Persona Non Grata (2005)
Accent DVD (region 4)
d. Oliver Stone; pr. Fernando Sulichin; ph. Rodrigo Prieto, Serguei Saldivar Tanaka; ed. Langdom Page; as themselves. Yassir Arafat, Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak, Benjamin Netanyahu, Oliver Stone, Hasan Yosef (67 mins)
THIS DVD REVIEW IS AN EXTRACT FROM ROBERT CETTL'S FORTHCOMING BOOK BY McFARLAND PRESS, TERRORISM IN AMERICAN CINEMA.
Acclaimed filmmaker Oliver Stone journeyed personally to Palestine and Israel to interview representatives of Hamas, the Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigade and the Israeli government in a build-up to a portrait of the legacy of PLO leader Yassir Arafat.
The resultant Persona Non Grata is less another Oliver Stone political thriller than a documentary in which Stone’s personal quest to track down and interview Arafat makes the director an integral part of the documentary: the cult of personality elevated to journalistic figure as has distinguished the American feature documentary format since Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9-11, as witness Michael Moore Hates America and even Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth.
Thus, as much as Stone devotes objective time and scrutiny to both the Palestinian and Israeli perspectives on the terrorism that began with the Palestinian intifada and accelerated into an unprecedented wave of suicide bombings against Israeli civilians, so too his personal responses inform the film’s structure and momentum.
Hence, when interviewing Hamas leader Hasan Yosef, who asks what Stone would do if his family were forced from their land into refugee camps and their children killed, Stone replies that he would do exactly what Hamas are doing. Correspondingly, it is empathy for both sides in the Palestinian-Israeli struggle which makes Persona Non Grata a humanist perspective on the terror conflict which, at the time of filming, seemed to be the unspoken root cause of a terror campaign since the mid-1970s and one that arguably lies behind Al Qaeda’s rationale in attacking the USA on 9-11. Indeed, in a feeble effort to market himself as a peacemaker, President Bush, primarily through Colin Powell, attempted to launch the “roadmap to peace”, which in the end proved as much a nicely worded sound-byte jingle as “axis of evil”, “war on terror” and “enemy combatant” – the post 9-11 doublespeak concealing an ethical agenda that the cinema of terrorism would examine in a wave of films in 2007-8 as betraying the ideals of the American Constitution.
Persona Non Grata is a short feature documentary (just over an hour), one of two Stone made for television - the second being on Fidel Castro. Immediately following 9-11, the Bush government through the “fair and balanced” Fox News Channel fabricated the spin that 9-11 was an isolated act of terror against an innocent and now traumatized America: sentiments reflected in the immediate post 9-11 documentary 7 Days in September, a mythopoeic evocation of “ground zero” that Stone himself would attempt in World Trade Center. Any attempt to examine US foreign policy as in any way culpable for the events that led up to 9-11 was considered unpatriotic and even traitorous. 9-11 to the Bush government was an unmotivated attack in which the USA were wholly innocent, and therefore altogether blameless. However, there were nonetheless serious foreign policy issues that lay behind 9-11: American presence on the Holy Land of Saudi Arabia (later examined in The Kingdom) and American sponsorship and arms dealing with Israel, the only nuclear power in the delicate Middle East. Significantly, it was America’s involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian struggle which the 1977 film Black Sunday, which effectively launched the cinema of terrorism as a genre in American film, suggested would eventually lead to suicidal terrorist attacks on American soil, a theme continued in 1980s Wrong is Right and traced through the cinema of terrorism over subsequent years until The Siege looked at Islamic terrorism in the USA in the wake of the first World Trade Center bombing.
Persona Non Grata begins with a look at both sides of the violence that consumed Israel / Palestine following the collapse of the Camp David Peace Accords of 2000 and thus unfolded in tandem to America’s entry into the list of terrorist-affected nations with 9-11.
Indeed, by directly examining the Palestinian-Israeli crisis from the perspective of Israel being involved, and experienced, in a War on Terror (though that phrase is never used) in which the terror threat is a daily facet of life and in which the casualty toll dwarfs that of 9-11. But, as Stone shows, the Palestinians live with daily brutality by Israeli forces who patrol with tanks and open fire on gatherings of Islamic men. In contrast to the unapologetic Netanyahu, the more reflective former Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres admits that Israel has made mistakes. Between the two, Stone suggests, the possibility of compromise remains faint though Peres remains optimistic, and the most humane figure in the film.
Significantly, Netanyahu and the Israelis portray Israel not merely as a Jewish, Zionist state but as the furthermost functioning outpost of Western Civilization in the Middle East. Correspondingly, the Israelis downplay any religious agenda in what the Palestinians by contrast see as a Holy War revolving around Israeli control of Muslim holy places in the West Bank: thus, the spectre of Zionism lingers over the Palestinian resentment of Israel whilst Israeli leaders sidestep the ramifications of political Zionism in the Arab-dominated Middle East. Avoiding direct examination of political Zionism except in Ehud Barak’s framing statements that the lands of Israel and Palestine were bequeathed to the Jews from the time of Moses but they are ready to give it back to the Arabs for contractual peace agreements, the Israelis attempt primarily to portray the terrorist cause as a clash of civilizations, with Israel the last bastion of Western civilization and gateway to Europe, the same perspective that saturated Netanyahu’s 1997 book Fighting Terrorism in which he depicts terrorism purely as a cultural clash with roots in Cold War proxy conflicts between the Soviet Union and the USA, themes which the cinema of terrorism had been addressing since the collapse of the Soviet Union in such films as Death Has a Bad Reputation.
Stone arrives in Jerusalem in March 2002, some six months after 9-11. He begins the film with interviews with the prime Israeli authorities – Netanyahu, Peres, Barak – before moving onto Hamas and the PLO in the Gaza strip, which Stone reveals full of posters memorializing the suicide bombers of such as the Al Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade, representatives of whom are also interviewed in the course of this documentary.
Considering the Western demonization of the suicide bomber as the abominable face of the unknowable enemy in the Bush War on Terror, Stone looks sympathetically at the culture which spawns and idolizes them as martyrs: even if Stone himself is sceptical of the religious beliefs which lie behind such, he acknowledges the cultural context behind it even as he focuses when interviewing the masked leaders of the Al Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade on such issues as the desired borders of the Palestinian state they fight for being those prior to the 1967 war (which saw the Israeli occupation and the growth of Israeli settlements) and the right to return of the Palestinian refugees to their homeland (which Israel will not allow as such would lead to the loss of control of Jerusalem, a Holy City of equal importance to both sides, the fate of separate governments for East and West Jerusalem being the issue that led to the collapse of the negotiations between Barak and Arafat at the failed Camp David peace talks.
Israel’s strategic position regarding its settlements in the West Bank and Gaza is outlined, as are the reasons for Israel’s need to ensure security when at its thinnest point Israel is only 15 kilometres wide and in danger of being ripped into two by Palestinian forces and Arab intrusion if the West Bank is left unchecked: secure settlements to protect Israel vs. intrusions into Palestinian land. Persona Non Grata lays bare the varied, conflicting and quite possibly irreconcilable differences underlying the terrorist war that affects Israelis and Palestinians on an hourly basis. As Stone interviews both Israeli and Palestinian residents, so too Persona Non Grata emerges as a portrait of life in a region consumed by terrorism in which both sides claim religious and territorial justification – the Israeli justification ultimately leading to the impoverishment and exile of the Palestinian people and their idealization of “arch-terrorists” Arafat, Hamas and Al Aqsa while the Palestinian justification leads to the suicide bombing of shopping malls and school buses.
The remarkable thing about Stone’s documentary is that it is effectively the first to portray both sides without favouring one over the other, although simultaneously creating a portrait of Arafat as a legendary figure and motivating force for a generation of Palestinian “freedom fighters” with editing techniques that evoke less of traditional documentary than the revisionist history Stone brought to his portrayals of American political leaders in the preceding JFK and Nixon and the subsequent W, the release of which was well-timed in the weeks leading up to the election that would see the end of the George Bush Presidency, if not the legacy of the War on Terror bequeathed America by Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld – indictable war criminals according to the 2007 documentary Taxi to the Dark Side and at the very least ethically compromised according to another 2007 documentary The Road to Guantanamo.
The War on Terror proclaimed by Bush seems mere American bombast in comparison to the ongoing struggle Stone depicts here, making Persona Non Grata, alongside Fahrenheit 9-11, The Manchurian Candidate and Lord of War, one of the core films in the cinema of terrorism post 9-11, all of which seek to locate a context for the brand new American experience of terrorism. Stone attempts to relate this new American experience of terrorism to its origins in the Palestinian struggle and its elevation of Arafat to living legend. Hence, Arafat himself is an arch-terrorist to Netanyahu, who tries to portray Arafat as a violent monster who brought terror to Jordan and Libya before being booted out by those nations and taking up home in Gaza to terrorize the innocent Israelis. It is clear that to Netanyahu, Arafat is detestable and no negotiation is possible with the Palestinian leadership. Peres on the other hand considers Arafat a revolutionary leader who could not make the transition to political leader and, in his recital of Palestinian liberationist poetry. concedes that Camp David failed because Barak expected Arafat to make concessions that would eliminate Arafat’s platform and dream, concessions Arafat could never make.
Israel’s leadership are old men. In contrast, 75% of the Palestinian populace are under 35. Al Aqsa thus considers itself the voice of displaced, impoverished Palestinian youth, the view being that circumstances imposed upon them by the Israeli “occupation” necessitate a guerrilla war. Curiously, Peres counters this view by saying that Palestine will mature, as will the Arab states, when they realize not that poverty begets terror but that terror begets poverty. Yet, Al Aqsa boast of getting their arms from Israel, just as America sells arms to Israel. The relevance of this struggle to America, hinted at as far back as Black Sunday, is made obvious when Al Aqsa reveals that their war against the occupying Israelis, when directed against Israeli settlers in the occupied territories is complicated by the fact that up to 60% of the Jewish Israelis settling on what the Palestinians claim as their land are also American citizens. America’s de facto occupation in tandem with the Israelis is raised as a by-product of American foreign policy in the region, although the examination of such is not Stone’s agenda here and it remains subtextual, though he would contextualize it in his biopic of George W. Bush, W, after first elevating “ground zero” to mythic status in World Trade Center: the three films being Stone’s War on Terror trilogy.
Stone does not use the word “terrorist”, instead establishing the crisis as a guerrilla war in which the participants and martyrs in Jihad see themselves as freedom fighters.
Such interviews with Al Aqsa are juxtaposed with those of Israeli intelligence officials, and Peres, reflecting on the problems of finding suicide bombings in advance and preventing the destruction they cause. Indeed, it is the interrogation of those suicide bombers captured before their martyrdom which gives Israeli authorities tactics to combat the terror – the families of the suicide bombers themselves, punished by association. Stone reflects on Bush’s support of Ariel Sharon and the license this gives the Israelis to go after Arafat: Stone understands the Israeli situation but laments the unquestioned Bush endorsement of the Sharon government and sympathizes with the Palestinians. Less a case of torn allegiance than understanding of both sides, Stone rounds the documentary with a look at what Barak feels is the only solution left Zionism – to disengage completely from Palestine, hence the construction of the fence / wall separating the two regions. In the meantime, Stone’s final interview with Perez is interrupted by a suicide bombing a mere 800 metres away, prompting an Israeli attack on Arafat’s headquarters in Gaza, captured with immediacy and irony. Appropriately, the last word goes to Perez, advocating that children be educated about the future and not the past, history being written by wars and the killing of people.
2005 also saw the release in American theatres of Steven Spielberg’s Munich, a look at the origins of the Israeli counter-terrorist operations against Palestinian terrorism following the Munich Olympic hostage incident and the first post 9-11 terrorist thriller. Likewise, America’s arms dealing history with both the Israelis and the pre-Al Qaeda mujahedeen was finally examined in Charlie Wilson’s War whilst the post 9-11 international arms dealer as terrorist enabler (who wouldn’t sell to Bin Laden only because his checks bounced) was the subject of the revisionist black comedy Lord of War.
