anyways, instead of focusing all your energy on calling out Succession and the Last of Us for being anti-palestinian, here's some of my favourite media made by Palestinians 🇵🇸 and their allies...
Salt of this Sea (2008). Dir. Annemarie Jacir. Heist film set in Palestine about 2 Palestinians who help a Palestinian American woman rob a British bank who refused to give her the money her grandfather left her.
Netflix original series, Mo, created by Mo Amer. Dramedy about Mo, a Palestinian American without papers, trying to stay out of trouble until his US citizenship is approved (he's already been waiting for 12 years). This just got renewed for a second season!!!!
Farha (2021). Dir. Darin J. Sallam. Coming of age story about a 14 year old girl trying to survive the Nakba in 1948. Tw: settler colonial violence.
In Between (2016). Dir. Maysaloun Hamoud. A film about 3 Palestinian women, one of whom is queer, in their 20s living under occupation. Heart-warming story about friendship, solidarity and revenge. Tw: sexual assault.
In Vitro (2019). Dir. Larissa Sansour. Breathtaking short scifi film set in a future where Bethlehem has been destroyed by an ecological disaster and two scientists from different generations are trying to remember what happened. This film is pure poetry and I think about it constantly.
It Must Be Heaven (2019). Dir. Elia Sulieman. A charmingly absurdist film about Elia Sulieman seeing parallels to Palestine everywhere he goes as he tries to make a film about his homeland.
The Crossing (2017). Dir. Ameen Nayfeh. Short film about Palestinian siblings trying to cross an Israeli checkpoint to visit their grandparents.
Ramy. Episode 3 of season 3: 'American Cigarettes'. Far and away the best episode of TV of 2022, and also directed by Annemarie Jacir. Ramy goes to occupied Palestine to make a diamond deal with some Israeli brokers, but his horniness takes him to The Other Side. I think about this episode almost everyday, it's unlike anything I've ever seen.
Freedom Is A Constant Struggle by Angela Davis. A book of interviews and essays conducted by Angela Davis on how systems of racism and colonial violence are all connected, and how solidarity between communities of colour are vital, using the long-standing allyship between Palestinians, Aboriginal peoples and Black Americans as case studies.
As fine and good as it is to call out Zionism in media, rmr to also support Palestinians, their work and their art. Feel free to suggest more ❤️
“Almost all Palestinians in the center and to the south are now displaced. And they are seeking refuge elsewhere. And ever since my family was entrusted with this village, all we care about is to keep the land safe as well as people's lives.”
i was watching the movie Farha and my GOD i have thoughts
Basically, Farha is a fourteen year old Palestinian girl living in a village in Palestine. The setup is like a traditional coming of age movie (obvs with cultural details, like Farha not wanting to be married orr young and to pursue education) but it COMPLETELY flips when the Nakba happens and Farha's village gets invaded.
The movie stops. Entirely. The whole setup is thrown away, and we spend most of the movie hiding with Farha in her father's storage space/hidey hole is SO fucking tragically clever, because it symbolises how so many Palestinian peoples' lives stopped after the Nakba.
There's a scene when Farha's friend says "when i grow up i want to be-" and shes LITERALLY CUT OFF BY THE SOUND OF AN EXPLOSION. SYMBOLISING HOW SO MANY PEOPLES' DREAMS WERE SHATTERED BY THE NAKBA.
It's not a satisfying story. You breathe a sigh of relief when it's over, but you don't feel like it's a good, happy, complete ending. Because it's not supposed to be. It's supposed to feel like being punched in the throat when you watch it. It's supposed to have you terrified, and heartbroken, and a little bored at times.
In other words, it perfectly reflects reality in a way dramatised, glamorised movies never do.
spoilers for farha, which you all should watch but is very, very brutal even if it is not terribly graphic.
tw: infant murder, settler colonial violence. read with caution.
the scene where the one israeli genocider doesn't end up killing the infant is such a powerful scene for a number of reasons. but one aspect of it that sticks out to me is that when his commanding genocider tells him not to "waste a bullet" and he can't go through with curb stomping the fucking newborn to death, he ultimately condemns the baby to a crueler death - to starve to death, alone in the night, beside his family's bodies.
it is of course a crueler death, and I am sure the soldier is aware of what will become of that baby when he places the kerchief over his face and walks away. but this moment is not about the soldier being decent or kind at all, of course - if he was halfway decent he would die rather than kill that baby.
he doesn't care what will happen to that baby as long as he doesn't have to bear witness to it. to cover the baby's face is to cover his eyes to the cruelty of his and by extension israel's actions. it makes him uncomfortable to think of curb stomping a baby to death, but not of starving him. of leaving him alone and screaming.
he doesn't even consider for a second disobeying the order and shooting the baby, putting him out of his misery - as horrific as that would be.
because it isn't about the baby for him - it is about HIS comfort. he's comfortable with ethnic cleansing, he's comfortable with terrorizing a woman who has just given birth and her family, it is not at all about shame or horror or a tiny spot of decency in him. he's just not comfortable with having to step on a baby and kill him.
he is more comfortable with letting that baby starve out of sight than he is taking direct action against him.
this is the liberal zionist or frankly the liberal colonizer even beyond zionism - because it's all connected. as long as they do not have to be the ones to crush the infant to death under their boot, as long as they can shield their eyes from the brutality of their country, they'll take that option.
I think about israelis living so close to the gaza strip, living in relative security and having food and shelter and yes bomb shelters because THEY are citizens of a settler colonial state and people who are being colonized are going to resist the violence of occupation.
I think about how generally they are so removed and detached from the brutality of what israel does to palestinians, and how after oct 7th, many people who considered themselves liberal zionists went completely apeshit racist and genocidal, and this is according to actual peace activists in israel, actual anti-zionists in israel, actual leftists in israel. the ones who have refused to cover their eyes to the realities of the occupation and the genocide.
you see it on social media - people who consider themselves non-zionists or liberal zionists have been laughing at hateful genocidal zionist memes, and centering their own pain, and it reminds me of how liberals in the united states will do ANYTHING not to witness the horrors of us imperialism when it threatens their comfort.
this is not unique to zionists, this is a symptom of settler colonialism. I do believe that sometimes liberals can do better than that, but they often end up useless as allies to resistance, actual resistance, when it fucking matters the most.
so many liberal americans will continue to watch their favorite racist shows or buy disposable vapes or support joe biden, and they'll make all kinds of excuses about why they have to but the truth is this: they value their comfort more than they care about genocide.
I mean frankly even I do to some extent. I pay my taxes. I'm not gonna go to prison on tax evasion because I want to make a point about genocide. I wish I had the courage of my convictions to that level but I don't. I know that I would never go serve in the military even if it was conscription, I'd go to jail for that but that's never been a real concern for me here.
meanwhile, there are people who do not have the comfort to lose. in the film, farha does not have the privilege to choose comfort. she can close her eyes, she can look away, but she hears the baby cry and cry and cry until the baby passes away. she has no choice.
in choosing his own comfort, the soldier unknowingly condemns a child to witness trauma he can choose to ignore. now farha, a 14 year old girl, has to live with not being able to free herself from her sanctuary/prison to save the baby.
a 14 year old girl injures herself to save a baby, but a grown man covers a baby's face and lets it starve so he can live with himself. he still murdered that baby, but he'll tell himself that he didn't.
people often say they know what they'd have done if they'd lived during the holocaust or other atrocities. but honestly these same people don't do shit now. they cover their eyes.
if you're going to accept the deaths of innocent people, at least say that your comfort, your security, matters more to you than their lives.
