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Visit Palestine
 What drives a young, well-educated Westerner to
volunteer as a “peace activist” in the Middle East?
Caiomhe Butterly is one of a growing number of volunteers who risk
their own safety to intervene in the long-running and bloody
conflict between Israel and Palestine. Several internationals,
including her, have now been injured. Some have died.
In this film, she describes witnessing the
aftermath of the attack on Jenin in April 2002. The film follows her
work, the main emphasis being “the accompaniment of communities at
risk”. Despite being threatened, shot in the leg and deported later
that year, she is determined to go back.
In the interim, she brings her story back to her native Ireland at
public meetings, receives a Time Magazine “European Hero Award”, and
travels to post-war Iraq to visit the Palestinian refugee camps. She
arrives back in Jenin, shortly before a young woman from that
community,Hanadi Jaradat, blows herself up in a suicide bombing in
Haifa.
Activists such as Butterly are usually
stereotyped as lunatics, meddlers or saints. This film offers an
insight into a brave, honest, determined yet self-critical woman who
takes direct action to the limit, with no quest for glory. She also
serves as a conduit into the everyday lives of Palestinians,who are
also usually presented to the viewer in a one-dimensional way, as
fighters or victims, heroes or fanatics. The film gives us a rare
chance to see what she calls “the spaces of beauty and joy” created
by a people under occupation.
'An astonishing piece of work, a wonderful film,
quite unlike anything I've seen'
John Pilger
'...a passionate indictment of the Israeli
military in the Jenin refugee camp...this is raw, urgent
movie-making'
The Guardian
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