Tammy Kremer
Zochrot
Tel Aviv, Israel/Palestine
I am excited to embark upon a journey of organizing a film festival with Zochrot, a Tel Aviv-based organization that educates Israeli Jews about the displacement of Palestinians.
I chose to work with Zochrot because of their approach to building the groundwork for a new political reality in Palestine/Israel: a social democracy in which all have equal citizenship. The crux of Zochrot’s work is directed at Israeli Jews, with the belief that they will need to acknowledge the suffering caused to Palestinians in order to go through the necessary processes of reconciliation that precedes true peace. I also believe that acknowledgment of Palestinian suffering is one of many crucial steps needed to transform the current reality of Israel/Palestine.
I will be assisting in coordinating Zochrot’s third 48 Millimeter Film Festival in Tel Aviv at the end of November and its first in New York City, which will take place concurrently or in early 2016. As my background is in arts and education, this project is a perfect match for my interests. I am particularly excited to see how the production and reception of the festivals will be different in each city.
I come to this project with a personal connection to Israel/Palestine. I grew up in Jewish communities that assumed a shared commitment to Zionism as support for a Jewish State in Palestine. Challenges to this assumption were considered hateful.
My father’s parents were Holocaust survivors. In the late 50s, my father and his family were able to leave Belarus and move to Israel, where my father spent much of his childhood and young adulthood. On my mom’s side, my grandfather escaped Nazi Germany in 1937 and came to the US. My mom went to college in Israel/Palestine. Both my parents served in the Israeli Defense Forces. I was raised in a Hebrew/English bilingual home in Los Angeles.
I grew up thinking I might join the Israeli army, but by the time I got to college I realized that I had heard only a very narrow range of perspectives on Palestine/Israel. Over the course of the last eight years, I have been educating myself and examining my beliefs and biases. It was and continues to be extremely painful to acknowledge the suffering that “my people” have caused and continue to cause to Palestinians. However, while painful, I have a responsibility and moral commitment to recognizing violence past and present and using my privileged membership in the Israeli and American Jewry to stand for justice.