Once again the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine has boiled over, rapidly escalating into one of the worst rounds of violence between the two countries since the seven-week Israeli war on Gaza in 2014. This is a conflict that has gone on for so long, with so much blood spilled on both sides, that any and all conversations on the matter will inevitably turn to finger pointing. A ceaseless back and forth that goes back all the way to the feuding sons of Abraham.
Now, there are many ways to educate yourself on what’s going on in the Middle East. The Internet is full of timelines and explainers. There are Twitter threads, and TikToks, and Instagram stories, full of facts and fictions, all of which have become manifest in thousands of attempts at conversation that have long descended into angry tirades.
For me, the movies are like a machine that generates empathy. If it’s a great movie, it lets you understand a little bit more about what it’s like to be a different gender, a different race, a different age, a different economic class, a different nationality, a different profession, different hopes, aspirations, dreams and fears. It helps us to identify with the people who are sharing this journey with us.
Roger Ebert
We at Goggler have always believed in the power of film, not just as entertainment, but as a tool that enlightens, that creates empathy, and that allows us to tap into a variety of human experiences. There are no easy solutions to this forever war. And a movie hasn’t (yet) saved the world. But what it can do is provide us with an access point into an incredibly complex issue, by going beyond the mere facts of the matter, and taking us into the hearts and minds of all those involved.
The five movies on this list are in no way exhaustive. They are, however, a great place to start.
Munich
Every civilization finds it necessary to negotiate compromises with its own values.
Munich was divisive. The movie has been criticized as being an attack on the Palestinians and its director, Steven Spielberg, has been chastised as being “no friend of Israel.” By successfully offending both sides, Spielberg might have achieved something altogether rare in Hollywood: making a movie with a conscience. A chronicle of the Black September attack on Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics and Israel’s ruthless retribution, Munich is a movie that accomplishes two things. 1) It gives us an insight into Israeli rage, the lasting scars of the Holocaust, and the extremes they are willing to go to so something like that will never happen again. 2) It also shows us, with necessary heavy-handedness, that both sides are fighting for one and the same thing: a place to call “home.”
If there is one message from this movie, it is that violence only begets more violence, and competing brands of terror are no way to establish peace.
5 Broken Cameras
I film to heal. I know they may knock at my door at any moment. But I’ll just keep filming. It helps me confront life. And survive.
Emad Burnat got his first camera when his fourth son, Gibreel, was born in 2005. He began using it to shoot home movies, first for himself, and then his neighbours, before becoming something of an amateur documentarian, spending his days and nights chronicling the life about him in the West Bank township where his family has lived for generations. When Israel sent in troops to deprive him and his townsfolk of their land in order to build a defensive wall, Emad Burnat realized that his cameras could be tools for empowerment. They could be used as a way to unite and mobilize his community.
Named for the cameras that were smashed over the five year period in which this documentary was shot, 5 Broken Cameras is one of the best documentaries that you will see about what Palestinian life is actually like. This documentary provides the most direct experience about what it’s like to live a life of persecution, dispossessed from the place you call home, and having to deal with the unflinching righteousness of your oppressors.
This is a movie with a sense of history. It may be polemical, but activism always is, and has to be.
Lemon Tree
If this were a Hollywood movie, there would be a happy ending.
Salma is a strong Palestinian woman who has the misfortune of living in the wrong place at the wrong time. The newly minted Israeli Defense minister has just moved into a fancy new home that abuts her property on the Green Line separating Israel from the occupied territories of the West Bank. Overnight, a security watchtower is constructed, and military forces begin patrolling the area. They inform her that the lemon grove, which has been in her family for 50 years, and her only source of income, poses a security threat from terrorists hiding among the trees and therefore must be uprooted. As a matter of military security of course.
Directed by the Israeli filmmaker Eran Riklis (The Syrian Bride), Lemon Tree is a modern retelling of the Old Testament story of the King of Israel who covets the vineyard of his neighbour. The Israelis here are arrogant and uncompromising. The Palestinians are proud and stubborn. This is the larger struggle in microcosm. And the movie, which doesn’t pick sides, does well to tell a very human story that chillingly illustrates all of the forces that separate the Israelis and the Palestinians – language, power, religion, as well as a massive wall. This is a beautiful border parable.
Paradise Now
What happens afterward?
Two angels will pick you up.
Are you sure?
Absolutely.
Said and Khaled, two Palestinians, mechanics, best friends, get recruited to cross into Israel and blow themselves up. They aren’t religious by any measure. They aren’t very political either. And yet, they take up the call willingly, even euphorically. These are everyday guys, not monsters or fanatics.
It is a rare thing to see a movie from the point of view of the suicide bomber (there are two others that I can think of – The War Within and The Terrorist), and Paradise Now is a powerful and authentic film that successfully deals with the topic in a nuanced and poetic manner. The answer to the question of whether or not suicide bombings are justified should always be in the negative, but what this movie does is provide explanation and context.
Paradise Now is an important watch, albeit an uneasy one. Mostly because we are so used to passing moral judgement without fully grasping the complexity of a given situation. This is a movie that forces us to confront those judgements by challenging our preconceived notions and forcing us to face an uncomfortable reality.
Visit Palestine
The tanks come to our school because they want us to grow as an ignorant generation.
Visit Palestine, Katie Barlow’s harrowing documentary, follows Irish human rights activist Caoimhe Butterly during her stay in the Jenin refugee camp as she risks her own safety to embed herself with the Palestinian people shortly after the 2002 massacre.
Why is this documentary so unique? Barlow and Butterly are endowed with so much trust and respect that they are given access to so many intimate conversations. We bear witness to the community’s most private thoughts, we experience their growing isolation, we are allowed to live their fear. For a brief moment, this documentary gives voice to a struggle that has grown increasingly muted over the years.
Despite coming out in 2006, there is nevertheless a depressing immediacy to this documentary. These are a people that live in a perpetual state of uncertainty, and chaos, and terror. And Visit Palestine is a movie that conveys more than just the sociopolitical context of their plight, but also their sorrow, their anger, and their trauma.
You can purchase a copy of Visit Palestine here.
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