The Palestinian submission for the Oscar foreign film award, Palestine 36, had strong momentum from the usual anti-Israel leftists: Mark Ruffalo, Diego Luna, Susan Sarandon, Riz Ahmed, Ava Duverney, Mira Nair, and Ramy Youssef and a raft of stars lending their support. When viewed at the Toronto Film Festival, it got a 20-minute standing ovation and has a 100% rating from film critics on Rotten Tomatoes. Indie Wire film critic Ritesh Mehta writes,

Annemarie Jacir’s rigorously researched telling of the three-year anti-British revolt in Palestine starting in 1936 shines in its period and cultural specificities even if its quilt-like structure can’t always hold the weight of the powerful archive and miniature histories it draws upon.

Though one of the fifteen films shortlisted, Oscar voters chose not to nominate it for Best International Featured Film. This is fortunate since the actual history of the revolt is dramatically different than what the film presents. The film ignores its continuation of the decade-long violence against Jewish communities and, most strikingly, never mentioning the leader of the revolt, the Grand Mufti Amin al-Husseini.

In the 1920s there were a series of pogroms, the most serious occurred in 1929 when the Grand Mufi instigated violence, wiping out the Hebron Jewish community of pious Jews who had lived there for generations. Attacks on Jewish settlements continued but increased during the revolt. The film has scenes of British transferring land to Jews despite overwhelming evidence that virtually all Jewish settlement land was legally purchased.

Historian........

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