AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to just break in to ask you about the death of Mohammad Bakri. You wrote a piece for Haaretz, “Israel Crushed Mohammad Bakri for Daring to Express Palestinian Pain as It Is.” I wanted to ask you about the acclaimed actor and filmmaker, who died at 72 in northern Israel on Christmas Eve. He appeared in more than 40 films, directed documentaries highlighting the experience of Palestinians under occupation, best known for his 2002 documentary, Jenin, Jenin, featuring the voices of Palestinians in the Jenin refugee camp following the devastating Israeli military attack that killed 52 Palestinians. In 2007, Mohammad Bakri spoke to Democracy Now! about interviewing survivors of the Jenin massacre.

MOHAMMAD BAKRI: They wanted to tell their stories, because they were still in shock. When I came in Jenin, I was shocked with what I saw. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t feel. I was really just humiliated as a human being, not as a Palestinian, not as a director, not as an actor, just as a human. How come people can do such things like that in the camp?

AMY GOODMAN: Gideon Levy, if you can talk about the significance of Mohammad Bakri? You wrote about him. You were there for the ceremony with his sons, who are also actors like him. Describe what it was like.

GIDEON LEVY: First of all, on a personal level, I really — I can’t tell you how much I loved him. We spent so much time together, including, by the way, in your New York, because he used to come almost every year to the Israeli Film Festival in the JCC in Manhattan, and we used to meet there from time to time. And in any place he went and whatever he did, he was, on one hand, a cultural icon, a brave Palestinian patriot; on the other hand, another typical victim of the Zionist or Jewish or Israeli machinery, which totally crushed his life and his career.

His film Jenin, Jenin, which was a heartbreaking film about a heartbreaking reality in this refugee camp of Jenin, maybe the most courageous refugee camp in the West Bank and the most devoted one, his film was a authentic expression of the pain of those people. I used to be there so many times in this refugee camp, and I can tell you that what he showed was the real pain of those people.

But Israel is not ready to listen to any other pain, except of the Israeli pain, obviously. And we are talking about 20 years ago, which means it’s not yet Netanyahu. It’s not the yet this fascist government. It’s the legal system of Israel, which has a lot of reputation, the Supreme Court, which is supposed to be a lighthouse of liberalism. And they crushed him, until they brought a situation in which his film was forbidden to be screened in Israel. Can you believe, Amy, a film about the suffer of a refugee camp, based on facts, was censored in Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East? And this crushed him, because he never recovered of it. He lost almost any, any chances to work in Israel as an artist, as a director. He kept on working until his last years and last months. His last film I saw was a five-minute film, excellent and touching. But Israel crushed him, because there is no room for Palestinian patriots in Israel. There is no room for people in his size in Israel, if they are Palestinians or Israeli Arabs, as we like to call them.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Gideon, I just wanted to ask you also — all the attention is on Gaza and the ceasefire, but, meanwhile, very little attention on the West Bank. The Israeli Cabinet approved the establishment of 19 settler outposts, additional settler outposts, on December 11th, and this has been condemned by most European countries, including Canada and Japan. But these these settlements and the additional violence and attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank continue. Your response?

GIDEON LEVY: So, if there was a moment of light in yesterday’s press conference with the president and the prime minister, it was when the president was asked about the West Bank. And I felt — maybe I’m wrong, but I felt a little different tone when it came to it. It seemed that here, at least, the [inaudible] does not see eye to eye with the darling of Donald Trump, namely, Netanyahu.

The West Bank, where I travel at least once a week for almost 40 years now, the West Bank is unrecognizable. Whoever — and I guess both of you have been to the West Bank in the past. Until two years ago, the war in Gaza, it was one West Bank, and in the last two years, with this government, it’s another West Bank.

The settlers see the war in Gaza as a huge historical opportunity, as a chance, really, to implement all the crazy, messianic dreams and fantasies. And they are doing it on a daily basis. The army is collaborating with them on a daily basis. The problem is not the recognition of another 19 settlements. The problem is the violence of the settlers, their behavior, and the cooperation with the army. The soldiers are behaving like in Gaza, at least part of them.

It is impossible to live in the West Bank. After they made Gaza an unlivable place, they really — they are really on their way to turn the West Bank into an unlivable place. Nine hundred checkpoints. Can you live in a piece of land with 900 checkpoints, that you never know which one will be open and which one will be closed? Can you have any normality in this reality? And then, when one day it will explode, Israel will be so surprised and so offended: “How can it be that the Palestinians are raising their violence again?” But what else is left for them?

AMY GOODMAN: Gideon Levy, we want to thank you for being with us, award-winning Israeli journalist, author, columnist for the newspaper Haaretz, member of the editorial board. His latest book, The Killing of Gaza: Reports on a Catastrophe. And thank you to Rami Khouri, Palestinian American journalist and distinguished public policy fellow at American University of Beirut, nonresident senior fellow at the Arab Center Washington DC. We just have 30 seconds, Rami, but I also wanted to get your comment on the passing of Mohammad Bakri.

RAMI KHOURI: You know, Mohammad Bakri represents Palestinian culture, creativity, life and persistence. The Israelis, and the Zionist movement before them, worked overtime, and continue to work overtime, to crush any activism that is not only political activism, but literature, poetry, cinema, art, cooking. Any creative work that Palestinians do that reflects their humanity and their attachment to their ancient land, the Israelis and the Zionist movement want to crush this. The Americans and the British and a few others seem to go along with this by banning activism for Palestine in many Western lands.

And this is an old, old tradition. You know, the Israelis killed Ghassan Kanafani many years ago, and a whole bunch of other prominent Palestinian creative artists. And they’ll continue to do this. And you get the Americans’ system — not the government, but the commercial system — refusing to show, distribute, say, really good Palestinian films that show the reality in Palestine and Israel.

So, there’s many ways in which his death is a continuation of a longer tradition of Western colonial attempts to essentially erase Palestine. Like the British gave Palestine to the Zionist movement in 1917, the Trump today is essentially giving Palestine, Gaza and the West Bank, and other places, South Lebanon and parts of Syria, is giving them to the Israelis. And this is a continuation of a colonial tradition which is troubling. But it’s going on, and we have to deal with it.

AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you for being with us. And on Monday, we’re going to speak with the Palestinian director Cherien Dabis about her new film, All That’s Left of You, a powerful, multigenerational Palestinian epic. Mohammad Bakri stars in it, as well as his sons Saleh and Adam. That’s Monday on Democracy Now!

Next up, starting in January, Trump plans to resume garnishing the wages of student loan borrowers in default. Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: “U’Huh” by Sinkane, performing in our Democracy Now! studio.