BUDRUS director Julia Bacha
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has dominated world politics and news for six decades now with seemingly no resolution in sight. However, what the world media would lead you to believe is patently false due to the fact that a tiny Palestinian village stood up to the Israeli government and achieved its political goals without the aid of bullets or bombs.
From 2003 to 2007, the village of Budrus engaged in a struggle that would not only redefine itself but provide inspiration to a new generation of Palestinians seeking to preserve their dignity while forsaking the violence that the world has come to know them for.
Documentarian Julia Bacha chronicles the struggle for freedom and its aftermath in the new film Budrus, now enjoying a US release after a successful run on the international film festival circuit. Bacha discusses the background of this film and why this particular story has been ignored for so long in this exclusive interview.
IFQ: For context, how did you first come to meet Ayed and in turn, begin putting this film together?
Julia Bacha: I first met him in 2007, when I was researching a story about the nonviolent resistance movement taking place in the West Bank today. I had been visiting many of the villages currently struggling and been preparing to make a film about all the different movements happening underground. All of the leaders I had met through going to all these different demonstrations would talk about Ayed Morrar and what he had done in Budrus. So I went back to him and at this point tried to convince him that a film needed to be made about the story of Budrus and what he had done there, because many of the others leaders said that was what inspired them to do what they are doing now. I was surprised that his story was so invisible and had not been brought to the stage of the international community as well as many Israelis and Palestinians who had never heard about what happened in that village.
At first, he was very reluctant to participate; he wanted other leaders to be the story who are currently struggling to be the story instead; so it took a couple of visits to his office to meet and talk with him and his family about what I wanted to do and once he agreed I started getting to know all the people in the village, winning their trust to allow me into their homes, and talk to them about what had happened. Then I needed to get the approval of the Border Police to interview Doron Spielman, who was their spokesperson, and found through research that he was one of the border patrol officers in Budrus at the time.
Parallel to that, I started contacting all the activists. I work with an organization called Just Vision and we’ve been researching this case for seven years now, so we know a lot of people in the field who have the most comprehensive database of Israelis and Palestinians working towards a nonviolent resolution to the conflict. So then we started an intensive research and investigative effort to collect footage from any activists worldwide who might have been in Budrus, even if just for a day, and had a few minutes of footage because we wanted to tell the story from the very beginning to the end. We eventually ended up collecting a total of two hundred hours, comprised of both archival footage and our own material. From that point then we started the editing process.
IFQ: As you edited the footage together, what material really shook you emotionally where you looked at it and are were amazed by what you saw, frightened, or perhaps both?
JB: Well the things that were most moving to me were the moments when Israelis and Palestinians, including Palestinians from all political parties and genders, were together facing the violence of Israeli Border Police officers and were able to stay disciplined in their efforts to try and break through the Border Police lines and stop the bulldozers. In particular when Iltezam Morrar, who is Ayed’s daughter, was able to break through the barrier and stand in front of the bulldozer with her bare body not knowing what would happen. This happened not long after Rachel Corrie had been killed in Gaza and she was aware of this but was able to have the courage to stay there long enough for the bulldozer driver to turn around and leave.
This was the moment that very clearly galvanized the village to believe they could actually do this. There were also several different moments throughout when Palestinians and Israelis were chanting in Hebrew together against the fence and for peace. The Palestinians themselves were speaking in Hebrew for peace and I found that incredibly telling and moving. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing and that it hadn’t been seen throughout the world so people could see what amazing community unity these people were able to generate.
IFQ: In terms of politics, how important was Ayed and his daughter’s decisions to not only unite Hamas and Fatah together but also bring women into the dynamic as well? Why was that such a game changer?
JB: Because a nonviolence resistance movement requires a lot of people to participate; in the situation of the Occupied Territories with a village trying to use that strategy, you need to have the backing of the entire community because the costs are very high. The costs involve the full breakdown of daily life in the community for the process for the entire time they are demonstrating. So there are no schools, these people can’t go to work, they’re stopped at checkpoints for much longer if they’re from Budrus and in the case of the village struggling, even if they have work permits they will be confiscated.
There were nightly raids conducted by the Border Police where they come in the middle of the night at 3 AM to arrest teenagers. So if everybody is not in it, it can’t be sustained which is why nonviolent resistance is so difficult to be created and exist. People talk very simply about why can’t the Palestinians use nonviolence and we heard that very often when we were making the film Counter Point, but knew the situation was much more complex than that and there isn’t such a simple equation between nonviolent resistance and peace.
It is also really important for all political parties to be unified so there isn’t infighting about strategy and it’s essential for the women to be participating. For one because they are fifty percent of the population, so if you don’t include the women you are only operating with half of your labor force. If you don’t have the women, what often happens is the demonstrations breakdown into violence much more easily. Women are able by their sheer presence to lower the level of violence. Finally, the movement allowed for a more democratic process to take place and for ultimately the end goal of a society that is more gender-balanced and respectful of women because they were a part of the process in winning freedom.
VO: For such an inspirational story, why is it that much of the mainstream media does not pay any attention to this subject, instead focusing on the suicide bombings and other violence perpetrated by both sides?
JB: I think that there were a few things that happened. One is that nonviolence is not glamorous and cannot be told in a single story. The journalists, in order to really tell the story, would have to understand what was going on at a deeper level than people simply trying to stop bulldozers; they’d need to understand that there is a movement being created underneath it to sustain such efforts. Journalists covering the Middle East conflict as well as others around the world have been very much biased in terms of covering violence because violence is simple. It is a picture, in the case of the Middle East it is a bus blown up or a bulldozer destroying a Palestinian home. Those things are simply pictures that are put on the air and become news.
Nonviolent resistance is more of a process though and although some journalists did go there and talked about a process developing there, no one bothered to go back afterwards and see what had happened. Did they win? What were the effects on the villagers? What happened to the other surrounding villages when they saw this community succeed with nonviolent resistance?
For six decades now, the news coverage on the Middle East process has focused almost exclusively on politicians and endless peace talks like we’re seeing today; it becomes so important what a single sentence Netanyahu says or what Abbas says which makes the headlines. But the entire struggle of a village that has spread throughout the West Bank and into East Jerusalem hasn’t managed to get that kind of attention. I think it is not only the responsibility of journalists but also the responsibility of individual readers and consumers of media today, because media has mostly become a business and they make decisions based on six other channels and if something isn’t staying in the top ten and people are flipping through the channels then the story will not continue to be broadcast.
It is the same thing with the top-selling newspapers, if it doesn’t sell newspapers then the story isn’t going to come back. I also think a fatigue has developed in those who follow the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that leads them to think that violence is the only thing going on, so people don’t even want to hear about the nonviolent aspect of it as well as the violence anymore. So it is up to individual consumers to go out there and look for stories that interest us, and call our local news editors to ask why they haven’t covered this particular story. That kind of action in the long term may be the way in which we change coverage of the Middle East conflict.
IFQ: Overall, how have you felt over the response the film has garnered thus far from those who have had a chance to see it? Any surprise reactions that caught you off guard?
JB: The reactions have been tremendously positive which, has not necessarily surprised me but I think I was expecting to face let’s say some more resistance and that has not happened. There has of course been some criticism of the film from Israelis, Palestinians, and other different people but overwhelming from Dubai to New York to Tel Aviv to Jerusalem to Ramallah to Nablus, San Francisco, etc. we’ve been touring now for ten months on the film festival circuit and have done tremendously well.
We’ve won I think the most awards with already eight awards at major international film festivals including the Berlin International Film Festival and people are inspired to hear finally hopeful stories and I think that because so much focus has been only on the bad news that when they learn about this village they think “perhaps there is a way I can constructively aid this effort”. There is some kind of hope that this can lead to a resolution which is respectful of the dignity and security of both sides. The amount of support we have garnered so far, the media interest, this is exactly what we hoped for and I hope that it continues.
To learn more, go to www.justvision.org/en/budrus