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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Nicky Larkin</title>
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		<title>A Filmmaker&#8217;s Second Thoughts</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/nicky-larkin/a-filmmakers-second-thoughts-on-israel/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=a-filmmakers-second-thoughts-on-israel</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 14 Mar 2012 04:15:03 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Nicky Larkin]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=125516</guid>
		<description><![CDATA["I used to hate Israel ... Not any more." ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="text-align: left;"><strong><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/israel-debt-collectors-2011-12-28.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-125519" title="israel-debt-collectors-2011-12-28" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/israel-debt-collectors-2011-12-28.gif" alt="" width="375" height="250" /></a>The following article was originally published by <a href="http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/nicky-larkin-israel-is-a-refuge-but-a-refuge-under-siege-3046227.html">The Sunday Independent</a>.</strong></p>
<p>I used to hate Israel. I used to think the Left was always right. Not any more. Now I loathe Palestinian terrorists. Now I see why Israel has to be hard. Now I see the Left can be Right &#8212; as in right-wing. So why did I change my mind so completely?</p>
<p>Strangely, it began with my anger at Israel&#8217;s incursion into Gaza in December 2008 which left over 1,200 Palestinians dead, compared to only 13 Israelis. I was so angered by this massacre I posed in the striped scarf of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation for an art show catalogue.</p>
<p>Shortly after posing in that PLO scarf, I applied for funding from the Irish Arts Council to make a film in Israel and Palestine. I wanted to talk to these soldiers, to challenge their actions &#8212; and challenge the Israeli citizens who supported them.</p>
<p>I spent seven weeks in the area, dividing my time evenly between Israel and the West Bank. I started in Israel. The locals were suspicious. We were Irish &#8212; from a country which is one of Israel&#8217;s chief critics &#8212; and we were filmmakers. We were the enemy.</p>
<p>Then I crossed over into the West Bank. Suddenly, being Irish wasn&#8217;t a problem. Provo graffiti adorned The Wall. Bethlehem was Las Vegas for Jesus-freaks &#8212; neon crucifixes punctuated by posters of martyrs.</p>
<p>These martyrs followed us throughout the West Bank. They watched from lamp-posts and walls wherever we went. Like Jesus in the old Sacred Heart pictures.</p>
<p>But the more I felt the martyrs watching me, the more confused I became. After all, the Palestinian mantra was one of &#8220;non-violent resistance&#8221;. It was their motto, repeated over and over like responses at a Catholic mass.</p>
<p>Yet when I interviewed Hind Khoury, a former Palestinian government member, she sat forward angrily in her chair as she refused to condemn the actions of the suicide bombers. She was all aggression.</p>
<p>This aggression continued in Hebron, where I witnessed swastikas on a wall. As I set up my camera, an Israeli soldier shouted down from his rooftop position. A few months previously I might have ignored him as my political enemy. But now I stopped to talk. He only talked about Taybeh, the local Palestinian beer.</p>
<p>Back in Tel Aviv in the summer of 2011, I began to listen more closely to the Israeli side. I remember one conversation in Shenkin Street &#8212; Tel Aviv&#8217;s most fashionable quarter, a street where everybody looks as if they went to art college. I was outside a cafe interviewing a former soldier.</p>
<p>He talked slowly about his time in Gaza. He spoke about 20 Arab teenagers filled with ecstasy tablets and sent running towards the base he&#8217;d patrolled. Each strapped with a bomb and carrying a hand-held detonator.</p>
<p>The pills in their bloodstream meant they felt no pain. Only a headshot would take them down.</p>
<p>Conversations like this are normal in Tel Aviv. I began to experience the sense of isolation Israelis feel. An isolation that began in the ghettos of Europe and ended in Auschwitz.</p>
<p>Israel is a refuge &#8212; but a refuge under siege, a refuge where rockets rain death from the skies. And as I made the effort to empathise, to look at the world through their eyes. I began a new intellectual journey. One that would not be welcome back home.</p>
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