News & opinions from a Palestinian-American
living & working in Ramallah/Al-Bireh, Palestine
The Law and the Prophets amplifies the voices of the brave, determined individuals who are trying to expose the destructive, unjust, and sometimes invisible ways in which Israel exploits and oppresses Palestinians. They deserve your attention.
My Tree follows Jason Sherman’s journey to find the tree that was planted in his name in Israel many years earlier. When he discovers that it stands on the remains of a Palestinian village that was destroyed in 1967, he embarks on another journey — to determine his responsibility in helping to cover up the destruction.
H2 is the name given to the eastern part of Hebron, the only Palestinian urban area which remains under full Israeli military control, due to the presence of several hundred settlers. Through rare archive footage and interviews with Hebron’s military commanders, “H2: The Occupation Lab” tells the story of a place which is both a microcosm for the entire conflict, and a test lab for methods of control implemented in the West Bank.
“A land without a people, and a people without a land” is how the relationship between Palestine and the Jewish people was described by Christian writers in the 1800s. And the 20th-century history of the Middle East has largely been written through these eyes. But this film from Al Jazeera Arabic looks at Palestine from a different angle. It hears from historians and witness accounts, and features archive documents that show Palestine as a thriving province of Greater Syria and the Ottoman Empire at the dawn of the 20th century.
When Israeli graduate student Teddy Katz meticulously documented a massacre of Palestinian civilians surrounding Israel’s independence, he was initially celebrated for his groundbreaking work. But soon, he was stripped of his degrees and was publicly shamed as a fraudulent traitor. Decades later, incendiary new evidence emerges to corroborate Teddy’s initial findings, not just vindicating him, but raising profound questions about how Israelis — and we all — deal with the darker chapters of history.
Boycott traces the impact of state legislation designed to penalize individuals and companies that choose to boycott Israel due to its human rights record. A legal thriller with “accidental plaintiffs” at the center of the story, Boycott is a bracing look at the far-reaching implications of anti-boycott legislation and an inspiring tale of everyday Americans standing up to protect our rights in an age of shifting politics and threats to freedom of speech.
The traumatic story of Deir Yassin, the Palestinian village located near Jerusalem that was invaded, conquered, and emptied by Jewish underground fighters in April 1948, is told through first-hand testimonies by Jewish fighters who participated and youths who were sent in to “mop up” the dead. In parallel, the film tells the story of Dror Nissan, a man who tries to discover the secrets of his origins by visiting the Israeli government psychiatric hospital built on the grounds of Deir Yassin in 1951.
Pastors encourage an impoverished Kentucky community, “The forgotten people of America”, to donate to Israel in anticipation of Jesus’s impending return. The film exposes the controversial bond between Evangelicals and Jews, in a story of faith, power and money, revealing how Trump’s America is led by an End-Times apocalyptic countdown.
Acclaimed Israeli writer-director Yaron Zilberman (“A Late Quartet”) chronicles the disturbing descent of a promising law student to an intransigent ultranationalist obsessed with murdering his country’s leader, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. “Incitement” is a gripping and unnerving look through the eyes of a murderer who silenced a powerful voice for peace.
Through riveting and moving personal recollections of both Palestinians and Israelis, 1948: Creation & Catastrophe tells the story of the establishment of Israel as seen through the eyes of the people who lived it. This documentary was the last chance for many of its Israeli and Palestinian characters to narrate their first-hand accounts of the creation of a state and the expulsion of a nation.
Recent Documentaries![“Palestinian Walks: Forays into a Disappearing Landscape” by Raja Shehadeh [Book Review]](https://epalestine.ps/sambahour/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/palestinian-walks-raja-shehadeh.jpg)
