| Lullaby | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Adi Arbel |
| Produced by | Naama Pyritz |
Release date |
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Running time | 52 minutes |
| Country | Israel |
| Languages | Hebrew Arabic |
Lullaby is a documentary film by Adi Arbel that interviews both Palestinian and Israeli mothers whose children have been killed as a result of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Over 150 Israeli and Palestinian children have been killed since the start of the Second Intifada in 2000. Lullaby tells the story of those grieving mothers in their own words.
“My daughter was born on the day the Intifada set off. When she turned 6 months old an Israeli baby was shot in the head; a month later a Palestinian baby was shot. This for me was intolerable,” says filmmaker Adi Arbel of her inspiration for making the film.
In the film, eleven women describe their children's deaths in this horrible conflict. Their own struggles to cope with their personal tragedies show candor, emotion, and at times even a sense of humor. Transmitted throughout the film are penetrating revelations about motherhood, the gruesomeness of armed conflict, and the burden of bearing witness in the most tragic way possible.
These eleven women come from varied backgrounds: Palestinians, Israelis, a Russian immigrant, and an American Christian living in Israel. The stories of their children's deaths are chilling, sometimes shared in explicit detail, and through these stories the viewer comes to understand a common thread among them.
For some of the mothers, their tragedy is seeing their child brutally killed before their eyes; for others, their tragedy is not having been there to witness their child's last moments. A baby-faced Palestinian mother is as traumatized by having found her infant daughter's body ripped open by IDF gunfire as an older Israeli grandmother is by not knowing what happened to her daughter and two of her four grandchildren in their last moments. “The neighbor told me she screamed ‘Mommy’ as hard as she could,” cries the grandmother in the film, “and I’m just trying to imagine, to put pieces together to know what happened to my daughter in that moment…and I can’t solve this mystery.”
Their children's deaths serve for all the mothers as a challenge to their motherhood, as they find themselves tortured by their inability to do what they feel is a mother's primary responsibility: to protect her children. “She is so small and helpless and you are everything for her because without you she couldn’t live…and all of a sudden, in this attack, you are there for her, but you can’t do anything. Nothing,” relates a secular Israeli. “Forgive me son, I could not help you when you called out to me, I was under debris,” a Palestinian mother recalls pleading to her son as she held him for the last time.
But overwhelmingly, the greatest pain these mothers share is in missing the presence of their children. They all have that same wonder of what sort of adults their children would have become, and describe being haunted by their memories of their children.
Finally, they share the necessary struggle of moving on, and of being complete parents to their remaining children. As the young Palestinian mother asks, “Tomorrow, when my children grow up, how are they to see me like this? I am supposed to instill courage in them. They shouldn’t be scared of anything. But I myself am scared, I am terrorized.”
Other documentaries about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:
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Hanadi Tayseer Abdul Malek Jaradat, a Palestinian militant from Jenin, blew herself up on Saturday, October 4, 2003 in a suicide attack on Maxim restaurant in the northern Israeli city of Haifa. Twenty-one people were killed and 51 injured. Among the dead were four Israeli children, including an infant, and three Arabs. She was the sixth female suicide bomber of the Al-Aqsa Intifada and the second woman recruited by Islamic Jihad.
The Maxim restaurant suicide bombing was a suicide bombing which occurred on October 4, 2003 in the beachfront "Maxim" restaurant in Haifa, Israel. Twenty-one people were killed in the attack and 60 were injured. Among the victims were two families and four children, including a two-month-old baby.
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Wafa Idris was the first female suicide bomber in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. At the time of her death, Idris was a 28-year-old, divorced Red Crescent Volunteer. She lived in the Am'ari Refugee Camp in Ramallah.
The murder of Shalhevet Pass was a shooting attack carried out in Hebron, West Bank, on 26 March 2001, in which a Palestinian sniper killed 10-month-old Israeli infant Shalhevet Pass. The event shocked the Israeli public, partly because an investigation ruled that the sniper had deliberately aimed for the baby. According to Deborah Sontag of the New York Times, the murder became a "potent Israeli symbol as an innocent victim of the raging violence."

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The Parents Circle-Families Forum (PCFF) is a grassroots organization of Palestinian and Israeli families who have lost immediate family members due to the conflict. The PCFF operates under the principle that a process of reconciliation is a prerequisite for achieving a sustained peace. The PCFF is also known as Israeli Palestinian Bereaved Families for Reconciliation and Peace and as Bereaved Families Supporting Peace, Reconciliation, and Tolerance.
Children in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict refers to the impact of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict on minors in Israel and the Palestinian territories. Laurel Holliday, in her 1999 book Children of Israel/Palestine, writes that two "ethnically distinct peoples – both Palestinians and Israeli Jews – lay claim to the very same sand, stone, rivers, vegetation, seacoast, and mountains" and that the stories she presents show that "Israeli and Palestinian children grow up feeling that they are destined for conflict with their neighbors".
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The Jaffa Street bombing was a suicide bombing on January 27, 2002, in which Wafa Idris, a 28-year-old female Palestinian suicide bomber, blew herself up in the center of Jerusalem, killing one person and injuring about 100 others.

Ahlam Ahmad al-Tamimi is a Jordanian terrorist known for assisting in carrying out the Sbarro restaurant suicide bombing in Jerusalem, in 2001. She was convicted by an Israeli military tribunal and received multiple life sentences, but was released in 2011 as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange. She hosts a television show about Palestinians in Israeli prisons.
Palestinian stone-throwing refers to a Palestinian practice of throwing stones at people or property. It is a tactic with both a symbolic and military dimension when used against heavily armed troops. Proponents, sympathizers, as well as analysts have characterized stone throwing by Palestinians as a form of "limited", "restrained", "non-lethal" violence. The majority of Palestinian youths engaged in the practice appear to regard it as symbolic and non-violent, given the disparity in power and equipment between the Israeli forces and the Palestinian stone-throwers, with many considering it a method of deterring Israeli military forces and civilians from the occupation of Palestinian lands. The state of Israel considers the act to be criminal, on the grounds that it is potentially lethal. In some cases, Israelis have argued that it should be treated as a form of terrorism, or that, in terms of the psychology of those who hurl stones, even in defense or in protest, it is intrinsically aggressive.
On 3 October 2015, a Palestinian resident of al-Bireh attacked the Benita family near the Lions' Gate in Jerusalem, as they were on their way to the Western Wall to pray. The attacker murdered Aaron Benita, the father of the family, and injured the mother Adele and their 2-year-old son Matan. Nehemia Lavi, a resident who heard screams and came to help was also murdered and his gun taken by the assailant. The attacker, 19 year old Muhanad Shafeq Halabi was shot and killed by police as he was firing on pedestrians.
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