Jay Jonroy, translator, Rubens Ewald Filho and Julia Bacha
Dialogue to Solve Conflicts
Brazilian-born of Lebanese descent, Julia said that her interest in the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians aroused when she started studying Middle East History at Columbia University, in New York, in 1998. In her opinion, there is a solution to the conflict, but those directly involved have to accept a peace treaty, which shall only happen through dialogue. Politicians meet to sign the deal, but should those who live the daily conflict not accept it, it will be a mere cease-fire.Jay, an Iraqi Kurd, said he left Iraq to study when he was still a teenager. He has even lived in Brazil, in Ipanema (Rio de Janeiro), in the 1980’s, but he left the country due to the high inflation rate. He complained about the press, for which all Muslims are the same, even when they come from different countries. He pointed out that this does not happen with Christians: French and Germans, for example, are not taken for each other even for following the same religion. Kurds are spread across several Arab countries, they do not have a native land and cannot find anyone interested in telling their story. He further added that Palestinians claim for a territory and are heard, while Kurds go through the same suffering and can’t get the media’s attention. Julia, on her turn, complained about the fact that traditional media only sells violence, maybe fearing to loose market share by broadcasting non-violent actions. Co-director of Encounter Point Ronit Avni, who is an Israeli-Canadian, for example, founded Just Vision, an organization created to give visibility to non-violent actions. The documentary was made exactly for this purpose.
Both Jay and Julia indicated Arabian television channel Al Jazeera as a vehicle depending upon the Arabs, which interferes in its account of the facts. Jay said his nephews, sons of his sister who is married to an Arab, saw the terrorist attacks on September 11 on that channel and therefore believed in the version presented by the channel, in the sense that everything was a scheme by Israel and the United States to invade Iraq. Other fact mentioned by the directors was the accounts of human rights violation in prisons like Abu Ghraib, as if this were something that started happening only now. Jay said that the place was used by Saddam Hussein to eliminate Kurds.
Julia pondered that the human rights violation occurs because the intelligence service of the United Sates of America is not duly organized. “They are far less organized against terrorism than we think they are”, told the director and screenwriter. Israel, for example, has stricter control over terrorism situations because it has prepared for that. She believes that it is important to divulge non-violence actions and informed that Encounter Point will be screened in the US theaters as from November 17, because the audience called the theaters requesting this exhibition. Their request was granted.