‘Promised Land’: The Fruit of Pessimism From Arabs and Jews

For 10 days we watched their houses . . . to determine the best time to hit them . . . . One night, we placed two bombs, one in the car and another in the garage.

--”Josef,” Jewish terrorist . . . I preferred that the Palestinian child pass unhurt. So as the child left and the armed Israeli girl soldier approached, I threw the hand grenade.

--Abu Nasser, Arab terrorist As paradoxical as the history and conflict it captures, “Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land” is a hauntingly beautiful film about ugliness.

The message that surfaces in this two-hour documentary on PBS is one of pessimism--that each side has hurt the other too deeply for conciliation. Measuring the physical trauma is relatively easy. Surveying the “psychological landscape” of Israel and the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, however, David K. Shipler wonders: “What wounds are done inside people’s minds?”

“Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land” answers that question with authority.

Airing at 9 tonight on Channels 28, 15 and 24, and at 10:30 p.m. Wednesday on Channel 50, it’s handsomely filmed and shares the title, freshness and prosaic rhythms, although not the fullness, of Shipler’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book about enduring hostility between Israeli Jews and Arabs. A former New York Times bureau chief in Jerusalem, Shipler is the executive producer, chief writer and narrator here, and with producer/director Robert Gardner has translated the book to film with sensitivity, insight and meticulous balance.

There is no point of view, except that peace between Israelis and rebelling Palestinians in the occupied territories depends on voices of moderation and that those voices--many as they are--may not prevail above the din of anger and bitterness.

Shipler gives context to the present by replaying the past, including the “scalding memory” of the Holocaust as part of a Jewish history that produces a feeling of isolation and intense suspicion.

We meet Israeli survivors of Arab atrocities and Arab victims of Israeli atrocities. Emotions pour out.

Shipler finds the common denominators among Palestinians and Israeli Jews, who not only look alike, but also share an almost spiritual reverence for the land. And he finds the intractables, including Jewish settlers in the occupied territories who believe that God willed this land to the Jews. So, if God commands it, who is to argue?

There are the extremists. After explaining how to make Molotov cocktails, a young Palestinian adds: “My hatred of the occupation will end when the Zionist ideal ends . . . when Israel ends.”

A section of the program disturbingly explores the terrorist mind. What is so “chilling” about terrorists is that “they seem so normal,” says Shipler. Semantics play a role here. A “terrorist” may argue that violence against a military target is not terrorism. Then again, what constitutes a “military target?”

Wordplay aside, the mind set is significant. In separate interviews, presented in a point-counterpoint style that typifies much of the program, an Israeli and Palestinian each explains the roots of his rage and cooly justifies violence. It is chilling.

Perhaps even more distressing is the prejudice on both sides, prejudice against the other that has been taught and reinforced since childhood. Facts and feelings clash here. We see discrimination by Israeli Jews against Israeli Arabs that echoes the plight of blacks in America. And we see Palestinian schools teaching anti-Zionist prejudice to young children.

Although Shipler’s book was written before the uprising in the occupied territories, tonight’s program fills in some of the gaps. The mounting casualties--the overwhelming bulk of them Palestinian--are not ignored. Palestinians throw stones at Israelis, says a Palestinian journalist, to show “we exist.”

Yet the small picture is sometimes obscured by the big historical picture. Hence, in citing anti-Israeli curricula taught Palestinian children, the program omits mentioning that the Israelis long ago closed Palestinian schools in the territories, alleging that they fomented violence.

There are glimmers of hope among the wounded spirits. We see a government-endorsed program in which Israeli Jewish kids spend time with their Arab counterparts inside Israel proper. They don’t always agree, but at least they get along.

But there is also the story of two other school-age children, this time on the West Bank, one a Palestinian boy, the other an Israeli girl. Both died in violence that erupted when the girl and other children from her settlement went on an outing that took them near the boy’s village.

An Israeli guard shot the boy and then inadvertently shot the girl. Before it was learned that the girl was killed by the guard and not Palestinians, the Israeli army blew up 14 homes in the boy’s village as punishment.

One of the girl’s friends, who has deep anger for the Palestinians, has written about the incident.

“Bitterness is all around us,” she says. And despair.