Broken Cameras and Justice

 


We don't partake of the ancient technology of the DVD (remember them?) often anymore but I noticed a documentary at the library recently which we'd intended to watch a couple of years ago. It's called 5 Broken Cameras and it was shot almost entirely by West Bank Palestinian farmer Emad Burnat, who bought his first camera in 2005 to record the birth of his youngest son. In 2009 Israeli co-director Guy Davidi joined the award-winning project. 

Burnat becomes an important witness to the illegal expropriation of land around his village for the construction of Israeli settlements. Even though the villagers protest relentlessly and Israeli courts decide in their favour a fence is constructed separating farmers from their land, while olive trees are bulldozed and burned by settlers. By the time the fence is rerouted  settler communities have been built and won't be removed.

Over the course of the years five cameras are destroyed as Burnat films what is transpiriing, some smashed by Israeli soldiers, some taking direct hits from bullets which might otherwise have struck him. During the intense encounters tear gas is often used, even on groups of children, and a number of villagers are shot, some fatally. It is so brutal that my viewing partner had to leave. 




I wondered about Burnat's four sons and how they were and are being shaped by these injustices. The newborn infant becomes a child who wonders why his father won't kill the soldiers who had shot a beloved family friend. I was deeply saddened by the deaths of people attempting to protect land which the courts upheld as theirs, to no avail. I pondered the young Israeli soldiers, required to do military service, who were required to view these Palestine farmers as the enemy when they are simply trying to survive. Burnat's wife begs him to stop filming along the way, concerned for his safety and weary of the conflict.

 We know that the Americans have taken a hard-line political approach to the Palestinians in recent months. But lest we feel smug, there are Canadian companies involved in the construction of the settler homes.

It's important to note that at times the villagers are joined by Jewish activists from Israel who are in solidarity with the Palestinians. They are swimming against the current of their own Prime Minister Not long ago Benjamin Netanyahu tweeted that


the weak crumble, are slaughtered and are erased from history
while the strong, for good or for ill, survive.
 The strong are respected, and alliances are made with the strong,
 and in the end peace is made with the strong. 

I've checked to see if this could possibly be accurate. Apparently it is. Someone described it as the most unJewish thing he'd ever read.

Have you seen the film? Thoughts?