Sunday February 15, 2015 @2:30 -- Grace Presbyterian Church, 7434 Bath Street, Springfield, VA 22150
"Palestine is a country without a people; the Jews are a people without a country" -- Israel Zangwill, 1901
What if this was not true? What if, when Zangwill wrote this, the population density of “Palestine” was higher than that of the US at that time? What if the Muslims and Christians of “Palestine” out-numbered the Jews more than ten-to-one in 1900? What if, before the establishment of Israel, there was a long-established community of farmers, merchants, tradesmen, writers and artists in what was then called the “British Mandate of Palestine?” What happened to those Palestinians who lived in places such as Haifa, and Jaffa, and Jerusalem before the creation of modern Israel?
This last question is examined in “Voices Across the Divide,” the first in a six-film series starting February 15, 2015. Filmmaker Alice Rothchild is an American Jew raised on the tragedies of the Holocaust and the dream of a Jewish homeland in Israel. The film follows her personal journey as she begins to understand the Palestinian narrative while exploring the Palestinian experience of loss, occupation, statelessness, and immigration to the US. The documentary is both a personal journey to understand the Palestinian narrative as well as the implications and contradictions of deeply held cultural beliefs in the Jewish community. Rothchild interviews those who participated in the Nakba – and those affected by it.