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No one needs Hollywood producers flocking to a film about Hind Rajab

Mainstream media has been abuzz with the news of five “Hollywood luminaries” throwing their support behind the upcoming film The Voice of Hind Rajab.

Brad Pitt, Rooney Mara, Joaquin Phoenix, Alfonso Cuarón, and Jonathan Glazer have joined the film as executive producers after previewing a cut of the film ahead of its Venice Film Festival premiere.

As the Canary’s Alaa Shamali highlighted:

The Voice of Hind Rajab is based on real audio recordings of Hind, as she cried for help, saying she was trapped among the bodies of her relatives inside a car in the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood of Gaza, before the call was cut off and she was later found dead. This tragic moment, which reverberated around the world as a symbol of humanity’s failure, has been transformed into a 90-minute fictional drama that combines documentary and art, raising questions of memory and justice.

On the face of it then, it seems like a positive thing that Hollywood stars are amplifying Palestinian stories. However, it shouldn’t have taken the Israeli occupation forces firing 355 bullets at a six-year-old to do it. Nor should it come 22 months into a genocide in which Israel has massacred at least 63,000, including 19,000 children, and wounded over 150,000 more Palestinians. It’s a disgrace that Palestinian filmmakers and artists are not being listened to on their own merits. Hollywood have not only dragged their heels on calling out the genocide, but have also silenced the voices and experiences of Palestinians.

The Voice of Hind Rajab: celebrity reputation opportunism

It’s only fair to start by underlining that it’s not the first time some of these celebs have spoken out.

For example, Glazer was the sole exception to a 2024 Oscars that saw otherwise damning silence. In a speech, he decried the instrumentalisation of Jewishness and the Holocaust in justification of Israel’s genocide. It’s worth noting however that Glazer’s spiel was at best, a tentative criticism since it preposterously equated Israel’s brutal genocidal onslaught in Gaza and the murder of more than 50,000 Palestinians, to 7 October.

Meanwhile, Phoenix was among the early names calling on then US president Biden to demand a ceasefire in 2023. He also signed a letter in support of Glazer’s Oscars speech alongside 450+ other celebrities. In May, he followed this up by backing another letter condemning the film industry for its silence on Gaza. Recently, he also went on American podcaster Theo Von’s show and lambasted the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) and Israel’s engineered famine:

@aljazeeraenglish

Academy award-winning actor, Joaquin Phoenix calls #Gaza situation “horrible” and questions the use of aid distribution methods over established channels. #news

♬ original sound – Al Jazeera English – Al Jazeera English

Mara also signed the letter to Biden, and the recent one in May, the latter alongside Cuarón.

However, plenty on X felt the move reeked of PR opportunism:

And to a large extent, it’s hard not to agree. Because let’s be real, a handful of open letters, while welcome, is not what genuine solidarity looks like. Have they thrown their collective billions behind the vital mutual aid efforts – like the Sameer Project – feeding Gaza? Perhaps they have, but it’d be a shock that any celeb hasn’t taken the opportunity to paraded their philanthropy en masse. Have they turned out to protests or taken direct action? Not that I’ve seen – or can find – either.

And, these individuals aren’t even the story. The real story here is that Hollywood is using censorship and silencing to manufacture consent for Israel’s genocide in Palestine. Middle East Eye’s William Johnson wrote:

Free speech once meant everything to the US arts and entertainment industries.

But since Israel declared war on Gaza, artists, actors and production staff have alleged that there is a concerted campaign by industry executives to silence solidarity with beleaguered Palestinians.

Dozens of workers at every level of the arts and entertainment world: from actors and dancers to carpenters, set dressers, animators, composers and screenwriters have told Middle East Eye that they have been punished for speaking out on Israel’s war on Gaza which has claimed more than 57,700 lives since October 2023.

The film industry has a problem. It is all too willing to prop up genocidal Israel and to silence Palestinians. Those in the most powerful positions of this industry have their role to play in this genocide. A few famous producers attaching themselves to a film about Hind Rajab, making themselves the story, is like using a thimble to save a drowning boat.

Hollywood: agitprop for the military industrial complex

Fundamentally, Hollywood complicity in warmongering is as American as apple pie. From it’s very inception, the industry has been pumping out ceaseless soft propaganda for the genocidal war criminals. As I previously wrote:

Hollywood is – and always has been – a vehicle of US imperial hegemony. Films operate as a mechanism of US propaganda for its militaristic colonial expansionism across the globe.

It was only the start of this year that film mega-franchise Marvel put out its propagandistic new Captain America film. This hitched US imperial supremacy to Israel through the introduction of superhero Sabra – in essence, a personification of Israel’s apartheid regime. This was in spite of, and amid, the settler state’s continuing genocide in Gaza.

The Pentagon’s entanglement with Marvel and Hollywood studios more broadly only cements the entertainment industry’s collusion with the US military industrial complex further.

In this way, Hollywood movies serve as a soft power strategy for subtly reinforcing US cultural domination on an international stage. Hollywood promotes the US’s white imperial project through screen. It sanitises the US and West’s militaristic expropriation of foreign territories, and its deliberate programme of destabilisation and domination throughout the globe using glorifying imagery and narratives to seed this in the psyche of international audiences.

Of course, the capitalist entertainment racket has just reinforced its moral vacuity with more of the same imperialism-mongering agitprop. The case of staunch Zionist celeb and de facto Israel ‘cultural ambassador’ Gal Gadot tells you all you need to know about the entertainment biz’s priorities.

That’s also nothing to even speak of these Hollywood names’ particular role in this. Brad Pitt is the obvious offender. His 2014 zombie dystopia World War Z bristled in unbridled Zionist apartheid glorification, Hasbara propaganda, and apologism.

Some have also questioned how a powerful white man with allegations of assault against ex-wife Angela Jolie, and their two children, could possibly be a champion of Hind Rajab and the children of Gaza:

https://twitter.com/lenajohnson007/status/1961036547064500511

Limits of solidarity

And once again, what these five Hollywood heavyweights stepping up – 22 months into a brutal genocide – painfully demonstrate, is not a tide-turning, dam-breaking, watershed moment of shining solidarity. Instead, they show its limits.

It’s a rinse and repeat of the spineless, amoral scoundrels at the Oscars Academy who refused to stand behind No Other Land’s Oscar-winning Palestinian director Hamdam Ballal after his lynching by far-right Zionist settlers. Less than 10% of the Academy’s membership spoke out then. To their credit though, Cuarón and Glazer were at least among them. Now, the media is rushing to praise five famous faces for throwing their support behind the film. It’s not enough, and it’s frankly not good enough either.

And let’s not forget that since Israeli settlers lynched Ballal, Israel has only continued to escalate its ethnic cleansing of the Masafer Yatta community in the occupied West Bank. In other words, Palestinians can win an Oscar, expose Israel’s crimes to the whole damn planet, and the settler war criminals can still get away with it.

There is power and poignancy in projecting Palestinian lives and stories – that isn’t in dispute. Absolutely, stars should be stepping up to support Palestine. Yet stepping up in this instance, should mean stepping aside so Palestinian cultural artists and producers can platform their lived realities in their own words and voices. Any film industry, even the remotest bit committed to anti-racism, to basic human rights and Indigenous agency, would – and should – do that much.

But that’s not what these Hollywood wonders giving major white saviour vibes are actually doing with their support for Hind Rajab.

‘Perfect victims’, like Hind Rajab

It’s that moment when rich white people speak over, after barely speaking up when it would have made a difference. Essentially, all they’ve actually done is throw their weight behind it at the eleventh-hour. They have swooped in for all the gains and glory. The fanfare over them latching onto the film at the last-minute epitomises this problematic paradigm perfectly as well. It took five big names – five white wealthy celebs – for the corporate media to spin into a frenzy over the film. As ever, Palestinian stories are only legitimate when forced through the lens of the white status quo.

Some on X have also underscored how this is the classic ‘perfect victim’ issue all over:

They’ve got behind Hind Rajab’s story because it’s safe. One poster recounted the poignant words Egyptian-Canadian novelist Omar El Akkad posted in late October 2023:

The Voice of Hind Rajab is a vital retelling of Israel’s abhorrent war crime (one of many). Ultimately though, these Hollywood stars’ backing of the film alone is, at best, hollow handwringing:

At worst, it’s opportunistic reputation laundering while Israel continues to slaughter more children just like Hind, and they still fail to take concrete action.

At the end of the day, Hollywood is hardly the place for punching up to power. It’s a vehicle to preserve and protect the interests of the elite. What this shows as ever, is that the powerful entertainment institutions will never truly afford Palestinians a voice in their own right. When it comes down to it, alone, Palestinian’s words count for nothing in the eyes of Hollywood, unless filtered through the worldviews of  wealth and whiteness.

However, Hind’s story doesn’t need the validation from Hollywood hotshots looking to profit from Palestinian trauma. Hind’s story has already taken on a life of its own. Its eulogised in the hearts and words of Palestinians, bravely, fiercely projecting their own stories out into the world – one that unconscionably continues to fail them. And it’s in their words and voices that Hind’s story will resonate louder than any Hollywood feature ever could.

Featured image via the Canary

By Hannah Sharland

This post was originally published on Canary.