Prayer worth a try because everything else has failed

Jay Kuten PHOTO/FILE

In the Wanganui Film Society's recent showing of the movie The Mill and the Cross by Lech Majewski, we were treated to a cinematic restaging of a 1564 masterpiece - Flemish artist Pieter Bruegel's The Way to Calvary.

With minimal dialogue, not only does the film enlighten our understanding of the creative process but, by refocusing from the foreground details to the grand large view of the painting (from figure to ground), we are led to Bruegel's intent: the depiction of Jesus' crucifixion as a contemporary event.

Instead of Romans marching Jesus to Golgotha, it is Catholic Spanish militiamen, then occupying the Low Countries and waging a brutal repression of Protestant reformation.

The film's shift in focus from tiny details of locals to the grand view of the whole scene of the canvas provides an insight into the subtlety with which Bruegel cast his political message - that Spain's occupation amounted to a new crucifixion.

I am indebted to Lin Ferguson of the Chronicle for her recent review (May 17) of an Al Jazeera presentation that touches on another occupation, the contemporary occupation of Palestinian territories and its effect on the young Israeli soldiers who had to serve there and who became sufficiently disillusioned that they emigrated from Israel to Berlin.

The presentation provides yet another instance of the differences of viewpoint (and political views) provided by examining the foreground details and then comparing the larger context. The focus in both is not the effect of occupation on the occupied but on the occupiers.

As Ms Ferguson describes the Al Jazeera presentation, the interviews of young Israeli veterans were without commentary or explanation from reporters, leaving viewers to draw conclusions that the occupation duty had resulted in the exodus from Israel of its young people, 30,000 of whom now live in Berlin.

For a different, broader understanding, one must do more than show a few troubled people. It turns out Sally McGrane of The New Yorker did such a piece in the same week (May 15).

In "So long Israel, Hello Berlin", McGrane does not shy from the special irony of young Israeli Jews returning to a city whose very subway lines end at Wannsee, the place where the Final Solution was decided.

However, that was 1942. In the last decades, Germany has done more than any other European country to make amends, including restoration of citizenship to any descendants of Berlin's pre-war Jewish community of 160,000.

While the Jewish population is now 30,000, only 10,000 are Israelis - the rest are immigrants from other countries, returning German Jews and, by virtue of a 1990 law welcoming them, Jews from the former Soviet Union. While their army experience may have played a part in their coming, the Israelis are in Berlin for the same reasons as other expats - because the cultural life is high and the rents are low.

One view - that of Al Jazeera - draws on particular instances of disenchanted young Israeli veterans to come to the conclusion that "Israel is hanging by a thread". The other, by a New Yorker writer, gives a more disinterested and nuanced view that sees these new Israeli Berliners simply enjoying an OE.

None of this is to deny that occupation takes its toll on all participants, or that it is long past time to resolve the agreements to create a peaceful end to the need for this occupation: Recognised borders of two states somewhere based on 1967 borders; exchange of lands as necessary; compensation to dispossessed Arab and Jewish refugees; and a capital in East Jerusalem of the new state of Palestine.

So far the political cost of seeking peace has been too high on both sides (murders of Sadat and Rabin).

Perhaps the offer of common prayers with the Israeli and Palestinian presidents by Pope Francis may give spiritual impetus to a renewed effort for a peaceful end of occupation. God knows, nothing else has worked.

Jay Kuten is an American-trained forensic psychiatrist who emigrated to New Zealand for the fly fishing. He spent 40 years comforting the afflicted and intends to spend the rest afflicting the comfortable.