Zombies? Sure. Mideast peace? No way
Draws mixed reactions
In one of the central scenes of the summer blockbuster movie World War Z, Israeli troops funnel Palestinian refugees to safety in Jerusalem behind a massive concrete wall. There, the Arabs and Jews embrace, dance and sing — before they are all engulfed by bloodthirsty zombies.
Even for such an over-thetop work of science fiction, in which billions of people come back from the dead as horrific zombies to terrorize Earth, one of the most improbable events of the film is that Israelis and Palestinians are fighting on the same side.
Granted, the film assumes that a post-apocalyptic world and a supernatural common enemy are needed to achieve such harmony. But the image of an elusive Mideast peace, coupled with the film’s overall positive portrayal of Israel, have not been lost among the region’s war-weary moviegoers.
“It’s a fantasy, and it seems ridiculous to those who live here, but it is still heartwarming to see Israelis and Palestinians coming together,” said Yehuda Stav, a movie critic for the Israeli daily newspaper Yediot Ahronot.
At the core of the cinematic coexistence lies a towering barrier Israel is praised for building to keep out zombies and protect inhabitants of the Holy Land — Jews and Arabs alike. In reality, Israel’s separation barrier with the West Bank — which Israel says is meant to keep out Palestinian suicide bombers — is much smaller but much more contentious. Palestinians call it a symbol of occupation that steals their land, hinders their movement and damages their crops.
In the film, Israel is praised for its savvy, survival instincts and peaceful intentions. It is credited with predicting the zombie invasion and preparing proper defences, making it one of only two nations to prevent a lethal outbreak.
The other, North Korea, adopts a more draconian solution: It extracts the teeth of all its citizen to prevent people f rom biting each other and spreading the deadly zombie virus.
Such a futuristic Israel in World War Z has sparked outrage in the real Arab world, where bloggers and moviegoers have slammed the film as a love song to Israel.
“It’s free propaganda for Israel at a time when it occupies other people,” complained Ramzi Taweel, a 38-year-old Palestinian cartoonist from Ramallah in the West Bank. “It portrays Israel as a moral power that protects human beings.”
In Lebanon, it is showing in theatres, but some of the Israel scenes have been censored or edited out. It also has been widely distributed in the Gulf, where it has received some thumbs down.
“I don’t think it was trying to justify Israel’s occupation, but it was glorifying the Israelis by emphasizing peace and harmony of the two nations, which is far from the truth,” moviegoer Aleena Khan told the Dubai-based Gulf News.
But even the fictional love fest comes at a cost. Since the zombies are drawn to noise, the raucous Israeli-Palestinian celebrations prove to be their demise. Their joint rendition of a popular Hebrew song of peace wakes the undead from their slumber, and they ultimately catapult over the wall and bite everything in sight.
Such scenes have raised philosophical debates in the blogosphere about whether the movie is actually for or against Israel’s real-life separation barrier.
The setting of World War Z migrates to Jerusalem after its hero, Gerry Lane, played by Brad Pitt, arrives to figure out how the Israelis have created a safe zone from zombies. There he meets the chief of Israel’s Mossad spy agency, who cites the experiences of the Holocaust, the 1972 massacre of Israeli Olympians in Munich and the surprise war Arabs launched on Israel the following year as lessons that taught the Jewish state to prepare for the unexpected.
The rare Hollywood focus on Israel has elicited local pride, with crowds cheering at the sight of the Israeli flag.
“It shows that we are strong, we fight to the end and don’t give up, but also are willing to help others,” Ohad Ben-Aharon, a 19-yearold soldier in the Israeli air force, said after a recent screening in Jerusalem. Another moviegoer was Mark Regev, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s spokesman.
His takeaway? “We hope the Palestinians indeed agree to live in peace with Israel before the zombies invade.”
AMMAN — Israeli and Palestinian officials will meet soon in Washington to work out final details on relaunching Mideast peace negotiations for the first time in five years, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Friday.
The announcement fell short of an outright resumption of the negotiations, which would tackle the toughest issues of the IsraeliPalestinian conflict. But after days of meeting with both sides, Kerry told reporters in the Jordanian capital that they had agreed on “a basis” for the talks.
“We have reached an agreement that establishes the basis for resuming direct final status negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis,” he said. “This is a significant and welcome step forward.”
“The agreement is still in the process of being formalized,” he said, refusing to give any details on what had been
“This is a significant and welcome step forward.” U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE JOHN KERRY
agreed so far.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who met with Kerry in the West Bank town of Ramallah earlier Friday, said “lengthy talks … have resulted in the Palestinians accepting the resumption of talks.”
In a statement, Abbas said “some details still need to be worked out,” but that Israeli and Palestinian officials could be invited to Washington for talks in the coming days.
The issue of the basis of the negotiations has been a major impediment to resuming the talks. On Thursday evening, the Palestinian leadership balked at dropping a main condition: They demand a guarantee that negotiations on borders between a Palestinian state and Israel would be based on the ceasefire line that held from 1949 until the 1967 war, when Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.
Israel rejects preconditions on the talks.
The announcement suggested that the question had been resolved. But Kerry said no details of the agreement would be revealed yet. A senior State Department official said the two sides had agreed on the core elements that will allow direct talks to move forward, and that agreement was not reached until Friday afternoon. Still to be worked out in the upcoming initial talks are the agenda of the final status negotiations and the process.
When they first meet, they will not be “sitting down to draw a line on the map,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it would not immediately comment on Kerry’s announcement.