Throughout the 18 years of the Roger
Ebert Film Festival, Roger and his staff have brought a number of important and
significant movies and documentaries to the restored Virginia Theatre in
Champaign, Ill., with themes exploring love, terminal illness, aging, organ
donation, war and any number of other subjects of consequence.
But
in this year’s festival, a documentary of crucial importance to finding a
peaceful solution to war and conflict was introduced to festival goers just a
month after Chaz Ebert saw the film at a special screening in New York, as
reported in the local News-Gazette by Melissa Merli, who has long been the newspaper’s
eyes and ears at Ebertfest.
The
film, Disturbing the Peace, had what
was called a “special premiere” and was given the first Ebert Humanitarian
Award for a film shown at the festival.
In
the documentary, producer and co-director Stephen Apkon and cinematographer and
co-director Andrew Young go to the troubled Middle East where Palestinians and
Israelis have fought and died for territorial rights for decades. Former
soldiers, fighters and activists from both sides who have lost family members have
come together to form a group they call Combatants for Peace and are now ostracized
and considered outcasts by many still fighting.
Writing
about the documentary in the festival program, reviewer Ben Cheever outlined
the roles played by each side for years. “This fresh and intimate documentary
by a first-time director and his veteran partner has changed the world I know,”
he wrote. “Some stories we inherit. Some stories we invent ourselves. We live
these stories. Change the stories and we change the world.”
Two
of the co-founders of Combatants for Peace, former Israeli soldier and former
prisoner Chen Alon and Palestinian activist and former prisoner Sulaiman Khatib
(who was sentenced to 15 years when he was 14) were in Champaign for only a few
hours during the festival to talk about the film and the movement. They sat
shoulder to shoulder on the stage as part of the panel after the film and told
their story.
Khatib
served 10 and one-half years of his sentence and spent the time reading and
learning about other world conflicts and the philosophies of Mahatma Gandhi and
Nelson Mandela, participating in hunger strikes and developing his commitment
to nonviolent resistance.
As
a reserve major in the Israeli army, Alon also co-founded Courage to Refuse, “a
movement of officers and combatant soldiers who refuse to serve in the occupied
Palestinian territories,” and was sentenced to prison.
While
the hostilities still rage between Palestinian and Israeli freedom fighters and
soldiers, the existence of the group and the marches for peace is a far cry
from the carnage that continues in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Iran and much of
the rest of the Middle East with ISIS, the Taliban and other factions that have
continued fighting for hundreds of years with no sign of it coming to an end.
And
the way Khatib and Alon served their prison sentences and came out to work
together for peace is a long way from how the prisoners of Guantanamo, Abu Graib
and other prisons and detention centers throughout the world have reportedly
served time and functioned after release back into society.
It’s
also a far cry from the way the controversial Steven Salaita, whose offensive
and vulgar-laced rants against Israel cost him a teaching position at the
University of Illinois before he ever taught the first day and cost the
cash-strapped university a boatload of money, responded to the Palestinian-Israeli
struggle.
If
the stories for the Palestinians and Israelis can change and have the potential
to change life in that area of the world, it seems that a similar approach can offer
hope for the rest of the world.
It
may not be as simple as John Lennon wrote in his song: “Imagine there's no countries/It isn't hard to do/Nothing to kill or
die for/And no religion too/Imagine all the people/Living life in peace. …” but
you can imagine people on opposite sides of the conflicts, political parties,
religions and other contentious situations or groups coming together in the
interest of peace and civility.
One would like to think that government leaders could be at least as
forward thinking as the former combatants and activists in Palestine and Israel.
Or is that asking too much? There are many places that could follow their example.
A good place to start changing the stories is in our own communities,
in the state government in Springfield, and in the federal government in
Washington.
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