DC Organization honors Saudi TV Series Showing Jewish Life in the Arabian Gulf

By Nate Feldman

America Abroad Media, an organization which according to its website supports voices that promote "universal values through creative content and media programming," hosted an event last week celebrating Um Haroun, a Saudi television series that aired last Ramadan, showing the life of a Jewish community living in the Arabian Gulf in the 1940s.  

The series portrayed Jewish people in a positive light, something extremely uncommon, if not non-existent during the past several decades of ongoing Arab-Israeli hostilities in the region.  Hayat Al-Fahad, a Kuwaiti actress who starred as Um Haroun, the protagonist of the shows, acknowledged in an interview with Margaret Brennan at the America Abroad Media awards that she hesitated a bit before accepting the role because "this idea is unacceptable in Gulf countries or in some Arab countries about a particular group of people." 

Mazen Hayek, a spokesman for the MBC channel which aired the shows, said that the program "focuses on tolerance, showcasing a region where acceptance of one another was the norm." 

Ali and Mohammed Shams, the two screenwriters of the series from Bahrain, said that they wrote the series because the reality of Jews living in the Arabian gulf was a reality and they could not "deny reality." 

The series preceded the normalization of ties between Israel and several Arab countries (the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco) later in the year, and some believe programs like this reflect the thawing of relations and shifting attitudes between former adversaries.  

For more information about Um Haroun and the interview between Margaret Brennan and the show's participants at the America Abroad Media Awards, here is the link on You Tube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvPMQEGozF0.  

My Dearest Enemy: A Film Review

By Nate Feldman

The Other Israel Film Festival, an annual event in New York City which plays movies dedicated to showing different sides of Israel not necessarily discussed in the mainstream media or other film festivals, is running a series of films online from December 3-10 due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.  Many of the films that are part of the festival often deal with Israeli-Palestinian relations.  This year, they are showing My Dearest Enemy, a film about two women, one Palestinian, and the other Israeli, who have been friends since they were young and have tried to maintain their relationship in the midst of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  

After being estranged for more than 20 years, two women in Jerusalem, Alice, a Palestinian professor of literature, and Maya, a professional photographer, re-unite when Maya helps Alice place her ailing father into the rehab center that Maya's catatonic father is in.   The story then goes back and forth between their friendship during their adolescence and adult years and the trials and tribulations of both periods.  

One recurring theme throughout the film is the parallel lives Alice and Maya experience in spite of being from populations at war with one another.  They both love the arts and humanities and express themselves throughout the movie through poetry and photography.  As adults, both of them have lost their mother (Maya's passed away when she was young), and they are both required to take care of their ailing fathers.  They're both in difficult relationship situations with Maya being a single mother who was never married, and Alice married to a man her family forced her to be with while being in love with someone else.  They also have to grapple with the fact their sons are drifting towards extremism and intolerance and wish to fight the other side in the conflict. 

Despite their similarities and apparent warm feelings for one another, the reality of the conflict constantly threatens to break them apart.  Alice is a passionate Palestinian nationalist, and Maya, while not tone deaf to her friend's point of view, does not share her ideas, or at the very least understand them completely.  They must also deal with the fact that the people they live and or interact with want them to end their relationship.  

Nevertheless, the friendship endures through the seemingly endless obstacles it faces.  Political and cultural differences cannot take away the fact that Maya and Alice truly care for one another.  Although the film does not sugarcoat the harsh realities of the Middle East conflict, its portrayal of their lasting friendship offers a sliver of hope.