13 Mar, 2015
Where Palestinians and Jewish settlers meet as equals
By Sara Hirschhorn
Mar. 19, 2013, Ha’aretz – The story of his work in the last five years of his life, and an examination of the legacy he left behind, is the narrative that runs through a new documentary, “A Third Way – Settlers and Palestinians as Neighbors” directed by Harvey Stein. Stein, who moved to Israel from New York close to a decade ago, first met Froman in late 2008 to make a small film about him, and was taken with the way he was building bridges in a place full of disconnect.
“I immediately fell in love with him for several qualities he had,” recalls Stein. “He was totally irreverent. I remember him asking me once, ‘What’s a settler?’ Then he made his hand like a claw and went grrr.” In other words, monstrous. “He was able to hold contradictions. He’d say, ‘I love my neighbors. My Jewish tradition told me to love my neighbors, and so I do.’”
Froman would sometimes go to great lengths to show that love, something mainstream settlement leaders – and your average Israeli – would consider extreme (or at least bizarre). In one surreal scene captured on film, Froman visits a West Bank mosque that was torched and vandalized by settlers, who also spray-painted insulting messages about the Prophet Mohammed on the walls. Wearing his kippa and tefillin (phylacteries), as he is leaving the mosque Froman stands on the stairs and calls out repeatedly to the Palestinians waiting below, “Allahu Akbar!”
Read the rest: http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/jerusalem-vivendi/.premium-1.646663
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