The Law in These Parts

I will be presenting on this film and can't wait to do so! 


I was incredibly struck by the way in which the director played on the themes of subjectivity and structure (systems of government, in this case Israel). As director Ra'anan Alexandrowicz puts it in the Sundance catalogue “This film is not about the people who broke the law, but about those entrusted with the law.” This is a fascinating take on his work and, I believe, slightly misleading on two points. First, the film was by no means about the lives and struggles of those lawyers, judges, lobbyists and Israeli state officials. It is about the structure of power they facilitate in order to occupy Palestine. The individuals are place holders in the world of international relations (remember that the establishment of the state of Israeli was sanctioned by the Allies in 1946). Second, and I think the film even illustrates this point, is that the law is not "entrusted" in the sense of divine law, but created, forced and established. The law is malleable, intimately tied to human beings and their motives and a construction of social relations.


The film, as I read it, was an essay in five parts that aimed at posing a question, not answering one. That question is simply: "what is the moral foundation of the Israeli occupation of Palestine?" However, that question has a myriad elements, dimension and perspectives that are by no means easily untangled. But I maintain that this is the central question being asked. Not, as the Sundance catalogue frames the question: "Alexandrowicz asks—in both simple and profound terms—can justice truly be served in the occupied territories given the current system of law administered by Israel for Palestinians?"  


The Law in These Parts is not a film arguing for the justice of the system in question, but a film about justice. How is "justice" carried out? What do we- first world Sundancers- call justice? Who has access to justice? What role does violence play in justice? These, again, as I see it, are the questions that the film proposes to ask through the question of foundation. Not trite contemplative questions about the justice served when Palestinians are being forcibly ejected from their homes, as Sundance would have it. The narration of a structure of power, told from within that structure, can not answer questions of its justice in any "objective" fashion. It can only articulate the demands of that systems… what it means by justice. (Remember that the film was financed by the state of Israel and produced by Israeli's). The answers are left to subjects… faithful to an idea. (about this I will undoubtedly have some arguments to make) 


The staggering scope of the film, in my opinion, is that the question of Israel is a question of the first world in general. Israel is a close ally of the United States and as voting citizens we condone their actions through our support- or inactivity- of our government. The film continually plays on this motif of subject/structure in fascinating ways I can't wait to share and explore together!