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Israeli drama film ‘Concerned Citizen’ tackles gentrification and race issues in Tel Aviv
(JTA) — The Israeli satirical drama film “Concerned Citizen” opens with the sacrosanct rituals of a bourgeois Tel Aviv life: a robot vacuum slides gracefully across the floor; lush house plants are watered; vegetables are blended into green juice. The score from the Bellini opera “Norma” plays in the background.
Then a car alarm rudely interrupts the utopia.
It only gets worse from here for Ben and Raz, a progressive Israeli gay couple (played by actors Shlomi Bertonov and Ariel Wolf, who are also a couple in real life) living in a pristine renovated apartment in a gentrifying neighborhood in south Tel Aviv. When Ben, a landscape architect, plants a tree on their block, his seemingly innocent desire to improve the neighborhood quickly goes awry, and a series of events forces him to face his own repressed prejudices and hypocrisy.
With the tension of a thriller, “Concerned Citizen,” the second feature film by Israeli writer-director Idan Haguel, tackles the universal themes of privilege and multicultural tension in gentrifying cities, using the hyper-specific lens of Neve Sha’anan — the south Tel Aviv neighborhood that’s home to many of the country’s foreign workers and asylum seekers, as well as the city’s notoriously rundown (but culturally vibrant) Central Bus Station.
After making its world premiere last year at the famed Berlin International Film Festival, the movie debuts in select U.S. theaters on Friday and will also be available to rent on Amazon and Apple TV+.
Ben and Raz’s apartment, a hot commodity in one of the world’s most expensive cities, is the axis around which much of the drama revolves. In one scene, a French-Jewish woman looks into buying the apartment sight unseen. Their neighbors include both the extremely vulnerable and the privileged: immigrants from Eritrea in one apartment, and a writer plotting his move to Berlin with his foreign wife in another.
Idan Haguel spoke with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about the film and his personal connections to it. After losing his suitcase, Haguel chatted on his phone from a cafe in Berlin before heading to New York for the film’s American release.
This conversation has been edited and condensed.
JTA: Tell me a little about yourself and how you became a filmmaker.
IH: I was born in the suburban city Rishon LeTsiyon and I always didn’t know what to do with my life. After the army I decided to go to film school. I wanted to be a scriptwriter, to do comedies. I discovered filmmaking, directing, and I gradually fell in love with that part. Then after school, I became a journalist because I couldn’t make a film — it was very difficult for me to get into that world. When my journalism career ended abruptly by the closing of the magazine, I decided that it’s now or never. I made my first feature film, that was a film called “Inertia.” That film is based on childhood memories of my grandparents. My grandparents were immigrants from Lebanon, Romania and Thessaloniki in Greece.
“Concerned Citizen” is partially about immigration. Why was it important to you to focus on the immigrant experience?
I was drawn into the irony, and, some may say, hypocrisy of living in a country that historically was formed by the narrative of [the Jew] being the immigrant of the world, not accepted into other countries, that in some ways still holding that grudge against countries that weren’t receptive to the immigrant Jew and pushed immigrants out. Of course, there is the horror story of Germany and the Holocaust and that’s the extreme end of mistreating “the other.” So living in a country formed by immigrants, [contrasted with] the way we behave to immigrants who are not part of the ethos of the Jewish immigrant narrative — I was drawn into that irony, although it wasn’t an intellectual process. It was more based on the experience of living in that neighborhood in south Tel Aviv, being marinated in the dilemmas and the daily complexity of living in Neve Sha’anan as a bourgeois, middle class person. After a few years I wanted to comment on that. I wanted to be brutally honest with myself and about myself. So my daily life and the life of my neighbors and friends became the material with which I wrote this fictional movie.
And you shot the film in your old apartment!
That was the mindfuck of the whole production, because I made the story close to me but I left a distance. I used my experience but I created these characters who are very close but very different. I shot the therapy scenes in my therapist’s clinic. I shot the building scenes in my building on my street. Everything became very, very close and it was really an “Alice in Wonderland” experience. Looking into a mirror and everything is morphing and making you look different and look differently at yourself and your life.
Can you talk about the south Tel Aviv neighborhood where the film is set, Neve Sha’anan?
It’s the outskirts of the center of Tel Aviv. It was always an immigrant neighborhood. But it changed over the years, it became working immigrants. In the 90s, there were the Romanian immigrants, and then it was Chinese immigrants who came to work in Israel. And over the last 15 years it has become immigrants from Africa, combined with older people who have lived there years and new people who are the more gentrifiers of the neighborhood, artists and gay people and those who are more economically stable. So now the neighborhood is comprised of sex workers, immigrants, junkies, dealers, and gay people. It’s a mix, but the prices have gone low, and people who didn’t have enough money to buy property in the city center started buying there. So the neighborhood has this tension of people who want to live a more bourgeois life, but they’re in the middle of the neighborhood with people who don’t have rights, who are immigrants, who don’t know if tomorrow the government will kick them out. People from all over the world. But it’s become a haven for investors and the neighborhood is in the middle of being gentrified and changed.
So it’s a very interesting setting to live in and to make a film in. It’s very dense. It’s one of the less homogenic and more diverse areas in Israel. Israel prides itself on the diversity of Jewish people coming from Arab countries, coming from Europe. But they’re all Jewish and they share a common mentality and they’re all citizens of Israel. Neve Sha’anan is more diverse – it’s people from India, China, Eritrea, Sudan, the Ivory Coast. I feel it’s a missed opportunity by Israeli society that instead of accepting these people legally and into our society, they are trying to hold back and fight against it. It’s also very ironic that Israel is becoming a state that aspires to have a government like this. It’s mind-boggling. It’s like, we learned nothing from history and our own history. It’s like people don’t want to connect dots. They just want to see the cruel history that they experienced as the Jewish people and feel like it was something personal that happened to them, and like they cannot be the victimizers at all.
You’ve said that this film is very much about the idea of who’s the victim and who’s the victimizer.
When you raise yourself and your children on the narrative of being a victim and perpetuating historical trauma it’s very hard to notice other people’s traumas, and the fact that you are creating traumas for other people. Because you’re constantly in trauma and you’re always dealing with your own trauma and you’re always the victim and you’re the center of the world, but you are not the center of the world. I think it should change. But no one cares what I think! Sometimes I don’t care about what I think.
What was the casting process like?
The casting process was through meeting people and going to plays. [I turned to] the Holot theater company to cast the Eritrean community in Israel. It was cast mainly by meeting actors from the group, having conversations with them. Basically they wanted to participate in the film and I was very lucky about that. They’re a group that used to be based in Holot outside of a temporary incarceration open prison for immigrants who don’t have permits to stay in Israel. They put them in an open prison in the desert close to the Negev.
There’s an interesting scene between the French-Jewish woman (played by Flora Bloch) who is trying to move to Israel and Ben that I thought was a very revealing moment about the ways that Jewishness is expressed when Jews are a minority in the country versus when they are the majority in the country. The French woman is concerned by France’s antisemitism and wants to move to Israel, while Ben is tortured by the complexities of living as a privileged Jewish Israeli person. Can you say something about what that scene meant to you?
One of the things I’m proud about this film is that I feel like it deals with subjects which are not easy subjects to address. But I think we managed to create a balance between comedy and drama that I’m very proud of. I think it allows the film to be self explanatory. It can reveal its deep themes and make you think, in an entertaining way. Again, it’s about irony. It’s about hypocrisy. It’s about human nature. Knowing how to experience your own point of view, and being unable to be in another person’s point of view. It’s human nature, and it’s ever-fascinating to me.
And it also happens to me a lot of times with the fact that I can be in my own shoes and identify my own narrative so much but it’s hard for me to even experience a person who is experiencing the same thing as me but in a different language in different settings. But the resemblance is there so it’s very ironic. And I think that scene is about that.
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The post Israeli drama film ‘Concerned Citizen’ tackles gentrification and race issues in Tel Aviv appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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The exceptional translator Barbara Harshav has died
פֿון אַבֿיה קושנער און שחר פּינסקער
באַרבאַראַ הרשבֿ, פֿאַררעכנט פֿאַר איינעם פֿון די וויכטיקסטע איבערזעצערס פֿון דער העברעיִשער און ייִדישער ליטעראַטור, איז אַוועק אין דער אייביקייט צו 85 יאָר.
הרשבֿ, באַקאַנט ווי באָבי בײַ אירע פֿרײַנד און קאָלעגעס, האָט איבערגעזעצט און אַרויסגעגעבן מער ווי 40 ביכער פּאָעזיע, דראַמע, בעלעטריסטיק, פֿילאָסאָפֿיע, עקאָנאָמיק, סאָציאָלאָגיע און געשיכטע. צווישן אירע איבערזעצונגען זענען געווען די ווערק פֿונעם נאָבעל־לאָרעאַט שמואל יוסף עגנון און די פּאָעטן אַבֿרהם סוצקעווער, מענקע קאַץ און יהודה עמיחי.
אַחוץ דעם וואָס זי איז געווען אַן ערשט-ראַנגיקע איבערזעצערין איז זי אויך געווען שטאַרק באַליבט בײַ אַנדערע אַקאַדעמיקער און איבערזעצער איבער דער וועלט, סײַ ווי אַ וועגווײַזערין אינעם געביט פֿון איבערזעצערײַ סײַ צוליב איר מענטשלעכקייט און ברייטהאַרציקער שטיצע פֿאַר אירע קאָלעגעס.
אַ צענטראַלער אַספּעקט פֿון איר קאַריערע איז געווען איר ברייטע און פֿרוכפּערדיקע צוזאַמענאַרבעט מיט איר מאַן, בנימין הרשבֿ (אַ העברעיִזירונג פֿונעם נאָמען הרושובסקי). צוזאַמען האָבן זיי איבערגעזעצט און רעדאַקטירט אויף ענגליש אַ ריי וויכטיקע טעקסט־זאַמלונגען ווי למשל דעם אייגנאַרטיקן באַנד „אַמעריקאַנער ייִדישע פּאָעזיע: אַ צוויישפּראַכיקע אַנטאָלאָגיע“ (1986), וואָס האָט אַרײַנגענומען סײַ דעם אָריגינעלן ייִדישן טעקסט סײַ די פּרעכטיקע ענגלישע איבערזעצונגען. אַזוי אַרום האָט דער לייענער געקענט אָפּשאַצן די קוואַליטעט פֿון די ווערק אויף ביידע שפּראַכן.
איינער פֿון הרשבֿס גרעסטע אויפֿטוען איז געווען דאָס וואָס זי האָט נישט פֿאָרגעשטעלט די ייִדישע פּאָעזיע סתּם ווי נאָסטאַלגישן פֿאָלקלאָר, נאָר האָט זי געשילדערט אינעם קאָנטעקסט פֿונעם גלאָבאַלן מאָדערניזם. דער באַנד האָט אַרײַנגענומען סײַ אַוואַנגאַרדישע עקספּערימענטן סײַ שטאָטישע טעמעס, צוזאַמען מיט די וויזועלע קונסטווערק פֿון בען שאַהן און ראַפֿאַעל סויער, וואָס האָבן געהאַט אַן ענלעכן הינטערגרונט ווי די פּאָעטן.
מיט איר מאַן האָט זי אויך אַרויסגעגעבן דאָס בוך, „זינג, פֿרעמדער: הונדערט יאָר פֿון אַמעריקאַנער ייִדישער פּאָעזיע“, וואָס האָט אַרײַנגענומען ווערק פֿון די „סוועטשאַפּ“־פּאָעטן מאָריס ראָזענפֿעלד און דוד עדעלשטאַדט, ווי אויך „אינזיכיסטן“ ווי ציליע דראָבקין.
הרשבֿ איז געבוירן געוואָרן אין דעטרויט, מישיגען, אין 1940. זי איז נישט געווען קיין נאַטירלעכע רעדערין פֿון העברעיִש אָדער ייִדיש. „איך בין געווען 34 יאָר אַלט ווען איך האָב אָנגעהויבן זיך לערנען העברעיִש און איך האָב זיך ממש פֿאַרליבט אין דער שפּראַך,“ האָט זי דערציילט בעת אַן אינטערוויו אין 2012. מיט דער צײַט האָט זי אָנגעהויבן איבערזעצן די וויכטיקסטע העברעיִשע ווערק.
דערנאָך האָט זי זיך גענומען צו ייִדיש. „ייִדיש איז די לעצטע שפּראַך וואָס איך האָב זיך אויסגעלערנט. צוליב דעם וואָס איך האָב שוין געקענט דײַטש און העברעיִש, האָב איך שוין פֿאַרשטאַנען אַרום 90% פֿון ייִדיש.“ כאָטש אירע טאַטע־מאַמע האָבן געקענט ייִדיש האָבן זיי עס בלויז געניצט צווישן זיך ווען זיי האָבן נישט געוואָלט אַז די קינדער זאָלן פֿאַרשטיין. „דערצו בין איך סײַ ווי נישט געווען אַזוי פֿאַראינטערעסירט אין וואָס זיי זאָגן,“ האָט זי געזאָגט.
איין סיבה פֿאַר וואָס זי איז געוואָרן אַן איבערזעצער — האָט זי דערקלערט — איז „ווײַל די איבערזעצונגען וואָס איך האָב געלייענט זענען געווען אַזוי שלעכט. כ׳האָב דעמאָלט געוווינט אין ירושלים און כ׳האָב זיך באַקענט מיט אַ שרײַבער וואָס האָט זיך באַקלאָגט פֿאַר מיר, און טאַקע מיט רעכט, וועגן די אומגעלומפּערטע איבערזעצונגען וואָס מע האָט געמאַכט פֿון זײַנע ווערק. האָב איך אָנגעהויבן לייענען יענע איבערזעצונגען און דערפֿילט אַז איך קען דאָס טאָן בעסער. ס׳איז מיר אָבער געווען אַ חידוש, ווען מײַן ערשטער פּרוּוו איז טאַקע פּובליקירט געוואָרן אין אַן אַקאַדעמישן זשורנאַל.“
אַחוץ איר אַרבעט ווי אַן איבערזעצער האָט הרשבֿ אויך געדינט ווי די פּרעזידענטין פֿון דער אַמעריקאַנער אַסאָציאַציע פֿון ליטעראַרישע איבערזעצער, און האָט געפֿירט איבערזעצונג־וואַרשטאַטן אינעם דעפּאַרטמענט פֿון פֿאַרגלײַכיקער ליטעראַטור אין יעל־אוניווערסיטעט, דערבײַ שטיצנדיק יונגע איבערזעצער זיך צו פֿאַרנעמען מיט דער ייִדישער און העברעיִשער ליטעראַטור. זי האָט זיך אויך איבערגעגעבן צום קאַמף פֿאַר געשלעכט־גלײַכקייט און פֿאַר שלום און גערעכטיקייט אין ישׂראל/פּאַלעסטינע.
אין 2018 איז הרשבֿ געוואָרן די ערשטע העברעיִשע און ייִדישע איבערזעצערין צו באַקומען די „פּען/מאַנהײַם מעדאַל פֿאַר איבערזעצונג“.
פֿאַר אונדז וואָס האָבן זי געקענט, איז באָבי געווען אַ בריליאַנטענע, ברייטהאַרציקע פֿרײַנדינע און קאָלעגע, שטענדיק גרייט צו העלפֿן אַנדערע מיט עצות און הדרכה.
The post The exceptional translator Barbara Harshav has died appeared first on The Forward.
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Rahm Emanuel: Pursuit of Greater Israel as ‘fanatical’ as the chant ‘from the river to the sea’
(JTA) — The pursuit of Greater Israel is a corrosive fantasy, veteran Democratic politician Rahm Emanuel is expected to tell a Tel Aviv audience on Wednesday, calling it as “destructive and fanatical” as the chant “from the river to the sea.”
Emanuel, who has held multiple top roles in the Democratic Party, in Congress and in the Obama White House, is a potential 2028 presidential candidate.
He will warn that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is leading the country to a “dead-end” that has turned the country into a “pariah” and is threatening Israel’s historic alliance with the United States, according to an advance copy of his speech shared with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Tuesday.
He blamed as “our mistake” America’s assumption that “the best thing Washington could do for Jerusalem was to blindly and silently stand behind your government, without conditions, without demands, and without consequences.” That path has led to policies including Israeli extremists terrorizing West Bank Palestinians and Gazans suffering from a lack of food that means “Israel has never been so isolated,” a situation that he terms “a countdown clock” for Israel’s security.
Instead, his remarks state, “we need a fundamentally new and different approach to the alliance.”
At the same time, he criticized the Palestinians for what he said were mistakes and obstacles to peace over the years. He lambasted their supporters in the United States who support replacing Israel with a Palestinian state stretching from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
“Those chanting ‘from the river to the sea’ need to hear this loud and clear: they will never have their way,” he declares in his prepared remarks. “But those calling for a greater Israel must also hear this loud and clear: you’re never going to have your way, either. Both are fantasies chanted by fanatics.”
Emanuel, who is a former U.S. congressman from Illinois as well as a former Chicago Mayor and served as White House Chief of Staff under President Barack Obama, is considering a presidential run in 2028. His trip has garnered media attention given that his ideas on Israel could signal the direction of his party on the issue, particularly as they come from a Jewish politician with close ties to the country. Emanuel once volunteered as a civilian with the Israeli army and his father was an Israeli citizen.
His trip to Israel to underscore the importance of the Israeli-U.S. alliance and to advocate for a new regional diplomatic initiative comes at a time when politicians in his Democratic Party are increasingly disavowing Israel to gain an edge in upcoming elections as the country’s reputation plummets.
A Pew Research Center Poll published in April found that 60% of Americans had an unfavorable view of Israel, but its standing was worse among Democrats and Democratic-leaning Independents, where 8 out of 10 had negative views about Israel.
According to his prepared speech, Emanuel is set to highlight his deep connection to the Jewish state and his family’s sacrifice in bringing about its creation, noting that his uncle, who was a member of the pre-state underground, is buried on Jerusalem’s Mt. of Olives. His father, Benjamin, was born in Jerusalem in 1927 and fought in Israel’s 1948 War of Independence before immigrating to the United States, where he raised his family in Chicago.
Emanuel plans to recount Israel’s history of overtures in the name of peace and in the face of Palestinian violence during the second intifada and the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on southern Israel. He will explain that he understands Israel’s cynicism regarding any future arrangement with the Palestinians since Israel’s past offers of Palestinian sovereignty in exchange for security were frequently met with violence.
“I understand why, even if you oppose the Netanyahu government, you’re so prone to dismiss criticism from the outside world,” Emanuel wrote, underscoring that a “corrupt Palestinian leadership has never lived up to the Palestinian people’s legitimate aspirations for sovereignty and self-determination.”
Still, he wrote, Israel’s future can’t be “held hostage to a past defined exclusively by recriminations,” warning that such a stance will endanger its “historic alliance with the U.S.,” which is now “at a crossroads.” Israel must embark on a path that pairs military and diplomatic efforts, rather than relying solely on military prowess, he wrote.
“Israel will be alone if its leaders choose to attempt to annex the West Bank and pursue the fantasy of a greater Israel,” Emanuel plans to say.
“America will not and cannot be complicit or complacent in that endeavor,” he wrote, explaining that it has erred in the past by “blindly and silently” supporting Netanyahu’s government.
The speech calls for an end to the “American taxpayer’s subsidy of Israel’s defense budget,” maintaining that Israel should buy U.S. arms with the same financial terms and restrictions as every other ally “that abides by our laws.”
The speech laid out a broad-based policy with regard to a two-state resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that rejects extremist Israeli violence against Palestinian civilians and illegal West Bank settlement building but does not spell out prescriptions for divisive issues such as the future of Jerusalem or using the pre-1967 lines for determining the borders of a Palestinian state.
Emanuel does not mention the U.S.-based political advocacy group J Street in his speech, but the text picks up on the 23-state policy idea that J Street put forward last year, involving 21 Arab states, alongside Israeli and Palestinian ones, that would include recognition of Israel by the Arab League.
Such a regional integration would allow for Israel and the larger Middle East to become a technological and transit hub for trade between Europe and India, he plans to say.
To achieve this regional peace, Emanuel continues, the Arab states would have to support a Palestinian governing entity that would accept the Jewish historic connection to Israel, stop teaching its children to hate Israel and end the “heinous practice” of financially rewarding terrorists who kill Jews.
Israel, he wrote, would have to halt unilateral actions in the West Bank, stop nurturing harmful organizations and support “real partners in pursuit of peace.”
This scenario rests on a three-part U.S. policy in the region that would leverage the Arab world’s desire for stability, Israel’s need for security, and Palestinian demands for sovereignty.
“The political benefits for all parties would be far greater than a two-state solution could ever offer. But to get there, everyone would need to make good on their piece of the bargain,” he wrote in his speech.
The alternative path, he wrote, is one that has seen Israel isolated and turned it into a pariah state.
“Israel has failed to convert its military wins into strategic advantages,” Emanuel is expected to say, noting that the country has “lost Europe” and its support in the U.S. is plummeting. U.S. unconditional support for Israel without demands and consequences has been a mistake, he added in his speech, in which he blamed Israel’s poor global standing on Netanyahu’s policies.
A centrist Jewish Democrat embracing a policy promulgated by J Street, a group founded in 2008 to counter the influence of what was then the mainstream pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, illustrates the degree to which the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and its credo of creating a bipartisan consensus of support for Israel has eroded.
Emanuel plans to recall his own tensions with Netanyahu, who during his time as White House Chief of Staff labeled him a “self-loathing” Jew for opposing West Bank settlement construction.
Netanyahu, he wrote in his prepared remarks, “cannot fight indefinitely against a world that has stopped believing you have the right to fight. You must instead find a new sustainable path to peace, security, and prosperity.”
Alternatively, he wrote, the United States would stand “shoulder-to-shoulder” with Israel as it pursued peace and security.
The post Rahm Emanuel: Pursuit of Greater Israel as ‘fanatical’ as the chant ‘from the river to the sea’ appeared first on The Forward.
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US launches ‘powerful strikes’ against Iran
(JTA) — The U.S. military announced that it had launched strikes against Iran Tuesday evening, marking the latest exchange of blows between the countries amid a fragile ceasefire.
In a post on X, U.S. Central Command announced that American forces had begun launching a “series of powerful strikes against Iran to impose heavy costs for targeting and attacking commercial shipping crewed by innocent civilians in an international waterway.
“The U.S. strikes are in response to Iranian attacks on three commercial vessels that were transiting the Strait of Hormuz,” the post continued. “Iran’s demonstrated aggression was unwarranted, dangerous, and a clear violation of the ceasefire.”
The latest round of violence could further imperil U.S. negotiations over fully reopening the Strait of Hormuz and reviving talks over Iran’s nuclear program.
Israel has treated the U.S.-Iran negotiations warily, chafing especially at the proposed imposition of terms of engagement with Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Iran has not claimed responsibility for the attacks on commercial vessels. Qatar’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Majed Al Ansari wrote in a post on X that the country held Iran “fully legally responsible” for an attack on the Qatari ship Al-Rekayyat in the strait.
“We demand that the Islamic Republic of Iran immediately cease all practices that undermine regional security or threaten the safety of international maritime navigation, & refrain from endangering global energy supplies & the resources of the countries of the region in pursuit of narrow interests,” Al Ansari wrote.
Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Affairs Ministry also condemned Iran’s alleged attack on a Saudi tanker, in a post on X shortly before the U.S. strikes were announced.
“The Kingdom affirms that these reprehensible attacks constitute an assault on the security and safety of international navigation and on the security of global energy supplies,” the post read.
The strikes come over a week since the last known round of U.S. strikes on the country late last month, which followed Iranian attacks on both Bahrain and Kuwait.
The post US launches ‘powerful strikes’ against Iran appeared first on The Forward.
