THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – WE CAN AVOID
Former commercial executive, Roland Nurier, citizen of Tarare, a charming town in the Rhône, has simultaneously embraced, since 2014, the cinematographic, Palestinian and anti-Zionist cause. In this capacity, he produced a first documentary in 2019 entitled The Chariot and the Olive Tree. Another story of Palestinewhose title speaks for itself, before focusing more particularly on the autonomous territory of Gaza in Yallah Gazawhich is released in around thirty theaters in France this Wednesday, November 8.
Made before the tragic spiral of destruction inaugurated on October 7 by the massacres of civilians perpetrated by Hamas – but how can we not think about it? –, this film is intended to be a celebration of Gazan resilience at the same time as a political analysis of the situation relating to this supposedly autonomous territory, subject to an Israeli blockade since 2007. Roland Nurier, who was unable to obtain authorization to film on site, entrusted the Gazan documentary filmmaker Iyad Allasttal with the local shots in a film which obviously gives pride of place to filmed interviews.
The aesthetic question, which by the very nature of cinema deals with the complexity of reality, is therefore subordinated to an omniscient political discourse and univocal thought, a frequent pitfall of activist film. The numerous speakers in this film – including the historian Thomas Suarez, the anthropologist Eléonore Bronstein, the surgeon Christophe Oberlin, and the former Hamas health minister Bassem Naïm – thus constitute a sort of concert choir whose anti-Zionism is the tuning fork, consequently attributing full responsibility to the State of Israel for past, present and future tragedies.
Slightly loaded boat
However bitter this responsibility may be – and this film rightly draws up the distressing catalog -, however unworthy and upsetting the condition which has resulted for the people of Gaza for twenty years, it is permissible to consider that the boat is a little loaded. Particularly when the Hamas attacks responded to “the Israeli aggressor” are systematically passed over in silence, just as the charter of this movement is notably euphemized, which still provides for the pure and simple destruction of the State of Israel, even if it is expunged of the anti-Jewish hatred of the original version of 1988. However, this is not the least of the factors contributing to the petrification of a situation which has lasted for seventy years.
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