Promises Film Analysis

The film “Promises” addresses the Israeli/Palestinian conflict from the perspective of children on both sides. Each child’s life contains a convoluted mixture of social, political, and cultural conflicts between their community and the communities of their neighbors. Present day Israel contains two peoples who are at odds, the Israelis and the Palestinians, both of whom believe they are the rightful owners of the land they both occupy. Both sides cite their own scriptures as evidence that they are the true heirs to the land. To complicate things more, some of the Jewish Israelis no longer maintain belief in God, whose covenant some Jewish people cite as evidence that the land is theirs. The Holocaust challenged their traditional conceptions

One of the Palestinian boys in the film says the Jewish people should be killed. One of the Orthodox Jewish boys says that the Palestinians need to be removed. Attitudes like the ones expressed by the children are deeply rooted in Palestinian and Israeli culture. Feelings of distrust and disdain expressed by some of the children on each side of the conflict stem from each side’s community believing that it is their God given right to occupy the land of Israel. If they did not take their scriptures literally, it might have been possible for the Jewish nation to be established elsewhere and the Israeli/ Palestinian conflict

They ask him about the Holocaust and if he believes in God. He says he cannot believe that God would abandon His people. The boys are dissatisfied and try to push him to commit one way or another, but he does not. Their grandfather is a good example of a Jew whose faith has been shaken by the Holocaust. For him, experiencing its horror firsthand had deeply shaken his faith. Religious Jews believe that they are God’s chosen people and that He has a covenant with them. The fact that the horrors of the Holocaust occurred directly contradict their belief that they are the chosen people of a god who is omnipotent, omniscient, and all good. For some, God would have to lose one of those qualities to exist, and that is not what their theology