A Reel War: Israeli Filmmaker’s Search for Stolen Palestinian Films
Karnit Mandel (2025)
Film Review
In this intriguing film, Israeli filmmaker Karnit Mandel profiles her search for the Palestinian film archive stolen from the Beirut Palestine Research Center when Israel briefly occupied the city in 1982. The narrative is interspersed with snippets (accessed from other sources) of Palestinian families and children going about their lives. Even films from the early fifties portray daily life in Gaza as strikingly cosmopolitan with children healthy and well dressed.
Among the people she interviews are the former Palestinian archivist for the Beirut research, IDF and Israeli intelligence officials and two Israeli film archivists. Retired Israeli archivist Dr Yakov Loazovick believes Israel has an obligation to return the films or at least make them public – that a truly democratic state would only restrict classified information and only for a limited 70-year period.
The film also features footage from 1968 Operation Karameh, and Israeli attack on Karameh on the Jordan border. Faced with the combined force of the PLO and the Jordanian army, the IDF was pulverized, with 30 troops killed, 100 wounded and more missing in action. The Israeli government banned publishing the true outcome of the operation until 1984, instead they released a propaganda news reel (filmed in a totally different location). Mandel shows us excerpts of both.
Some of the most intriguing footage is from the thriving Palestinian export city of Jaffa in 1946, when the population (mainly Arab) was 123,000. Other footage shows unarmed Arabs surrendering at gunpoint to Haganah terrorists in 1948. One Israeli intellligence officer Mandel interviews asserts Palestinians were an insignificant minority in Palestine prior to Israel’s formation and left voluntarily.
After repeated calls and interviews with various Israeli officials, Mandel’s request to access the Palestinian archives to return them to the Palestinian Authority is denied – for the following reasons:
“The existence of a Palestinian film archive is an urban myth”
“It shouldn’t be returned because it’s all propaganda.”
“Palestine didn’t exist at that time. That concept was created later.”
“The film archive may have been destroyed.”
“It was returned to the Palestinians under the Oslo Accords” (a participant in the Oslo meetings asserts it was never discussed).
According to Mandel Palestinian cinema began in the 1930s
The Most Revolutionary Act 
Pingback: Israeli Filmmaker Searches for Stolen Palestinian Films | Worldtruth