Palestinian film screening 'challenges people to play a role'

The community is invited to a free screening of the documentary, Palestine Under Siege, shot in East Jerusalem the West Bank and Israel before the Hamas invasion of Israel on October 7.

The film delves into the carve up of Palestinian land by the British and other Western powers in 1948 to provide a homeland for Jewish people and "Israel's accelerated colonisation of Palestinian land under its colonial Zionist apartheid regime, propped up by the West," according to promoters.

The Dare to Struggle film project and producers, Jill Hickson and John Reynolds, documented the lives of Palestinians in 2023.

They spent a month gathering footage, conducting interviews and exploring the Palestinian people's struggles to end the "apartheid settler colonialism of the Israeli state".

It features Australians, Dr Peter Slezak, UNSW Honorary Associate Professor of Philosophy and his two companions, Rand Darwish, Australian Palestinian student and former Greens senator, Lee Rhiannon and Bashir Sawalha, president of the United Australian Palestinian Workers Association.

They spent time talking to Palestinians and Jews in Lebanon and Palestine on the themes of the 1948 Nakba, settler colonialism and the nature of the Israeli state.

The film includes interviews with Palestinian researcher, Salman Abu Sitta, who mapped the towns that no longer existed and developed a plan for their reconstruction so refugees could return there after the Occupation.

It also features an interview with Jeff Halper, an Israeli-American anthropologist, author, lecturer and political activist who has lived in Israel since 1973 and is director of the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions (ICAHD).

Hanan Ashrawi, a Palestinian politician, activist, and scholar and winner of the 2003 Sydney Peace Prize takes people through the one state, two state discussion.

The event, from 4pm to 6pm at the Goulburn Workers Club, includes the film's screening followed by an in- person Q&A session with the producers, and other contributors via Zoom.

While a free event, gold coin donations are welcome, with proceeds going to Medicins San Frontiers.

TGG president, Urs Walterlin said the group was sponsoring the event but it was initiated by Goulburn woman, Sally Easlea out of concern about the conflict.

He said similar events in other towns had garnered "extreme interest."

"We are all concerned because it goes to the core of humanity," Mr Walterlin said.

"You don't have to be a friend or enemy of Israel but a friend of humanity. What is going on is despicable and there is no excuse for it.

"In no way does anyone excuse Hamas, and Israel has a right to defend itself. But what's going on is not defence, it's genocide...In the end we are all humans."

The film will be screened in the club's auditorium.