Film part of Israel Independence Day celebration

Review By Michael Fox, Special To The Dayton Jewish Observer

There was a time, not so many years ago, when the British were the despised enemy that the Jews of Palestine fought with every means at their disposal.

Ido Port and Alfred Molina in The Little Traitor

The year was 1947 and Great Britain’s hold was crumbling in the face of armed Jewish resistance and increasing international support for a Jewish state. Even as the British clung tenuously to their mandated territory, they callously prevented Holocaust survivors fleeing displaced persons camps in Europe from entering.

It was an anxious period fraught with rumor, uncertainty and paranoia. Little of that tension and danger permeates The Little Traitor, a Jewish child’s-eye view of the possibilities and pitfalls of befriending the enemy.

Adapted from Amos Oz’s 1997 novella Panther in the Basement, set in and around Jerusalem a half-century earlier, the soft-centered film evokes but doesn’t embrace the darkness at the heart of its coming-of-age story. The poignant movie is suitable for all ages, though adult viewers will wish it were more layered and complex.

The Little Traitor, which will receive a limited release in the fall, will be screened as part of the Dayton Community Yom Ha’atzmaut celebration on April 29.

Bright, precocious 11-year-old Avi “Proffy” Liebowitz and his two close friends secretly plan attacks against the British occupation, mimicking in their own tiny way the campaigns of the Haganah and Irgun. This isn’t a game for the lads, who despise the British interlopers with every inch of their being.

Proffy (a familiarization of professor, in tribute to his prowess in the classroom) is the only child of Polish parents who fled their homeland before the war. He’s given free run, regularly breezing through the Arab market in the Old City to buy candy when he’s not hanging out with his mates, so long as he’s home by the British-declared early evening curfew.

The boy always cuts it close, and one day he cuts it too close and gets snagged by a chunky soldier in the requisite khaki shorts and red beret. This would be Sgt. Dunlop (Alfred Molina), an easygoing chap who threatens to arrest Proffy but instead escorts him home. In the wake of this chance meeting, Proffy starts visiting Dunlop at British headquarters to chat, play snooker and trade vocabulary lessons. (The film bounces arbitrarily between English and Hebrew, with a little Yiddish.)

Unlike Proffy’s secretive, authoritarian father, Dunlop is open and approachable. Personality aside, the Brit represents not just the adult world but also the outside world. The fascination he holds for Proffy is both clear and innocent, but that’s not how it appears to outsiders.

When his friends see Proffy making regular trips to the British compound, they conclude he’s a collaborator supplying information and they report him to their parents. The strange and disturbing events that follow may seem implausible unless one imagines the setting transposed to the West Bank in the present day and the Israelis and Palestinians subbing for the British and Jews.

The other historical irony is that spending time with a Brit is considered treasonous, but no one in Proffy’s circle thinks twice about him kibitzing with the Arab merchants in the shuk. In a matter of months, however, when the U.N. declares the existence of the Jewish state, everything will be flipped — and Proffy’s warm acquaintanceships with Arabs will end.

The Little Traitor will be screened as part of the Community Israel Independence Day celebration, on Wednesday, April 29 at 7 p.m. at Temple Israel. For more information, go to www.jccdayton.org.