프로그램 노트

Program Note​

Because identity is fluid and capable of crossing boundaries, Israel invokes its own diasporic experience when dealing with Palestine. It says that we all have a nomadic spirit and have been blessed with grace—now it’s your turn to enjoy it. Those long subjected to expulsion and oppression tend to know the methods of expulsion and oppression all too well. Armed Israeli soldiers relentlessly demolish homes across the West Bank. Identity has wandered from victim to perpetrator, while the apparatus of oppression remains firmly in place.

As the film shows us, this is a war of the post-camera-democratization era. Atrocities once believed impossible in a world full of cameras are now being carried out with cameras in hand. These recordings are in vivid HD, nearly free of rolling shutter, with ISO that adapts easily to changes in light. Footage that once would’ve required a massive film camera is now casually captured. And the same cameras are also held by Israeli soldiers and settlers, those who document the ones who document them. The soldiers demolish homes with full awareness that they are being filmed.

Those whose homes are destroyed live in caves. These scenes evoke the image of prophets in sacred texts of world religions. Religion, after all, was born out of human fear—of being left alone between the vast sky and the beautiful earth. But once created, people began to kill each other, claiming the other’s religion was wrong. Years later, those long exiled from elsewhere come and declare everything on the land—cars, buildings, even people—illegal, and yet people live there. Even after failure has become familiar, life goes on—and there are people who endure the unendurable. But those accustomed to repeated evictions can sense the looming presence of the army the day before it comes, and young people hesitate to start families in a place so devoid of stability.

Israeli cars bearing yellow license plates move freely across the region, while Palestinian vehicles with green plates are confined to the West Bank. To liken the latter to the Star of David once forcibly pinned to people’s chests may reflect a material truth, but politically(internationally), it may not be the most appropriate comparison. The Israeli soldiers tasked with these evictions are carefully balanced across lines of race and gender, which is politically correct. Nazi Germany once used IBM punch cards to kill Jews across Europe in a method that was, likewise, politically correct and disturbingly efficient.

Israeli soldiers in the West Bank wield signed eviction orders to turn Palestinian villages into military training grounds. They move fluidly between reverence before God and the willingness to kill those of other faiths, between being victims yesterday and perpetrators today. Identity has migrated from victimhood to violence, while the machinery of oppression remains unchanged. The grace of diaspora, it seems, is boundless. Hamdan Ballal, one of the directors featured in the film, was attacked by Israeli settlers, arrested, and beaten by the IDF on March 24, 2025. Once the story reached international media, he was released and transferred to a hospital within a day. (KIM Daehyun)​

“Then the king gave the command, and Daniel was brought and thrown into the den of lions. The king said to Daniel, ‘May your God, whom you faithfully serve, deliver you.’” (Daniel 6:17)

“It is He who created for you the earth as a bed and the sky as a canopy and sent down from the sky rain and brought forth thereby fruits as provision for you. So do not attribute to Allah equals while you know that there is nothing similar to Him” (Surah Al-Baqarah 2:22)