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I had done for my film Forgiveness, which takes place at the hospital, came
to mind. I wondered then, and I wonder now, how it is that the State of
Israel manages time and again to create a reality that exceeds the most surreal symbolism of Latin American literature (it was only natural for IsraeliArab Knesset member Dr. Ahmad Tibi to quote Gabriel Garca Mrquez
when describing the ongoing robbery of Palestinian land by the government of Israel). The hospitals name, Kfar Shaul, literally means a borrowed village, and indeed one day we shall return it to its rightful owners.
Poor Rabbi Litzman: he sees the patients, but he does not know that
on the symbolic level they are being punished for a sin they have not
committed, the ancient sin of Have you not murdered a man and seized
his property? committed by the perpetrators of the massacre who acted
in the name of Zionism. After all, what does an ultra-Orthodox rabbi like
Litzman have to do with Zionist history.... He may also be oblivious to
the increased likelihood of renewed demands that the Israeli government
be accountable to the original owners of the place if he decides to close
down the hospital.
Every reasonable person should realize that those people of pain,
as described by the prophet, or loonies, according to vulgar language,
or inmates, in standard language, are not there to be punished for
crimes committed in our name in 1948 but to serve as custodians of the
theft, like the man who accommodates his handicapped relative at a keymoney apartment in order to maintain his right to the asset. And since
the welfare of the patients is not the states highest concern, as we are
informed by the deputy ministers visit, perhaps one day the Israel Land
Administration will decide to close down the place and sell the land to a
rich Jewish millionaire from abroad. And this will probably be deemed
a Zionist act.
In the meantime, until the day of reckoning, survivors of the Holocaust, those people of sorrow from the times of Gods hiding of the
face (hester panim in Hebrew) sit there idly. They can tell the ghosts of
Deir Yassin how they are maintaining their sheikhs tomb and horrors
they experienced in Europe, of hatred toward Jews and the greatest murder of them all. The ghosts of the villagers, in turn, can tell the Holocaust
survivors of the olive trees, of the numerous wells that had to be dug
because of water shortages, of the budding village industry, and of neighborly cooperation with the Jews who were living nearby.
And maybe at this time, as we are waiting for the Israeli High Court
of Justice to explain its puzzling and racist decision to expel Palestinian

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