Uncomfortable viewing

By N.P. | SDEROT

THE great and the good of the Israeli establishment daringly travelled from Tel Aviv's well-heeled suburbia to the country's plentifully bombed frontline with Gaza for the Sderot film festival in early June. They came expecting an opening gala full of patriotism. For over a decade, the government publicised Sderot as the prime example of the victimisation of Israelis by Palestinians firing rockets.

Instead, for over an hour, they had to endure "Testimonies", Palestinians' stories of the Israeli occupation. In a series of monologues drawn from Israeli human-rights reports housewives and farmers recounted abuses at Israeli checkpoints. A cleaner returns home with a Star of David etched on her arm by a soldier wielding a broken bottle. A porter is required to copulate with his donkey to recover his identity card. To help the audience connect with the plight of those more usually seen as the enemy, the director, Shlomi Elkabetz, cast Jewish actors speaking Hebrew in the roles of the Palestinians and stripped the landscapes of any Palestinian symbols. The film ends with a woman weeping in Hebrew and Arabic, refusing to stop crying until the suffering ends.

The guests of honour squirmed in their seats. The culture minister, Limor Livnat, a hardliner from the ruling Likud party, upped and fled. General Uzi Dayan, a former military commander in the West Bank, whose charity had unwittingly funded the film, feigned sleep, eyes scrunched, head back and legs outstretched. "It's boring propaganda and lies," he complained. A major-general at his side berated the festival organisers as traitors, before stomping out, with his wife in tow. "How can they show Arabs suffering when they are the ones shooting us?"

While generals huffed and puffed, the packed auditorium audience gave "Testimonies" a standing ovation. Some remained seated, in tears. "In Tel Aviv you don't hear Israel's bombs dropping on Gaza, but you do in Sderot," says Mr Elkabetz, explaining the empathy. "You realise we're sharing one place."

A host of other films on Gaza betrayed a fascination with Sderot's Palestinian neighbours that Israel has locked out for years. One of the local lecturers recounted how he had sneaked in via a tunnel linking Gaza to Egypt. "The government keeps us as victims to justify occupying and abusing others," says Avner Faingulernt, who runs Sderot's film festival and film-school. "We're tired of being manipulated and told there's no one to talk to. We want to talk to Hamas," the Islamist group that runs Gaza.

Not everyone finds it so easy to identify with Gaza's population. Right-wing parties in Sderot won twice their national average in the last elections. Some residents say Israel's assault on the strip in the winter of 2009 which killed around 1,400 Gazans came eight years too late. "Gaza has to feel our nightmare," said a waitress, and went back to serving revelers at a party after the film.