The Promise comes to Sherborne

A BISHOP, a rabbi, a film director and a subversive soprano joined forces to stage an unforgettable event in a small Dorset town.

It shows how people can correct misleading media narratives – working from the bottom up.

Claire Foy plays Erin, a young woman who visits Israel and retraces her grandfather's steps in 1940s Palestine.

But before I get into that...................let me applaud the great news that Peter Kosminsky’s seminal work The Promise has been upcycled onto All 4 (see here: https://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-promise).

It can now be watched again at a time when it has never been more needed. Since it came out over a decade ago, I have gifted the DVD to numerous young people to give them a thorough grounding in the roots of the issue now playing out on our screens – the seemingly unstoppable slaughter or banishment of every man, woman and child in Gaza.

The Story

For those of you who haven’t seen it, Kominsky teamed up with Claire Foy – a partnership that would later produce the highly acclaimed Wolf Hall – to make four 90-minute episodes of The Promise in 2011.

Eighteen-year-old Erin (Claire Foy) goes to stay with an Israeli school friend. The friend’s family comprises two children, a father who seems pretty liberal and a mother whose latent racism begins to show when her son is injured in a suicide bombing. The said son, a former soldier, now works with former Palestinian militants in Combatants against War. Meanwhile Erin’s pal goes off unquestioningly to do her own military service. So Erin sees a whole range of Israeli opinion.

A pretty truculent teenager herself, she’s taken her grumpy old grandpa’s diary with her – he was a handsome young British soldier, Len, at the time of the British Mandate and his story from the 1940s interweaves with Erin’s contemporary experience.

Len was caught up in the bombing of the King David Hotel when the Jewish terrorist Irgun gang blew up the British army HQ. He’s drawn into a honey trap by a beautiful Israeli undercover operator and forms a deep friendship with a Palestinian family who lose their home to Jewish incomers.

Making the film

Kosminsky has done his homework – years of meticulous research. His choice of subject was sparked by a letter he received from a soldier who had been stationed in Palestine like Len and who complained their experiences were totally forgotten.

Eighty veterans of the British Mandate campaign were interviewed and every single one said he’d begun his tour by totally sympathising with the Jews. Many – like Len – had been part of the liberation of concentration camps but, in the course of their posting, had come to take the side of the Arabs, the underdogs.

So how does a bishop come into the story?

Just over a decade ago, Jewish activists were weary of the backlash from alternative carol services that they’d been staging in London churches. They’d used traditional tunes but with hard-hitting words to reflect the horrors of life in Bethlehem today rather than the twee Baby Jesus meek and mild stuff. The events had caused uproar.

A friend challenged me, saying it was time the Christians took over. Well, I didn’t have any contacts in any London churches but we do have a couple of major churches in Dorset – Sherborne Abbey being one.

Indefatigable Jewish activist Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi and I went to visit the then Bishop of Sherborne Graham Kings. Not only did he give us his blessing for the carol service, he suggested that we invite local students to an open day on The Promise. The bishop is a big fan of film and he loves working with young people.

Naomi knew someone who knew Peter K and he was duly invited and duly came!

The Big Event in Sherborne

Three hundred six-formers attended – some from The Gryphon School, the local comp, and others from Sherborne School – Alan Turing’s alma mater, Sherborne School for Girls and Catholic school Leweston. Bishop Graham chaired the day. And the event was filmed by Jon Pullman in A Heartfelt Wish.*

The morning comprised Peter using clips from The Promise to talk about how the film came to be made. The students interrogated him and, although he had at times been quite prickly to deal with, he was completely at ease, mesmerising the students and fielding their questions.

He talked about his controversial career. He’d covered the Falklands War, Bosnia and the death of government inspector David Kelly. I've had death threats, I’ve had to go into hiding, he told them. But nothing had prepared him for the abuse he endured when he tackled Israel/Palestine in The Promise.

He expressed surprise at the invitation to meet the students, saying:

That’s never happened to me before – and I’m very touched and flattered that you would not only do that, but that you would devote so many hours of your day to thinking carefully about the issues that we tried to raise,

And he described some of the difficulties with filming The Promise – all on location in Israel/Palestine.

In one scene Erin is with Palestinian children when Israeli settler children attack them on their way to school while IDF soldiers look on. The soldiers’ brief is to protect those Israeli citizens illegally settled in the West Bank and not the people who live there legally. The Palestinians are fair game.

The scene was so shocking that Kosminsky’s lawyers said the footage needed to be cut. But Kosminsky produced a clip from a Scandinavian cinemaphotographer showing exactly that. Human rights monitors can be seen in the clip – one of their tasks is to accompany these children as they try to get to school through the daily attacks.

A Host of Uplifting Experiences

We arranged several workshops for the afternoon. Rabbi Danny Rich, then the CEO of Liberal Judaism, explained that he respected both the Jewish narrative and the Palestinian narrative and that he wanted to see the Palestinians getting their full rights.

Diana Neslen, an observant Jew, spoke of fighting against apartheid in her native South Africa and how it informed her advocacy for Palestinian rights nowadays.

Glyn Secker talked of piracy on the high seas – he was the skipper of an all-Jewish boat trying to break the Siege of Gaza with a consignment of food and medicine but the Israeli navy impounded the boat, illegally.

From the Muslim side, we had the late beloved Dr Hassan Qasrawi – head of science at Sherborne School for Girls – who talked about growing up as a child under the British Mandate. And there was an academic from Bournemouth Islamic Centre, Dr Hammadi Nait Charif.

Students heard the Palestinian Christian perspective from Anne Clayton, representing Sabeel – now Sabeel-Kairos – a campaigning charity working in solidarity with Christians in the Holy Land.

Anglican priest Jonathan Herbert and I had both served on the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel, and each gave workshops on what we’d witnessed firsthand.

A memory that stands out was one of Hassan’s students thanking me for putting on the event. She was a Jordanian princess, the granddaughter of now elder statesman Prince Hassan of Jordan.

Rounding Off

We finished the day with the carol service in Sherborne Abbey. We heard carols, some updated with quite challenging lyrics. Dr Hammadi gave a reading from the Holy Qur’an, the Annunciation of Jesus’ birth. Peter himself chose to read Matthew Arnold’s Dover Beach.

Jewish activist Debbie Fink whose amazing soprano had interrupted the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall earlier that year was the star of the show as she sang music from The Messiah.

The heartfelt wish from all of us was that the 300 youngsters, now all in their late 20s or early 30s would do their best to speak out for a just peace.

And this latest access to The Promise could influence many more to try to halt the genocide of the Palestinian people: https://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-promise.

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*A Heartfelt Wish is available from Jews for Justice for Palestinians https://jfjfp.com/jfjfp-dvd-a-heartfelt-wish-discussing-peter-kosminskys-the-promise/