‘The Roof (2006)’: Uncovering the Perspectives of Arabs in Israel
‘The Roof (2006)’: Uncovering the Perspectives of Arabs in Israel
Kamal Aljafari’s family | Feature art by Abigail Manaluz
In the face of charges of genocide, supporters of the Israeli state often bring up that it can’t possibly be one because they are not murdering the Arabs within their national borders. The argument goes that the comparisons to Nazi Germany are completely baseless because in the case of the Holocaust, everyone of Jewish descent inside the country was purged out into concentration and extermination camps to die. And so wouldn’t a true genocide also include the Arabs who continue to live inside Israel?
Given how much these citizens are used as scapegoats to defend the state’s mass killings, it’s a wonder how often the media coverage of their tragic state of affairs leaves their voices out. What do they actually think about what’s going on? What is it like for them to live in a state that is hell-bent on starving to death, if not fully exterminating their brethren? The unfortunate reality is that a reason why they may not be as outspoken as other Arabs in the region is that expressions of outward dissent may disrupt their safety and status as citizens. But there are other ways to learn about what their points of view are, such as watching and reading the films and literature that they have created over the years. The Roof is one such work of art.
Palestinian filmmaker Kamal Aljafari’s The Roof is an observational documentary from 2006 about the daily lives of Arab citizens of Israel living in Jaffa, Ramle, and Jerusalem. He tells the story of their people through the lens of his own family and friends. These are necessary perspectives to unpack, for their on-paper freedom of speech is often compromised by their fears of further societal ostracization, or worse, the traumatic threat of expulsion once again.
Kamal Aljafari overlooking Tel Aviv, Israel
The film is filled with interviews conducted in 2004 in the midst of the Second Intifada, during which over 3,000 Palestinians were killed. One of the interviewees is a friend who was sent to prison for six and half years during the First Intifada. He describes his issues with border police over the years who continue to accuse him of being a terrorist. Another is his grandmother, who was forced to flee her home in Jaffa as a child during the 1948 Nakba. Of the around 120,000 people living there at the time, they estimate that only around 3,000 remained. In his grandmother’s words, most of them wanted to leave because they “were scared like everyone else [as] the Israelis were shooting Palestinians.” When they returned, their house was completely destroyed and they were instead relocated into the home of another exiled family. Narratives like these bore holes into the standard Israeli narrative that the 1948 expulsion was more of a migration, as the Arabs were the ones who chose to leave. Yes, she said they technically did leave, but it didn’t sound like any of them had a meaningful choice. The alternative was death.
We also learn a lot about their everyday lives and how they feel treated by the Israeli state. A man from Ramle complains that over the years less and less of the local businesses have remained in their hands, as they have been replaced by Jewish immigrants from Iraq, Turkey, and even Russia. They’re able to take control of the area “as long as they are Jews and not Arabs,” while the Arabs left behind have been made “useless.” In another conversation, a female law student describes her experience living in Jerusalem as feeling that “people react as if they don’t know we live in this country, as if they were afraid.”
Photographs of the fallen
The film was released two years before Israel would conduct one of its most brutal attacks against the Palestinians, Operation Cast Lead. In 2008, over a hundred thousand civilians were displaced in Gaza over the course of three weeks. At the time, this was one of the most violent events in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It has since been eclipsed by Operation Protective Edge in 2014, and overwhelmingly so by the current invasion of Gaza.
In order to better understand what’s going on today, it is important to educate ourselves on the perspectives of those who are most affected in the region. And since the Arabs living in Israel are being used rhetorically as a defense for the nation’s horrendous actions, it’s imperative that we take the time to hear from these citizens directly. Although this documentary is almost two decades old, the conflict has been going on for much longer, and so it is still a fantastic place to start to help broaden our understanding of their tragic situation.
Every month the Beirut-based nonprofit Aflamuna streams for free on their website, https://www.aflamuna.online, selected Arabic films with English subtitles. The Roof is currently available to watch there until May, 23, 2024.
