#leilakhaled

Stefan: Today the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which Leila Khaled is associated with, is listed as a terrorist organization in Canada, in the US and in the EU, which means they are on the same list as groups like al-Qaeda. 

With the PFLP on those terrorist lists (just like Hezbollah) it becomes very difficult to have a real political discussion or debate about the organization, their motivations, the context, the history. Within the mainstream press, once an organization becomes a terrorist group, having a real debate on this issue becomes really difficult, because the terrorist listing silences debate. Can you comment on these ideas?

Lina: This is very interesting, because actually its very irritating when the news creates a big news flash about a group that has given money to the PFLP, simply because they are on a terrorist list.

Recently the world remembered with so much celebration the life of Mandela. However, let us remember that globally, including here in Sweden, there was a time when Mandela was treated like a terrorist, labelled that by politicians like Thatcher and others around the world. After the political context changed, everyone was rushing to praise Mandela and most recently to attend the funeral in South Africa, speaking about Mandela as being a great man and a freedom fighter.

Today there is a lot of interest in the Palestinian issue. People still say that the Palestine–Israel conflict is complicated, but there are aspects that are very simple to understand: the Palestinians were dispossessed from their land and some have fought back.

However, because one side, Israel, represents for many the victims of the Holocaust, the conflict becomes more difficult to solve, as compared to South Africa, and the way that the conflict is covered is very different from others around the world.

Stefan: In terms of political debate, Leila Khaled, along with associated Palestinian activists and organizations, are linked to groups considered terrorist. How do you feel about the ways in which terrorist listing prohibits or restricts political discussions on Palestine–Israel history and all the issues today that extend from that?

Lina: This is a good point. For example, the film Leila Khaled: Hijacker was screened at a film festival in Gothenburg, Sweden, last fall and Leila was invited to Sweden to speak at the festival. But Swedish authorities denied Leila permission to enter Sweden, claiming that Leila was a terrorist because she was associated with groups on this terrorist list.

I thought that this was ridiculous. Leila is almost 70-years old — what exactly did they think Leila would do in Sweden? I think it was very good that Leila was invited to Sweden to explain her thoughts and also to offer reflections on terrorism today, but that possibility was silenced because of the terrorist list.

However, if you ask me about the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda, for example, after reading about the heavy involvement of child soldiers and their gruesome attacks on civilians, for me that group is terrorist. So the question is, should we have a terrorist list? I find this a very difficult question to answer.

Stefan: Your film was screened in Montreal at Cinema Politica in collaboration with Tadamon!, an activist collective that had a political campaign at the time to have Hezbollah removed from Canada’s terrorist list — despite Tadamon! being an anarchist-inspired, leftist organization that would strongly disagree with Hezbollah on many social issues.

Tadamon! was challenging the terrorist listing not because we were directly sympathetic to Hezbollah but because the terrorist list was being deployed to silence real political discussion on the issues and because it was being used as a tool to harass members of the Lebanese community in Montreal, especially after the war in 2006.

Canadian intelligence agencies were visiting the homes of Lebanese families, interrogating teenagers, mothers and fathers, without any formal legal basis, and questioning people on the basis of their religious and national identity — terrible practices that were linked to this terrorist list regulation.

People from the Lebanese diaspora in Montreal would go to visit their family in Lebanon, and sometimes they were being stopped at the airport and questioned without basis. Authorities were racially profiling, and this was justified at the time because of the existence of Lebanese terrorist organizations.

So when Hijacker was screened at Cinema Politica and Tadamon! activists introduced the film, we explained that although one might agree or disagree with the political framework and vision of Hezbollah, it is inaccurate or unrealistic not to acknowledge that Hezbollah is an important part of the political debate within the region. They are part of the discussion. Similarly, Leila Khaled and the long history of Palestinian fights and organizations like the PFLP are an important part of the entire discussion around Palestine and Israel.

When we presented Hijacker, we also presented the campaign to remove Hezbollah from the terrorist organization list, which was very controversial and actually lead to real pressure on our collective, Tadamon!, from a Canadian government intelligence agency, CSIS.

Within this context, can you offer your thoughts, not about Hezbollah specifically, but about the way that these terrorist lists silence real political debate?

Lina: Yes. We face similar problems here in Sweden. People are being targeted and questioned for expressing their political point of view, especially Muslim people and groups. For example, a Palestinian organization in Sweden invited a representative of Hamas to Stockholm, which created a major controversy in which the media tried to silence a real, calm and honest debate about Hamas and their political role in the Palestine – Israel conflict.

Of course we need to protest against such laws. It is always better to talk with people and groups that you do not understand, or that you disagree with. It is a better approach than placing them in a corner and calling them evil, then refusing to engage. Debate is always the true way to finding sustainable political solutions. However, I do have contradict- ing thoughts on the issue. It is very difficult, for example, in the case of the Lord’s Resistance Army.

So the Canadian government was tracking Hezbollah members?

Stefan: No. But they were enforcing surveillance on people attending certain mosques, or frequenting specific community centres in Montreal, or simply due to the region in Lebanon that they were from. For example, a sheikh at a local mosque expressed sympathy for Hezbollah during the 2006 war, and then all the people going to that mosque were considered suspicious by the Canadian government. This is racial and religious profiling. Our conclusion was that the targeting of mosques and community centres, on the basis of a terrorist list, was wrong and illegally attacked political freedoms at a basic level.

I also want to ask you about your work in cinema in general. You work at a Swedish TV station, right?

Lina: I have worked at Sveriges Television, Sweden’s national public channel, for many years and hosted a discussion show called Events in the World.

Stefan: In the context of your experience in TV and film, I want to ask you about the process of creating Hijacker, which is such a beautiful film. More than a talking-head documentary, it is a very personal and artistic film, with the creative use of old footage, like the scenes in Italy. The mood of the film is intense and also romantic. Can you reflect on the creative process behind the documentary, given your traditional TV background?

Lina: Thank you. It was a very difficult process that I went through to create Hijacker, which of course happened in collaboration with many people involved in the making of the film. When you are becoming a journalist, you often think about being objective and you are pressured to think that way, that getting involved personally in the subject of the story is not a good idea. When I started working on Hijacker, I quickly realized that if I tried to approach the film in that way, with the idea of being “objective”, it would not work, because I was so deeply tied to the story.

I wanted to say very early in the film that I was a Palestinian filmmaker so that people can understand that Hijacker is not a sterile and objective documentary, but a very personal one. So close to the beginning of the film I explain what I think about Leila Khaled, my history with the subject and my identity as a Palestinian, so that actually is at the top of the film.

When writing the manuscript, and after starting to film Leila and talking to people about her and the subjects in the film, I quickly realized that most people did not understand the history, the context of Palestine and Israel, going back to 1947/1948 and before. So the film highlights the period when Leila was born, close to the creation of Israel and the expul- sion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. Viewers get a sense of that history, all before going heavily into Leila’s story, which provides context and background on Leila’s militant activities.

Swedish TV is famous for having a lot of archival footage, so I thought that I could find all the footage that we needed there, but when we started editing we realized that we had to go to the BBC and other sources. The budget for the film jumped and that was a shock, but all that archival material was necessary for Hijacker.

When we started editing the film, we placed the interview with Leila at the beginning, but then realized that people would see Leila too quickly, without understanding the whole story. So then we thought about telling the full story from the beginning, including the historical aspects about Palestine.

Stefan: I am curious to understand how language impacted the film. Your narration is in Swedish and your conversations with Leila are in Arabic.

Lina: The first interviews that I did with Leila were in English, because I thought that it would ensure global interest in the project. But I quickly realized that Leila communicates her feelings and ideas much better in Arabic. Then after filming interviews in English, I realized that we needed to change languages and re-film everything in Arabic.

I thought that it was good to be honest in the film, so that it is actually a documentary, because so many documentaries really play with reality. I wanted to show Leila’s thoughts and reality.

There is a scene where I ask Leila to lay down on the couch to be filmed, and Leila thought that was silly and got frustrated with the film crew. I wanted to show that exchange, show Leila getting frustrated and making cynical jokes, as part of the documentary process. I thought that showing Leila joking and her sense of humour would illustrate Leila, and the human relationship that developed while we made the film.

This relationship was important and this was the reason I hesitated to ask Leila the last question that I had, the one about Leila’s actions giving Palestinians a bad name in the world. It was a question that I planned to ask while filming, but one that I had a hard time approaching.

I went back to Sweden and logged all the interviews and the producer asked me about that interview question, and the exchange, and I realized that I had never found the courage to ask the question. So I had to call up Leila to ask the question, the one that I had been scared to ask while visit- ing with her.

Stefan: Generally speaking, what are some of the strongest or most meaningful reactions that you have had to Hijacker?

Lina: I have been invited to show the film in the US multiple times, and I am traveling again this year to show the film. I was very shocked by this, actually. I thought that because of 9/11, both in relation to the laws and the political environment, I would not be invited to show the film in the US, but actually the opposite has happened.

On my trips there, I met Americans who had served in Afghanistan and had become critical of US foreign policy, and who appreciated the film. This all illustrated to me the political complexity of the United States. Coming from Sweden, I had stereotypical ideas about American culture and thought that Americans would be closed to the ideas being presented in the film.

Also, many university libraries in the US have gotten the film and it has also been included in many curricula for courses relating to Middle East politics and Israel and Palestine. This made me very proud, because the film not only tells Leila’s story, but also tells the history of Palestine, including the Nakba.

The film was also invited to a film festival in South Africa, and those who arranged the screening invited me and Leila Khaled to participate. I could not go because I was expecting my son the same month. When Leila went to Johannesburg, they literally rolled out the red carpet for her when she got out of the plane, and the film festival organizers treated her with a great deal of respect and admiration.