MARILYN PENN: THE SNEAK ATTACK ****
http://politicalmavens.com/index.php/2013/07/09/the-sneak-attack/
For more than half its running time, “The Attack” is an absorbing film about an outstanding, prize-winning Palestinian surgeon working in Israel and clearly meant to represent the hope of moderate Jews and Arabs living together peacefully and productively. We see Amin’s competence under the intense pressure of saving victims of a recent suicide bomber attack; we see his friendship and ease with his Israeli colleagues; we see his solicitude for a family member to whom he extends his open hospitality. And mainly, we see in flashback, his loving relationship with his graceful and sensual Palestinian wife who is Christian and who is suspected of being the bomber.
From the moment that Amin decides to go to Nablus to recreate the series of events and confront the people who may have led his wife to this incomprehensible act, the film shifts direction. Slowly it becomes more dogmatic and more muddy at the same time. We are asked to accept at face value the fact that Amin would not have heard from anyone that his wife’s picture had been reproduced as a “Martyr’s Poster” all over the city of Nablus (the biblical Shechem). But suicide bombing is only viewed as martyrdom by Muslims who are guaranteed a reward in paradise for this act. The official Christian position is to condemn suicide bombing both from a position of faith and as resistance to the “occupation.” In 1985, there was a 17 yr old Christian girl who did conduct a suicide mission against an Israeli military convoy. But this is a far cry from the depiction of an educated, mature Christian woman married to a leading surgeon and living an upper class lifestyle in contemporary Tel-Aviv deciding to murder Israeli children celebrating a birthday party and families eating at a local restaurant.
The enormous gap in this psychological portrayal is explained in the film as culminating in the wife’s experience in Jenin where she comes face to face with the remnants of the so-called Israeli massacre that is commemorated there as Ground Zero. Originally labeled a massacre by Wafa, the Palestinian news agency and hysterically recycled as such by various British and other news sources, the final tally for casualties was 56 Palestinians – mostly gunmen – and 23 Israeli soldiers. At the time of the battle at the Jenin refugee camp in 2002, Jenin had not been occupied by Israel for the previous 9 years.
At the end of “The Attack,” the surgeon has moved beyond his anger at his wife’s dissembling and her violence to understand the motivation for her senseless act. This is given moral equivalence with the actions of Israel in defending their country against constant war and constant terrorism sponsored and supported by the Arab world. None of the major stumbling blocks that impede a peace treaty between Palestinians and Israel is ever broached in this film, though there is a voice tape of one of the sheikhs declaring that the Jews are not entitled to one grain of Israeli sand. The main characters are all intelligent and thoughtful but this movie really isn’t about discussion. It prefers to cling to the notion that a Palestinian medical student, given scholarship aid and the opportunity to reach the apex of his chosen profession is ultimately an Uncle Tom living in massah’s world and will never be anything else until Palestine is a state. The more salient idea that people of similar educational and professional achievement can achieve friendship and mutual satisfaction despite political dividers is abandoned. The most important question that should have been asked by Amin’s wife when she reached Jenin was why were her people purposely kept in refugee camps by their leaders for so many generations when all around her in Israel were millions of refugees who had been re-settled and integrated into a thriving country. To that question, this film has no answer.
Comments are closed.
