This month, Israeli moviegoers may get just a little more than they bargained for at one of the country’s best-known movie theaters. Through the end of November, the entrance hall to the Tel Aviv Cinematheque will exhibit a series of black-and-white photographs by British photographer Alan Gignoux that places photos of Palestinian refugees alongside photos of the homes they lost during Israel’s War of Independence.
Decades of media reporting about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have largely ignored the individual experiences of Palestinian exiles, says Gignoux, who, starting in 2004, photographed and interviewed his subjects over a period of two years. The project, “Homeland Lost,” which is sponsored by East Jerusalem’s British Council, touches on a series of sensitive issues, including the meaning of a “homeland” and the “right of return,” the latter still the biggest stumbling block in the peace process. Shown for the first time in a mainstream Israeli venue, the images touch a raw nerve.
Exhibited in the year of Israel’s 60th anniversary, Gignoux’s photographs are intimate reminders of the heavy cost of Israeli nationhood that uprooted an entire population. They offer a rare glimpse into the lives of this diverse group of refugees who cut across lines of class, gender, religion and age. These are ordinary people trying to build a life for themselves often under complex circumstances. Some live in refugee camps in Lebanon and the West Bank, others in Jordan and Gaza. Some have successfully integrated into their host countries, while others have not. The elderly among them remember their homeland firsthand, and many hold on to possessions they managed to take with them as if they were precious jewels. Zeinab al’Sakah, an elderly woman, is featured in her wedding dress, the only possession she brought with her from her home in Al-Nahar; today she lives in a refugee camp in Lebanon. Several others are pictured holding the keys to their former homes, which many refugees have held on to as reminders of the residences that they lost, and in hope of one day returning.
Also included here are young men and women born after their families left the land. Sana Bkhet, who participated in the 800-meter event at the Athens Olympics in 2004, Rima Mulhim, who lives in Amman and works for the United Nations, and Hassan Al’Ialeemi, who lives in Dheisheh refugee camp in the West Bank and works as a journalist, have no personal memories of life before 1948, yet their homeland survives as a symbol.
Homes and villages all endured different fates, as have their owners. Some were destroyed immediately after the war and remain in ruins; others have been turned into Israeli agricultural sites, and one is an orphanage for Palestinian children.
No doubt these images will provoke Israelis who see them, in part because they remind these people of similar photographs taken of the Jewish Diaspora. While on the one hand they suggest the “right of return,” they also raise the question of what there is to return to. “The project speaks of the heartbreaking difficulty of facing up to the impossibility of restoring a past that has ceased to exist and raises the question of imagining an alternative future,” Gignoux writes in a description of the project.
For Cinematheque director Alon Garbuz, hosting this exhibit is a way of encouraging Israelis to begin to think about the issues.
“The problem of refugees should interest everyone in Israel, just like Jewish refugees from other countries,” Garbuz said. “What is important about the exhibit is that it makes people start thinking, because people prefer not to think at all.”
Michal Lando is a freelance journalist working from Tel Aviv.
The Forward welcomes reader comments in order to promote thoughtful discussion on issues of importance to the Jewish community. In the interest of maintaining a civil forum, the Forward requires that all commenters be appropriately respectful toward our writers, other commenters and the subjects of the articles. Vigorous debate and reasoned critique are welcome; name-calling and personal invective are not. While we generally do not seek to edit or actively moderate comments, the Forward reserves the right to remove comments for any reason.
Copyright © 2013, Forward Association, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Why a Rabbi Should Not Marry Outside the Faith
Tapping Into Growing Lure of Hidden Jewish Heritage
Montreal's First Jewish Mayor Michael Applebaum Hit With Corruption Charges
Getting In Face of Ultra-Orthodox on Need for Real World Education
Barbra Streisand Is Butt of Anti-Semitic Joke
You've successfully signed up!
This article would have us believe that Israelis don't want "to think about the issues". However, it's simply not so. There is a high public awareness of the question of refugees, and the topic is on the news (and in literature) on a regular basis. The assumption of this article is that the price of Israel's nationhood was the creation of the refugee problem. This assumption is likewise untrue. The acceptance of the Partition Plan of 1947 would have meant that a Jewish State and an Arab State would have been born in this country without warfare (and without refugees). Unfortunately, the Arab side insisted on war. Another misleading assumption in this article is that the right of return is "still the biggest stumbling block in the peace process". No, it's not. The refugee problem is not the cause of conflict - it's the result of conflict. Similarly, the refugee problem is not preventing a peace deal; rather, the inability to end the conflict means that there is no solution for the refugees. In short, had the Arab side accepted the legitimacy of Jewish statehood in 1947, there would have been no war (and no refugees). Moreover, when the Arab side finally accepts Israel's legitimacy, the conflict will come to an end (and there will be no more refugees). It is absolutely absurd to discuss today's plight of refugees without mentioning that there is still today an ongoing conflict. What is wrong with the Forward's reporting this week?
I think "Homeland Abandoned" would have made a much better title for this project.
It requires very little 'historic' research as evidence for the legitimacy of both Yehuda and Mike's comments. Mae
I look forward to an exhibit of the homes that the Jews in all Arab countries had to abandon after the creation of Israel. Most of these Jews had lived in Iraq, Egypt, Yemen etc. for nearly 2000 years and their number was double that of Arabs living in Palestine. Thos Arabs willing to be peaceful citizens of Israel lost little and today enjoy a standard of living, health, etc. greater than Arabs living under Muslim governments. Twelve million Germans, who as Polish, Czech and Yugoslav citizens betrayed their countries to Hitler, were expelled and incorporated into Germany. In 60 years the Arab countries that incited Palestinian Arabs to "drive the Jews into the Sea" have kept their fellow Arabs in refugee camps instead of absorbing them as citizens. Let us not be betrayed by false sentimentality towards our sworn enemies like Syria, Iran and (cold peace) Egypt.
What the Arabs lost was houses not a homeland. There has never been an Arab nation in Israel (or what the Romans called Palestine). In addition to what some Arabs might have lost because of the war of annhilation they started against the Jews one must also consider what would have happened had the Arabs won. First most of the jews would have either been killed outright by the Arabs or would have drowned trying to swim across the Mediterranean to some country that might have taken them in as refugees. For those who would have survived no non Jews then or now would have cared one bit about their refugee status. It would simply be "tough luck" no home land for you. One also needs to ask why if the Arabs consider themselves all brethren they cannot accept as citizens their own brethren. To that the answer is obvious. It simply is another device to try to destroy Israel.