Review of the feature film Palestine 36, written and directed by Annemarie Jacir, a Palestinian film-maker from Haifa
By John Bond
Any British person who criticises Israel’s brutality against Palestinians should watch Palestine 36, now in cinemas. It makes clear that the Israelis are simply continuing where Britain left off.
The film focuses on 1936, the start of the Arab Revolt. We see the growing resentment of the Arab population as Jewish immigration grows, and the Jewish community is favoured by its British overlords. Land is removed from Arabs and handed to Jews. Machine guns and ammunition are smuggled to the Haganah, the Zionist underground militia.
The Arabs call a general strike and when this fails to change the attitude of the High Commissioner, Sir Arthur Wauchope (played by Jeremy Irons), armed rebellion breaks out. This is exacerbated by the Peel Commission’s recommendation in 1937 that that Palestine be partitioned between Jewish and Arab areas.
The British respond by bringing in thousands more troops, who suffer at the hands of the Arab rebels. The film depicts the response, when troops savagely destroy a village suspected of harbouring rebel fighters. They are led by Captain Orde Wingate (played by Robert Aramayo), a passionate Christian-Zionist. The residents are corralled, a house is dynamited, a village leader is shot dead and a boy is threatened with the same fate before the boy’s father breaks down and leads Wingate to the hidden weapons.
This does not save the village. The suspected rebels are placed on a bus and the Arab driver ordered to take them into custody. But the troops have placed a landmine in the path of the bus, which explodes, killing everyone. Then the village’s cotton crop is set alight, and the soldiers leave taking a young villager tied to their lead vehicle as a human shield..
We also see the struggle among the Arab leadership, striving to prevent the relentless takeover of their native land. We are introduced to devious tactics: a Jewish organisation funds a Muslim association to publish articles purporting to give an Arab view, though the articles have been written by Jews.
The film is largely in Arabic, and depicts the Arab view. Jews are almost invisible. But since the Jewish view has far greater prominence in Western media, this is a valuable counterbalance. It makes clear the impossible situation created by the Balfour Declaration of 1917, and the British Government’s support for the idea of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, and large-scale Jewish immigration in the following years, over which Wauchope presides helplessly, watching the conflict grow.
The film clearly has a commitment to historical accuracy and authenticity, and has spared no cost in depicting Palestine in the 1930s. It held my attention throughout. I warmly recommend it to anyone who seeks to understand the origins of the never-ending war between Israel and Palestine.
John Bond is a writer and activist who has served as Secretary of Initiatives of Change International. Earlier he was Secretary of Australia’s National Sorry Day Committee, which enlisted nearly 1m Australians in action towards healing the harm caused by cruel and misguided government policies.
Ian Wellens, a member of the Exeter Palestine Solidarity Campaign, living in Devon, writes:
Palestine 36 is something I have never seen and thought I would never see: the story of that place and its people on the big screen, given the full cinematic treatment, a film of the type that Richard Attenborough (Gandhi, Cry Freedom) could have made but of course never did. And which he wouldn’t have been allowed to make even if he had wanted to.
This a story (not ‘the’ story, just ‘a’ story) of the nightmare the entirely innocent people of a small country in the Middle East have been dragged into for the past 100 years. A nightmare we – the British – created and which we, along with others, refuse to bring to an end.
I was gripped as the first notes of the soundtrack began over the opening titles, and stayed that way for two hours. This beautiful, powerful, haunting, heartbreaking movie tells the story of how Britain – the colonial power – planned to hand Palestine over to European Jewish settlers (we see their military infrastructure being built), provoking its people into an attempt at a liberation war which was then brutally beaten down.
The diplomatic lies and military brutality typical of British colonialism are on full display in its relationships with the fellahin (peasant farmers) of one small village, as well as with the different situation of middle-class Jerusalemites.
You cannot help but recognise tactics which the Zionist setters would adopt later once they had chosen the name Israel for themselves. We are not just responsible for their re-colonisation of Palestine; we offered inspiration and examples of how to humiliate and terrify its people, which the Israelis enthusiastically went on to extend and perfect.
The peculiarity here is that this film is absolutely about the Zionist colonisation of Palestine and yet those colonists are barely seen. It is 1936, after all. They are barely seen and yet every terrible thing that is done in the film is being done for them, in furtherance of a project devised in a far-off country (Switzerland) 40 years earlier, which could never have become a reality without Britain’s help.
The film is also striking and beautiful. Palestine (the film was largely shot there) looks amazing; its re-creation of traditional culture and life is wonderful. Which makes it even worse to think how all this has been – deliberately – destroyed. Very importantly, it also portrays the world-famous ‘sumud‘ (steadfastness) of the Palestine people; their passionate attachment to the land and to their homes.
As a footnote, I saw the film with a friend who has had 36 family members killed by Israel in Gaza in the past two years. Britain truly, truly has a lot to answer for.