Unvarnished truths

Reflecting a year of political turmoil, five regional films have been nominated for the Oscars. The favoured contender documents the killing of six-year-old Palestinian Hind Rajab in Gaza. She was murdered by Israeli fire on Jan.29, 2024, when she and her relatives were trying to flee the Tal al‑Hawa neighbourhood of Gaza City.

Six of her relatives died immediately, while she and her 15-year-old cousin, Layan Hamadeh, were trapped in the car and made mobile phone contact with the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) in Ramallah. Layan was killed, but Hind remained on the line with the emergency team and managed to speak to her mother. Her three and a half hour pleas for help generated PRC contacts with the Israeli authorities who eventually approved a mission. Nevertheless, it was fired upon along with the car where Hind remained. All were killed.

The Israeli military attempted to deny responsibility by claiming they died in crossfire with Hamas but outside investigators used satellite imaging to tie its military alone to the incident. Three months after the incident Israeli coordination head Elad Goren told “The Washington Post” that the agency had “coordinated everything … including the ambulance that wanted to go and find Hind.” This had clearly not been transmitted to troops on the ground.

Palestine 36 recounts the 1936–1939 Arab revolt against British colonial rule in Palestine during the post World War I mandate period during which the foundation of a Jewish state was built. In 1936, Palestinians observed a general strike which was succeeded by an armed rebellion in rural villages many of which suffered land confiscations by Jewish settlers. Britain brutally suppressed the uprising and imprisoned Palestinians who resisted before its 1948 abandonment of Palestine to the Zionist underground army which conquered 78 per cent of Palestine and drove 750,000 Palestinians from their homes. Palestine 36 was selected as Palestine’s entry for the March academy awards.

Two Israeli short films depicting the Palestinian situation under Israeli occupation have also been recognised by the academy. The first, “Butcher’s Stain,” is about a Palestinian-Israeli butcher employed in an Israeli supermarket who desperately strives to prove his innocence after being accused of tearing down break room posters of Israeli hostages held by Hamas.

“The Sea” tells of the adventures of Khaled, a 12-year-old Palestinian boy, who has joined a school party to see the sea. While this was his first time to make this trip, he is turned back after an Israeli army check point rejects his travel permit and sets off on his own to reach the sea. His father, Ribhi, a labourer illegally working in Israel, leaves his job and courts arrest to search for his son.

“It Was Just an Accident” directed by Iranian filmmaker and former political prisoner Jafar Panahi, depicts a released prisoner who has abducted the prison staff member he believes to have tortured him and calls upon others who suffered torture to identify the man before deciding what to do with him. Now living in exile, Panahi could pay dearly for this film if he returns to Iran. The film was branded by Tehran to be “propaganda against the political system” and he was sentenced in absentia to a year in prison and a two-year travel ban. As a French co-production France submitted the film as its official entry for Best International Feature Film.

While “The Voice of Hind Rajab” depicts the terrible human cost of subjugation, the other films are about resistance. Resistance is in vogue these days whether to Israeli occupation of Palestine to Iran’s harsh regime and the international and domestic bullying of Donald Trump in the US. He has used tariffs to secure benefits in trade and punish countries which do not submit to his bullying. Nevertheless, Europe has resisted his demand to annex Greenland, an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, and nine key European powers – Germany, France, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and Britain – have turned down the invitation to join his Board of Peace which was originally designed to provide governance and reconstruction for Gaza but expanded to embrace global issues. His overreach has not worked.

On the home front, Resistance to Trumpism has grown across the country: in universities which lose federal funds by refusing to clamp down on freedom of speech and among, civil society groups and churches. Lawyers, doctors, teachers, journalists, business men and women, legislators, and others have rejected his agenda. Many objected to the administration’s dramatic reductions of government departments and wholesale firing of civil servants, efforts to terminate federal diversity, equity, and inclusion programmes, and reversal or gender protections.

Trump had made deportation of “illegals” a major plank in his campaign platform and is trying to remove all undocumented or illegal migrants whether convicted of crimes or not. Under his predecessors’ convictions had been a cause for deportation. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has accessed data from the Internal Revenue Service (tax) and Social Security Administration. Field agents are provided with eye scanners, facial recognition software, and license plate numbers to catch sought individuals. His efforts have driven mass protests in Los Angeles, California, and Minneapolis, Minnesota, where US federal agents have killed two demonstrators and shot another this month. Commentators fear the US is moving towards becoming a police state while its democracy transitions into an authoritarian system.

Photo: TNS