The struggle for freedom is not a path of easy victories; it is the path of enduring hope against overwhelming odds.
~Fadwa Tuqan
The Middle East Film Festival
I'm going to have a go here at talking about some of the Iranian films that I've watched over the last month or two, which are fewer in number than I would have liked. Because I'm rushing into writing this post, somehow driven into it by the madness of war, I can't say that I'm reaching here for a thematic arc, in the same way as I did for instance in my last post. I'm just writing out of urgent need to say something.
Purim falls on the 14th day of the Jewish month of Adar. It fell in late February in the year that I stayed in Jerusalem. There was a big fancy dress party, and then the day after was seemingly a fairly quiet one until my friend from down the corridor came to ask me if I'd heard the news about what had happened in Hebron.
Imagine that the chairman of your Neighbourhood Watch is a DJ and mixtape composer with an interest in Tibetan mysticism, who smokes weed and carries a baseball bat around the hood. In characterisations of Israel which break it down into something more complex and less monolithic than 'the Zionist Entity', there are multiple communities which need to be understood if we have any serious intention of healing the gaping wounds of the Middle East.