Police ban Jaffa screening of controversial ‘Jenin, Jenin 2’ film
Director of banned and widely discredited ‘Jenin Jenin’ Mohammed Bakri says sequel includes interviewees from original as well as new testimonies
Israel Police issued an order banning the screening of a controversial Palestinian film in Jaffa’s Al Saraya Theater on Wednesday, saying it amounted to incitement according to Channel 12 News.
The theater condemned the move to ban “Jenin, Jenin 2,” a sequel to the controversial and also-banned 2002 film, saying it was a violation of their freedom of expression.
The new film is about a 48-hour IDF incursion into Jenin last July in which hundreds of terror suspects were arrested and 13 were killed.
The widely discredited first film falsely alleged that the Israel Defense Forces massacred civilians in the West Bank city of Jenin during the Operation Defensive Shield military campaign at the height of the Second Intifada.
Mohammad Bakri, who directed the sequel as well, told Channel 12 News on Sunday that the new film features testimonies from people who were in Jenin during last year’s operation and includes some interviewees from the first film.
“It also talks about what I went through, the persecution and the ban on screening ‘Jenin Jenin,'” he said.
Police interrogated the manager of the Al Saraya theater, Mahmoud Abu Arisha, on Tuesday, according to Channel 12, and he was released with a warning and an order not to screen the movie on Wednesday.
The theater said in a statement on Wednesday that the police were banning the screening based on the High Court’s ruling on the previous film.
“The theater’s manager was interrogated for three hours yesterday on suspicion of disrupting public order. Abu Arisha explained that preventing the screening is a blatant violation of the freedom of expression and represents political persecution of its creators and anyone who screens it,” the statement said.
Bakri told Channel 12 that Israel hasn’t been a democracy “since the right rose to power.”
“The government is extremist, and the best example of that is the fact that [far-right National Security Minister Itamar] Ben Gvir rules the police. What’s happening here is a disgrace,” he said.
Police shuttered a Sunday screening of the film at the headquarters of the Israeli Communist Party (a main component of the Arab Hadash Knesset slate) in Haifa and interrogated its secretary, releasing her two hours later.
The proceeds from Sunday’s screening were intended to be given to Gazans amid the Israel-Hamas war in the Palestinian enclave.
In 2022, the High Court of Justice issued a final ruling barring screenings of “Jenin, Jenin.”
Immediately after the release of “Jenin, Jenin,” the 53-minute film drew sharp criticism for what many — including the High Court — saw as egregious breaches of documentary and journalistic ethics.
Notably, its director, Bakri, was found to have used misleading cuts in the film to imply deliberate civilian deaths that never happened, specifically in a scene in which an armored personnel carrier — inaccurately referred to as a tank in the movie — is made to look as though it ran over a number of Palestinian prisoners lying on the ground, though it did not, as the director later admitted in court.
The filmmaker also mistranslated Arabic for the subtitles to include words like “genocide” and “massacre,” which were never actually said during interviews. In addition, no Israeli officials were interviewed for the movie to provide an opposing viewpoint.
