Israeli Movies

                  Time of Favor was an excellent film.  Unfortunately, I was not able to watch the entire thing, and could not get a hold of Beaufort, either.  But what I did see of Time of Favor, I thoroughly enjoyed.

I cannot remember all of the characters names, so you will have to bear with me- the only names that I can remember are Pini and Menachem.  My favorite character was Menachem, and I did not know what to think of the girl (I cannot remember her name).  I despised Pini.  I say that I “liked” the characters, because to me, this movie was slightly more Hollywood-like than was Paradise Now.  This movie had more of the traditional “happy-ending” with the good characters becoming heroes.  It was nice to see a happy-ending again for a change, I have to admit!

                  It was enlightening to hear what other people had to say about the movie during our class discussion.  I especially think that the parallel that was drawn between Paradise Now and Time of Favor was especially enlightening.  Though the issues addressed were slightly different in each film, the fact that both movies’ plots centered on suicide bombers on either side made them complimentary to one another. 

                  What made me slightly uneasy in class was that we seemed to keep coming back to the Palestinian plight, rather than really keeping focused on discussing what might be troubling the Israelis right now.  I think it is necessary that we discuss both sides evenly, one unit discussing the Palestinians and one unit discussing the Israelis, and not give one side more credit or time than the other.  The class as a whole seemed to more readily denounce Israeli literature as biased, but was not as hesitant to accept Palestinian literature as the same.  Not that I think Palestinian literature is unimportant; on the contrary, it is very important.  But so is Israeli literature.  Just because Israeli literature does not present the opinion that one agrees with does not mean that its opinion is not valid.  And just because Palestinian literature is “new” to many of us does not necessarily discredit the opinions of other more-commonly-read literature.  I hope I am not misunderstanding what was said or implied in class; I only thought that this was something that should be brought up.