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It seems that in Israel, a land of endless war, the way to belong is to contribute your love ones to the country. Israeli Memorial Day unites Jewish society over the grief of the loss of our soldiers. When a siren breaks off, we stand still in respect for two minutes. I asked my neighbors, Arab-Israeli and Palestinian construction workers, to film them during this day. Among them was a foreign worker, a refugee from a different war. Trapped between my camera and their own nationality, the Palestinians stood still. What could have been a candid act of respect felt more like a surrender. They stood still for my dead, while theirs were forgotten. But it was the way in which they treated their fellow foreigner worker that struck me. They adopted the Jewish Israeli narrative, and in turn asked him to do the same. Finally, thanks to him, they could distinguish themselves from being “the strangers”. There was a new stranger in town.
