shaul, the one Jew who does express suspicion of Tarek, as a pompous buffoon wasn’t a subtle form of self-congratulation on the part of the Israeli director and screenwriters. I couldn’t help but wonder about how a Palestinian filmmaker would have approached this tale—or if a Palestinian would have chosen to tell this particular story at all.

In all fairness, however, this film wasn’t about the politics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This film is basically a movie about outcasts and how they often instinctively seek out and cling to other outcasts, battling loneliness while skirting the edges of society. For My Father also touches on the very human need to maintain reputation with the emotionally fraught bond between parents and children driving the story in surprising ways. I appreciated the fact that the story doesn’t insult the audience with a tacked-on happy-ending; there’s no way that a movie with a terrorist as leading man can end on an emotional high note.

Despite its over-idealized view of ethnic strife and pseudo-philosophical leanings, I am going to recommend For My Father on the strengths of its understated and powerful performances. But anyone expecting to get a crash course on the current state of Israeli-Palestinian resentments needs to look elsewhere.

Written by: Ebony Edwards-Ellis, June 18th 2010

Amreeka

admin — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 17:01:00 +0000

Directed by Cherien Dabis

National Geographic Entertainment

There are a plethora of films which recount the arrival of distinct ethnic groups to America, ranging from the Eddie Murphy’s pathetic Coming to America to the Charlie Chaplin’s classic The Immigrant to the Patricia Riggen’s subtle Under The Same Moon or Jim Sheridan’s In America. However, no situation seems as tense as the arrival of visible minority immigrants to the United States post-9/11, where tense circumstances await them.

Amreeka is a the debut feature-length film by Cherien Dabis, named by Variety magazine as one of its “Ten Directors to Watch” this year, and we can indeed look forward to her next feature length film if her first is any measure of her talent. Dabis has worked in television, writing for Showtime’s The L Word and has also written and directed several award-winning short films. In Amreeka, Dabis’ writing underscores the subtleties of one who has bridged many cultures at once, a personal insight that she most likely gained during her childhood and adolescence in both the U.S. and Jordan, and as the daughter of Palestinian parents.

Dabis’ film questions the differences between the uneasy racial situation as it exists in the United States and the situation lived by the Palestinians in the Occupied territories. Nisreen Faour, a talented Palestinian theatre and television actress, is exceptional as the mother in this film; it is she who negotiates the departure for the United States with her son, the very promising young Melkar Muallem in his first movie role. Hiam Abbass, a famous international actress whom readers might recognize from such Hollywood blockbusters as Munich and Babel, is ever-talented in the role of the sister who has been living in the United States with her doctor husband and raising three girls.

Part of the film’s brilliance is that it is meant to unsettle viewers at various levels—Dabis often uses humour as her weapon. Whether it is in the encounters (at Israeli checkpoints, at the U.S. customs, during a job interview with a racist or in the visual of the Mom in her fast food uniform), in the stereotypes (the mom’s naivety, the fresh-off-the boat clothing debate, the terrorists) or in the general melodrama, there are many cringe-worthy moments. One circumstance that personally made me cower was the weight of gender in the mother-son relationship, especially in the film which has been touted as the story of an “indomitable” single mom who makes it on her own. There are a few condescending moments when the son patronizingly pats his mother’s shoulder during her hopelessness, saves the day by lending her money, and makes her believe in a paternalistic way that everything will be alright.

Sadly, the film does not seem to imply that the general condition of immigrants in the U.S. will evolve for the better. There are brief flashes of “openness” in the mom’s male friend, her dropout co-worker from the fast-food joint, and the lady at the bank who finally gets her a credit card (the American dream!). However, in the final scene, the family unit folds back into itself (with the male friend) and drives from the fast-food drive through to a Palestinian restaurant in Chicago to enjoy a blissful “traditional” meal, complete with hookah and dancing. In this turn of events, Dabis’ symbol is not lost; the errant Palestinians make their own mini-homelands wherever they may be, no matter how hostile their environment.

_Review by Sophie M. Lavoie_

Written by: Sophie M. Lavoie, December 26th 2009

World for Palestine 2010 Calendar

admin — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 09:00:00 +0000

By Resistance Art

The World for Palestine 2010 Wall Calendar features twelve cartoons drawn by Brazilian cartoonist Carlos Latuff. Latuff’s images are stark, simple, and unflinching in their support of Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation. His images, like most political art or propaganda, do not explore political complexities or nuances, but rather bluntly convey the truth through art. His images emphasize themes of global silence around the genocide of Palestinian people, the struggle of resistance by Palestinians against Israeli violence, and the emotional foundation of hatred that enables the destruction of Palestinian people and their homeland to continue.

This calendar will only satisfy those that are looking for blatantly politicized images. The use of cartoons for political purposes in the U.S. is most commonly associated with revealing the hypocrisy of elected politicians in daily newspapers. These cartoons were, at first, surprising to view because their intention was more simplistically and fiercely stated than I was used to. The artwork in the calendar is meant to nourish the spirits of those fighting the Israeli occupation and to uncover the brutality of the Israeli state.

As an example, one month of the calendar features an older Palestinian man’s hands and head sticking out of a set of gallows. The gallows are made out of a full Israeli flag, and the man’s face conveys pain and humiliation. The calendar succeeds in presenting such unwavering political metaphors, and the write-up in the beginning of the calendar that describes the Brazilian cartoonist, his intentions, and the context of his art helps to promote a better understanding the goals of the calendar and its art.

It is interesting to imagine other ways this calendar could have been presented. Latuff has a particular style, and the calendar may have benefited from a variety of artists. This would have shown the common elements of cartoons used to bolster Palestinian resistance, rather than focus on one artist’s work, which reinforces a similar aesthetic and specific political priorities. After a whole year of looking at these cartoons, it is easy to imagine how the complicated and profound human aspects of the struggle could be lost amidst the constant righteous outrage elicited by the images of one artist. More artists would have strengthened the depth of the viewers’ understanding.

This calendar certainly isn’t for everyone, and definitely not for fence-sitters regarding Palestinian peoples’ liberation. The World for Palestine 2010 Wall Calendar is strong and powerful in its convictions; hopefully Resistance Art will produce more calendars in the future that follow in this tradition.

Written by: Katrina Forman, December 22nd 2009

The Madwoman of Bethlehem

admin — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:03:00 +0000

By Rosine Nimeh-Mailloux

Second Story Press

Before I started to read The Madwoman of Bethlehem, a story about a woman’s struggle against her patriarchal culture, I wondered whether it would be depressing. It wasn’t. From the beginning, when Rosine Nimeh-Mailloux sets up the present, where Amal is incarcerated in an asylum for women, the writing captivated me.

Yes, the main character, Amal, is born into tough Palestinian life as a female, subjected to her mean grandmother and later, drunken husband, but I never once feel sorry for her. She gives off the energy of a feisty spirit and does not give up. It doesn’t matter how terrible the situation is; we all have the choice to fight or give up.

As Amal’s history is slowly revealed, the author also provides background of the other characters, so that the reader gains understanding of the complex context they exist in. It isn’t just Amal who is expected to obey her husband, but all women, according to Allah. By treating Amal as a servant, she will learn proper behavior—or so her family believes.

Amal refuses to accept the ancient view that women belong to men to do with as they please, she argues that her family betrays her by trading her off to get her sister a nice deal. Her view falls on deaf ears, but she does find an ally to turn to during her journey to acceptance.

So many girls and women in many cultures from around the world have been betrayed by their families under the guise of the old “it’s for your own good” philosophy. This novel is inspiring despite this typical letdown. I have spent years resenting my own family’s strict patriarchal ways, but after reading Nimeh-Mailloux’s novel, I know that I have to accept that it is simply their belief system, not mine.

Amal the character may be fictional, but she is based on the lives of women in the author’s family. She is also the voice of oppressed women in today’s world. She is me and you when we learn to stand up to abuse against women and children.

Whether you’re looking for a bit of inspiration or simply a good page-turner, you’ll find it in The Madwoman of Bethlehem. I didn’t want to put the book down. It is an emotional trip, from tears to laughter and back again.

Written by: Nicolette Westfall, November 20th 2009

A World I Loved: The Story of an Arab Woman

admin — Mon, 11 May 2009 08:30:00 +0000

By Wadad Makdisi Cortas

Nation Books

Nostalgia is front and center in Wadad Makdisi Cortas’ atmospheric memoir of life in Beirut, a war-torn city once belonging to Syria and later, the capital of Lebanon. Born in 1909, Cortas died in 1979, but her impassioned account of a four-decade career as principal of the Ahliah School for Girls touches on themes that remained pertinent throughout the twentieth century—colonialism and the founding of Israel, among them.

Cortas was fiercely committed to the education of girls and sought international examples to prod her students into imagining an array of possibilities for their lives. American journalist Dorothy Thompson gave a talk on campus; so did Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, the first woman president of the UN General Assembly; Bertha Vester, a Jerusalem resident who founded a children’s hospital; and Helen Keller. “Nationalism as a chauvinist ideal never took root in our school,” Cortas writes. “Fairness, humanity, and principles of equal rights all found deep expression in our collective inner life.”

Her descriptions of visits to Palestine before 1917’s Balfour Declaration—in which Lord Arthur Balfour promised to give Palestine to the Zionists—and following the creation of Israel as a Jewish homeland, are gripping. “For Arabs the problem of Palestine was our common denominator,” she writes. Her position was, in part, shaped by Jawaharlal Nehru’s assertion: “When the British declared that they were willing to establish a national home for the Jews in Palestine, Palestine was not a wilderness. There were Arabs and non-Arabs living there, Moslems and Christians… Zionism is a colonial movement. The generous offer of the British was made at the expense of Arabs.”

Cortas’ allies in opposing Israel included Albert Einstein, who favored a bi-national state in Palestine and condemned the violence and terrorism wrought by the Haganah and the Stern Gang against Palestinian villagers. In fact, Cortas consistently sought to include the voices of anti-Zionist Jews in her work, and her outspoken activism always included expression of distress over Jewish persecution in Europe. As the same time, she writes, she felt that it was unjust “that the Arab world was being forced to bear the consequences of Europe’s cruelty.”

Yet despite the efforts of anti-Zionists the world over, in 1949, Israel came into being. Not long after, Lebanon was torn apart by civil war and Cortas’ memoir closes with a searing account of the fighting, 1974-1978. “Hatred breeds hatred,” she concludes, “and love breeds love.”

This simple statement sums up Cortas’ philosophy toward both her students and toward political engagement. An optimist but not a Pollyanna, her example is invigorating. While I wished A World I Loved had provided a bridge between her death and today—an afterward, perhaps, about the Ahliah School and the state of contemporary women’s education in Arab countries—the book is nonetheless fascinating. Full of nuanced historical detail and rich observations, it reintroduces a foremother whose wit and grace help explicate the political quagmires of the twenty-first century.

Written by: Eleanor J. Bader, May 11th 2009

Breaking Poems

admin — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 16:44:00 +0000

By Suheir Hammad

Cypher Books

In her third book of poetry, award-winning Palestinian American poet Suheir Hammad explores the resilience of women’s bodies across borders in a fluid set of poems entitled Breaking Poems. Hammad embraces life at the border, refusing to translate her identity to fit a bounded-identity construct of what it means to be Palestinian or American. She uses a diasporic language, blending anglicized Palestinian Arabic with English. She fuses cultures, dropping names of inspirational figures like Umm Kulthum, Fairuz, Malcolm X, and James Baldwin.

Exploring the theme that wars are fought on women’s bodies, Hammad writes, “in gaza still flesh is ashed/wa smoked wa denied/a women’s chest caves in/smoke escapes legs.” (Wa means "and" in Arabic). In fact, the violence in Gaza is a constant topic in her poetry, summoning us to act and react as she evokes images of exploded bodies, rubble in place of homes, and empty stomachs. She connects the experiences of women in New Orleans to Gaza, capturing the resilience of women’s bodies as they encounter multiple forms of violence.

Breaking poems is also about breaking with old identity constructs. Hammad undergoes a personal transformation as she finds it impossible to fit into fixed and bounded notions of identity. Instead, she embraces border identities that are contradictory, fluid, and multi-sited. She refers to herself as “translinear me” and allows herself to exist simultaneously across time and space as a young girl in Deheisha to a woman in Beirut to a refugee in Brooklyn. “We lived there once my parents sisters and me,” she writes about Beirut. “I left my skin there still boiling.” Beginning to find home in change, Hammad writes:

sometimes I leave my body wa I leave my country wa my religion sometimes leaving is my religion.

Hammad also offers up the poem as the space for home, writing, “Poem is my body my language my country.” By exploring transnational and border identities, Hammad joins the ranks of women like Gloria Anzaldúa, Uma Narayan, Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Ella Shohat, and Nadine Naber.

Hammad’s poetry is never conventional; she plucks words that evoke the sensations of sight, smell, and touch. She induces feeling and meaning by convincing the reader that her words describe their memories. Nuanced and complex, breaking poems explores a new space in twenty-first century poetry.

Written by: Arwa Ibrahim, March 29th 2009

Shapeshifters

admin — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 11:51:00 +0000

By Invincible

Emergence Music

The state of mainstream hip-hop is pretty damn depressing. The entire genre has been declared dead a number of times, and the best of a generation make reality shows instead of change. Similarly, the city of Detroit has been ridiculed as economically depressed and full of unprosecuted crime in the shadow of police scandals that have come to prominence again this year. Some might say these are symptoms of a dying city, if it not a dead one. Of the respective states of Detroit and hip-hop, it is also sometimes said that one death begets the other. So how is it that one could make such pronouncements about this city and the underground hop-hop movement, then witness such a birth from such supposed death? Perhaps the stories in newspapers don’t tell the whole truth. Wouldn’t be the first time.

So this leads us to easily understand the intro track titled “State of Emergency” on Shapeshifters, the debut album by Invincible. A wildly talented Palestinian MC, who grew up in Detroit Rock City and is a longtime member of the ANoMoLies all-female crew, her rhymes are continuous fresh breathes of air in a purportedly stifled creative environment.

This is where we are: a critical juncture in social movements and humanity. So why, if we’re so dead and doomed, is every positive, hopeful Invincible beat and lyric so right on? Explained in the liner notes, an unofficial motto of Detroit remains “opportunity in crisis,” legitimized further by albums like this one, self-built distribution rising up behind it. Despite being previously offered million-dollar record deals, Invincible created Emergence , what she hopes will serve as a distribution model for others working outside the system. She raps, she organizes, she has activist-based business savvy. What doesn’t this woman, this album represent? As she puts it in “Looongawaited”: “I’m striving to be one of the best, period/Not just one of the best with breasts and a period.”

The album features a slew of talented Detroit MCs including Finale, and local Detroit City activist/expert folk like Grace Lee Boggs, Gwen Mingo, and Ron Scott (who is, in full disclosure, a good friend of mine). Many of these collaborators are also featured in the docu-music-video that is included on the CD: “Locusts.” The themes on this album, and in the "Locusts" video, don’t make sense to me just because I have family from the same geographical area and grew up personally understanding small town Midwestern deprivation. These stories of gentrification, destruction, and rebirth are universal. And from a strictly artistic perspective, this album has me nothing but excited about recognizable, reworked samples and one of the most tightly produced revolutionary blueprints I’ve put in my boombox since discovering Dead Prez’s Let’s Get Free.

Invinicible says it herself: “My job is to make the revolution irresistible” (“State of Emergency”). A line from “Looongawaited,” and from the CD jacket, is important in a downloading age (a time I admit to reveling in): “You want good music/You gotta support it.” So, go do it. Best music purchase of the year. I'll put money on it.

Written by: Brittany Shoot, July 23rd 2008

Rakasa

admin — Tue, 01 May 2007 17:50:00 +0000

Directed by Iris Rubin

Go2Films

Rakasa is a documentary about the lives of three Palestinian women who dance for joy, expression and sometimes money. Certain images come to mind when an American says, “I’m a dancer.” However, the dancing found in Rakasa _(Arabic for “bellydancer”) comes from an irrepressible urge to rebel, to be free, and to be wholly and utterly a _woman in a culture that would have one deny that Goddess-given gift. This form of dancing also crosses religious barriers, bringing Israeli Jews and Arabs together to dance. For this, rakasa—and the women whose lives are shared within—should be celebrated.

What’s missing from Rakasa is solid structure and clarity of purpose. It ends up coming across as a beautiful, blurry blob; Rakasa isn’t sure if it wants to be an overcoming-oppression film, or simply a celebratory slice-of-life.

One of the women fights with her mother and grandmother over her right to dance. Another tries to overcome the apathy of her lackadaisical husband. The third, whom you might call Rakasa’s heroine, enjoys an adoring husband, her own dance studio and dancing passionately while great with child.

Director Iris Rubin chose to keep the tone light in a documentary that could have easily included cultural images of brutality against women. While I applaud Rubin’s decision to focus on the joy of dancing, the film might have revved my energetic investment had it displayed images of oppression that extended beyond irritating smotherhood.

Rubin does pepper in two cultural-context references. The first comes from clips of old TV shows depicting misogynist males. The second comes from a dancer’s advisor who reminds the dancer (frustrated by her mother’s objections to dancing) that things really are improving: after all, she says, 20 years ago, they would have killed you.

“They” are not specified, but this moment might have been Rubin’s way of saving her viewers from the very images I lament being absent. Perhaps there was no middle ground with which Rubin could work, and any accurate images of brutality would have crushed all she hoped to show: women dancing joyously.

Despite its wobbly structure, _Rakasa _is a luscious journey filled with surprising and sizzling food scenes, uber-femininity and brilliant, yummy colors that is a sensorial pleasure to watch.

Written by: Michelle C. Schaefer, May 1st 2007

Goal Dreams

admin — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 13:15:00 +0000

Directed by Maya Sanbar, Jeffrey Saunders

Arab Film Distribution

Originally projected onto the Separation Wall in Palestine/Jerusalem on the eve of the 2006 World Cup, Goal Dreams is a documentary account of the struggles the Palestine National (Football) Team faced to whip up what is so strikingly absent in Palestinian culture: hope. Even if you don’t give two stuffed grape leaves about sports, this edu-docu-drama will capture, break and embolden your heart. The sport itself is not entirely incidental, but the film is about unity amongst people who have been essentially homeless for over fifty years.

The football (that’s soccer, you know) players, all of whom have Palestinian blood, come to Egypt from around the world to play for Palestine. Goal Dreams highlights the thirty incredibly stressful days prior to the “decision match” between Palestine and Uzbekistan, which will determine who goes on to play in the World Cup.

Training camp, if it can be called that, takes place in Egypt because (in case you didn’t know) there’s political tension in Israel and Palestinian Territories. As the film observes, any discussion about Palestine becomes—inevitably—a political discussion. Goal Dreams shows-not-tells what it means to be a Palestinian today, whether in New York, Chile or Gaza. Strangely, the team’s coach is a very difficult to like Austrian named Riedl. Given to fits of brow furrows and eye rolling, Riedl yells a lot, but does little coaching.

The team’s goalkeeper, Ramzi Saleh—a distractingly beautiful Gazan Palestinian—is key in keeping our non-politically-based attention. He is a devoted husband, father, son and brother. We kind of love him for that. However, we can’t help thinking about the palpable absence of women in this story. The women we do see are wearing abayas; some are munaqqabat (women who wear niqab, a full face cover).

Additionally, one player makes a frat boy observation about Swedish girls and Riedl considers “We are looking like girls!” the ultimate insult. (The Palestinian Territories National Women’s Soccer Team might disagree.)

Maya Sanbar, a Brit with Palestinian heritage, and Jeffery Saunders, a Jewish-American, are skilled directors who keep an unflinching tone throughout the film. There is a tastefully indulgent moment at the end when a player opines, “everyone should dream because without dreaming, there is no life.” Nice by itself, but even nicer with an image of David Beckham shouting from a wall ad in the background.

Written by: Michelle C. Schaefer, March 5th 2007