Rafah: The Movie

Well I fully expected this movie to be amateurish and a bit sappy, but I wasn’t prepared for this. Terrible editing paired with lame scripted lines by quintessential American liberal upper-middle-class twenty-somethings and scruffy middle-aged Berkeley-looking professor-types made this a messy affair to watch. Fortunately, the images speak for themselves. The utter devastation wrought by the Israeli aggressors on civilian Rafah needs no narrative.

Children climb over piles of rubble three times their height. Families huddle in pitiful concrete shells that once were warm homes. Indiscriminate, constant gunfire echoes through the neighborhood as babies sleep. The people of Rafah stubbornly try to go about their business as tanks and bulldozers and snipers threaten their every attempt at normality. This is the reality of occupation, of a brutal war against a proud, ancient people.

The Israeli State’s assault on freedom, lives, and property is here captured in a mere clip, 20 minutes long – a shred of evidence that suggests a lot more than it shows.

Pictures are worth a thousand words, and this movie is proof. Just leave out the sappy Guns n’ Roses and we’re cool.

ISM Rafah – Solidarity Under Occupation (Get Quicktime)

Author: Jeremy Sapienza

Jeremy Sapienza is senior editor at Antiwar.com, and lives in Bushwick, Brooklyn.