On Home and a film

The post Elly wrote about Munich made me feel a bit uneasy about my feelings towards "home", whatever it is: the motherland or fatherland or homeland.
A long time ago, I discovered I had no sentimental emotions regarding "home".

My first long voyage far from Egypt took me twelve years without feeling the slightest 'homesickness' for Egypt. Truly. I missed certain places such as a coffeehouse, a part of the river Nile, certain hours of the day, some streets and very few people. In the beginning I was worried about my 'patriotic' feelings, but gradually and secretly I was feeling relief that I had no emotional ties to many things and people I mentioned above.

That is why I was feeling uneasy about Elly's post, inspite of liking it, because she connected her feelings with an interpretation of the film, Munich
Elly wrote: "I need to know that home is there. And you may believe you are criticizing Israel in Munich, but really you are merely chastising it and underlining over and over again the reality of the homeland. It is there and you have the luxury of choosing at whim whether you like it or not. And what inexpressible relief as well as agony that gives to you!
So what about the relief of the Palestinians - will they ever have any damn relief?"

But I never had this urge or feeling that I want to return 'home'. I created two homes for myself: a simple house in Amsterdam where I do not share anything with the Dutch population... No history, no schools or playgrounds, no streets which witnessed my first kiss with a girl... In addition, I have another small flat in October city, which it is a new city and has no character or even history by itself! I lived in Warsaw for five years, Baghdad four years, Beirut four years. In addition, so many years in Sudan. Some of these places I like and miss, and that is it - nothing more.

I saw the film, Munich, in Amsterdam about a year and half ago. I liked it because I felt Spielberg tried hard to be objective and say something that would not agree totally with the Jewish mainstream thinking about 'Home'. I saw the Palestinian camps in Lebanon and in Gaza; all my life I have known all sort of Palestinians - rich and poor, fighters and politicians. I saw them leaving Beirut in one of their big and contentious exoduses.

The film also gave me uneasy feeling, a sort of frustration and hopelessness.
I did not feel sorry for Avner, because he is a killer. The Black September fedayeen had a cause. They had been betrayed by the Arabs in the massacre in Jordan, and by the world since 1948, so they decided to take things into their own hands. The Israelite hajanah had killed so many Arabs before, so what Avner was doing was to continue what his culture and religion demand from him.

That is the main difference between the two sides in the film, which the director could not or would not grasp. I was looking in the film for justice, not justification. I was not looking for home or homeland because I know that both politicians and killers do not believe in them in spite of what they claim.

Still the film is a daring step. I do not believe there were innocent people in the film; they all shared certain dogmatic ideas about being righteous, and that the "others" are wrong, and that according to my book would put them in a grey area. I had a feeling the director was aiming the message of the film towards those people!

Summary only...

Is this home?

Home is what I ache for when I feel a despised stranger elsewhere - my home becomes a mythical Somerset idyll and the warmth and safety of my mother's womb from which I was ejected 32 years ago.

When at home I eat my mother's bread, and sit next to the radiator and behave badly often; it is my home, I'll behave as I want I think. At home I reconnect with friends and forget to make new ones, or hide from old, long gone ones.

The desire to be at home is one of the most natural and disheartening of human desires. I leave home for good reasons - there is nothing for me there any more, it bores me and keeps me infantile, yet I keep going back.

There is only one explanation of Spielberg's film, Munich - it is his personal exploration of what home and family is. (For a good critical review see Angry Arab)

If Golda Meir is the grandmother whose racist tales you listen to in respectful silence, and the 'hero's' mother is Lady Macbeth egging him on, then his wife is Mary Magdalene crying at the foot of the cross over the beautiful man who has sacrificed his life for the sins of his people. Avner believes he is protecting his people, but of course they are using him and eventually offer him up - a Jew nonetheless - for crucifixion.

The film's 'hero', Avner, we are told, did all he did - hunting down innocent men and murdering them in cold-blood - for home and family. And in the end he is symbolically homeless and broken, estranged from his own father, disgusted by his mother and at best the adoptive son of a mafia boss.
A parable of sorts, but an ambivalent one.
After all Avner is not really an exile. At worst he is the prodigal son; if he chooses to return to his homeland Israel, he will be welcomed even by those who despise him. And one senses that the pull of home and family is too strong for a man such as Avner to resist. He may have sinned at the behest of his people, but he is doing penance (in Brooklyn of all places) and anyway, time heals...

It is interesting that the sympathetic Arab villains (I know that seems not to make sense, but think about it - the one does not cancel out the other for the well-trained film audience as Spielberg knows) who Avner tracks down are scattered all over Europe and beyond. Of course we should know that is because they DO NOT have a homeland to return to, and in this context their adamant refrain that 'one day we will return to our olive trees' seems laughable.
The problem is that because of the genre of the film: fast-paced international action thriller led by soul-searching hero - the fact that the targets live in foreign metropolises is to be expected.
Are we, therefore, asked to worry about them not having homes? No, because they are little more than classic criminals in hiding, escorted by KGB or CIA agents, for whom a hotel room and a personal driver is a way of life.

Avner does have a home and he rejects it - at least for the moment - as a matter of principle. The Palestinian men and their families living in Paris, Rome, Amsterdam, New York and Beirut are homeless.
As Spielberg and I have cleverly established - the idyll of home and family is more often than not a stupid fantasy. Yes, yes Mr. Spielberg, we agree on that, but the material fact of that home that haunts us is the big elephant in the room. It must be there, even for one to leave it voluntarily, and then dream about it.

I need to know that home is there. And you may believe you are criticising Israel in Munich, but really you are merely chastising it and underlining over and over again the reality of the homeland. It is there and you have the luxury of choosing at whim whether you like it or not. And what inexpressible relief as well as agony that gives to you!
So what about the relief of the Palestinians - will they ever have any damn relief?

Summary only...