200 Meters. A film

The film 200 Meters, currently being screened at the Sacramento Jewish Film Festival, raises humanitarian issues surrounding checkpoints operated by Israel. Mustafa and his wife Salwa come from two Palestinian villages that are only 200 meters apart but separated by the wall. Their unusual living situation is starting to affect their otherwise happy marriage, but the couple does what they can to make it work. Every night, Mustafa flashes a light from his balcony to wish his children on the other side a goodnight, and they signal him back. One day Mustafa gets a call that every parent dreads — his son has been in an accident. He rushes to the checkpoint, where he must agonizingly wait in line only to discover that there is a problem with his fingerprints, and he is denied entry. Desperate, Mustafa resorts to hiring a smuggler to bring him across. His once 200-meter journey becomes a 200-kilometer odyssey joined by other travelers determined to cross.

Ronny Perlman has been active in Machsom Watch since its beginning in 2001, following the second Intifada. In her role, she monitors and documents human rights violations at checkpoints and lectures in Israeli premilitary programs about MachsomWatch activities and human rights.

Ronny was born in 1944 in Jerusalem to Holocaust survivors from Austria and Czechoslovakia. She returned to Czechoslovakia in 1947 with her parents and grew up there. After graduating from university in 1967, she decided to move back to Israel since she felt intensely unfree in the communist regime.
Later, she married a South African and lived and studied there for over a year, strongly opposed to the apartheid regime and active volunteering in a township with black children. Back in Israel, she got involved in the awakening feminist movement. The feminist motto, “the personal is political”, led her to think about her own experiences in places with no freedom. This was when she became a part of the group that started Machsom Watch, committing herself to fight for the freedom and dignity of Palestinians. She has two sons and six grandchildren, and resides in Tel Aviv.

Machsom Watch is an Israeli women’s group that aims to ensure that the human and civil rights of Palestinians attempting to enter Israel are protected and also reports the results of its observations to the widest possible audience, from decision-makers to the general public.