JONATHAN POLLAK“I saw that the floor was covered with blood. I felt fear run like electricity through my body. I knew exactly what was about to come”Testimonies from the Zionist gulag

Rape. Starvation. Fatal beatings. Mistreatment. Something fundamental has changed in Israeli prisons. None of my Palestinian friends who have recently been released are the same people they used to be

Jonathan Pollak, Haaretz  , 9/1/2025
Translated by Shofty Shmaha, Tlaxcala

Tlaxcala's Note: Haaretz finally translated this article from Hebrew into English, allaying our fears that they wouldn't. You can read their version here 

Jonathan Pollak (1982) was one of the founders of the Israeli group Anarchists Against the Wall in 2003. Wounded and imprisoned on several occasions, he contributes to the daily Haaretz. In particular, he refused to appear before a civilian court, demanding to be tried by a military tribunal, like a common Palestinian, which he was obviously refused.

 

Jonathan Pollak facing an Israeli soldier during a protest against the closure of the main road in the Palestinian village of Beit Dajan, near Nablus, occupied West Bank, Friday, March 9, 2012. (Anne Paq/Activestills)



Jonathan Pollak at the Jerusalem Magistrate's Court, arrested as part of an unprecedented legal campaign by the Zionist organization Ad Kan, January 15, 2020. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)



Activists hold up posters in support of Jonathan Pollak during the weekly demonstration in the Palestinian town of Beita, in the occupied West Bank, February 3, 2023. (Wahaj Banimoufleh)

Jonathan Pollak alongside his lawyer Riham Nasra at the Petah Tikva court during his trial for throwing stones during a demonstration against the Jewish settler outpost of Eviatar in Beita, occupied West Bank, September 28, 2023. (Oren Ziv)

When I returned to the territories [occupied since 1967] after a long detention following a demonstration in the village of Beita, the West Bank was very different from what I knew. Here too, Israel has lost its nerve. Murders of civilians, attacks by settlers acting with the army, mass arrests. Fear and terror around every corner. And this silence, a crushing silence. Even before my release, it was clear that something fundamental had changed. A few days after October 7, Ibrahim Alwadi, a friend from the village of Qusra, was killed along with his son Ahmad. They were shot as they accompanied four Palestinians who had been shot the day before - three by settlers who had invaded the village, the fourth by soldiers who were accompanying them.

After my release, I realized that something very bad was happening in the prisons. Over the past year, as I regained my freedom, thousands of Palestinians - including many friends and acquaintances - were arrested en masse by Israel. As they began to be released, their testimonies painted a systematic picture of torture. Fatal beatings are a recurring motif in every account. It happens in prisoner counts, during cell searches, at every movement from one place to another. The situation is so serious that some inmates ask their lawyers to hold hearings without their presence, because the path from the cell to the room where the camera is installed is a path of pain and humiliation.

I hesitated for a long time about how to share the testimonies I heard from my friends who had returned from detention. After all, I'm not revealing any new details here. Everything, down to the smallest detail, already fills volume upon volume in the reports of human rights organizations. But for me, these are not the stories of faraway people. These are people I have known and who have survived hell. None of them is the same person they once were. I seek to tell what I’ve heard from my friends, an experience shared by countless others, even while changing their names and obscuring identifiable details. After all, the fear of reprisals recurred in every conversation.

Blows and blood

I visited Malek a few days after his release. A yellow gate and guard tower blocked the path that once led to the village from the main road. Most of the other roads passing through the neighboring villages were all blocked. Only one winding road, near the Byzantine church that Israel blew up in 2002, remained open. For years, this village had been like a second home to me, and this is the first time I’ve been back there since my release. 

Malek was detained for 18 days. He was interrogated three times, and during all the interrogations, he was asked trivial questions. He was therefore convinced that he would be transferred to administrative detention - that is, without trial and without evidence, without being charged with anything, under a veneer of secret suspicion and with no time limit. This is indeed the fate of most Palestinian detainees now. 

After the first interrogation, he was taken to the Garden of Torment. During the day, the guards would remove mattresses and blankets from the cells and return them in the evening when they were barely dry, and sometimes still wet. Malek describes the cold of winter nights in Jerusalem as arrows penetrating flesh to the bones. He tells how they beat him and the other inmates at every opportunity. At every count, every search, every movement from one place to another, everything was an opportunity to hit and humiliate.

“Once, during the morning count,” he told me, ”we were all on our knees, our faces turned towards the beds. One of the guards grabbed me from behind, handcuffed my hands and feet, and said in Hebrew, 'Come on, move'. He lifted me up by the handcuffs, behind my back, and led me bent over across the courtyard next to the cells. To get out, there's a sort of small room you must go through, between two doors with a small window”. I know exactly which little room he’s talking about, I’ve passed through it dozens of times. It's a security passage where, at a given moment, only one of the doors can be opened. “So we got there,” Malek continues, “and they slammed me against the door, my face against the window. I looked inside and saw that the floor was covered in clotted blood. I felt fear run through my body like electricity. I knew exactly what was going to happen. They opened the door, one came in and stood by the window at the back, blocked it, and the other threw me inside onto the floor. They kicked me. I tried to protect my head, but my hands were handcuffed, so I didn’t really have any way of doing that. They were murderous blows. I really thought they might kill me. I don’t know how long it lasted. At some point, I remembered that the night before, someone had said to me, “When they hit you, scream at the top of your lungs. What do you care? It can’t get any worse, and maybe someone will hear and come.” So I started shouting really loud, and indeed, someone did come. I don't understand Hebrew, but there was some shouting between him and them. Then they left and he took me away. I had blood coming out of my mouth and nose”.

Khaled, one of my closest friends, also suffered from the violence of the guards. When he was released from prison after eight months’ administrative detention, his son didn’t recognize him from afar. He ran the distance between Ofer prison and his home in Beitunia. Later, he said that he hadn’t been told that the administrative detention was over, and he was afraid that there had been a mistake and that they would soon arrest him again. This had already happened to someone who was with him in the cell. In the photo his son sent me a few minutes after their meeting, he looks like a human shadow. All over his body - his shoulders, arms, back, face, legs - were signs of violence. When I came to visit him, he stood up to kiss me, but when I took him in my arms, he groaned in pain. A few days later, examinations showed edema around the spine and a rib that had healed.

In the Megiddo prison

Every action is an opportunity to hit and humiliate

Another testimony I heard from Nizar, who was already in administrative detention before October 7, and has since been transferred to several prisons, including Megiddo. One evening, the guards entered the cell next door and he could hear the blows and cries of pain from his cell. After a while, the guards picked up an inmate and threw him alone into the isolation cell. During the night and the following day, he moaned in pain and never stopped shouting “my belly” and calling for help. No one came. This continued the following night. Towards morning, the cries stopped. The next day, when a nurse came to take a look around the ward, they understood from the tumult and the screams of the guards that the inmate was dead. To this day, Nizar doesn't know who it was. It was forbidden to speak between cells, and he doesn't know what day it was. 

After his release, he realized that during the time he was detained, this detainee had not been the only one to die in Megiddo. Tawfik, who was released in winter from Gilboa prison, told me that during a check of the area by prison officers, one of the inmates complained that he wasn’t allowed out into the yard. In response, one of the officers said to him: “You want the yard? Say thank you for not being in the Hamas tunnels in Gaza”. Then, for two weeks, every day during the noon count, they took them out into the yard and ordered them to lie on the cold ground for two hours. Even in the rain. While they lay there, the guards walked around the yard with dogs. Sometimes the dogs would pass between them, and sometimes they’d actually step on the inmates lying down; they’d walk all over them.

According to Tawfik, every time an inmate met a lawyer, it came at a price. “I knew every time that the way back, between the visiting room and the ward, would add at least three more volleys of blows. But I never refused to go. You were in a five-star prison. You don’t understand what it’s like to be 12 people in a cell where even six are cramped. It’s like living in a closed circle. I didn’t mind at all what they were going to do to me. Just seeing someone else talking to you like a human being, maybe seeing something in the corridor on the way, that was worth everything to me”.

Munther Amira   - the only one here to appear under his real name - was released from prison by surprise before the end of his period of administrative detention. Even today, no one knows why. Unlike many others who have been warned and fear reprisals, Amira told the cameras about the catastrophe in the prisons, calling them cemeteries for the living. He told me that one night, a Kt’ar unit burst into their cell at Ofer prison, accompanied by two dogs. They ordered the inmates to strip down to their underwear and lie on the floor, then ordered the dogs to sniff their bodies and faces. Then they ordered the prisoners to get dressed, led them to the showers and rinsed them with cold water while clothed. On another occasion, he tried to call a nurse for help after an inmate attempted suicide. The punishment for calling for help was another raid by the Kt’ar unit. This time, they ordered the inmates to lie on top of each other and beat them with truncheons. At one point, one of the guards spread their legs and hit them in the testicles with a truncheon. 

 Hunger and disease

Munther lost 33 kilos during his detention. I don't know how many kilos Khaled lost, having always been a slim man, but in the photo sent to me, I saw a human skeleton. In the living room of his house, the light from the lamp then revealed two deep depressions where his cheeks used to be. His eyes were surrounded by a red outline, that of someone who hadn't slept in weeks. On his skinny arms hung loose skin that looked as if it had been artificially attached, like plastic wrap. Blood tests on both showed severe deficiencies. Everyone I spoke to, regardless of the prison they passed through, repeated almost exactly the same menu, which is sometimes updated, or rather reduced. The last version I heard, from Ofer prison, was: for breakfast, one and a half boxes of cheese for a cell of 12 people, three slices of bread per person, 2 or 3 vegetables, usually a cucumber or a tomato, for the whole cell. Once every four days, 250 grams of jam for the whole cell. For lunch, one disposable plastic cup with rice per person, two spoonfuls of lentils, a few vegetables, three slices of bread. At dinner, two spoonfuls (coffee, not soup spoons) of hummus and tahini per person, a few vegetables, three slices of bread per person. Sometimes another cup of rice, sometimes a falafel ball (just one!) or an egg, which is usually a bit spoiled, sometimes with red dots, sometimes blue. And that’s it. Nazar told me: “It’s not just the quantity. Even what's already been brought in isn’t edible. The rice is barely cooked, almost everything is spoiled. And you know, there are even real children there, the ones who have never been in prison. We've tried to take care of them, to give them our rotten food. But if you give a little of your food away, it's like committing suicide. In the prison there is now a famine (maja'a مَجَاعَة), and it's not a natural disaster, it’s the policy of the prison service.”

Recently, hunger has even increased. Because of the cramped conditions, the prison service is finding ways to make the cells even tighter. Public areas, canteens - every place has become an extra cell. The number of prisoners in the cells, which were already overcrowded before, has increased still further. There are sections where 50 extra prisoners have been added, but the amount of food has remained the same. Not surprisingly, prisoners are losing a third or more of their body weight in just a few months.

Food is not the only thing lacking in prison, and inmates are in fact not allowed to own anything other than a single set of clothes. A shirt, a pair of underwear, a pair of socks, a pair of pants, a sweatshirt. That's it. For the duration of their detention. I remember once, when Munther's lawyer Riham Nasra visited him, he came into the visiting room barefoot. It was winter and freezing cold in Ofer. When she asked him why, he simply said: “There aren't any”. A quarter of all Palestinian prisoners suffer from scabies, according to a statement by the prison service itself in court. Nizar was released when his skin was healing. The lesions on his skin no longer bled, but scabs still covered large parts of his body. “The smell in the cell was something you can't even describe. Like decomposition, we were there and we were decomposing, our skin, our flesh. We’re not human beings there, we’re decomposing flesh,” he says. “Now, how could we not be? Most of the time there's no water at all, often only an hour a day, and sometimes we had no hot water for days. There were whole weeks when I didn't have a shower. It took me over a month to get soap. And there we are, in the same clothes, because nobody has a change of clothes, and they’re full of blood and pus and there’s a stench, not of dirt, but of death. Our clothes were soaked with our decomposing bodies”.

Tawfik recounted that “there was only running water for an hour a day. Not just for showers, but in general, even for toilets. So, during that hour, 12 people in the cell had to do everything that required water, including natural needs. Obviously, this was unbearable. And also, because most of the food was spoiled, we all had digestive problems almost all the time. You can't imagine how bad our cell stank”.

In such conditions, the health of the prisoners obviously deteriorates. Such rapid weight loss, for example, forces the body to consume its own muscle tissue. When Munther was released, he told his wife Sana, who is a nurse, that he was so dirty that his sweat had dyed his clothes orange. She looked at him and asked, “What about the urine?” He replied, “Yes, I peed blood too.” “You idiot,” she yelled at him, ”that wasn't dirt, that was your body rejecting the muscles it had eaten”.

Blood tests on almost everyone I knew showed that they suffered from malnutrition and severe deficiencies of iron, essential minerals and vitamins. But even medical care is a luxury. We don't know what goes on in the prison infirmaries, but for the prisoners, they don’t exist. Regular treatment has simply ceased. From time to time, a nurse makes a tour of the cells, but no treatment is administered, and the “examination” amounts to a conversation through the cell door. The medical response, at best, is paracetamol and, more often, something along the lines of “drink some water”. Needless to say, there's not enough water in the cells, as there's no running water most of the time. Sometimes a week or more goes by without even the nurse visiting the block.

And if there’s little talk of rape, there’s no need to mention sexual humiliation - videos of prisoners being led around completely naked by the prison service have been posted on social networks. These acts could not have been documented other than by the guards themselves, who sought to brag about their actions. The use of the search as an opportunity for sexual assault, often by hitting the groin with the hand or metal detector, is an almost constant experience, regularly described by prisoners who have been in different prisons.

I didn’t hear about assaults on women first hand, obviously. What I have heard, and not once, is the lack of hygienic material during menstruation and its use to humiliate. After the first beating on the day of her arrest, Mounira was taken to Sharon prison. On entering the prison, everyone goes through a body search, but a strip search is not the norm and requires reasonable cause to suspect that the inmate is hiding a prohibited object. A strip search also requires the approval of the officer in charge. During the search, no officer was there for Mounira, and certainly no organized procedure to verify reasonable suspicion. Mounira was pushed by two female guards into a small search room, where they forced her to remove all her clothes, including her underwear and bra, and get down on her knees. After leaving her alone for a few minutes, one of the guards came back, hit her and left. In the end, her clothes were returned to her, and she was allowed to get dressed. The next day was the first day of her period. She was given a sanitary pad and had to make do with it for the whole of her period. And it was the same for all of them. By the time she was released, she was suffering from an infection and severe inflammation of the urinary tract.

Epilogue

Sde Teiman was the most terrible place of detention, and this is supposedly why they closed it down. Indeed, it’s hard to think of the descriptions of horror and atrocity that came out of this torture camp without thinking of the place as one of the circles of hell. But it was not without reason that the state agreed to transfer those held there to other locations - principally Nitzan and Ofer. Sde Teiman or not, Israel is holding thousands of people in torture camps, and at least 68 of them have lost their lives. Since the beginning of December alone, the deaths of four more detainees have been reported. One of them, Mahmad Walid Ali, 45, from the Nour Shams camp near Tulkarm, died just one week after his arrest. Torture in all its forms - hunger, humiliation, sexual assault, promiscuity, beatings and death - does not happen by chance. Together, they constitute Israeli policy. This is the reality.

 

TIGRILLO L. ANUDOLa guerra de los muralesUn cuento locombiano

 

Tigrillo L. Anudo, 14-1-2025

Autor amazonense sin fronteras, bolivarista, martista, mariateguista, gaitanista y un poquito zapatista.

 

En una ciudad muy pulcra se desató una guerra singular. No fue con piedras ni tanquetas, fue entre pinceles y rodillos, el arte contra la infecundidad.

La ciudad -muy visitada por extranjeros y nacionales- permanecía ataviada con los ajuares más blancos, bandejas de brillante plata, impecables servicios de seguridad.

La orden del alcalde fue muy clara desde su posesión: “¡Nada de suciedad! Es menester que todo esté limpio, desinfectado como el Metro, desprovisto de sugerencias, ningún símbolo ni metáfora, tampoco banderas extrañas, ni alegorías ni opinión”.

Los rodillos iniciaron la guerra. Lanzaron sus primeras andanadas de acrílico gris tapando frases y grafitis de infausta recordación.

Siguieron con pintas en muros y bancas, con los signos parceros en parques y barrios, luego con los murales de un estallido social.

Los pinceles contestaron la afrenta contra la libertad pintando en el lugar donde estuvo la frase “Nos están matando” otra frase con letras de gran tamaño: “El arte no se calla”.

Pero los rodillos regresaron pronto y agrisaron otra vez el mural.
Volvieron a la carga los pinceles. Esta vez pintaron un cráter inmenso lleno de cráneos y huesos. Arte con filosofía, poderoso arte. “La fosa común a cielo abierto más grande de América. Atentamente, las cuchas”, lo titularon.

No pasaron 24 horas para que llegaran los rodillos y en un santiamén taparon aquél mural que tardó 12 horas de realización.

La pared no demoró en ser intervenida nuevamente por los pinceles que entre porros y cumbias dibujaron una represa cercada con alambre de púas. Arte memoria, puro arte. Le pusieron como nombre: “Hidrofango, la fosa acuática más grande de América”.
En esta ocasión, los rodillos esperaron agazapados detrás de los árboles; apenas se retiraron los pinceles, entraron a cubrir con pintura más densa y oscura el mural aún fresco.

Quién dijo “nos rendimos”. ¡Nadie! Al contrario, se unieron más pinceles y empezaron a pintar murales a lo largo y ancho de la ciudad. El muro donde se concentró la discordia amaneció con la frase en pintura de neón que decía: “Ciudad innovadora en narcobernabilidad”.

Ordenaron en penumbroso pasillo que ni siquiera durante una noche brillara ese fosforescente mural. Como los anteriores se esfumaron sus vistosos colores que hasta a las aves atrajeron.

Pero no alcanzaban las cuadrillas de rodillos para tapar tanto mural que cubrió la pulcra ciudad. En el muro de un largo puente apareció la frase: “El prostíbulo infantil más populoso del mundo”. En un deprimido se pudo leer: “Débora Arango ha vuelto para pintar las 300.000 personas que se acuestan sin comer cada noche”. En un paredón abandonado: “Gonzalo Arango presenta silla eléctrica para moralistas”.  En las paredes de varios hoteles: “Turismo sexual: sólo Euros”, o “Bienvenidos a Silicona Valley”.  En la pared de varios colegios: “Vigilados y castigados. Nos persigue un fascista”. Una locura esa ciudad. Frases y murales bellamente pintados por todas las esquinas, los paramentos y separadores de las calles, las jardineras, los zócalos deteriorados. El espacio público volvía a ser público, la ciudad estaba viva, vibraba con sus verdades expresadas artísticamente.

Los rodillos entraron en pánico. Estaban perdiendo la guerra. No sabían qué hacer ante tanto mural. Cuando vieron pintada en caracteres gruesos las frases “Ciudad moldeada con harina blanca” y “Por más que laven no dejará de ser un lavadero” estallaron de rabia que no pudieron contener. Antes de empezar a limpiar y lavar lo que llamaban suciedad, cuadrillas de radioteléfonos vigilantes del espacio público, cerraron con vallas metálicas el ingreso a las plazoletas que tenían las dos últimas frases. No permitieron entrar a los vendedores ambulantes, ni a los artistas callejeros, ni a los lustrabotas. A los visitantes extranjeros les recomendaron volver más tarde pues estaban atendiendo una emergencia.

Los rodillos se multiplicaron por miles, el alcalde y sus corifeos contrataron mano de obra que esperaba sentada frente a los murales porque en esa ciudad saben dónde va a resultar súbitamente el trabajito. ¿Qué hay pa hacer? Así, lograron en una semana rescatar la buena imagen, sí, borraron todos los mensajes a la vista del público.  

De no creer. Enterados de la pérdida de todos los murales, los pinceles se dieron una tregua. Esta vez, respiraron profundo, planearon una sola frase para pintar en toda la ciudad. Arribaron tranquilos a los puntos de intervención, danzaron, comieron helados, hicieron relatos de memoria histórica para realizar mejor la tarea. Preparadas las pinturas de intenso colorido escribieron con letras mayúsculas la frase “La mugre está en el alma, ningún detergente la limpia”.

Los rodillos llegaron cansados a los nuevos murales, sus rostros lucían descompuestos, los ánimos destemplados. Tuvieron que ser empujados por capataces. Descendieron de camiones y carro tanques con baldes, escobas, trapeadoras, barriles de pintura gris, trapos y mangueras. Seguidamente, restregaron con cepillos, echaron agua, secaron con compresores, rodaron los rodillos con espesa capa, repitieron la faena, pero el letrero seguía legible y completo. Ni una sola letra de aquella frase pudieron borrar.

Clique para agrandar

ROSA LLORENSNo other land : une caméra est-elle une arme efficace face à l’armée israélienne ?

Rosa Llorens , 14/1/2025

No other land relance, un peu plus de 10 ans après, le problème soulevé par le film 5 caméras brisées (2011), qu’il semble réécrire : quel sens y a-t-il à promouvoir la lutte pacifique, caméra à la main, contre la puissance de la machine israélienne et de son armée ?

 

Dans 5 Caméras, Emad Burnat filmait la résistance des villageois de Bil’in, situé près de Ramallah, en Cisjordanie, au Nord de Jérusalem ; dans No other land, Basel Adra filme la résistance des villageois de Masafer Yatta (ensemble de 12 villages), situé au Sud d’Hébron, en Cisjordanie, au Sud de Jérusalem. Dans le premier cas, c’est le Mur qui était en question, et l’installation d’une colonie juive ; dans le deuxième, un décret interdisant d’habiter dans une zone, déclarée militaire, destinée à l’entraînement de l’armée, et décidant donc l’expulsion des habitants palestiniens (par contre, on a construit dans cette même zone une colonie juive). On voit bien que l’étau israélien se resserre autour de tous les villages palestiniens, qu’il s’agit d’isoler, d’étouffer et de détruire, éliminant toutes les taches palestiniennes qui subsistent sur la carte d’Israël. Aujourd’hui, on comprend même que l’unification du territoire israélien était une première étape, préludant à l’extension d’Israël aux dépens des pays voisins, pour réaliser le Grand Israël. Il est donc facile de conclure que toutes les initiatives pacifiques des Palestiniens sont vouées à l’échec, face à un projet national, patronné par les Etats-Unis, et mené méthodiquement et impitoyablement, au mépris de toutes les décisions internationales, depuis 1947.

Mais d’abord, il faut répéter tous les arguments en faveur du film No other land, les mêmes que ceux en faveur de 5 Caméras, pour qu’ils ne nous soient pas retournés (ils le seront de toute façon) en manière de reproche et de disqualification. Oui, il faut montrer les images concrètes de la situation des Palestiniens et des violences dont ils sont victimes de la part des soldats (et soldates) ninjas israéliens ; oui, il est impossible de ne pas être bouleversé quand on voit la démolition d’une école, d’un parc de jeux pour les enfants, ou la destruction d’un puits qu’on bouche en y versant du béton, tandis qu’on scie les tuyaux d’adduction d’eau, ou la confiscation d’un générateur électrique, qu’un villageois essaie de défendre, recevant une balle qui le blesse mortellement, et, face à ces crimes, la dignité et la volonté de résistance des Palestiniens. Indignons-nous, donc, comme disait Stéphane Hessel ; et après ? Le village sera malgré tout détruit : « C’est la loi », et les villageois de nouveau déplacés, vers où ? L’espace de vie pour les Palestiniens se réduit comme peau de chagrin.

C’est pourquoi la confiance placée dans la lutte pacifique et les caméras apparaît bien dérisoire : les actions en justice qui en sont le moyen suprême sont toujours tranchées (après parfois des dizaines d’années d‘arguties de retardement) en faveur des Israéliens : c’est une justice d’apartheid. La lutte que montre le film deviendrait même parfois grotesque, s’il n’y avait derrière tant de souffrance, lorsqu’on voit quelques dizaines de villageois manifester, des ballons à la main, noirs dans les cas les plus graves, ou lorsque le héros, devant chaque agression de l’armée, s’écrie : « Vite, ma caméra ! » (lors des massacres de Gaza on a vu que des soldats israéliens se filmaient eux-mêmes, tout fiers, en train de commettre leurs propres exactions), ou lorsque les deux auteurs dialoguent gravement sur la possibilité d’arriver un jour, pas à pas, à une démocratie apaisée. Ne nous répète-t-on pas depuis des dizaines d’années qu’Israël est la seule démocratie du Proche et Moyen-Orient ? 

À quoi a mené cette stratégie des petits pas ? À la mainmise totale d’Israël sur la Palestine, à la relégation des Palestiniens dans des réserves, ou des camps de concentration, et finalement, au génocide à Gaza, mais aussi, plus silencieusement, dans toute la Cisjordanie où les colons, devenus des bêtes féroces du fait de leur totale impunité, assassinent tous les jours des Palestiniens. 

Alors il faut poser la question qui fâche : cette position en faveur d’actions pacifiques, l’espoir qu’on place en elles, ne tiennent-ils pas au fait que les deux films, 5 Caméras et No other Land, sont réalisés par un duo israélo-palestinien et soutenus par une kyrielle d’organisations israéliennes, européennes et américaines ?

Dans le cas de 5 Caméras, la collaboration israélo-palestinienne n’est même qu’une tromperie : on répète dans toutes les critiques que c’est Imad qui filme : mais qui le filme quand on le voit filmer ? En réalité, il n’y a qu’un réalisateur, l’Israélien Davidi. La supercherie a été révélée lorsque le film a tenté de concourir dans un festival du film palestinien. Mais on aura beau chercher sur Google, on ne trouvera aucune référence aux articles, parus sur des sites ou des journaux arabo-musulmans, qui documentent ce fait, ni, même, aucune référence au débat sur l’auteur réel du film. Surprise, le cas est analogue pour No other Land. Certes, on insiste partout sur le duo de réalisateurs, Basel et Yuval, et les critiques les plus enthousiastes (celles qui donnent un 5 au film) s’engouffrent dans la brèche, jusqu’à la nausée : Critikat met son article, par ailleurs irréprochable, sous les auspices de L’amitié, donnant ainsi le premier rôle, non aux violences israéliennes contre les Palestiniens, mais aux relations individuelles entre les deux responsables du film. Avoiralire conclut de façon hallucinante : « Les auteurs offrent une lueur d’espoir à travers cet acte transnational de solidarité et de résistance. » En réalité,  Basel a fourni son matériel filmé, mais c’est Yuval Abraham le seul réalisateur, c’est lui qui a organisé et monté le film.

 Il ne s’agit pas de mettre en cause la sincérité, la bonne foi des deux Palestiniens : être pris en main par des Israéliens leur a permis de diffuser leur témoignage. Mais comment ne pas penser que les deux Israéliens ont canalisé ces témoignages dans le cadre de leurs propre positions, intérêts et objectifs ?  

La projection de No other land au cinéma parisien Les 3 Luxembourg le mardi 7 janvier 2025  était suivie d’un débat avec trois représentantes d’associations de solidarité avec la Palestine ; mais, de débat sur les deux problèmes posés par le film, il n’y en n’a pas eu : la langue de bois est de mise partout, et elles ont refusé toute discussion sur le film. Et pour cause : ces associations fonctionnent, par définition, dans un cadre strictement légal, douter de l’efficacité des procédures légales, ce serait se remettre en cause elles-mêmes. Aussi ont-elles tout de suite noyé le poisson en enfourchant le dada de l’antisémitisme, en reprenant au vol le mot « juif ». Mais ce terme n’est pas, dans le cas d’Israël, une notion raciale ou religieuse, c’est une notion politique : en Israël, ce pays qui se conçoit comme « l’État des Juifs » (et là, oui, c’est un concept racial), il y a  près de 2 millions de « citoyens » arabes, mais ils n’ont pas le même statut, les mêmes droits que les autres : les citoyens juifs le sont de plein exercice, les « citoyens » arabes ne sont que des citoyens de seconde zone. C’est pourquoi, pour savoir de quoi on parle, il faut préciser : Israéliens juifs ou Israéliens arabes. On a aussi eu droit à l’énumération des associations juives qui soutiennent les Palestiniens, ce qui permet de donner un alibi aux Israéliens, mais elles n’ont aucune incidence sur la politique d’Israël, et on a d’ailleurs pu constater, avec les massacres de Gaza qu’une très large majorité d’Israéliens soutient la politique du gouvernement, ne demandant qu’une chose : être débarrassés une bonne fois pour toutes des Palestiniens.

Que faire, donc, dans un cadre légal ? Les intervenantes ont instamment prié les personnes du public d’obliger leurs élus à respecter les décisions internationales concernant l’inculpation pour génocide de dirigeants israéliens ; comment fait-on, on écrit des lettres à Monsieur le Maire ? On lance des ballons devant la mairie ?

Il ne s’agit évidemment pas de dire que toute résistance est inutile : dans la situation des Palestiniens, la résistance est de toute façon une question de dignité et de survie morale, et il faut soutenir toute forme de résistance, mais sans essayer de bercer les gens d’illusions ; le sort des Palestiniens n’est pas entre leurs mains, ils sont le jouet d’ambitions impérialistes qui se livrent à bien plus vaste échelle que celle d’un village. De plus, on aimerait entendre la voix des Palestiniens eux-mêmes, sans le filtre de bienveillants (?) tuteurs juifs, pour soutenir vraiment la volonté des Palestiniens.