Hours before the scheduled screening of a documentary about the depopulation of the Palestinian town of Lyd in 1948, Israeli police blocked a Jaffa Theater from last week’s screening of the film. The censorship incident, which took place on the al-Saraya Theatre last Thursday, October 10, followed a written order from the Minister of Culture and Sports Miki Zohar, in which he claimed that the film presented “a distorted view of reality” that could incite “unrest and tensions in mixed societies.” [Jewish-Arab] towns.”
Among other things, Zohar took issue with the film’s “claims that the Israeli army carried out a brutal massacre of hundreds of innocent Palestinians and continues to carry out the Nakba to this day,” he wrote in a letter to Israeli Police Commissioner Daniel Levy . dated October 10.
Produced by Roger Waters, co-founder of the English rock band Pink Floyd. Lyd (2023) is a documentary with science fiction elements about the ancient Palestinian city of Lyd (now known as Lod in Israel), which was first inhabited about 8,000 years ago during the Neolithic. Directed by Rami Younis, a Palestinian journalist from Lyd, and Sarah Ema Friedland, a Jewish-American media artist and educator, it is set in the past, present, and an imagined future in which the 1948 al-Nakba (Arabic for “the catastrophe”) and the establishment of the State of Israel never took place. The film features never-before-seen archive footage of the depopulation of Lyd, interviews with current Palestinian residents and fantastic animations to explore a future without the Israeli occupation.
Today the city has a Palestinian minority population that has confronted repeatedly violence from Israeli extreme nationalists and discriminatory treatment by the police.
In his written order canceling the screening, Zohra makes no mention of Friedland, but describes Younis as an “anti-Israel boycott activist” and Waters as “the leader of the global boycott movement.”
A day before the film was to be shown at al-Saraya, Israeli police contacted the venue with claims of a far-right demonstration, cinema director Mahmoud Abu Arisha said in an interview with Hyperallergic.
“They later claimed that the law ‘requires that any screening by an institution has approval from the Israeli Film Review Board of the Ministry of Culture,’” Arisha said, adding that police officially informed theater staff four hours before the show that it would go ahead the display would ‘be considered a criminal offence’.
“The police stated that they were prepared to prevent the screening if necessary and demanded that we inform all ticket holders of the cancellation,” Arisha continued, noting that he was called in for questioning at 7 p.m. and that the theater is now future programming must be submitted to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Communication for approval.
Hyperallergic has contacted the Ministry of Culture and the Israel Police for comment.
Israeli Film and Theater Review Board is a council established by a Regulation of October 1927 drawn up during British rule used to it now Block Palestinian films with a so-called anti-Israel narrative. In early 2023, after his appointment by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Zohar promised withhold state funding by individualsinstitutions and venues that promote art that “discredits Israel.”
This is the second time in less than two months that Israeli authorities have blocked the screening of a Palestinian-made film at al-Saraya over claims of alleged incitement. In August, Israeli police blocked the presentation of Palestinian filmmaker Mohamad Bakri Jenin, Jenin 2 (2023), which focuses on a two-day Israeli military assault on the city of Jenin in the occupied West Bank.
“It’s nothing new – it’s against the Palestinians,” Younis said Hyperallergicciting previous instances where Israeli authorities focused his work on other projects, such as the critical daily news program ‘On the Other Hand’ and the Palestine Music Expo Festival.
Friedland said Hyperallergic that the screening’s cancellation is “an example of the kind of censorship we see around the world, including in the United States.”
“It is not surprising that Israel censored Lyd,” she said. “It just shows that we are part of a larger struggle against rising fascism around the world.”
