We continue our series of ‘Urgent Voices’ – key cultural figures responding to the current crisis – with a piece by the Brazilian filmmaker
On a Saturday morning, half a century ago, I see my reflection in the mirror of my room. I'm 12 years old and in a foul mood because my mother has forced me to wear clothes I detest and go to the dullest place in the Milky Way: the synagogue on Rua da Graça in Bom Retiro, the Jewish neighbourhood in São Paulo, a few blocks from my home. It's 6 October, 1973, and it’s Yom Kippur.
Annoyed by the unbearably long prayers and constant sitting and standing, I escape with three other boys to play football in the courtyard of another synagogue on Newton Prado Street. Our match is interrupted by a small crowd of adults who, exiting the temple, suddenly invade our pitch. Some are in tears. One explains: “Egyptian troops have invaded the Sinai Desert and Syrian tanks have taken the Golan Heights and are heading towards Haifa.” Moshe Dayan and Itzhak Rabin, our invincible heroes from the Six-Day War in 1967, have been caught off guard.
I know the map of the region by heart. If the Egyptians are advancing in the Sinai, they surely breached the impregnable Bar Lev fortifications built in the desert sands. From the Golan Heights, it's easy to bomb Galilee, march to Netanya and separate the north and south, strangling the country. The atavistic trauma of ghettos and pogroms that my grandparents brought from Eastern Europe to Brazil reverberates strongly in me. It's as if the armies of Anwar Sadat and Hafez Al Assad have already crossed into Bom Retiro.
I spend the weekend glued to the radio and television. In the middle of the night, I torture myself with the possibility of Brazil allying with the Arab League. I know it won't happen, but if it did, I wouldn't know whom to fight for. If I sided with Israel, could I still continue to root for Santos, my football team, and for the Brazilian national team?
My mother cries. It's impossible to get news about my Uncle Itzke, who lives in Haifa. He is elderly. It's been three years since he became a widower, sold his shoe store and station wagon, and headed to Israel to be close to his son.
In the lift of our building – a crazy neighbour, a survivor of the Majdanek concentration camp – stares at me, wild-eyed, and shouts, spitting in my eye: "Israel is always right! President Nixon is a friend of the Yids and he will save us because Henry Kissinger is one of us!"
On Monday, I am one of the first students queuing up at Renascença School to volunteer to go to Jewish-owned shops, offices and textile factories to ask for donations for ambulances for the Israeli army. Even the owner of the tiniest haberdashery, a family acquaintance who, according to my grandmother, doesn't even have a pot to pee in, contributes everything he has in the cash register. On Friday, we celebrate receiving almost $2,000.
During the week, the game suddenly turns, and Israel miraculously wins the war. I see the enemy troops retreating in the haze.
By March 1995, I’m living in London. I'm a filmmaker and an Italian NGO proposes that I make a documentary for the European Union about social assistance programmes for disabled youth in poor regions of the world. When they tell that I might film in Gaza, I enthusiastically agree. Since 1993, when Yasser Arafat, the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin signed the Oslo Agreement, a peace process has begun. The conflict between the two peoples has entered a new and hopeful phase.
Three days later, I land in Tel Aviv and take a taxi to the Erez checkpoint, one of Gaza’s entry points. At passport control, a stern-faced Israeli soldier reads my surname and asks contemptuously, “Aren’t you Jewish?"
“Yes.”
"Then what the hell do you want in Gaza?" I show him my press pass. He laughs and says: "I hope you come back in one piece."
As I cross the border, an endless line of ghosts haunt me, including the Israeli athletes killed during the 1972 Munich Olympics and the Jewish hostages in the 1976 Entebbe hijacking. But, in the den of my worst enemies, I am surprised by a tremendous warmth and hospitality. I meet the NGO team and am introduced to Nuha, a young wheelchair-bound Palestinian woman in her early 20s. She has the friendly smile and sunny demeanor of a carefree northeastern Brazilian and dreams of studying medicine at Nablus University in the West Bank – a dream that will only be possible if the promise of peace becomes a reality.
She is eager to be the main character in my documentary and I spend days following her around Gaza. She has eight siblings and her father is a builder. Her mother realises I like stuffed grape leaves and insists I devour a stack of them at every meal. I feel completely at home. When one day I reveal that I'm Jewish, I realise that my big revelation is nothing more than an indifferent detail. I am a guest and, in the local culture, the guest is always a king.
After two weeks, I leave Gaza excited and full of hope. I call my parents and friends in Brazil to tell them that the Palestinians were much closer than the poor Brazilian classes to breaking free from oppression. Peace is already a tangible reality and it will do great good for Israel and the Jewish diaspora.
Less than two months later, at a massive rally for peace in a square in Tel Aviv, prime minister Rabin is shot at point-blank range with a semi-automatic Beretta. The shooter is a 25 year-old Israeli, Yigal Amir. Rabin had just left the stage where his words – "I have always believed that the majority of us want peace and are willing to take risks for it” – were met with thunderous applause. But not from Amir, an activist of the religious and radical right, who dreams of creating a Greater Israel with the annexation of all occupied territories and the expulsion of the Palestinian population. Rabin dies on the operating table.
Fast forward to 7 October 2023. Listening to the first tragic news about the current carnage, I hurriedly search the internet for a photo from that time that remained etched in my memory. A few days after Rabin's assassination, Arafat visited the newly widowed Lea Rabin in her home to offer condolences. Arafat and Rabin were far from perfect leaders, but after decades fighting each other, they united around the idea of peace.
We, Palestinians and Israelis, were there. It was almost a possibility. Today, we know it was just the beginning of a sad end.
By Henrique Goldman
Henrique Goldman is a Brazilian filmmaker based in London. He has directed, written and produced a number of award-winning films, including Princesa, Jean Charles and 492. He is also the founder of Mango Films. mangofilms.co.uk