Film Review: Where the Olive Trees Weep
Thoughts on historical truth, representation, and narrative
Over the summer, when chatting to a volunteer at work about the live-streamed genocide in Gaza, we drifted into a conversation about the perception of Israel’s occupation and Palestinian liberation in the West. When our discussion shifted to films, I was told that the documentary Where the Olive Trees Weep, was a good introduction to the Zionist occupation of Palestine. I had only seen a few promotion clips of the documentary while scrolling on social media but had no formal plans to watch it. When I learned about a screening in my city, I decided to go. While I enjoyed parts of the film and was profoundly affected by all the Palestinian stories and experiences, I left the theatre feeling unsettled about certain aspects. So, here are my thoughts on historical truth, representation and narrative.
Filmed in the occupied West Bank in 2022, Where the Olive Trees Weep follows several Palestinians and their lives under Israeli occupation and colonialism. The film narrates closely the experience of Palestinian journalist Ashira Darwish who founded Catharsis Holistic Healing, a center which focuses on trauma therapy for Palestinian women and children. Other speakers include Canadian-Hungarian physician Gabor Maté, Israeli journalist Amira Hass, and the Israeli co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement, Neta Golan.
The cinematography is beautiful yet jarring, as it weaves stories of Palestinians across multiple generations. Images of the Old City of Jerusalem – the heart of Palestine – with its historic market are punctured by heavily armed and adolescent soldiers, who patrol what is not theirs with arrogant impunity (in the words of Mohammed El-Kurd). The images and narratives reflect the daily injustices Palestinians experience – from the apartheid wall fragmenting Palestinian land to the forced displacement and ethnic cleansing of Bedouins from their farmland. Through multiple interviews, the film emphasizes how Palestinian livelihood is impacted by Israel’s theft of Palestinian land and resources – the foundations of Israeli and Western colonialism – and the sheer desire to erase Palestinian existence.
Particularly poignant of the experience of thousands of Palestinians was the story of Ahmad Saleh Barghouth who was born in the village of Al-Walaja in Bethlehem in 1947. Listening to him describe being forcibly displaced to take shelter in caves is illustrative of the kind of humiliation Palestinians experience as refugees in their own land. His account of returning to most of his land being stolen and divided by what is now the apartheid wall represents the deliberate geographical fragmentation of Palestinians from their lands. Not only did he lose access to fertile land with olive trees and orchards that are thousands of years old, but he lost access to the graves of his family members. This kind of geographic separation – through ghettoes and bantustans – manifests in Israel’s attempt to break Palestinians’ connection to their land but also their history, traditions, and practices.
As the film intertwines multiple stories, it follows chronologically the experience of Palestinian journalist Ashira Darwish. She details how she was first imprisoned by the IOF when she was 16 after attending a peaceful protest in Jerusalem. She details her initial encounter at al-Moscobiyeh prison, once known in the 1980s as “the slaughterhouse” for the torture methods used by the Israeli police. Ashira was arrested again for her journalistic work on Palestinian resistance fighters of the Second Intifada. She recalls her experience of physical and emotional abuse by the IOF who denied her access to sanitary products as she was being interrogated.
Torture at the hands of the IOF is not phenomena in Palestine, if the past year in Gaza hasn’t glaringly shown (as well as the past seven decades). The shared accounts of Ahed Tamimi, her father Bassem Tamimi among others in the film shows that be it a child or elderly – no one is spared from Israeli terrorism and torture. The stories of beatings, solitary confinement, medical neglect, sleep deprivation, and the use of stress positions are harrowing and demonstrate the Israeli attempt to force Palestinians to submit to the occupation, to give up on resisting.
Throughout the film, Palestinian life is punctuated by the multiple forms and manifestations of Israeli colonialism. From obstructing Palestinian freedom of movement through checkpoints to stealing Palestinian resources such as running water to house demolitions which Bassem Tamimi rightly states is a form of ‘silent ethnic cleansing.’ Israel’s occupation is glaring. With the footage of the annual Jerusalem Day March where Jewish Israeli settlers march through Palestine chanting “May your village burn” and “We’ll kill you all, all motherfuckers! I’ll kill you, one by one. Fucking Muslims!” – Israel and Zionism rears its head as the genocidal, racist and colonial project it is.
Prioritizing Palestinian voices is integral – they are the experts in speaking about the occupation and violence they experience daily. In my opinion, several guest speakers provide a rather simplistic view of colonialism and the Zionist project. When speaking about Israel’s occupation, Israeli journalist Amira Hass who writes for Haaretz (which publishes genocidal apologia, so) claimed that:
“The issue is the present day, ongoing, settler colonial project that by definition is meant to take the land and create a political system that excludes the indigenous people. 200 years ago in the States or New Zealand or Brazil, it was not considered violations, it was the norm. Now, because Zionism is an anachronistic settler colonial movement, the world understands it’s not according to the norm but the world accepts it.”
To claim that Zionism is an issue because it is an “anachronistic’ movement is to disregard that a) colonialism still exists and b) that colonialism was ever considered a ‘norm’ by indigenous people in what is now the United States of America, Canada, New Zealand or any settler colony. To frame Zionism as against the ‘norm’ compared to previous European and Anglo-American imperialism is deeply reductive because it separates the impact of other settler-colonies on communities and indigenous peoples. While colonialism no longer exists in a ‘direct’ form, it continues today in a legacy of political, social, and economic inequality.
Zionism is rejected by Palestinians, Lebanese, and people of conscience because it has produced mass oppression, suffering, and violence of all forms through its genocidal and racist ideology. Also, the Zionism that the ‘world accepts’ according to Hass seems to disregard millions of people who outrightly reject the Zionist occupation of Palestine.
Through the comments made by Canadian-Hungarian physician Gabor Maté, the discussion of Zionism, the Holocaust, and trauma seem to intertwine in a way I find both misleading and problematic. When talking about the Holocaust, Maté states:
“In some sense, it [the Holocaust] is the worst event in history, where there was a deliberate attempt to extirpate a whole people by mechanical scientifically designed, violence. So, in that sense, the project that led to the creation of the Jewish state arose out of deep trauma, unspeakable trauma.”
Then, he continues to say:
“This [Israel’s occupation of Palestine] is like any other colonial project. It’s only that it’s the latest one, and it’s the longest-standing ethnic cleansing in the history of the 20th and 21st centuries. So, it’s fed by a stream of trauma but after all these decades, we can’t talk about trauma anymore. It’s simply colonialism, pure and simple and it’s an apartheid state.”
While the Holocaust most definitely garnered support for Zionism, the Zionist colonial project long preceded the Holocaust, which is not addressed or explored in the film. Claiming that the Zionist project in Palestine was ‘fed by a stream of trauma’ creates two problems in my view:
1) It implies to some degree, that the Zionist project in Palestine was an answer to the horrors and trauma of the Holocaust. This ignores early attempts by European settlers – of whom were rampantly racist – to settle in Palestine in the late 1800s. This also ignores the 1897 Zionist congress in Basel, Switzerland where 200 delegates from all over Europe organized for more coordinated attempts to settle and establish a Jewish ethnostate in Palestine. While the documentary isn’t exclusively about Zionism, these important facts are absent.
2) Claiming that European Jewish settlement and Zionist colonialism in Palestine was ‘fed by a stream of trauma’ but decades later should be considered colonialism and apartheid is to disregard Zionist colonialism and violence prior to and after 1948. Does this imply that at some point that the ethnic cleansing, violence or theft of Palestinian land was acceptable because it was fueled by Jewish trauma? By framing the Holocaust, trauma, and the colonization of Palestine in this manner, the film also fails to comment on the weaponization of Jewish trauma and the way in which Zionism demands that Jewish ‘safety’ is tied to the complete subjugation of another people.
Finally, my strongest critique or perhaps the most thought-provoking is the relationship, or rather the representation of the oppressor versus the oppressed. During Ashira’s account of her experience as a journalist, which she was driven to study following her first arrest by the Israeli police. She said:
“I was working in the Old City of Jerusalem. Maybe if they [Israelis] hear my narrative, and they see the similarity and they see the closeness, and what the Palestinians are, then they can stop, you know. And then you can open the hearts of people inside Israel. Because words are everything right? So, the use of the word ‘resistance fighter’ versus the use of ‘terrorist’ makes a very big difference in our nervous system. And how we accept it and the level of rage that we experience when we hear those words. We’re so dehumanized by this instrument and machine to the point where they can come, and they can exterminate you because to them you are nothing but a rat. You’re nothing but something that can be killed, you’re not a human and that’s what creates a holocaust. You dehumanize first and that is a learned lesson. You dehumanize them so that you get people to the point where they act in a group against a minority group. And they, the Israelis couldn’t see us. They can’t see us.”
The military intelligence echelon knows that if the Israelis in Tel Aviv hear my voice and hear the songs of Gazan children singing in the streets it might make an Israeli in Tel Aviv think twice before pulling the trigger in the face of that child, when they come to the point where they need them.”
Ashira is correct: Dehumanization, indoctrination, and propaganda are integral to settler colonial societies and projects like ‘Israel’. What I strongly disagree with is the idea that there is a way to appeal to the moral conscience of Israelis or Zionists. Now, I am not saying Darwish is claiming that that is what must be done but it’s an important thing to question. Trying to appeal to members of the IOF, Israeli settlers or supremacist Christian Zionists will not decrease the violence, subjugation or oppression of Palestinians nor will it end the colonisation of Palestine.
Frantz Fanon writes of French colonialism in Algeria, of which we can apply to Israel’s colonization of Palestine and all occupied peoples:
“Colonialism is not a thinking machine, nor a body endowed with reasoning faculties. It is violence in its natural state, and it will only yield when confronted with greater violence.”
Collective efforts and attention must be directed at the apparatus of Zionism not the hearts and minds of those that enforce, perpetuate, and benefit from it. After years of very sophisticated and thorough brainwashing, the process of de-Nazification is not the responsibility of the Palestinian people, and it would presumably take decades of unlearning, if it was possible. Decades of evidence, footage, and testimony have shown us that there is a kind of sadistic violence integral to Zionism and Western colonialism at large, that will not be stopped by appealing to the Israeli conscience.
The failure of appealing through non-violence or moral conscience of the IOF or the forces of the settler colony, while brushed over in the film is surprisingly made by Israeli guest Neta Golan. When speaking about the Great March of Return in 2018 when Palestinians in Gaza marched near the borders of their fortified prison to demand a return to their rightful lands, they were met with gunfire, where over 250 Palestinians were killed and thousands severely injured. Golan says:
“So, its’ hard to argue, it’s impossible to argue, kind of, for nonviolent resistance, which is tragic because of course if people could take that route, they would.”
In his illuminating book Wretched of the Earth, Fanon writes that, concerning violence, “Decolonization is always a violent phenomenon.” Fanon argues that since colonialism is inherently violent, decolonization is a violent process because violence is the only ‘language’ the colonizer speaks.
For decades, Palestinians, and allies have tried non-violent resistance: protests, strikes, boycotts, sit-ins, and marches, and while those are not insignificant, they have been ineffective at halting or decreasing the land theft, home demolitions, imprisonment, checkpoints, and ethnic cleansing Palestinians endure. The large-scale structural change will require armed and violent resistance, as the Algerian and Vietnamese Revolutions have shown. This is not to claim that these liberatory struggles glorify violence, but rather, that armed struggle is the only means available to confront and defeat their colonizers.
Justice and liberation is not achieved peacefully. As Malcolm X said, “Freedom is never safeguarded peacefully. Anyone who is depriving you of freedom isn't deserving of a peaceful approach by the ones who are being deprived of their freedom.” In the end, defeating and dismantling Israel’s colonization of Palestine will not be achieved by appealing to the hearts and minds of the Israeli Western-backed oppressors.
So, be critical of what you watch, do your research, and always center Palestinian voices and narratives. Support resistance, in all forms, violent and nonviolent for that will be the only way to defeat the beast of imperialism and Zionism and liberate Palestine and all oppressed peoples. To end, in honour of centering and celebrating Palestinian voices, here are a few films and documentaries to add to your list that I have watched and recommend: Jenin, Jenin, Salt of this Sea, 200 Meters, The Present, Farha, Pomegranates and Myrrh. Also, check out this collection of films on Palestinian and Lebanese resistance.
