Israel Backlashes on Netflix over The Jordanian Film Farha

Farha is a Jordanian movie directed by Darin Sallam depicting the Israeli-Palestinian ethnic cleansing setting at al-Nakba 1948 or the catastrophe. It is the most brutal coming-of-age movie about a 14-year-old Palestinian girl called Farha living in a Palestinian village. She dreams of attending school and pursuing an education with her best friend Farida in the city while other girls are excited about their friends’ marriages. Nevertheless, things went as unexpectedly; the Israeli gangs barbarically attacked the village, committing massacres against the Palestinian villagers. While waiting for her father to return, she watches through a small hole in the wall as Israeli soldiers execute a family including two young children and a baby. This brutal scene makes Israel backlashes against Netflix over the Jordanian Film Farha.

Sallam has said that the movie is based on the true story of a friend of her mother, who lived years later as a refugee in the Al Yarmouk refugee camp in Syria and recalled her experience as a young girl during the Nakba. Sallam describes the film as a means of helping process a painful memory of that time. The 15-minute scene has angered Israeli officials and the pro-Israelis as well.

Israel is Furious

The film has caused Israel deep chagrin regarding the 15-minute scene. Several Israeli officials blasted the portrayal of the 1948 Nakba in the movie. “It is crazy for Netflix to release a movie that aims to incite hatred and make false excuses against Israeli soldiers,” Avigdor Lieberman said. He stated that the Israeli soldiers would not allow anyone to damage their reputation. Lieberman said that the film is provocative and full of lies against Israeli soldiers. Furthermore, Lieberman revoked state funding to a theatre in Tel Aviv’s suburb of Jaffa that screened the film, with the “goal of preventing the screening of this shocking film or other similar ones in the future.

The campaign also included downvoting of the film’s ratings online and a social media campaign. It calls on people to cancel their Netflix subscriptions. “After more than two years of subscription, I have decided to cancel it due to Netflix’s support for the anti-Israeli film.” one streamer said. “Netflix supports such a shocking and unrealistic scene that is not in line with Israeli and Jewish morality at all. I cannot subscribe to a site that has endorsed such a shocking scene in which [Israeli] soldiers are portrayed as vile as murderers without heart and without any humanity,” another subscriber added.

What is actually “Crazy” is their reaction toward the Film. They do not want people to see it, through all means, and under any circumstances. Israel backlashes on Netflix over Farha Consequently, Palestinians’ right to process their suffering through art is being denied unfairly by shutting down screenings of this film.

Palestinian Right to Process Pain through Art

Israel has tightly orchestrated and controlled its own narrative of its birth. Before the military opened its archives of the 1948 war, it issued a policy forbidding the release of any documents. These documents include detailing the forced deportation of Palestinians; any human rights violations, including war crimes, committed by Israeli forces. They also included anything that might “harm the [Israeli Defense Forces]’s image” or expose it as “devoid of moral standards.”

This is neither the first nor the last time that movies depict Palestinians’ suffering through art. Many masterpiece works were made previously including Al-Taghriba Al-Filistinia, The Tower, Inch’Allah, and most notably “Tantura”. Yet, this is almost the first time to air a Palestinian movie on a global platform like Netflix to go trending. We cannot deny that the more the situation complicates, the more the film spreads, affecting prevailing the truth and exposing the heinous crimes of the Israeli thoughtless soldiers.

The movie represents a quantum leap in the artistic field regarding the Palestinian cause. Ironically, from a tiny hole in the wall, the movie exposed Israel to its heinous massacres in 1948, causing chagrin and anger in Israel. The massacre in the movie is nothing compared to what happens nowadays, especially in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. On the same day Israel denied and condemned streaming the film by Netflix, they brutally shot dead the Palestinian youth Ammar Mufleh at point-blank. How sarcastic!

Truth is Unsilenced

It is also a story that Palestinians have never stopped telling. Yet, there is something unique about hearing it from the perpetrators themselves. “The Palestinians know the story. They’ve been talking about it, and the world has heard from them, but the world believes the Israeli side a lot of the time, and Israelis do not admit to this story,” said Schwarz. “This is a story of Israel looking the other way.” “We robbed them of their history,” he said. “We not only ethnically cleansed them, took them out, denied their return, but we also robbed them of the true story. Schwars added, “We robbed them of the right to remember, and that is terrible.”

Most importantly, In “Tantura,” a movie named after a Palestinian prosperous fishing village near Haifa that was wiped off the map during the Nakba, Schwarz sets out to investigate the massacre of an unknown number of villagers that was carried out just a week after the establishment of the Israeli state. Releasing Tantura, especially these days while the Palestinian cause is taking over the scene in Qatar World Cup 2022 as well as the Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu received an official mandate to form a new Israeli government, is precarious for Israel’s image, consequently.

Schwarz says that people were killed in different ways and different places in the village. It took about two weeks to bury them. There are testimonies of bodies that have not been buried for 8 to 10 days. In a dehumanizing language, over 90-year-old Israeli soldiers confess to committing heinous massacres in Tantura. Actions cannot be reversed, but the evidence is present. For more on this click here.

Farha is currently streaming on Netflix

Despite Israel’s backlashes on Netflix over Farha, it is now available to millions of people to watch on Netflix with a rate of 8.6. Despite attempts to shut down its production, there is a solid case to deepen hatred over terrible events that happened. The film should stand as an acknowledgment of the other side of a historic story about the creation of Israel. A brutal story that people had ignored or denied for too long. You can support the truth by watching the movie, rating it, and sharing the truth even with a trembling voice. Eventually, the truth will prevail.