Palestinian filmmaker Raed Andoni says, Israel is an apartheid state

Raed Andoni. Pic/Datta Kumbhar

A filmmaker who is looking for former inmates of Jerusalem's Moskobiya interrogation centre for a documentary places a newspaper advertisement in Ramallah. After a casting process, the men reenact their interrogations, discuss details about the prison, and reveal the humiliation they experienced during detention.

That filmmaker is Palestinian director Raed Andoni, 51, who was incarcerated in Moskobiya three decades ago. His film, Ghost Hunting, was shown at the Vikalp Film Festival at Prithvi theatre on Friday evening. In an interview at a Juhu hotel, Andoni talks about the soul-destroying occupying power, the fight and right to dignity and why the ghost continues to haunt those who have lived through the prison experience.

Andoni, whose Arabic film won a clutch of awards, including the Glashütte Original Documentary Award at Berlinale 2017, talks about the contemporary Israel-Palestine equation and believes the Israel apartheid state is a temporary model, designed to fail and fall.

A poster of Ghost Hunting

Is this your first time here?
This is my first visit to India. I was part of the jury at the 11th International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala that just ended in Thiruvananthapuram. I am now in Mumbai for the Vikalp Film Festival.

A little on your background…
I was born in 1967 in Amman, Jordan. I am Palestinian Christian. I have a family home in Beit Satur (Bethlehem). For the last 10 years, I am based in Paris, because it is easier to travel when based there. I do often make trips to Palestine.

Why were you incarcerated in an Israel jail 30 years ago?
(Does not directly say why he was incarcerated, despite prodding). When it comes to Palestine, your question should be why were you not in an Israeli jail? Out of approximately four million Palestinians, at least 25 per cent have been in jail, so every family would have had at least one or two members in an Israel jail. One really starts resisting the Israel occupation when one is 18 or thereabouts. Now, though there are very young children being put in Israel jails. I was in jail for one year.

Your film is about Israel interrogation techniques...
They are designed to break you physically and psychologically. Ghost Hunting is all about finding the 'ghost' that lives inside of Palestinian prisoners. My film has real prisoners, they are not professional actors but inmates and through this they release the deep emotion within them. Every person reacts differently to the prison experience. Some, when they are freed, simply try to blank out that part of their life. It is one way of coping. This [imprisonment] is a way in which the Israelis control a population. They do not just occupy the land, they occupy the mind, and they occupy the soul.

The poster girl of the Palestine resistance movement Ahed Tamimi is in jail...
What a shame that is. What is she in jail for? For slapping a soldier who entered her home. The Israel Govt. panicked. They are in a perpetual panic mode. They panicked when the Argentine football team refused to play in Israel. The Israeli PM, Benjamin Netanyahu came to India, took a selfie with Bollywood actors and was promoting the country back home through the selfie. What an immature way to behave. The Palestinians see the growing closeness between India and Israel with disappointment. India and Palestine have shared experiences. India, too, has been colonised. You know what it is like to live under an occupation. India has traditionally stood up for Palestine.

What is the future and what are the solutions?
Israel is an apartheid state and this is a temporary model. Many Israelis, when they look deep inside themselves, know that they are occupying somebody else's home and land. They are living a lie and how long can you do that? Ignorance is a dangerous disease leading to a sick society. That is why this occupation is designed to fail. Everybody needs to live like equals under a civil rule. As a Palestinian, I do not want to live like a second or third degree citizen. I respect any way people choose to resist because first comes the right to food and then drink and then, right up there is the right to live with dignity.

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