Paradise Now

I watched Paradise Now in my class on Israel, and I can definitely say that it's one of the more heartbreaking films that I've see. The movie itself caught a lot of flack for trying to portray terrorists as humans, rather than monsters. But here's the thing: they are human. Director Abu-Assad said, "The film is an artistic point of view of that political issue. The politicians want to see it as black and white, good and evil, and art wants to see it as a human thing." 

The plot of the story follows two Palestinian men who have been chosen to complete a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv out of protest for the Palestinian State. The characters struggle as they prepare for the attack, asking themselves over and over again if there is any other way to achieve their means of a free state than through violence. As a friend of the men is pleading with them, she points out, "If you can kill and die for equality, you should be able to find a way to be equal in life now."

So often peace is said to be an unachievable thing. Even for those of us who want peace more than anything else, we commonly face the sobering realization that we will unlikely ever see peace in our own lifetimes. The friend's statement on equality gives me hope. Equality is something humans have been fighting as far back as we can see, and it's still something that so many of us continue to fight for today. I wish that we could all stop and take the time to understand that if equality is so important to so many of us, then we can find a way to achieve it peacefully and without creating more inequality; often our tactics of trying to gain equality result in pain, death, and more inequality for all humans involved. For how long we have been fighting, we have truly achieved nothing, and will truly achieve nothing until we allow ourselves to find a way garner change, a way to be equal in life now.

PL&E.