Return
to Haifa (1982) is a film in which the political element of
international relations is translated into personal terms on the levels of
family and individual people. The establishment of Israel by the UN is depicted
in the film as being accomplished not only incompetently, but in negligence of
likely human suffering. In fact, the suffering of the indigenous population may
have been intended, given the operative attitude towards those people as animals.
That the human being can be so dehumanizing in action as well as belief ultimately
makes victims of all of us, even across artificial divides. This is precisely
what the film depicts, with the victims being the active characters while the real
culprits remain for the most part off-camera. The viewer is left with a sense
of futility that can be undone by widening one’s view to include the antagonists,
who are not passive. It is not as if fate inexorably brought about the Nakba
(or even the scale of the atrocities in Gaza in the next century, which, as the
film was made in 1982, cannot be said to be anticipated by the filmmaker—though
perhaps it could have been).
The full essay is at "Return to Haifa."
