Interracial (Homo) Sexualities: Post-Traumatic Palestinian and Israeli Cinema During the al-Aqsa Intifada (Diary of a Male Whore and The Bubble)

An analysis of films depicting interracial sex between men during the al-Aqsa Intifada reveals a complex picture. Eytan Foxʹs Israeli film, The Bubble, deals with the love between a young Israeli and a young Palestinian, ending tragically when the Palestinian becomes a suicide terrorist. In Abu Waelʹs Diary of a Male Whore, a Palestinian street hustler recalls his violent childhood while he is servicing an Israeli client. Israeli and Palestinian homo(sexual) cinema (2000-2008) requires a rethinking not only of cultural concepts revolving around the possible encounters between the I and the other (prostitution, masturbation, gay-ization, romance) and psychoanalytic interventions (denial, repression, projection, fantasy) but also of memory, trauma, and post-trauma as reproducing the unsolvable pathology of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.