Learning Arabic in Hebrew: Michel Khleifi

Thiruvananthapuram: Filmmaker Michel Khleifi was born in Nazareth. That could be northern Israel or northern Palestine, depending on which side you are on. “I am a Palestinian. That we are Arabs in Israel is a figment of fiction that Israelis have created in their head,” he says. He makes a map of Palestine, and goes on to cut it like Christmas cake. In the end, the map looks like mutiny on paper. (For sure, he is not trained in cartography.) “Imagine an Israeli coming to Kerala, occupying the whole land and pushing you to other states,” he says. He had to leave Nazareth for Brussels in Belgium, as there were no opportunities to grow. “Even now percentage of Palestinians in universities may just be 2 percent. It is nothing,” he says.

To help appreciate the situation, he shares a joke. “We say, in Israel, you can learn English in English, German in German, French in French,  Hebrew in Hebrew and Arabic in Hebrew. The whole system of education has now become Hebrew. I have met Palestinian families who have stopped speaking Arabic,” he says. In a rich country, the Palestinians live in ghettos. He, at 14 years, worked in a garage. After five years of working, his mother told him to build his own life. What she meant was that he can have his own garage, a house and a wife. But Michel decided to leave for Belgium in 1971. “You would not believe. I just had money to buy a one-way ticket, and 200 dollars,” he says.

He studied theatre and television in Brussels. He decided to come back to Nazareth in 1975, but there was no work. He returned to Belgium, and after three years, he started making his first film.  “I said this is my line. In any creative field, you must know what you don’t want, and you look for what you want. People think they must know what they want,” he says. Neither he nor his cinema is against Israeli people. ‘Wedding in Galilee’, screened at IFFK 2016, is about Israeli soldiers attending an Arab wedding. They don’t do that out of camaraderie, but to keep a close watch on the villagers. The story unfolds to show the simple human side of the Israeli soldiers.

His political stand – humanity over war – is evident in the way he treats people at IFFK 2016. A friendly giant, he was seen making small talk with festival volunteers, waving at friends made the other day.   To this reporter, Michel Khleifi said, "you have the eyes of a director". Of course, it does not matter that he barely knew me, or that I don’t wield the camera too well. He probably said that to every person he met. And each of those people, including me, is not going to forget the encounter.