While around the world, the ‘Palestinian Stories’ page still exists, when accessing Netflix from within Israeli-held territory, the page has completely disappeared.
In a move that has triggered a campaign whereby users are now canceling their subscriptions to the streaming platform, Netflix suddenly removed its ‘Palestinian Stories’ collection.
The company has maintained that the move was standard and that it had simply discontinued the licenses to these films.
In October 2021, Netflix announced that it would be streaming dozens of films that depicted various kinds of aspects of the struggles and creativity of Palestinians.
The streaming platform had stated that the Palestinian Stories collection “is a tribute to the creativity and passion of the Arab film industry as Netflix continues to invest in stories from the Arab world.”
However, overnight, 24 films were wiped from the platform, leaving only a single movie – Lina Al Abed’s 2019 documentary “Ibrahim: A Fate to Define” – for users in the United States.
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This is even though from the beginning of the collection’s launch, at least 34 films were flatted for selection by the platform, as others were said to be included at a later date.
While Netflix has maintained that its decision is standard and has nothing to do with the tremendous pressure campaign launched against them, since 2021, to remove the Palestinian films, there are still many questions that have gone unanswered.
For example, while around the world, the ‘Palestinian Stories’ page still exists, when accessing Netflix from within Israeli-held territory, the page has completely disappeared, despite the fact that it once contained 28 films. This would indicate that a special decision has been made specifically for Israeli Netflix, the question remaining is whether this was intentional upon a specific request or not.
In addition to this, the Israeli TV series called “Fauda”, or Chaos in English, is still streaming all its series on the Netflix platform. This is despite the fact that the TV show depicts racist caricatures of Palestinians and is focused on Israeli special forces’ operatives who murder Palestinian civilians, raid homes, have affairs with Palestinian women and even attack Gaza.
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Although the series glorifies Israeli apartheid and paints the occupiers as the simultaneous heroes and victims, the show remains on air after a year of Genocide in Gaza.
Not only this, but the show’s co-creator and lead actor Lior Raz says that season 5 of the series (expected to be released in early 2026) will be more militaristic and not seek to “show the other side”.
While Fauda does not show “the other side” in the slightest, rather offering some white-savior stories in which the lead character develops a perverted love affair with a Muslim Palestinian woman who he tries to save from her so-called “terrorist” society, the words of Lior Raz indicate that Fauda’s next season will be even more discriminatory that before.
Netflix has no problem continuing to stream the show, whose cast has had to delay the next series due to so many of its staff actively participating in the war in Gaza.
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In fact, the show’s longtime production team member Meir Mattan was killed by the Palestinian resistance while invading northern Gaza in November of 2023, while one of the show stars Idan Amedi was injured while taking part in the ongoing genocide.
Despite the claims of Netflix that the removal of the Palestinian Stories Collection was routine and not to do with anything political, critics of the move point out their lack of transparency surrounding the removal of the films, combined with the timing of the decision to discontinue the licensing contracts. If anything, due to the nature of the ongoing conflict, these movies are more relevant than ever.
However, the inclusion of a series that literally depicts the Israeli forces as heroes, for killing, besieging, torturing, and enforcing apartheid against Palestinians, is a powerful message from Netflix that they do not take a stand against genocide.
(The Palestine Chronicle)
– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.
