Demonstration on Tuesday against the genocide in Gaza at the Hague branch of Leiden University. Activists made an attempt at occupation, the police took them out of it and arrested 74 people. The Journaal did not even make the promotion anymore. The late journal on NPO1 had an item about the hunger in Gaza with images of emaciated babies. As usual, the NOS treated this in passive sentences, as if it were a natural disaster. But that is not the case. The Palestinian population is deliberately starving by the Israeli army. That is a war crime.
Rachel Rosier would not want to go that far. The presenter is central to a remarkable documentary by director Geertjan Lassche: Rachel’s grave. Rosier is investigating “the polarization” in the Netherlands about Gaza. She starts as an Israel supporter who visits a pro-Palestinian demonstration with aversion and gradually starts to think about the issue ‘more nuanced’.
The form is that Rosier looks up namesakes from various groups and makes drawings of them. A Christian Rachel from Urk who is pro-Israel; A Palestinian Rachel who lives under the Israeli occupation; an Israeli Rachel who was murdered by Hamas on October 7, 2023; And a Jewish-Dutch Rachel who lost her nephew at that attack.
The gimmick of the various Rachels is fun, but the most interesting contributions come from people who are not called Rachel, such as the Palestinian-Zeeland Anisa Boonman who explains clear and reasonably what is wrong with Israel. Lion Tokkie, a Sjoa investigator with a Jewish father and SS mother, leads Rosier around in Auschwitz. “For me, Auschwitz is the biggest argument for Israel,” says Rosier. With that she expresses the feelings of many Westerners: after the Sjoa, Jews needed their own, safe place. But Tokkie doesn’t want to know anything about it. He finds the foundation of the Jewish state on other people’s land extremely dubious.
Entry-level documentary
Tokkie and again and again Rosier is invoking to empathize with her own family who was murdered by the Nazis. But Rosier doesn’t want that. She is practicing Christian and does not feel connected to the Jewish side of her father’s family. While her half-Jewish grandfather calls her “the most Jewish” of his grandchildren. She sighs: “I started with certain questions and before I knew it my family was called in.”
The use of Rachel Rosier as a personal storyteller works strongly. She is known for it Sinterklaasjournaal And other children’s programs and comes across as fresh, youthful and sympathetic. She talks freely and uninhibited about things that are only discussed with great caution by others. She makes Rachel’s grave to a handy entry-level documentary.
But it is a strange documentary. A Christian journalist starts with natural pro-Israeli feelings and discovers that there is also another side of the case. For example, she discovers on the West Bank that the Israeli occupier suppresses the Palestinian population. Duh. After this she argues for fewer judgments, listening better to each other and more nuances. The truth is in the middle. Is that so? Is “too much judging” the problem? Is it “polarizing” to condemn genocide and oppression? Or should that be common ground, and the starting point of every documentary about this?
The surprise about Rosiers ‘nuanced’ approach is aptly expressed by Palestinian refugee Marcelle who lost her family in Gaza. Rosier presents her that Dutch Christians stand behind Israel. Marcelle laughs with disbelief and bewilderment: “They are behind Israel?!” She had never heard anything so crazy.