"Why was communication essential to understanding among the children of Promises?"
The movie "Promises" takes place in Jerusalem, where the director meets with 7 Jewish and Palestinian children who live only 20 minutes from each other, but in completely different worlds. Jews all live in west Jerusalem, while most Muslims live in Palestinian refugee camps. While the Jews and Palestinians are in war over the land, which each one claims its theirs, the kids are influenced to be against and hate each other. The movie shows how communication is essential to the understanding of each other's ideas and can help solve problems, such as hate.
Daniel and Yarko are the first two Jewish brothers whom the director meets. They live in west Jerusalem and start talking about how dangerous it is to take a certain bus, because there might be a terrorist attack on it and they might die. These boys are also not very religious Jews, and do not strongly despise Muslims. They are also the kids which I identify myself with the most, since I am not a very religious person and I do not despise any other different race. Shlomo is a child who is a very Orthodox Jew, shown praying various times and in his Bar mitzvah. Since Shlomo is very religious, he is not required to join the army, like all Jewish citizens are. Another Jewish child is Moishe, who lives in Belt-El in West Bank and really dislikes the Arabs. There are also the three Muslim children, Faraj, Mahmoud, and Sanabel. Faraj lives in a refugee camp, where people have poor infrastructure and resources. He also has a strong dislike for the Jews. Mahmoud is the child who most hates the Jews, he says that he would never be friends with a Jewish kid. He also does not live in the refugee camp like the other Muslims, but in the Palestinian quarter in East Jerusalem, being the son of a merchant. Sanabel lives in the same refugee camp as Faraj. Her father is being kept in prison by the Jews, and has been waiting three years to go to trial. When comparing the problems and challenges faced in the daily life of these children with my own, I realize how complicated their lives are. While they daily worry about being exploded in a bus, or being shot and killed by a soldier, I worry about school grades and other things which seem very futile compared to their problems.
Daniel and Yarko are the most open minded ones and the only Jews who interact with the Muslim kids from the refugee camp, in a meeting arranged by the director. Faraj is the one who talks on the phone with the two brothers before they meet, and the one who interacts the most. I believe they are the ones who associate with each other the most because they are the most open minded and less religious children. They all seem to share the same interests, such as liking the same kind of sports and food, even though one is Jew and the other Muslim, proving they are not as different as they thought. Therefore, before they started communicating they thought of each other as horrible and hateful people, but when they started sharing ideas, they realized that they were not so different. On their encounter they ended up really liking each other and tried to maintain contact even though it was hard.
Therefore, communication was essential to understanding among the children of "Promises" because they learned from one another and stopped hating each other for their race. Also learning that they are not so different as they thought. They then realized that if everyone would talk to each other and listen to their side of the story, there would not be so much hate and war as there is between Jews and Palestinians.
