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Each morning, Dan Leon, my 76-year-old father, leaves his house situated in the Nahla'ot neighborhood of West Jerusalem. He marches through the alleys of the Mahaneh Yehuda market and takes Bus No. 23 to East Jerusalem. According to his words, the passengers of the bus are composed of "Orthodox Jews who ride to Geula, Arabs who ride to Damascus Gate, and Dan Leon."
After a 10-minute walk in the streets of East Jerusalem, he arrives at a modest office with no identification signs. In his office, he meets Leila Dabdoub and Ziad AbuZayyad, the latter a member of the Palestinian cabinet - his Palestinian associates in editing the Palestine-Israel Journal, a joint IsraeliPalestinian quarterly established in 1994 right after the Oslo agreement.
During the past seven years, my father did not miss a single day of work - even on days with terror acts and riots.
"Who's Left?" The story of my father, Dan Leon, stretches over 100 years, and it represents the trajectory of events of the Israeli Zionist left and the obstinate, sometimes Sisyphean struggle of a group of fighters who continue to this very day to struggle for Jewish-Arab coexistence. The title of the film is inspired by his important collected essays published in 2004, entitled Who 's Left in Israel? Radical Political Alternatives for the Future of Israel, with its double meaning.
Our story goes way back to my father's grandfather, Daniel De Pijoto, the one after whom is named De Pijoto Street in southern Tel Aviv.
Grandpa De Pijoto had worked closely with Chaim Weizmann, later to become the first president of the State of Israel, before the establishment of the country. De Pijoto tried to convince Weizmann to use the Sephardim as a bridge between the European Jewish immigrants and the native Arab Palestinians, since he believed that the European Jews were incapable of grasping the complexities of the region's mentalities and language. He later founded the Sephardic-Jewish Federation and acted as its first president.
During World War...