Arna’s Children

Directors: Danniel Danniel, Juliano Mer-Khamis (Israel, Netherlands). Year of Release: 2004

The camera goes down the wrong side of a road, passing a queue of standing cars. Some horns are honked. As we approach the reason for the queue – an Israeli checkpoint – the horns get loudly. A woman wearing a kuffiyah on her head is stood next to banners in Hebrew and Arabic. She is encouraging the drivers to honk, and urging them to drive past the Israeli soldiers at the checkpoint – soldiers at whom she is hurling abuse.

Arna Mer-Khamis discharged herself from hospital, where she was being treated for cancer, to stage this protest. The kuffiyah hides her lack of hair due to chemotherapy. In 1948, Arna served in the Palmach, the élite Israeli militia. She also joined the Communist Party and married a Palestinian – Saliba Khamis. In the 1980s when schools in the West Bank were closed down by the occupation, she established the Care and Learning Project, providing education to traumatized kids in Jenin.

Her work was rewarded by the Alternative Novel Prize. With the $50,000 prize money, provided by the Swedish government, she extended her project to build what was to become the Freedom Theatre. Arna’s son Juliano, an actor, who also directed this film, took over day-to-day management of the theatre. Footage shown from between 1989 and 1996 shows how it was able to provide both therapy and an outlet for the youngsters’ anger.

In a typical liberal film, we would be shown how Art can be used as a way of channelling aggression, so that kids at the Freedom Theatre learn that drama is much more productive than violent resistance. Arna’s Children is not typically liberal, and all the better for that. Taking its lead from both Arna and Juliano it makes a good case for theatre being the artistic accompaniment to the armed struggle. Or, as one kid says: “Acting is like throwing a Molotov cocktail,”

Two scenes in particular highlight this. After Ala’s house is destroyed by Israeli tanks, Arna asks him how he would like to respond to the Israeli soldiers. “Kill them”, he says. Arna then asks the distressed boy to act out this feeling on, whereupon he physically attacks her while she looks on approvingly. “Be angry”, she tells him. Later Juliano asks the class to portray their English teacher – resulting in a performance containing arrogant disdain and a great deal of violence.

Although much of the film takes place within the classroom, everything is pervaded by the violent occupation. As we jump backwards and forwards in time, Juliano’s beard gets more and less bushy, and the kids look slightly older and younger, though never fully adult. Then we are brought up to date and told that nearly every boy is now dead. Some fought for Islamic Jihad, some for Al-Aqsa Brigades, some with local residents who picked up guns to protect their village against invasion.

The most tragic story is that of Youssef, who we first see as a happy-go-lucky kid. Youssef watched Israeli tanks shelling the Ibrahimiya Elementary School. When the shelling stopped, he entered the school on his own and found the bloody body of a 10-year old girl Reham, who had been hiding in a classroom. Youssef took Reham’s body in his arms and tried to take her to hospital. She died in his arms before he could reach his destination.

As we hear this story, we start to understand a video which we see earlier in the film of Youssef and his brother Nidal, both in paramilitary dress. They are carrying gins and are standing in front of the photo of a young girl, who we recognise as Reham. This is the pair’s farewell video taken before they went on a shooting spree against Israeli civilians – a suicide attack which led to both being killed by Israeli forces.

This particular scene led to one online reviewer going spare, saying: “’Youssef died in Israel’, states the Narrator. What the Narrator doesn’t say is that poor Youssef was a suicide bomber, who didn’t simply die – his death was incidental to his mission – to kill as many innocents as possible…. he portrays these poor Palestinian Arabs as the Noble Oppressed and the Israeli army as the Faceless Evil. But it’s not so simple as this; there’s evil and good on both sides”

Talk about missing the entire point. Nothing about Arna’s Children glorifies violence. Instead it shows how, if you raise children up in a brutalized society in which tanks are likely to raze their homes to the ground, or kill a small girl cowering in fear in a school classroom, do not be surprized if you meet a violent response. To those asking where is the Palestine Gandhi, he was killed in Jenin, and when the Great March of Return was butchered. He is currently being killed in Gaza.

The film also has its moments of levity, from Juliano encouraging the kids’ play to Arna’s reminiscences of her youth. She remembers driving a jeep barefoot when “at that age, everything seems beautiful.” She remembers being adventurous, wild and young. But does she regret anything from those times? Her immediate answer is “No”, then she has a recollection. “I helped to drive out the Bedouin. That is something I regret.” This is the tragedy of Arna, and her country.

The film ends by once more confronting reality. The few remaining kids from the theatre class are filmed putting up posters on walls with pictures of their former classmates – the martyrs. We learn that the theatre no longer exists – one of the many casualties of the Battle of Jenin. Arna died of cancer, and those of us who know our history know that Juliano has also not survived – in 2011 he was murdered outside the theatre. The killer has still not been identified.

Nonetheless, Arna’s Children ends in defiance, with kids from Jenin singing a song of resistance. Some will be disturbed that the song ends Allahu Akbar, but that would be to miss the point. After all the destruction which has been wreaked on Jenin, and which is currently being wreaked on Gaza, almost any form of resistance is preferable to passively accepting the genocidal occupation. As the old AIDS slogan goes: to exist is to resist.

You want the resistance to look different? Then start by accepting the right to resist and condemning the reason the people are resisting in any way possible.