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ARTIST STATEMENT

by Michael Moshe Dahan

What does it mean to perform “Israeli-ness”? What does it mean to identify as Palestinian? As

Christian, Jew or Muslim? And how do those attachments blind us to the nuances that actually

inhabit our real lived existence? How do Manichean binaries and the identities they engender

eliminate possible positions of compromise and comity between self and other?

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I am interested in interrogating questions around identity, the way we attach ourselves to certain

social/political/ cultural markers of identity, and how we perform identity. Yes Repeat No is an

exploration of Jewish identity as viewed through a trifecta of portrayals of Juliano Mer-Khamis, a

man who proudly identified as “100% Palestinian and 100% Jewish.” Mer-Khamis believed that his

very existence challenged these notions of identity—and hoped that his life and work could help to

bring peace to his homeland. By examining the world through the lens of his life --and also his

death—this film explores the intersections of Jewish, Muslim and Christian identities in Palestine,

Israel, and the world at large.

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Yes Repeat No was intended to challenge polarizing binaries and identarian politics that breed

hardened distinctions such as “us” and “them” or “Israel” and “Palestine”. It organically emerged

that the film should be shot in black and white in order to emphasize the tendency to believe one’s

political or religious position was clearly the right one against the opposing position as the wrong one

i.e., “it’s black and white, I’m right and they are wrong.” In this algorithm, it is always grey that

functions as the mediating position between black and white—though the middle position, is itself

often hardened into a polarizing position.

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I chose to address this through an examination of three messianic religious traditions, Judaism,

Christianity and Islam. In the film, I establish stand-ins for these messianic traditions through the

figure of Mer-Khamis, who was by birth associated with all three. His mother was a Jewish Zionist,

and his father was a Christian Palestinian—though his Palestinian progeny finds association to

Islam, as many of his students in Jenin were Muslim.

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How, then, to challenge entrenched attachments to political and religious identities that to each side

seem so black and white? My approach was to trouble these very attachments in order to reveal the

constructed and performed nature of identity itself. Moreover, even in the casting of the roles, it was

important to represent some of these particular identities. As such we cast one Muslim Palestinian

actor (Mousa Hussein Kraish), one Jewish Israeli actor (Adam Meir), an actor of Lebanese decent

(Karim Saleh), and an Iranian actress (Salome Azizi).

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I was born and raised in Jerusalem to French-Moroccan parents who immigrated to Israel in the late

1960’s. My maternal grandfather was a rabbi and a religious poet. Though I have a strong

connection to Israel —I was born from her, she is my mother— I’ve faced challenges aligning

myself with the problematic political environment—and I believe this has allowed me a generative

critical distance. If you know anything about Israelis, it is that they are brutally honest with each

other. And thus, for our relationship to continue, I am compelled to be that honest with Israel.

Our story is not only told by the filmmakers, it is embodied and lived by us. It is my hope that this

project will encourage viewers to examine the lens through which they understand Palestine and

Israel—and how the intersection of our identities impacts our understanding of history and how it

shapes our future as Jewish people.

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