Palestinian documentary faces barriers


Times Herald-Record
 Date: 01-15-05

By Dianna Cahn
dcahn@th-record.com

Middletown ? Seven voices created quite the ruckus. They sparked other voices of protest, convinced a cafe owner in Warwick to silence them, albeit unintentionally, and inspired a shouting match in Middletown.

The seven voices are heard in a documentary called "The Wall," made by two Hudson Valley residents. The movie contains interviews with seven Palestinians affected by the wall Israel is constructing in the West Bank. These are the film's only voices.

When the Tuscan Cafe in Warwick agreed to show the documentary on behalf of the Orange County Peace and Justice Coalition, voices of protest followed. First, members of the Jewish community called the cafe. Other voices needed to be heard as well as the ones in the film, they said. Some threatened to boycott the cafe, convincing owner Richard Bennett to back out of the showing. "The issue wasn't that they were showing it," said Rabbi Andrea Myers, who heads the Jewish congregation in Florida and Warwick. "It was that there wasn't a chance for dialogue, a chance to respond to the film."

Civil rights lawyer Michael Sussman, who heads the Orange County Democratic Alliance, offered the group's Middletown headquarters for a film showing Thursday.

"Censoring a film certainly does not foster peace and justice," Sussman said. "We cherish open discussion. ... To suppress this film and that discussion is un-American."

Bennett, who is away on vacation, said he just wanted to postpone the showing until he got back. He was concerned about protests, and wanted to see the film before he showed it.

"If the lesson here is that you can stop the showing of something you don't like by protesting, that is not the one I want people to come away with," Bennett said.

So on Thursday night, about 25 people sat bundled in coats in the unheated Democratic Alliance premises and heard about the hardships created by the wall as told by seven Palestinians.

Filmmakers Andrew Courtney and Emily Perry of Croton-on-Hudson acknowledged they were not journalists. They said the wall was comparable to the South African apartheid, and charged it served no security purpose at all. They maintain Israel's purpose in building this wall is to grab land and Palestinian water sources.

The Palestinians are the indigenous peoples, said Perry, adding that her knowledge of history "isn't too good."

People nodded. Then a voice piped out of the audience.

"The genesis of the wall was terrorism," said Eric Heffler, a Jewish resident of Warwick. "You call it a refrain. I call it murder and terrorism." When Courtney told of gun exchanges he said were sparked by the Israelis, Heffler broke in.

"That's a lie," Heffler said.

"Can we please talk nicely?" a woman said to Heffler scornfully. "I have a right to speak my mind," Heffler said. "Not when you are shouting everybody down," shouted the woman in front of him.

The meeting ended on a sour note between Heffler and the crowd. "I am sorry I was such a lone voice," Heffler said. "I thought because of the controversy, there would be other people wanting to speak to an opposing point of view."

But after the presentation, he talked with audience member Najim Chechen. Chechen shared with him lessons he's taken from his own long history as an Iraqi refugee.

"I told him, 'If you blame me and I blame you, we walk away disagreeing. So let's agree that we both want to help,' " Chechen said. "It was a very wonderful thing. I think it was good for Eric, too."

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