Ten minutes before the opening hearing of the first defamation lawsuit brought by five Israeli soldiers against Palestinian actor and filmmaker Mohammad Bakri — who passed away last week — I met him in the lobby of the courthouse on Weizmann Street in central Tel Aviv. It was 2003. I was a very young lawyer, working in the office of veteran civil-rights attorney Avigdor Feldman, and had been sent to argue that the soldiers lacked standing to sue.
The lawsuit stemmed from “Jenin, Jenin,” Bakri’s documentary about the Israeli military’s invasion of the Jenin refugee camp during Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, at the height of the Second Intifada. In what would later be known as the Battle of Jenin, Israeli forces entered the densely populated camp with tanks, helicopters, infantry units, and armored bulldozers. Large parts of the camp were left in ruins; at least 52 Palestinians and 23 Israeli soldiers were killed. While the film includes accusations of war crimes against the Israeli army, it does not attribute any specific crime to any individual soldier. ….more
