A story of a 1930s uprising against British colonialism is key to understanding Gaza today
A scene from Palestine 36 shows rebels rallying local Palestinians
Jonathan Cook writes in Middle East Eye on 5 December 2025:
Anyone wondering why the British state and media, despite the latter’s pretension to serve as a watchdog on power, continue to cheerlead Israel’s genocidal slaughter of civilians in Gaza will find the answers in a new film.
It recounts not the current period of history, but a story from nearly 90 years ago.
Palestine 36, directed by the remarkable Palestinian film-maker Annemarie Jacir, illuminates more about the events unfolding for the past two years in Gaza than anything you will read in a British newspaper or watch on the BBC – if, that is, you can find anything at all about Gaza in the news since Donald Trump rebranded the killing and dispossession of Palestinians as a “ceasefire”.
And Palestine 36 does so, unusually for a Palestinian film, with a budget worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster and with a cast that includes names recognisable to western audiences, from Jeremy Irons to Liam Cunningham.
This is a major episode of British colonial history told not through British eyes but, for once, through the eyes of its victims.
The “36” of the title refers to 1936, when Palestinians rose up against British colonial tyranny – more usually, and deceitfully, referred to as a “British Mandate” issued by the League of Nations.
The problem for Palestinians was not just the systematic violence of those three decades of tyranny. It was that Britain’s role as a supposed caretaker of Palestine – an “arbiter of peace” between native Palestinians and mostly Jewish immigrants – served as cover for a much more sinister project.
It was British officials who ushered Jews out of Europe – where they were unwanted by racist governments, including Britain’s – to implant them in Palestine. There, they were actively nurtured as the foot soldiers of a coming “Jewish state” that was supposed to be dependent on Britain and assist in strengthening its imperial, regional agenda.
In effect, an overstretched British empire hoped over time to outsource its colonial role to a “Jewish” fortress state.