Jews and Arab cinema.. from the era of occupation to the time of normalization

Inside the Jewish Quarter in Egypt, or the "Mallah" in Morocco, and in other parts;

The Jews lived their lives in Arab and Islamic societies, isolated at times, and involved in their societies at other times, expanding in a number of professions and fields that allowed them to have an important weight within their societies in many cases, and among these fields was art, which spoke about them with or without them, Revealing the secrets and depths of ghetto life, and the political and social transformations that struck the Jewish communities in the region at that time, the most violent of which was Israel.

Shalom... the first Jew

The first appearance of the Jews on the Arab art scene was through actors who first appeared in the theater and then moved to the cinema after that, and a large number of them chose to change their name and take a neutral name to break the barriers between them and the Arab audience, which is mostly Muslim.

The Egyptian artist, Henriette Cohen, chose for herself the name Bahija Al-Mahdi, and Rachel Ibrahim Levy changed her name to Rakia Ibrahim, while the Palestinian Badro Lama Arabized his name to Badr Lama.

On the other hand, other artists chose to keep their Jewish names, such as the Egyptian "Victoria Cohen" and her fellow Syrian-born artist, "Esther Shatah", without this affecting the public's dealings with them and their works (1).

The Jewish artists were able to prove their talents and find a foothold for them in the artistic arena, so their participation was natural alongside their Muslim or Christian colleagues.

However, the real emergence of the Jewish personality on the artistic scene appeared with the arrival of the Italian-born Ashkenazi Jewish director, "Togo Mizrahi" to Egypt, who produced a number of films starring the Sephardi Jew "Shalom".

The relationship between Jewish citizens and Muslim or Christian citizens in some Arab countries was better than the relationship between the rich Jews who lived in high-end neighborhoods and the poor who lived in poor Jewish neighborhoods.

Within this context, the films of Togo Mizrahi came, which attempted to reformulate the relationship between Jews and each other by highlighting the most important challenges they face as a minority in eastern Arab societies, most of which profess Islam (2).

Mizrahi's films tried to address the poor Jews, who usually appeared through the character "Shalom", the main character of all the films, whose appearance receded into the mold of the poor Jew who practiced a simple profession that society did not allow him to do otherwise.

Shalom is the lottery seller in the movie "05001" (1932), and the bean seller in the movie "The Athlete" (1938), a movie that depicted him being deprived of some of his rights, such as practicing sports activities, although the reality did not confirm that this happened exactly, in the same period, There were many Jewish cultural and sports clubs, such as the Maccabi Sports Association in Alexandria, which was then transformed, at the level of Egypt, into the "Macabee Jewish Sports and Literary Union", but perhaps these were spaces that were difficult for the poor Jews to integrate into (3).

Besides poverty, Shalom suffered from persecution, despite his conviction in a simple profession such as selling sandwiches in the movie "The Sportsman".

Shalom's films achieved a kind of success because of their lightness and comedic presentation, despite the important messages that Mizrahi tried to convey to the Jews of his religion, but with the outbreak of World War II, it was no longer possible to continue Shalom's films on the artistic scene within the same framework, and it was not possible to repeat Presented in a different way, after which "Shalom" disappeared forever from the world of art.

After that, Mizrahi bet on the artist, Laila Murad, who had not yet declared her conversion to Islam, so he directed her films “On a Rainy Night” (1939), “Laila the Countryside Girl” (1941), and “Laila the Girl of Schools” (1941), and then finally "Laila" (1942), and these films did not focus much on the heroine's Jewishness, but rather focused more on the Arab society surrounding her and how she faced cultural, moral and social challenges.

From the movie "Laila the Girl of Schools" (communication sites)

Away from Mizrahi films, the Jewish character was present in a number of films, albeit not the main ones. We mention here, for example, the movie "The Hat of Concealment", in which the actor Shafiq Nour El-Din played the role of the Jewish usurer who seized the property of an old Jewish widow played by "Serena Ibrahim". While the Jew appeared positively in the movie “The Game of the Set” (1946) starring Naguib Al-Rihani, who is “Hassan” who meets the Jewish businessman “Isaac” during his search for a living amidst the estrangement of people and the spread of greed, stinginess and bad manners.

The film shows "Isaac" with a unique and human personality in the midst of a society suffocated by material calculations, and proves to Hassan with his words and actions that complete happiness lies in sacrifice, self-denial and loyalty, and ends up donating to Hassan all his wealth after the arrival of the Nazis in Libya, as Isaac decides to flee Egypt and head to South Africa In search of safety and security away from the Nazi camps.

Israel.. the new party in the equation

All of our lives are struggle and jihad

Something we inherited from our ancestors

Who missed countries and countries

It has glory and there is jah

The land of our ancestors and others

On it we die and on it we live.”

From the song "O Mujahid in the Cause of God" from the movie "Girl from Palestine" (1948)

The emergence of the occupying state in 1948 had a major role in reshaping the relationship of the Arab, Muslim or Christian citizen with the Jewish citizen in his country.

This change undoubtedly had a great impact on the role of the Jews in the Arab film industry in general and the Egyptian cinema in particular, and it also cast a shadow over the "image of the Jews" in the artworks in which they were embodied.

First of all, one who looks at the conditions of the Jewish artists who emigrated to Palestine can feel some social and political pressure that pushed them to this emigration without their real desire to do so.

NEW on our library shelves—'Togo Mizrahi and the Making of Egyptian Cinema' by @Deborah_A_Starr (@ucpress, 2020): https://t.co/LOiYYrMrvP pic.twitter.com/LSFG8LsQnw

- Tine Lavent (@Tine_Lavent) December 8, 2021

This is evidenced by the life path of "Serena Ibrahim" and "Gracea Qasin", who immigrated to the occupying state, while "Najma Ibrahim", Serena's sister, and "Salha Qasin", Gracia's sister, did not emigrate from Egypt because of their marriage to Muslims and their belonging to stable families. She was able to stay in the country.

This tells us that "Israel" did not represent that rosy dream for a large number of Jews, including artists and celebrities who supported the occupation state at some point in time, as Rakia Ibrahim (Rachel Ibrahim Levy) immigrated to the United States in the end despite obtaining an Israeli passport, while Togo Mizrahi preferred to go into self-imposed exile in Italy, where he lived until his death in 1982. For her part, Samiha Murad immigrated to the United States after her separation from her husband, Leon Kazis, who is one of the mediators of the Jewish Agency that worked to displace Jews to the Promised Land. ".

On the other hand, some Jewish artists chose to present works that support the Arab cause in the face of the Jewish state. The director, Youssef Wahbi, assigned the singer, Laila Murad, of Jewish origin who had just converted to Islam, to play the role of the Palestinian character in the movie Shadia and the Valley (1948). ), and Laila Murad wore nurses' clothes, accompanied by "Camellia", also a Jewish actress, to take care of the Egyptian soldiers returning from the Palestine war in the films "Wandering Souls" (1949) and then in the movie "Life is Love" (1954), while Rakia Ibrahim adorned the flag of Egypt in The movie "Makansh Ala Al Baal" (1959).

Rakia Ibrahim in the movie "There Was No Mind" (1959).

(communication Web-sites)

And if this was the case of the Jewish actor, the image of the Jew on the screen was also greatly affected by the political realities in the post-establishment of the occupying state.

In the year 1948, director Salah Abu Seif presented his film “The Adventures of Antar and Abla,” which was political in nature through a number of nationalist slogans that were used in the cinematic framework, such as “Arab land for Arabs” and “We make peace with those who make peace with us, and we make enemies with those who oppose us.” The film was presented The image of a Jewish spy played by the actor "Zaki Tulaimat", who appeared with a blindfold on his eye in a clear projection of the personality of "Moshe Dayan", the former Israeli chief of staff and defense minister. , and sells heroes and saviors to their enemies for money and power.

The movie "Girl from Palestine"

After the announcement of the establishment of the State of Israel, and contrary to what was expected, things calmed down somewhat in Egypt. The official position was to stress the necessity of distinguishing between the Jew and the Zionist, and here we can recall the movie “Fatima, Marika and Rachel”, who are 3 girls, Muslim, Christian and Jewish, respectively. They fell victim to the young Joseph, who wanted to marry the three of them, and loved them equally, and loved each of them for their distinction and difference.

The film wanted to say in an indirect way that the homeland is able to accommodate all its citizens of different faiths without problem or opposition (4).

Find balance

Despite the official hostile rhetoric that was exported internally and externally about the occupying state by Egypt and the Arab countries, the art maintained a degree of balance in embodying the image of the Jew between showing him the appearance of the enemy and trying to show him in a different way in a number of artworks. For example, we find a clear anti-personality. The Jew in films such as “Port Said” (1957), “Ibn Hamidou” (1957) and “Jamila” (1958). About "cliches" like treason and drug trafficking.

From the movie "I am Free" (1959) (communication sites)

On the contrary, we find a different embodiment of the image of the Jew in the movie “I am Free” (1959) from the novel by the writer Ihsan Abdel Quddous with the same title. Study, excel and work.

Not only does the film present "Vicky" as a positive model, but it also shows us the small Jewish community that consists of Vicky's struggling mother and her educated brother, who works as a bank employee in the morning and a dance teacher in the afternoon.

The film also entered into clear comparisons between the Arab society and the Jewish society through some events, such as holidays in which Jews show a kind of commitment and good manners even with the existence of practices such as drinking alcohol and open relations between young men and women, unlike the Arab society in which backbiting and gossip dominate. There are many taboos around, from the secrets of homes to sex.

During the sixties, the same equation remained present, so the stereotype of the usurer, miser, and fraudster who became a spy continued, and the beautiful daughter of Zion who exploits her beauty to serve Israel’s agendas (the movie “Conflict of the Titans” 1962) and the Jewish father who lives on his “daughters’ charms” and became dependent on more than that. , and recruits his daughters inside Israel so that he can find a foothold among the elite in a new emerging society (the movie "The Spy" 1965).

On the other hand, the positive side was presented to the Jew when he got rid of his Zionism, as is the case of "Nadia Lutfi" in the movie "The Struggle of the Titans", who traveled to the occupying state dreaming of a national homeland for the Jews, then realized the reality and sacrificed her life to save her beloved, the Egyptian officer who was captured by the occupation army. .

With Egyptian President Anwar Sadat signing the peace agreement with Israel at the end of the seventies, artistic production entered into a cycle of division greater than that witnessed in the sixties over how to formulate the new relations with Israel, and the consequent change on the artistic level.

After that, the people of art were divided into two teams, one team looking in the bygone pages of history for events that support peace and tolerance and aversion to war, while the second team took it upon itself to fight Zionism and warn of its danger and spread in the Arab and Islamic worlds (5).

In general, the artistic production was little during this period, and no embodiment of the Jewish character appeared, so the human being was absent and armored vehicles and military equipment were present, while the only appearance of an Israeli officer was in the movie "The Bullet Is Still in My Pocket", where "Muhyiddin Ismail" played the role of the Zionist Who kills Egyptian prisoners with cold features after the 1967 setback.

From "48 Hours in Israel," Al-Sayyed Rady as "David" (right) and Farouk Al-Fishawy as "Salim O'Shlomo" (left).

(communication Web-sites)

With the advent of the nineties, a qualitative change occurred in the artworks that dealt with the relationship between Arabs and Jews, with a focus on the "Zionists" who established the pillars of their occupation of the land of Palestine.

Spy films began to appear and dominate the art scene for several reasons, most notably the assertion that the Arab countries have the capabilities that make them stand equal to Israel and achieve major victories in complete secrecy, which remained within the artistic framework of course, as the Mubarak regime was closely linked to the United States. And then he was keen to respect the peace between Cairo and Tel Aviv, taking into account the social and political red lines in front of the people who have not yet accepted normalization with the occupying state (6).

This period witnessed the production of a number of films such as “The Spies Trap” (1992), “Mission in Tel Aviv” (1993) and “48 Hours in Israel” (1998), and these works presented us with the personality of the Jew in more than one way.

In "A Mission in Tel Aviv", we discover the personality of "Botta", who is distinguished by cunning and cruelty, while we see his colleague, "Pinhas Zaev", who is considered an angel if we compare him to Buta, as described by "Amal" (Nadia El-Gendy).

As for the movie "48 Hours in Israel", it presented us with "David" (Sayed Radi), who represented absolute evil, opposite his colleague "Salim or Shlomo" (Farouk Al-Fishawy), who has a great deal of self-control, calmness and civility, but all of that disappeared when he showed what was He hides in himself a deep hatred and thirst for Arab blood.

With the passage of time, the focus of cinema on the relationship of hostility with Jews or Zionists began to decrease significantly due to political and social factors, but there was still an attempt to insert "patriotic" scenes confirming hostility towards them in a context not necessarily related to work, such as the films "Hammam in Amsterdam", And “The Next Statement Came to Us” starring Mohamed Heneidy, “A Journey of Love” by Mohamed Fouad and Ahmed Helmy, and “Code Paper” by the trio Hisham Majed, Chico and Ahmed Fahmy.

Normalization is a solution to fighting revolutions

The series "The Jewish Quarter" (2015), which takes place in Egypt during the period between 1948 and 1956, and deals with the life of the Jewish community in Egypt.

(communication Web-sites)

The relationship between the Arab countries and Israel once again presented itself as a focal point during the Arab Spring revolutions that broke out across the region, as large segments of the revolutionaries considered that the normalization of relations with Israel, whether officially or under the table, is a legacy left by the ruling regimes and is rejected by the Arab peoples because it is a clear abandonment of the Palestinian cause. However, after the old regimes recovered and succeeded in curbing the revolutionary demands in most Arab countries, these regimes hastened to consolidate their relations with Israel.

Artworks after the counter-revolutions no longer made an effort to pass political messages secretly and in the manner of "poisoning honey," as it was said. Rather, the messages came directly in a crude and sometimes shocking way (7).

Simultaneously, artworks appeared that re-presented the Jews and their history on the screen in a more “balanced” manner, such as the series “Haret al-Yahud” (2015), which takes place in Egypt between 1948 and 1956, and deals with the life of the Jewish community in Egypt, which It was inhabited by the Jews, along with Muslims and Christians, without any discrimination on the basis of religion.

The "Adl Family" presented us with the Jewish family in a very sophisticated way, in terms of civility, elegance and good manners from all family members, except for the son "Haroun", whose role was played by the actor Ahmed Hatem, as Harun worked secretly for the Zionist movement, and his sister "Laila". , the heroine of the film, whose character was played by actress Menna Shalaby, as she is a young Egyptian woman who loved the Egyptian Muslim officer, "Iyad Nassar", and became emotionally attached to him despite the poor chances of marrying him due to the difference in religion.

In the series, the family experienced many fluctuations due to the political situation and its internal dissension regarding the position on Israel, and then circumstances forced Laila to join her brother in Israel, but she soon returned to the bosom of the Jewish Quarter after it became clear to her the criminality of the Zionist gangs, and she insisted on marrying Officer Ali , a marriage that did not take place because of her brother's Zionist activity;

What prompted her to travel alone to France after the death of her father and the flight of her religious Jewish mother with her son Moses, for fear of targeting Jews at the hands of "extremists".

The series tried to present many messages, most notably the Arab Jews’ attachment to their countries and their lack of conviction in the Zionist “Promised Land” project, with the exception of a few of them, and how they left their lives in their countries partly because of the “Islamic extremists” who terrorized them and forced them to go to Israel, while showing the extremism of the Jews The Zionists are the owners of the Israeli project at the same time.

The Israeli embassy in Cairo came out to praise the work, before retracting after that for its reservations about the way the Israeli character was embodied, just as Avichai Adraei, a spokesman for the Israeli occupation army, did in the Arab media (8) (9).

Jewish cinema shines from Morocco

Among the films shown in Morocco is the movie "Jacob's Well" (also called "The Girl of Israel"), produced by a French-American (networking sites)

From the East we go to the West, where the Jewish presence in the Maghreb goes back hundreds of years, and accounts differ on the date of the first arrival of the Jews to these lands. There are historians who attributed this presence to the time before the birth of Christ, peace be upon him, while other sources indicate that there Of the Berbers, the original inhabitants of these regions, who was Jewish (12).

In any case, the Jewish communities in the Maghreb region, especially in Al-Aqsa Morocco, remained strongly present until the beginning of the Zionist project, when the Jews left, sometimes voluntarily, and sometimes unwillingly, towards occupied Palestine.

This demographic presence of the Jews was reflected in art in the Maghreb countries. In Algeria, for example, which witnessed the actual start of cinematic activity in 1905, most of the films produced belonged to the “Bate” and “Jomon” companies, both of which were owned by Jews.

The Jews dominated this industry, while the Arabs moved away, for many reasons, the most important of which was that colonialism did not allow Moroccans to stand behind the camera to make films before the forties (13).

In 1907, the "Bate" company was able to open branches in the Arab Maghreb, and in 1908 the first cinema hall was opened in Tunisia, while a number of marketing and cinema distribution men of Jewish filmmakers of French nationality succeeded in entering the market of the Arab Maghreb countries and distributing their films, which They produced it in the East (14).

A new face of Jewish cinema appeared years later, before the occupation of Palestine, and it is the Zionist cinema that gained good spaces for spreading, especially in Al-Aqsa Morocco, which was then under occupation.

The idea of ​​Zionist cinema arose when Adolf Niveld, a Jew of Polish descent, presented a detailed idea of ​​the link between Zionism and cinema during the First Zionist Congress in 1899, emphasizing the importance of the "seventh art" for the Zionist settlement project.

Implementation began through Jacob Ben Dov, the spiritual father of Zionist cinema, a Russian Jew who emigrated to Palestine after the 1905 revolution in Russia. (15).

Morocco witnessed the beginning of the presence of Zionist films after the declaration of the occupation state in 1948, and among the films that were shown in the Kingdom was the movie “Jacob’s Well” (also called “The Girl of Israel”) produced by a French-American, and it tells the story of a girl who worked as a dancer and lived in a number of countries before she She joins the settlement movement to settle the "Jewish people" in occupied Palestine.

The Zionists showed other films in Morocco, which was colonized by France, such as the movie "The Truth Has No Borders", which dealt with the story of the "Holocaust" in Poland.

From the movie "Midnight Orchestra" (networking sites)

These films angered the Moroccan Muslims, and the "national" press attacked the exacerbation of Zionist activity, especially in the city of Tangiers, where it reached the point that some cinemas showed films representing the Zionist military, so the people were outraged and destroyed the house in protest.

The Moroccan press was not alone in revolting in the face of this Zionist cinematic expansion, but rather the position was shared by some Moroccan intellectuals, such as "Mohamed Abed Al-Jabri" who published in 1959 (three years after Morocco's independence) a series of articles in Al-Tahrir newspaper exposing the Zionist activity that It spread in Moroccan cinema, citing in one of his articles the example of a wedding ceremony for two Jewish brides that took place in Verdun Square, which turned into a semi-secret meeting, in which the doors were closed and film recordings about Israel were shown (16) (17).

After the independence of Morocco, the presence of Zionist cinema diminished, but due to the historical relationship between the Kingdom and its Jewish community, works that talk about Jews continued to appear through documentaries that monitored the lifestyles of Jews, including “Oh, the heartbreak of Doc Liam,” which showed the social and religious lifestyle of Jews in the fifties. from the last century (18).

At a later stage, cinematic works about the Jewish community appeared, such as the movie “Midnight Orchestra” by “Jerome Cohen-Olivar” and “Aida Idriss Lamreni”, and “Where are you going, Moshi” by “Hassan Benjelloun”, who talked about the immigration of Jews. In the 1960s, to occupied Palestine, and then the movie "Tenghir-Jerusalem", which sparked great controversy at the time of its showing in 2012 due to the refusal of a segment of the audience to call the film for normalization with Israel.

The Jews constituted an important tributary of Arab art, and after their departure from Arab countries, whether to the occupied lands or to Western countries;

The Arab screen continued to pay attention to them, and they continued their presence behind the screen, albeit shyly, while the monitoring cameras continued their game of rallying against the Zionists at times, or calling for normalization with them under the guise of "coexistence" at other times, a change that was not necessarily matched by changes in the public mood towards Zionism. As the Arab street seems more stable in its rejection of the occupying state since its establishment more than 70 years ago.

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Sources