Delivery - a documentary about Jewish-Palestinian exchanges of a different kind

Short Synopsis

This film will provide a rare inside look at Jewish-Palestinian encounters in the highly charged atmosphere of Israeli hospital maternity wards, as doctors and patients share intimate and often life-changing experiences, while symbolically joining forces to bring new life into the world. 

Description/Treatment

We intend to demonstrate through this hour-long documentary film that Jews and Palestinians are able to overcome their ingrained prejudices and conduct healthy exchanges when motivated by a greater common good. The film will follow events over six months at maternity wards in at least two Israeli hospitals, in the process revealing how Jews and Palestinians come to bond in quite unusual circumstances and how this experience influences their perceptions of the so-called “other.”

The main characters will be doctors and patients whose personal lives have been touched by the Arab-Israeli conflict. Their individual narratives will provide the backdrop, along with a striking contrast, to the remarkable stories that play out within the confines of the hospital, made especially poignant when newborn babies enter the picture.

Our intention is to capture on camera not only inspiring moments of intimacy and humanity, but also the uncomfortable and contentious exchanges that are inevitable in such high-pressure situations, in the hope of presenting as realistic a picture as possible of Jewish-Palestinian relations in all their complexity. It is not our goal to present a romanticized view of what transpires or to suggest that a simple solution to the conflict exists; rather, we hope the film will connect viewers to some of the very real human faces behind the conflict, expose them to a little-known facet of life in the Middle East that holds promise for other avenues, and challenge them to reexamine some of their own views about the conflict and those caught up in it. 

Our plan is to film dramatic moments in the delivery room, as well as quieter moments, for example when doctors relax together in hospital cafeterias or when patients chat as they breastfeed their newborns. We also plan to film these doctors and patients at home with their families, immersed in their own very different cultures.  In addition, we intend to shadow several Jewish and Palestinian expectant mothers, specifically high-risk cases who are most likely to be seeing their doctors regularly in the weeks and months that precede their deliveries and follow them through their deliveries and the aftermath, capturing on camera the relationships that develop between them and their doctors. Our main characters will be prompted to speak openly about how their personal stories have influenced their views of the conflict, their prejudices, and their thoughts and expectations regarding encounters with the so-called “other.” Because this will be a character-driven documentary, a top priority will be identifying characters with compelling personal stories, who are honest, articulate and not shy about sharing their thoughts, and who as individuals embody many of the complexities of the region.

To provide context and background, interviews will be included with several prominent Jewish and Palestinian gynecologists, who will be asked to weigh in on the subject. These would include Dr. Ahmed Tibi, an Israeli parliamentarian and former adviser to the late Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, and Professor Shlomo Mor-Yosef, the high-profile director of Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem and former director of Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba. We also plan to speak with Dr. Ezzeldeen Abu al-Aish, a Palestinian gynecologist and peace advocate from Gaza, who has worked for many years in Israel, and whose three daughters and niece were tragically killed during Israel’s last incursion into Gaza. His personal story is particularly illuminating in that it represents the two extremes of Jewish-Palestinian relations.

Among the few places that Jewish and Palestinians citizens of Israel have the opportunity to mingle and interact is in hospitals. Jewish and Palestinian patients receive medical treatment at the same hospitals and very often share hospital rooms. Medicine is among the few professions in which Jews and Palestinians work side by side in Israel. In Israeli hospitals, Palestinians patients are routinely treated by Jewish doctors and medical staff, and Jewish patients are routinely treated by Palestinian doctors and medical staff. This phenomenon is most pronounced in hospitals located in Jerusalem and Haifa – cities with mixed populations of Jews and Arabs – where we will be filming. While the world is acutely aware of the violence and tensions that play out between Jews and Arabs in the Middle East, little attention has been paid to those rare enclaves of coexistence and normalcy that do exist, hospitals being a prominent example.

Israeli hospitals as a dominant symbol of Jewish-Palestinian coexistence is a subject that has yet to be explored in documentary film. While any Jewish- or Palestinian-Israeli who has worked or been treated in an Israeli hospital can attest to this phenomenon, few outside the country are aware of its existence. What will distinguish this documentary project from others that have spotlighted Jewish-Palestinian coexistence and collaboration is that the filmmakers will not be the catalysts of the situation; rather, they will be the observers of a situation that already exists.

Our objective in making this film, tentatively titled Delivery, is to bring to light a little-known side of life in the Middle East, while demonstrating that despite the current atmosphere of despair in the region, not all hope is lost. We decided to spotlight maternity wards because this is where new life enters the world, and along with it, hope and new beginnings. As such, it holds special symbolism – particularly in a part of the world marred by bloodshed and violence.

We have already received clearances from two Israeli hospitals to bring cameras into their maternity wards for the purpose of making this film – Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem and Bnai Zion Medical Center in Haifa. Both hospitals have expressed their willingness to cooperate fully with this endeavor. We have also received indications that a third hospital, Hillel Yaffe Medical Center, in Hadera, might be interested in participating.

Our last documentary film, No. 4 Street of Our Lady (www.streetofourlady.org), won nine awards and has been screened at dozens of festivals worldwide. It told the remarkable story of Francisca Halamajowa, a Polish-Catholic woman who risked her life to save 15 of her Jewish neighbors during the Holocaust.  The film was based in large part on a diary kept by one of the Jews she saved, Moshe Maltz, filmmaker Judy Maltz’s late grandfather. Facing History and Ourselves, an international organization dedicated to teaching young people civic responsibility, recently included the film in its resource collection and will begin making it available to its network of 28,000 educators starting this fall.

In No. 4 Street of Our Lady, our objective was to show that being a bystander during the most terrible period in human history was not the only alternative for decent people, as many would believe. In our new film, we intend to demonstrate that neither are conflict, hatred and mutual distrust the only alternatives for life in the Middle East. We hope in this new project to create a deeper understanding of an important, yet very complex, global issue, while ultimately providing a glimmer of hope for the future of Middle East peace process and ideas for policymakers and peace advocates to consider that might facilitate dialogue and the creation of cross-cultural bridges in the region