Slaughter of the Lamb

June 11

After spending the night at the Colony Hotel in Haifa (highly recommended as it is a restored 19^th century building built by German pilgrims), we met up with Manal Mahamid, an Palestinian-Israeli installation artist who kindly offered to help us with one of our most challenging video shoots—the slaughtering of a lamb—which is an image we have been wanting to capture on video as it has symbolic resonance with many of the themes we are here to explore. Despite the raw violence of the killing, Sammy was unflinching as he kept a steady hand during the shooting of the video from start to finish. Meanwhile Anthony had to back off in horror after taking a few key stills with his camera.

Neither one of us had ever witnessed a death so up close like this before.

After the shoot, Hiel, the man who slaughtered the lamb for us, brought us to his family home in Yarka, a Druze village overlooking a beautiful valley filled with olive groves. It felt like a real honor to be invited into his parents’ home to experience their amazing hospitality as we were treated to a delicious lunch made from all the things that the family grows  on their land including organic goat yogurt and sheep cheese.

Spending the day with Manal, we got a much clearer picture  of the difficulties of what it means to be an Isreali-arab. According to her, they are looked down upon by both the Jewish Israeli establishment and by their fellow Palestinians in the West Bank because in 1948 they chose to stay in their homes and villages to live under Israeli rule.

Manal is a fearless, tough woman who was determined to stop at nothing so that we could get the  shot that we imagined and we are forever grateful for her perseverance.