the voice of hind rajab (w&d kaouther ben hania)

If we accept that this thing we call life has always been a delicate balance between civilisation and barbarism. That at any moment the barbarians might rear their ugly heads and ignore the established rules of civilisation, then we also tend to believe, from the standpoint of the post-war liberal order, (which gave birth to the state of Israel), that this won’t happen here, or be perpetrated by those we consider our allies. Included in that idea of civilisation is that children should not become the victims of warfare. Wilfully killing children is the kind of thing the barbarians do. Be they the Nazis or the Mongols or any of the other peoples who codes of warfare pay no heed to our idea of civilisation. When the mass murder of civilians occurs, this is what we have come to term a genocide. There are many Israeli politicians who openly advocate for the eradication of the Gazan population. Their rhetoric has fuelled the acts of barbarism which we have witnessed, whether we want to or not, over the course of the past three years.

Hind Rajab was another of the victims of this barbarism. And the weapons which our ‘civilised’ societies have provided. This film pays homage to her suffering. It does so intelligently by not attempting to take us into a fictional Gaza which can never be recreated, rather recreating the events during the hours Hind Rajab was being killed from the point of view of the Red Cross workers in the West Bank, who are trying and failing to save her. Just as we, those who are opposed to the killing of children, try and fail. The Red Cross workers are impotent. They betray one of the core credos of modern filmmaking which is that the protagonists have to be active. They cannot be anything but passive bystanders as they witness the crime occur in real time. We are also passive bystanders, unable to roll back time, make the world see sense, save a child who is begging for her life. It is a terrible thing to witness but the action of witnessing which the filmmakers demand of the audience, the passive, impotent audience, is in some ways a homage to Hind Rajab’s short life and cruel death.

No-one can be a saviour or a superhero in the face of institutionalised barbarism.