Communication in Promises.

"Why was communication essential to understanding among the children of Promises?"

    In the movie Promises, the audience is introduced to Moishe, Mahmoud, Shlomo, Yarko, Daniel, Faraj, and Sanabel; these are all kids that live either on Jerusalem or on the refugee camps around them. During the movie, they show their points of view on the Israeli and Palestine conflict over the land. Each one of them has a distinct opinion due to their religions: Mahmoud, Faraj, and Sannabel are Muslims and believe that the Palestinians should have the land, while Moishe and Shlomo are Jewish and believe that Israel should continue, whereas Yarko and Daniel are secular and just want to stop the conflict. The goal of this movie was to show their perspective and then try to make the kids meet in order to play and discuss the issue.

   The conflict between these two cultures is a quite old one and it does not seem to get any closer to peace, so the idea was to make kids, the future generation of both sides, to communicate with each other. Communication is necessary whenever there is a dispute for something so all perspectives can be shown and understood for the process of reaching a peaceful solution can please both sides. Adding children to a debate of opinions is also very effective since they do not know much about the other's opinion due to their age which means less experience and knowledge. If they never contact the other point of view, they might grow with a biased view and just increase on the violence of the conflict. While if they gain knowledge about each other, they will be favorable to understand both sides and provide solutions in the future. As they got together, they saw how similar they were and how foolish all this idea of separation seemed.

-Israeli Checkpoint

   Coming together is not the only method of communication used for the understanding of the kids in the movie. Even though they all are neighbors, it is hard for them to come together due to the Israeli checkpoints which do not allow the Palestinian kids enter Jerusalem, so communication was an essential method for them to know each other and establish a discussion. An effective method of communication used was the phone to call each other. Faraj was able to call Yarko and Daniel in order to get to know each other and schedule their friendly meeting. Another method of communication that brought opinions together was by B.Z. Goldberg, the director, himself. He was able to send messages from kids to another and he was also responsible to introduce them to many different perspectives. Finally, this movie was another part of communication that helped on the understanding among the children, since many of them only were exposed to the other kids when they went watch it on the cinemas. As they watched the movie they were exposed to the suffering many of them passed and to what each of them believe on, also exposed to the possibility of meeting the two groups represented by the meeting of the kids. Also they were not watching the movie by themselves; people from various cultures came to them and talked to them about their opinion on the conflict.