The Promise

I spent last night watching the four episodes of the Channel 4 mini-series The Promise. I had avoided it after hearing from people I really like and respect on twitter that the first episode was really bad. But yesterday those same friends on twitter were urging me to watch it, saying that it was brilliant. They said that while the first episode will get on my nerves I should stick with it and that I would be pleasantly surprised. I had realised that I wasn’t going to be able to sleep that night. So I thought that I might as well watch the whole thing because I wasn’t going to do any work anyway.

I sat and started watching it on the watch again feature for channel 4 (4OD). I have to admit that within 15 minutes of the first episode I wanted to grab my laptop and smash it repeatedly on the wall. It just looked like it was going to be a complete surface pro-israel account. There was a point when the main character, an annoying, rich, White, British, 18-year old, clueless girl from London on her gap year, who goes to israel with her best friend, who’s going there for her military service, says, while sitting on the beach next to the villa of the family she’s staying with in the rich part of Haifa: ‘this is paradise!’. At this point I just wanted to scream. The whole first episode is filled with things like that. I also noticed that the Arabs were conspicuously absent. The only arab character seemed to be a reformed Al-Aqsa brigades member, who only appears for a small part.

But anyway, before getting carried away, let me explain what the series is about. It follows the afore-mentioned British teenager’s trip to israel on her gap year. Before she leaves her grand father falls ill and she takes his diary, from his time in british mandate Palestine to read. The series therefore follows two parallel storylines, one in modern day Palestine and one in 1945-1948 Palestine. She’s a clueless, privileged, annoying teenager, and he is a British soldier who liberated a concentration camp during world war II and found himself in Palestine.

So the story begins with both of them, especially the grand father, being quite pro-zionist. She out of uninformed stupidity, he out of the horrors he witnessed in the death camps. So this is why the first episode was so annoying to me. It is because the story is really told from the perspective of the two characters, and no one else’s, that the first episode needed to be like that, from a story telling point of view. However, the next three episodes go on to shatter every single assumption and lie that seemed to be told by the first one. They also go on to tell the truth about the Palestinian tragedy without compromise. It felt so good to watch a drama the wasn’t afraid to show the truth and shatter this idea of false equivalence between both sides’ suffering.

I cried my eyes out through the whole last episode. I’ve always known the history of the Nakba, and Deir Yassine, and the truth of the brutality of the occupation in the West Bank and the giant interment and concentration camp that is Gaza, but I was still emotionally drained and affected by it. The most beautiful thing about it was the way in which it showed things that are important for all arabs but that most people don’t know. Like the centrality of the keys in the Palestinian struggle for the right of return of the people who were forced out of their homes and were ethnically cleansed in 1948.

Another really good thing about it was all the very subtle ways in which it showed the apartheid system of israel for what it is. For example, the main character’s best friend makes fun of the recruits on her first day of induction into the IDF calling them idiots for the way in which they act, she’s spent most of her life in England and thus feels like an outsider. However, during her basic training graduation party, she acts exactly like the people she made fun of in the first place. This is not in your face but is subtly represented. Another example, is the moment when ‘liberal israelis’ are forced to have dinner with a Palestinian for the first time. They ask him where he’s from and he tells them, being from a village cut in half by the  illegal apartheid separation wall, and they act politely outraged. Then he asks them where they’re from, one of the says I’m from here. He then pointedly asks, ‘no I mean where are you from originally?’

Anyway, the whole thing was brilliant in every single aspect. It is one of the best pieces of television ever made and takes its place amongst the other greats like The Wire and Battlestar Gallactica. The acting is brilliant, the story is wonderful, the sets are fantastic, especially the period ones, and the history is completely accurate. I cannot recommend it enough. It’s still on 4 OD for another few days and it is already out on DVD. Trust me you will want to watch this, whether you know about Palestine and its history or not. It is an education for those who don’t know and a reminder for those who do.