September 9, 2016

‘Disturbing the Peace’ a documentary of monumental significance in search of peace


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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