LONDON: Officials in Israel have criticized a Netflix film depicting the murder of a Palestinian family by Zionist forces during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war as “creating a false narrative.”
“Farha,” a historical drama from Jordanian filmmaker Darin J. Sallam and Jordan’s 2023 Oscar entry, has premiered at multiple film festivals globally since its 2021 release and will begin streaming on Netflix on Thursday.
The film tells the story of a 14-year-old Palestinian girl who, while locked in a warehouse by her father during the events of the Nakba, witnesses through a crack in the pantry door to Israeli soldiers murdering an entire family. , including a baby. and two small children.
In a statement reported by The Guardian, Israel’s outgoing finance minister Avigdor Lieberman said: “It is madness that Netflix has decided to broadcast a film whose sole purpose is to create a false pretext and incite against Israeli soldiers.”
He added that he would consider revoking state funding from the Al-Saraya Theater in the Arab-majority city of Jaffa for having screened “Farha.”
Israeli Culture Minister Hili Tropper said the film displayed “lies and defamation”, describing its screening in an Israeli cinema as “a disgrace”.
In an email to The Guardian on Thursday, the theater’s manager, Mahmoud Abo Arisheh, said: “We responded to the incitement by (moving ahead) by showing the film.
“As for the public response, Saraya’s supporters once again turned out to be many. We are committed to defending our right to exist and to express ourselves… We are committed to the freedom of art, all art”.
The Palestinian Nakba of 1948 saw the ethnic cleansing and displacement of some 700,000 Palestinians by the Zionist Irgun and Stern Gang militias prior to the Israeli state. On April 9 of the same year, Zionist forces, in one of their most infamous crimes, killed more than 110 men, women and children in the village of Deir Yassin, on the outskirts of Jerusalem.
Depictions of the genocide committed by Zionist forces during the 1948 war remain a highly sensitive issue in Israel.
In interviews, Sallam said that he made “Farha” because very few narrative films about Palestine explored the root of the conflict. He noted that “Farha” told the story of her mother’s friend, who met Sallam’s mother in Syria.
In a 2021 interview with Arab News, Sallam said: “The story traveled through the years to reach me. He stayed with me. When I was a child, I had this fear of closed and dark places and I kept thinking about this girl and what she happened to her ”.
