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"descriptions of horror." But even when the "information" was refuted,
and of thousands of corpses there remained fifty-two, and even when
"corpses" from the staged funeral processions stood up, the libel of the
"Jenin massacre" continued feeding the media's imaginary descriptions.
Even the report of a UN investigating committee that confirmed the facts
did not quash the libel. On the contrary, it only spread. The film
Jenin
Jenin
made by Mohammed Bakri (an Israeli Arab star in Israeli film and
theater) was a caustic propaganda film disguised as a documentary.
Shots of corpses were arranged as if they "were cleared out of the ruins
of Jenin," nonexistent wings of a hospital were presented as destroyed
by shells, and fabricated heartbreaking stories supplied the human
dimension. In Europe, the film was enthusiastically received, and the
Arab media were filled with it. Even the inflamed audience at the screen–
ing at the Cinemateque in Jerusalem routed a doctor off the stage who
had been at the battle in Jenin and tried to refute the lies in the film. The
accusation of blood libel, the "Jenin massacre," let loose a wave of
hatred and an impulse for sacrifice-the disguised explosive compound
of the mythical and religious abysses-so powerful that no facts can
refute it anymore. It became a symbol of Palestinian martyrdom.
CLEARLY, THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT has dimensions of
tragedy. The attempt (seeking good will)
to
repress its religious and
mythical roots (threatening as they may be), and to reduce it to an eco–
nomic, territorial, national problem only increases the tragic blindness.
It's like pretending that the plot of
Oedipus Rex
begins with the out–
break of the plague in Thebes-ignoring the prophecy preceding the
birth of Oedipus, his murder of his father, his marriage to his mother.
Recognition or catharsis are only possible by exposing the roots of the
tragedy and the resolution of all elements of the plot, onstage and off.
The return of the Jews to history is a unique phenomenon, which
demands no less than a revolution in the relations of the three Abra–
hamic religions. The return of the Jewish protagonist as a national and
political entity to the Land of Israel, for the first time since the destruc–
tion of the Second Temple, and, simultaneously, the return to the area
of the Western and Christian protagonist, for the first time since the fall
of the Crusader Kingdom, are reestablishing the Land of Israel, the his–
torical source of the triangular religious clash. Hundreds of years of
common history created mutual influences and fertile relations between
the three religions, with an infiltration and assimilation of concepts and
values from among them. But at the same time, the principle of unique–
ness and universal appropriation led to a history of struggles, wars, and
