Inverse hasbara: How '5 Broken Cameras' changed Palestinians' attitude toward nonviolence

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One Palestinian prisoner writes that the bravery in the Oscar-nominated documentary, denounced by the Israeli government as slander, affected even militant inmates, suggesting they could benefit from exposure to nonviolent literature.

By Amira Hass | Apr.07, 2013 | 6:00 PM

The Palestinian security prisoners incarcerated in Hadarim Prison in Even Yehuda recently had the opportunity to watch the Oscar-nominated documentary “5 Broken Cameras,” about the protests against the separation fence in the West Bank town of Bil'in, not once but twice: on Israel's Channel 2 as well as on the Palestinian television station.

One of those prisoners did in fact watch the movie on both channels. Walid Daqa a 52-year-old Palestinian citizen of Israel from Baaqa al-Gharbiyeh, followed, somewhat amused, the discussion over whether the documentary – which was co-directed by an Israeli and a Palestinian and criticized by Culture and Sports Minister Limor Livnat as slandering Israel – qualified as an Israeli or Palestinian. But most of all, he was interested in the reactions of his fellow prisoners, as he wrote in a letter to his friend Anat Matar, a philosophy lecturer at Tel Aviv University and his pen pal of several years.

At a time when Palestinian prisoners are in the headlines for their deaths, whether during interrogation or due to cancer, hunger strikes, protests or stone throwing, Daqa’s letter to Matar (written in Hebrew) offers a glimpse of the world of Palestinian prisoners from a different angle.

“The prisoners are a masculine society or subculture that praises and glorifies the values of aggressiveness and sees nonviolence as feminine,” wrote Daqa. “If a man espouses nonviolence, he is thought of almost as gay, as someone whose place is not among the freedom fighters. And of course, they don't see any contradiction between being freedom fighters and [supporting] the repression of a man's right to live how he wants, whether it's a gay man or anyone else.”

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