After Jenin: Israel’s War Crimes on Film
 |
| Israelis are to this day not prepared to take responsibility for what they have done to the Palestinians |
By Reda Hammad, IOL
Emirates correspondent
ABU DHABI, July 30
(IslamOnline) – Abu Dhabi television has produced a documentary film
titled, “After Jenin”, on the massacre that Israeli occupation
troops carried out in the West Bank Jenin refugee camp. This film
documents the human rights abuses the Palestinians suffered at the
hands of an occupying Israeli army.
The English-medium
documentary film was aired/presented Friday, July 26, in the British
Academy for Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) to a packed audience of
British and Arab journalists, as well as representatives from human
rights organizations.
The film was shot just
minutes after the Israeli army withdrew from Jenin, leaving behind a
trail of blood and stories of horror.
“After Jenin”
includes footage of what happened in Jenin, with eyewitness reports,
as well as footage of other Palestinian areas, such as Nablus, and
Ramallah which were subjected to Israeli occupation along with Jenin.
It also includes interviews with well-known figures, outlining their
views on what happened, as well as interviews with numerous
Palestinians and Israelis, and representatives from human rights
organizations.
The film is 52 minutes
of gruesome scenes and evidence of gross human rights violations
carried out by Israeli occupation forces.
“After Jenin”
explores different aspect of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in
specific and the Israeli-Arab conflict in general. It includes
interviews with Eden Landau, an Israeli refusenik, or soldier who
refuses to serve in the Palestinian West Bank, as well as Reema
Hamamy, a Palestinian academic who talks about the roots of
Palestinian resistance against Israeli occupation.
There is also an
interview with Wessam Farid, an Israeli activist who has called for
international intervention for the protection of the Palestinian
people, as well as a world-wide boycott of Israeli products.
In “After Jenin”,
a Palestinian farmer talks about Israeli military operations in which
Palestinian farms were destroyed, and an Israeli journalist, Michael
Warsowski, insists that the state of war has become a status quo for
Israel, and Israelis have learned to live with it.
The film largely
depends on on-the-scene footage in Jenin and other Palestinian areas
that were subjected to a bloody Israeli military offensive launched
late March 2002, as well as scenes from events since the outbreak of
the second Palestinian intifada in September 2000.
One of the most
prominent accounts is that of Gideon Eizra, the Israeli Interior
Minister, who likened hawkish Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to
Winston Churchill, the British prime minister during the second world
war, who, Eizra said was the only European leader who was able to save
his country from the German Nazi army.
Dr. Hanan Ashrawi, a
member of the Palestinian parliament, and a former minister in the
Palestinian Authority, stressed in the film that the world was not
listening to the Palestinians’ voice through traditional channels,
which forced the Palestinians to resort to alternative channels of
protest, most prominently through resistance operations.
Kathreen Kafa, a human
rights activist, said, that she believed that what happened in Jenin
and other Palestinian areas was premeditated murder on the part of the
Israeli occupation army, which also destroyed houses on the heads of
residents, and used civilians in its military operations. All these
operations are in violation of all international agreements,
especially the Geneva Convention, she said.
Amnon Raskotsink, an
Israeli professor of history, said that the state of Israel was built
on one principle, namely that of the deportation of hundreds of
thousands of Palestinians from their homes and destruction of the
Palestinian state. He expressed his surprise that Israelis are to this
day not prepared to take responsibility for what they have done to the
Palestinians.
Reema Hamamy said she
believed that any Palestinian who carries out a resistance operation
is generally not out of political reasons, but rather because of the
oppression and dire conditions that they are forced to live in under
the Israeli occupation.
Abu Dhabi television
had aired last Ramadan (November-December 2001) a sitcom called
“Sharoniyat”, or “Sharonisms”, in which the comic Kuwaiti
actor played the role of Ariel Sharon, who was depicted as a
bloodsucker who takes pleasure in killing Palestinian children.
This sitcom, which was
aired by several Arab satellite channels, had provoked the Israeli
government to condemn it and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres
called for legal action against the television station as well as the
lead actor whom he accused of anti-Semitism.
Israel pressured
companies that advertised during the commercial breaks in the sitcom
until some of the companies withdrew their sponsorship of the sitcom.
Abu Dhabi television had earlier sponsored two
fund-raising campaigns for the Palestinian people living under Israeli
occupation.
|
