As a home video, it's shocking. A Palestinian teenager faces the camera, a suicide note in her hand. She reads it rapidly, stridently, emphatically. One senses an undercurrent of nervousness. Her statement is short: in less than two minutes, the clip is over.

On the same day she made this video--March 29, 2002--Ayat al-Akhras left her family's home in the Dheisheh refugee camp, near Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank, and traveled the short distance to Jerusalem. There, at the entrance to a grocery store, she detonated the explosives belt she was wearing, killing herself and two Israelis. Media coverage later attributed her act to her outrage over seeing a neighbor shot to death by Israeli troops.

One of the Israeli victims that day was a girl who looked almost like her twin. Rachel Levy, who was shopping for her family's Sabbath meal, was 17. Ayat was just 18.

The news made the cover of Newsweek. It also preoccupied many Israeli and Palestinian youngsters, the media reported. These two girls, so similar in many ways but divided by conflict, seemed to many people to symbolize the tragedy of Israeli-Palestinian relations.

Hilla Medalia, an Israeli citizen working on a master's degree in mass communication at SIUC, was deeply affected by the news. She had already intended to do her thesis film on some angle of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Medalia says she had been looking for "a story of hope, something that would break misconceptions" and hold out the hope of Israeli-Palestinian co-existence. In media interviews, she listened carefully to what the parents of Ayat and Rachel had to say. Some of their comments, she thought, undercut the stereotype of hatred that so many people have of Israelis and Palestinians.

Medalia knew that she wanted her thesis project to give voice to the feelings on both sides of the conflict. She wanted to focus on individual experiences rather than politics, and she thought that viewers would be able to relate to these two young women and their families. Through their story, she says, she hoped to give U.S. audiences "a feel of what life is like in the Middle East: one side lives under a humiliating military occupation, while the other lives under the daily threat of terrorism."

In fall 2002, Medalia persuaded both sets of parents to grant her interviews. She obtained press credentials from the Israeli government for herself and two fellow students in the College of Mass Communication and Media Arts: master's student James Saldana and undergraduate Chrissy Mazzone. They traveled with her to Israel to shoot footage over the semester break.

The result is "Daughters of Abraham." The title refers to the fact that Abraham is the founding patriarch of both Judaism and Islam.

Although the film includes some historical background, it gives the conflict a human face by concentrating on the personal lives of the girls and on their parents' reactions to the bombing. Medalia directed, produced, and edited the 45-minute documentary.

Political realities intruded on the filming. Medalia had hoped to bring the two sets of parents together, but the Israeli government would not allow Ayat's parents to travel to Jerusalem, and Rachel's parents would not enter the refugee camp. Medalia knew it would not be safe for her, either, in the camp.

So Saldana and Mazzone shot the footage there, and a Palestinian friend, Adnan Tahah, conducted the interview with the Palestinian parents for her.

The interview with Rachel's parents was in English. But back home, Medalia was faced with the thorny problem of translating the lengthy interview with Ayat's parents before she could edit that footage. "I can understand a little Arabic, but that's about it," she says.

Fortunately, around this time she met Imad Samarah, a Palestinian doctoral student in management information systems. He agreed to do the translations--a time-intensive commitment.

"It took us over 50 hours," says Medalia. "Translating Ayat's video was even more difficult because she was quoting from the Koran, and Koranic Arabic is very different from contemporary spoken Arabic."

Both interviews reveal a gamut of emotions, from hatred to empathy. Both clearly express bitterness about the years of bloodshed, not just about this particular tragedy, but both also communicate a desire for peace. They hint at a hope for understanding and co-existence.

That certainly is Medalia's hope. It is one reason she chose music by Sheva--a band made up of Muslim, Jewish, and Christian Israelis and Palestinians--to score the documentary.

The filmmaking process, she says, "was very hard. Not just because of all the hours in the editing room [agonizing over what to cut]. The conflict is something I live every day. Making the film gave me a much deeper understanding of it."

An early, 10-minute cut of the documentary won Medalia a Carole Fielding Student Grant, a national award from the University Film and Video Association. (She is the first SIUC student so honored.) This $2,000 grant helped fund the work in progress.

Medalia had some additional financial support from Carbondale's Jewish community. Beyond that, she spent several thousand dollars from her own pocket--charging expenses and getting grocery money from her parents so she could put much of her graduate assistantship stipend toward the film. Her parents also helped out during filming, allowing the crew to stay at their house and providing transportation.

Radio-television professor Jan Thompson was "the force behind everything," Medalia says. "When we went to Israel to shoot, we had legal issues, because Chrissy was only 19. Jan took care of getting the permissions we needed.

"She pushed me--gave me deadlines that I thought were impossible. So I'd go off and just work [and get it done]. Some days I wanted to give up--I was sick of sitting in the editing room. But she was very supportive."

"Daughters of Abraham," which Medalia completed in September 2003, has been screened at SIUC and several other universities.

Medalia graduates this spring with her M.A. in professional media practice. She plans to return to Israel after gaining some job experience in film or television.

--by Marilyn Davis, ed.

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