It might seem that State of Rage is a documentary that has been overtaken by events. The subject matter is the West Bank, in the Palestinian occupied territories – as it airs, Israel’s new bombardment of Lebanon and continuing destruction of Gaza have relegated its West Bank activities to newspapers’ inside pages.
But by taking us into two households, one in the Palestinian city of Jenin and the other in the Israeli settlement of Havat Gilad – a community built on land taken from the Palestinians, as part of a process of expansion of Israeli territory that is illegal under international law – Marcel Mettelsiefen’s film offers an urgent, clarifying picture of the psychology of the occupier, and of the occupied. While vividly capturing the contemporary state of play on the ground, the voice it gives to Israeli and Palestinian youth also casts a bleak vision of the future. Every minute of it contains a quote to stop the heart.
The main protagonists are two sets of sisters. In Jenin, we meet Jana and Heba, both 10 years old. The first question they answer is to give their definition of peace. “Peace will come when the Israelis no longer enter our camp. When we can live our childhood,” says Jana, although her immediate concern is getting her bike fixed. Her father, Haitham, knows a guy who can do the necessary spot-welding. Haitham promises to take the bicycle to him the following day – unless, of course, “the army comes”, in which case nobody will be able to do anything. Later on, dad and daughter chat about how they will cope now they have lost their family car, which has been crushed by an Israeli bulldozer. Haitham struggles to rescue items from the twisted metal of the boot.
Over in Havat Gilad, Renana, 16, and Naomi, 14, are more upbeat, in their roomy house with its extensive valley views. “I woke up this morning in the mood to destroy Gaza,” says Naomi to an informal kitchen gathering of family and friends. “You know, an energetic mood.” Their talk is of driving the Palestinians out of land that they believe belongs entirely to Israel; as they look out across the valley towards a Palestinian village, they fantasise about all the inhabitants being evicted. “This younger age group is very strong minded,” says their mother, Yael. “It’s clear [to them] that we are the good guys and they are the bad guys.”
Back in Jenin, the bad guys – Jana and Heba – are on an adventure, picking over the remnants of a recent missile attack. “This looks like skin,” says Heba. “There, it is! Do you see the blood coming out of it?” When they are back inside, they are quizzed on how they feel they should deal with living under occupation. “We must defend ourselves and fight them. We shouldn’t remain silent while they kill us,” says Jana. “Every little child should carry a weapon and resist.” Once again: Jana is 10 years old.
The contrast is stark, but it turns out that, although their present day-to-day existence is far safer and more comfortable than the kids in Jenin, the girls in Havat Gilad are also acting out of fear and grief. Renana and Naomi’s father, a rabbi, was killed in a drive-by shooting near the Palestinian city of Nablus in 2018.
State of Rage, we now see, is bold in its choice of which Israelis to feature. Actively participating in an illegal settlement project is an act of belligerence; our default view of people who do that has to be negative. But focusing on children who didn’t make that decision themselves and have now suffered a devastating personal tragedy risks promoting a false equivalence where both sides are victims in a cycle of violence where nothing much can be done. Seeking out the daughters of a man murdered by a Palestinian might be mistaken for a choice a documentary-maker would make if they were desperate to engender sympathy for the settlers.
That, however, is not Mettelsiefen’s intention. This one settler family stands as a representation of the Israeli national psyche in the wake of 7 October, and the debate over whether to respond to calamity with a previously unseen level of aggression. Eventually it is revealed that while losing their father has radicalised Renana and Naomi, losing her husband has made Yael travel in the other direction. When Renana announces her intention to join the Israeli army, Yael suggests she sign up for a less bellicose form of national service. “No, I want a weapon,” Renana says, firmly. “That’s how I’ll help the most, by killing people.
“Not people,” she corrects herself. “Arabs. Monkeys.”
Yael looks lost and powerless, as if there has been a battle that she knows she has lost. Her closing words sum up the moment State of Rage is capturing. “The tragedy is that right now, we are marking everyone as the enemy,” she says. “We are at a crossroads … we have to understand what this means for us as a people. Is this really the nation we want to become?”
State of Rage aired on Channel 4 and is available online
