Published: 10 September 2021
Last updated: 4 March 2024
Criticised by right-wing Israelis and left-wing Arabs, Ibtisam Mara’ana makes no apologies for serving as a Labor MK or for her vision for a society where Jews and Arabs are equal
IN HER FIRST DOCUMENTARY film, 2003’s Paradise Lost, Ibtisam Mara’ana set out to uncover the story of Suaad Genem, a woman from her coastal hometown, Fureidis, who in 1979 had been arrested on vague security charges and imprisoned. At the same time, the director attempted to learn more about the recent history of her hometown, which was one of the few Arab villages in the area to remain intact after the Israeli War of Independence in 1948.
Mara’ana, who will be 46 next month, grew up with a silent father who spent most of his time tending the trees in his family’s small garden. This left her mother with the responsibility of supporting the family, which she did by cleaning homes in the more prosperous Jewish town of Zichron Yaakov, which looks down on Fureidis from Mt Carmel.
Both of these facts – her father’s passivity and her mother’s need to leave the home to work – were sources of shame in their conservative, patriarchal village.
In the film, we see her asking her father, Saleh, where he was at the time of Fureidis’ surrender to Zionist forces in 1948, when he was just 10 years old. But Saleh, who died in 2007, evades her questions, claiming not to know anything, while expressing his fear that her independence and curiosity will get her mixed up with the Shin Bet security service, like Suaad before her. Finally, Saleh gently explains to Ibtisam that, “It’s not our time, my daughter.”
Mara’ana could never accept the idea that reality had its own timetable. For her, shame was a catalyst for anger, and curiosity a catalyst for action.
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