Voices Across the Divide

Archival film maestro Göran Hugo Olsson has assembled—from a vast catalogue of footage in the vaults of Sweden’s national television service SVT—accounts of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as witnessed and represented by Swedish journalists. Stories of the beginning of the Israeli state interwoven with the Palestinian struggle for independence. News coverage with Yasser Arafat and interviews with Israeli foreign minister Abba Eban during a visit to Sweden unseen since first broadcast. From the tenth anniversary of Israel’s founding to the First Intifada, perspectives and encounters with statesmen, civilians, revolutionaries, and intellectuals tell the story from myriad angles of an evolving media landscape, revivifying a history of the ongoing conflict.

An exhaustive explanation of how the military occupation of an invaded territory occurs and its consequences, using as a paradigmatic example the recent history of Israel and the Palestinian territories, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, from 1967, when the Six-Day War took place, to the present day; an account by filmmaker Avi Mograbi enriched by the testimonies of Israeli army veterans.

Amira, a determined 9 year old girl makes her way along the river bank to the sea shore, collecting rocks and sticks in a bucket. She's wary of the water, worried of the current taking her and her bucket, but she puts on a brave face and carries on. These fears turn into frustration as she finds herself at the beach, building sandcastles only to be washed way by unrelenting waves. She fights back and stands her ground, outsmarting the waves but is reminded that there are other things to fear.

Letter to My Tribe started with a question: Why don’t more Jews and Israelis speak out about Palestine? Over many years my mother, who represents a more messianic perspective, and I have had numerous arguments, some recorded, some not. These form the backbone of this video essay in which Israelis and Jews, journalists, activists and a rabbi are interviewed, and in which documentation of actions on the ground, in the West Bank, are woven with more personal family histories and journeys to Iraq and to Poland.

“A land without a people, and a people without a land” is how the relationship between Palestine and the Jewish people was described by Christian writers in the 1800s. And the 20th-century history of the Middle East has largely been written through these eyes. But this film from Al Jazeera Arabic looks at Palestine from a different angle. It hears from historians and witness accounts, and features archive documents that show Palestine as a thriving province of Greater Syria and the Ottoman Empire at the dawn of the 20th century. The evidence suggests that its cities had a developing trade and commercial sector, growing infrastructure, and embryonic culture that would enable it to meet the challenges of the decades ahead. This film is the other side of the Palestinian story.

3 CM LESS (the title comes from projections that the Palestinian children of today will grow up on average three centimeters shorter than their parents, thanks to the deprivations of occupation) is a complex, highly personal look at the impact decades of war has wreaked on families and friendships.

Five broken cameras – and each one has a powerful tale to tell. Embedded in the bullet-ridden remains of digital technology is the story of Emad Burnat, a farmer from the Palestinian village of Bil’in, which famously chose nonviolent resistance when the Israeli army encroached upon its land to make room for Jewish colonists. Emad buys his first camera in 2005 to document the birth of his fourth son, Gibreel. Over the course of the film, he becomes the peaceful archivist of an escalating struggle as olive trees are bulldozed, lives are lost, and a wall is built to segregate burgeoning Israeli settlements.

In May 1974, the Israeli Air Force carried out an extermination operation against the Palestinian refugee camp Nabatiyeh. With this as a starting point, it is reviewed how the last 50 years of Zionist colonization of Palestine have partly led to the establishment of the state of Israel, partly to the expulsion of a people, the Palestinians, from their land. The film shows scenes of daily life in Palestinian refugee camps. We hear various of the inhabitants talk about their desire to return to their country, and we follow how the resistance movement works to free women from their traditional backward role. At the same time, the emergence of the armed resistance struggle is analysed, and the significance of the latest military technological developments for guerilla wars in the 3rd world is explained.

Palestinian writer and journalist Hamza Salha recently reached Ireland from Gaza, where he endured two years of relentless bombardment and famine under Israeli genocide. Just a few weeks after his arrival, Hamza sits down with Palestine Deep Dive's Omar Aziz to recount his experience and document what he witnessed. From being buried under the rubble to experiencing first hand the latest technology in AI-assisted automated killing and surveillance, Hamza's personal account of resilience and resistance to Zionist erasure traces his family’s journey from the Nakba of 1948 to today’s ongoing genocide. Host / director: Omar Aziz Editor: Dhruv Haria Assistant Editor: Sam Mathias-Stanley

Palestine, 1948. After the withdrawal of the British occupiers, tensions rise between Arabs and Jews. Meanwhile, Farha, the smart daughter of the mayor of a small village, unaware of the coming tragedy, dreams of going to study in the big city.

Ayn Hawd is a Palestinian village that was captured and depopulated by Israeli forces in the 1948 war. In 1953 Marcel Janco, a Romanian painter and a founder of the Dada movement, helped transform the village into a Jewish artists' colony, and renamed it Ein Hod. This documentary tells the story of the village's original inhabitants, who, after expulsion, settled only 1.5 kilometers away in the outlying hills. This new Ayn Hawd cannot be found on official maps, as Israeli law doesn't recognize it, and its residents, deemed "present absentees" by the authorities, do not receive basic services such as water, electricity or an access road. Rachel Leah Jones' filmmaking debut is a critical look at the art of dispossession and the creativity of the dispossessed.

Year 1936. As villages across Palestine rise against British colonial rule, Yusuf drifts between his rural home and the restless energy of Jerusalem, longing for a future beyond the growing unrest. But history is relentless. With rising numbers of Jewish immigrants escaping antisemitism in Europe and some arriving with nefarious Zionist-colonial ambitions, and the Palestinian population uniting in the largest and longest uprising against Britain’s 30-year dominion, all sides spiral towards inevitable collision in a decisive moment for the British Empire and the future of the entire region.

When, in the late 1990s, Israeli student Teddy Katz exposed the massacre of Palestinian civilians by Israeli forces in the village of Tantura, in May 1948, during the first Arab-Israeli war, he was initially praised for his pioneering work; but he was soon infamous and branded a traitor. Decades later, incendiary new evidence emerges that corroborates Teddy's findings.

Initially embarking on an unplanned personal filmmaking project, Ilias Boukhemoucha finds himself drawn to the overlooked corners and marginalized communities within Canadian cities.

When she heard the explosions around her, 15-year-old Sma Ahel immediately picked up her phone. 'I removed the password from my phone so that if we didn't make it out, and we were killed, people would know what happened to us. So they know we existed.' In their own words and images, this short documentary tells the story of a Palestinians trapped in deadly fighting between Israel and Hamas during an 11-day war in May 2021.