'Attack' Starring Ali Suliman and Raymond Ansalem. Directed by Zaeid Doueri. In Hebrew and Arabic with English subtitles.
The conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, Israeli novelist Amos Oz once said, "is a conflict between right and right." In short, Israelis deserve their homeland but Palestinians deserve one too.
But what happens when this conflict runs right through your life?
It happens to Amin Jaafari (Ali Suliman) in this film. At the film's opening, Amin is a Palestinian who works in Israel, and has carved out a successful career there.
He's given an award for his work in front of a crowd of cheering Israeli Jews. But then a suicide bomber kills a crowd of Israelis and the suicide bomber turns out to be Amin's wife Siham (Raymond Ansalem). A grief-stricken Amin launches a search to find out why his wife did this and how she hid her pro-Palestinian feelings for so long.
"Your wife died for your redem[ption," a church father tells Amin in the occupied city of Nablus on Israel's West Bank. Amin and Sahim were secular Christians not Moslems.
Amin, it seems, can never accept that his wife was a terrorist until his nephew tells him the truth. Nor at the film's end does he feel comfortable as an Israeli or a Palestinian.
Director Zaeid Doueri was born in Lebanon, lived in the U.S., and then shot the film in Israel.Because it was shot in Israel, and maybe due to its politics too, 22 countries have refused to show 'Attack' in their theatres.
'The Attack' is a very fine film. Yet its message and the many Moslem countries that have banned it from their movie houses, show that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a long was from
ending.
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