Limud - A Bottle in the Gaza Sea

By Guy Gelbart. This short handout is intended to give us food for thought and discussion. One of the main components in Jewish tradition is the element of Limud Be Chavrota communal learning or learning with friends. There is no teacher and no expert; we just sit together read a text, and share our thoughts. You are invited to participate in this enriching Limud at your table. Invite the people next to you to join in! The suggested questions give some ideas and guidance as to the topics of discussion, but there is no obligation to stick to them. There are no good answers or bad answers, just an openminded discussion. It is often helpful to start by reading the text aloud at the table. Enjoy!

This Limud is comprised of four questions presenting methods often used in Jewish tradition to discuss complex moral issues.
1. Tweaking the background narrative: Assume the following change to the love story presented in the film Our love story takes place between a native Israeli Jewish boy named Noam and a Palestinian Muslim girl named Tahiyya. Noam is the son of a native Israeli Jewish family. His ancestors were part of the ancient Jewish community of Hebron. His great-grandparents fled the city after the Massacre of August 24, 1929, and moved to Petah Tikva, where he currently lives. Tahiyya is the daughter of Arab immigrants. Her great-grandfather emigrated from Egypt during the time of Ottoman Empire. Her mother was born and raised in Jordan. Currently Tahiyya lives in the city of Hebron. How do you think these specific changes to the details would affect the story? Why? What might that teach us about our understanding of the conflict? Which of the background narratives (the movies or the one above) fits your assumptions about the conflict? Would you be surprised to learn that both stories are equally valid?

2. Fiction vs. Reality: Comparing the film to a real case scenario: A true internet love story between an Israeli Jewish teenager (16) and a Palestinian young woman (24) took place in the years 2000 2001(about 8 years prior to the time in which our film takes place). Ofir Rahum, a 16 year-old Israeli from the city of Ashkelon, fell in love through the internet with Mona Jaud Awana from Bir Nabala. Mona conducted long, private conversations in English with Rahum through the instant messenger program ICQ, during which she masqueraded as a Jewish immigrant from Morocco named Sally. Mona, a member of the Tanzim, the armed wing of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), managed to gain his confidence and get him to agree to meet with her in Jerusalem, supposedly for romantic purposes. When he arrived for the meeting, she drove him through the border control into the Palestinian-controlled territory, to an area near Ramallah where two other members of the Tanzim had been waiting. Ofirs body was returned to Israel on January 18, 2001. His murder shocked Israeli society. Mona was convicted of murder in 2003 and sentenced by the Israeli court to life in prison. On 18 October 2011, Mona was released to Gaza as part of the prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas that returned Gilad Shalit to Israel. She is now residing in exile in Turkey. On December 20, 2011, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas privately met Mona in Ankara. The meeting was harshly criticized by the Israeli government. The huge gap between the fiction presented in the film and the harsh reality presented by the case of Ofir Rahum raises significant questions about the prospects for building trust between the sides. What steps would you suggest each side of the conflict take in order to build trust, to prove trustworthiness? What level of personal risk would you be willing to take, or have your loved ones take, in order to build such trust?

3. Intractable conflicts in life, deriving from other situations: Each one of us had or still has some significant personal conflictsfor example, with a neighbor, parent, child, a spouse, business partner, or service provider. Would you be willing to share with the group one such conflict, and the ways you dealt with or are dealing with it? What can be learned from your experience that might help resolve the conflict between Israel and its neighbors? Are there elements of the Arab-Israeli conflict that cannot be compared to your personal conflict? 4. The uses of symbols: A Bottle in the Gaza Sea begins with the proverbial message in a bottle. What other uses for bottles do you know? What different interpretation might be given to the film in light of those uses?