Written by: Victoria Britten

New film, Tomorrow’s Freedom, is a poignant and powerful depiction of the power of a united family to support Palestine’s most notorious political prisoner.

translation homelandAbd al-Rahman Basem al-Bahash, 23 years old from Nablus, was killed on January 1 in the Israeli Megiddo prison. He is the fourth prisoner to die (martyred) in that prison, and the seventh prisoner to die (martyred prisoner) since October 7. He is An unprecedented number.

Since October 7, up to 4,700 Palestinians have been arrested in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and at least 1,000 Palestinians have been arrested in Gaza, where hundreds have disappeared, including dozens of women.

Amnesty International and four Palestinian human rights organizations have reported “systematic violations,” including violent assaults, beatings, kicking, cigarette burnings and more in the “human rights crisis in Israeli prisons.”

Ayman Labad of Al-Haq Foundation for Human Rights was among those detained in Gaza. He spoke of the “inhuman and degrading treatment” he was subjected to, as he spent days blindfolded, on his knees, and with little food while detained in a makeshift pen.

For decades, prisons in Israel have remained an invisible center of Palestinian political life. The valued young prisoners released in the Israeli hostage exchange in November gave outsiders a rare glimpse into this unique world.

Today, the future of the devastated Gaza is being discussed in government offices around the world, and implausible schemes are being put forward, most of them by people who know nothing about the Palestinians.

Palestinian prisoners, who are currently cut off from lawyers, family visits, and information, constitute a political force that will not disappear in that future, as many wish.

Imprisonment, then exile

A new film, “Tomorrow’s Freedom,” opens that window with the story of Palestine’s most famous political prisoner, Marwan Barghouti, who is often compared to Nelson Mandela, the prisoner described as a “terrorist” who is supposed to be forgotten in prison.

Barghouti is in the 23rd year of a prison sentence of four consecutive life sentences plus 40 years. His giant pictures are painted everywhere on the apartheid walls of the West Bank, on the streets of Gaza and Beirut, and in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon and Syria.

He was one of the leading figures in the first and second intifadas, the founder of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the Secretary-General of the Fatah movement in the West Bank when he was arrested, the leader of a hunger strike of 1,500 prisoners in six prisons in 2017, and an elected member of the Palestinian Legislative Council from prison.

Opinion polls showed that he would be a prominent presidential candidate even while in prison.

Decades ago, Barghouti was imprisoned and then exiled in Jordan. After being allowed to return after the Oslo Accords, he worked supportively alongside Yasser Arafat for the promised new peace. But he was the target of two failed assassination attempts in 2001.

Other activists in Oslo were not so fortunate – Fatah’s medical director and secretary-general in Tulkarm, Thabet Thabet, was assassinated by Israeli secret units on December 30, 2000 as he was leaving his home, near Tulkarm.

The second intifada (2000-2005) began only three months ago, as it broke out after the provocative visit made by Ariel Sharon, accompanied by the army, to the Al-Aqsa Mosque complex.

“A cohesive major force”

Tomorrow’s Freedom begins with Muqbil Barghouti telling the story of his 11-year-old brother Marwan’s tears when the Israeli army shot his beloved dog near his family home in the village of Kober near Ramallah. “This was the story of the occupation: taking the things he loved from him, the things he loved most.”

Filmed over three years, the film shows how the taking away of the freedom of Marwan and his beloved family, like the killing of the dog decades earlier, shaped him into a remarkable man.

His integrity, courage, leadership qualities and years of rigorous self-education made him, many believe, the man who could unite Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. He earned his doctorate while in prison and reads and speaks Hebrew and Arabic.

The film contains old footage from more than 20 or 30 years ago, of the young Marwan smiling in the heart of the dangerous Palestinian street confrontations with the Israeli army in the days of the first intifada 1987-1993, and as a young and enthusiastic politician who wanted to talk to everyone about the path to peace by ending the occupation. .

The interviews in the film show perspectives on Marwan mostly from the personal experience of a distinguished group of Palestinians, such as academic and politician Dr. Hanna Nasser, who until last summer was chairman of trustees of Birzeit University; Academic and politician Hanan Ashrawi, and lawyer Diana Bhutto.

There are also Israelis such as former minister Yossi Beilin, lawyer Leah Tsemel, writer Jeff Halper, and journalist Gideon Levy, in addition to the French ambassador to Israel.

South African leaders including Nelson Mandela and the late Desmond Tutu; Americans like President Jimmy Carter and Professor Angela Davis speak of Marwan with great respect.

Professor Nasser speaks of him as a “major cohesive force.” Belén’s words — “He’s not a terrorist, he’s a political leader” — resonate across the spectrum, from the Argentine writer and activist who won the 1980 Nobel Peace Prize Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, to the former Palestinian prisoners who were with Marwan. 2017 on a 42-day hunger strike for dignity and improved conditions for prisoners.

Torture and beatings

The film’s courtroom scenes from his 2004 trial show Israelis screaming at him: “Terrorist! Murderer!”

French lawyer Simon Forman, who represented the Inter-Parliamentary Union monitoring the trial, says seriously: “It is impossible to consider it a fair trial. Two points stand out in his treatment: he was transported across the border in contravention of international law,” and he was subjected to torture, including being placed on a recliner. He was studded with nails, which would pierce his back if he bent backwards, during long hours of interrogation, and the judge publicly accused him of being a terrorist even before he was put on trial. “He was put on trial.”

Marwan’s wife, Fadwa, a lawyer, says, shocked by the ruling, that she was expecting a prison sentence of five or seven years, with a maximum of 10 years.

Fadwa is shown in later years addressing huge rallies in Palestine in support of her husband, often using his written words from prison, and being tear gassed by Israeli soldiers.

I have traveled widely to speak on behalf of Marwan. In October 2013, footage shows her in Mandela’s cell on Robben Island, South Africa, launching the international campaign to “release Marwan Barghouti and all political prisoners”, led by the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation, in honor of a man who spent 26 years in the apartheid regime. South African prisons.

Kathrada was also the person who first began the campaign to free Mandela, before joining his decades-long friend in prison.

Assassinations, mockeries of justice in court, harsh prison conditions, loss of family time and being labeled a terrorist were the daily realities of South Africa’s struggle against apartheid. Marwan was like a brother to the veterans who participated in the long struggle against apartheid, who also suffered character assassination and were branded as communists and terrorists.

Imprisonment is very common for Palestinians, with one million people arrested since 1967, and there have been regular reports by human rights groups of ill-treatment, torture, beatings and abuse, including of children and women.

Prison is part of the experience of almost every family and every community. Ten thousand children have been detained in military detention centers over the past twenty years, according to Save the Children. Every Palestinian can identify with Marwan’s 1,000 days of solitary confinement, his long hunger strikes, and his years of being denied family visits.

Insults at checkpoints

Imprisonment has become a particularly acute issue since October 7, when the unprecedented number of Palestinians in detention doubled from 5,200 in the first two weeks. Thousands of detained workers were then returned to Gaza under the weight of bombing. New arrest campaigns exploded. Many prisoners are held in administrative detention, meaning they often remain detained for years without trial.

The film’s intimate scenes, in which Fadwa meets one of the released young men and eagerly asks him if he sees Marwan and how he is, reveal her deep pain and how much she misses him, as well as the young man’s pride in being with Marwan.

One scene shows her carefully preparing for a promised visit after years of not being allowed to; She smiles and packs a heavy bag of books, which is what he wants more than anything else, she says.

The long ride on the Red Cross bus, among all the women, children and elderly people, is long hours of anxious anticipation. Fadwa describes a routine of starting at 5 a.m. and a day filled with humiliation at checkpoints and in the prison itself, ending at home around 8 p.m.

One of the scenes filmed shows her returning to the bus outside the prison, with a different face. It takes a moment for the viewer to realize that she was not allowed to see him. It is unbearable to watch her bring her heavy bookbag back home.

At that time, the viewer saw Fadwa at home, with her three sons, Qassam, Sharif, and Arab, and their daughter, Ruba.

The strong and effective activist has a soft face in domestic scenes with her grandchildren in her arms and the warm, close-knit family she has gathered single-handedly all these decades.

Her husband missed graduations, weddings, and the births of grandchildren. Fadwa listens to her three eloquent and highly educated children talk about their father, embrace the new children, and live a responsible life, and the viewer is given a glimpse into the strength of the extraordinary united family.

“Eyes so bright”

On another Red Cross bus on another day, after a hunger strike, the brothers Sharif and Arab could not hide their joy as the prison approached. Sharif has not seen Marwan for 18 months, and Arab for three years. (Qassam spent four years in prison and saw his father then, but there are no visits from a former prisoner.)

The brothers talk about rationing precious visiting minutes, and there’s a lot to be said: five minutes for family news, seven minutes for experiences of Arabs studying in the United States, and they’ll reserve 15 minutes for all the other people who would want to welcome Marwan. . “They love him, and he feeds off of them.”

They emerge beaming from their father’s hands on the glass greeting them, thin but “his eyes are so bright.” They call their mother from the bus and tell her all the details.

The life atmosphere of these Palestinians dedicated to fighting the occupation through disciplined education in prisons, as the path to peace, is rarely mentioned to English speakers.

It is reinforced by the unmistakable voice of Mahmoud Darwish as he reads from his famous poem, We have on this earth what makes life worth living, of love and life in the shadow of Mother Palestine. The music, composed especially for English musician Brian Eno and an advocate for many humanitarian causes, is another element of beauty.

The filmmakers, Sophia and Georgia Scott, first saw Marwan’s face while working in Beirut, and saw it everywhere on the walls of Shatila Camp. Curiosity led them to explore his story and meet Al-Qassam.

One of its producers is Sawsan Asfari, who was behind original films such as “Wajib” by director Annemarie Jacir in 2017, and “Queens of Syria” in 2014.

Al-Asfari says that distributing Palestinian films “is difficult, and requires courage, faith, and collective effort, which is what gets us there in the end.”

*Victoria Brittain has worked at The Guardian for many years, living and working in Washington, Saigon, Algeria and Nairobi, and reporting from many countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. She is the author of a number of books on Africa, co-author of Moazzam Page’s Guantanamo memoir, Enemy Combatant, and the author and co-author of two Guantanamo verbatim plays, Shadow Lives, Forgotten Women in the War on Terror. Her most recent book is the book Love and Resistance, films by Mai Al-Masry.

Source: middle east eye