Israeli Court Lifts Ban on Film

"Jenin, Jenin," described by the filmmaker, Mohammed Bakri, as a fact-based documentary but denounced by Israeli critics as false and propagandistic, examines an intense, close-quarters battle 19 months ago in the heart of a West Bank refugee camp.

In weighing the case, the high court did not attempt to reconcile conflicting claims about the film. It only sought to decide whether the country's film censorship board had overstepped its bounds last year when it banned public screenings of the work in Israel.

The three judges' unanimous verdict: The censors went too far.

The ban "unnecessarily violated freedom of speech, and contradicts basic principles of human liberty," Justice Dalia Dorner wrote. "The censorship board isn't authorized to decide what is the truth and what is a lie."

Bakri, who had appealed the film board's ruling, called the decision a victory for free speech.

"I'm proud that justice was done and the truth came to light," he told reporters. "Every truth has two sides -- our side and your side -- and the two truths are one big truth."

Israeli military reservists who took part in the eight-day battle, together with the families of slain Israeli soldiers, were outraged by the decision and vowed to continue efforts to block screenings.

"You are a liar, you hate Israel!" David Zangen, a physician who served as a medic during the fighting, shouted at Bakri outside the courtroom.

"If you believe this film, those who fell in battle and risked their lives did so in vain, and their lives were worthless," Hagai Tal, whose brother Roi was killed in Jenin, told Israel Radio.

Throughout the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict, one constant theme has been the two sides' widely differing interpretations of violent events. But rarely have these competing narratives diverged so sharply as they did in the wake of the Israeli army's April 2002 incursion into Jenin.

The fighting in the camp -- in the final days of a massive West Bank military operation launched in response to a string of Palestinian suicide bombings in Israel -- left 23 Israeli soldiers and 52 Palestinians dead, and reduced a large area of a tightly packed slum to rubble.