Forty million minutes: witnessing across generations

What is the value of testimony? What kind of effect can it bring about? What kind of action may it incite, for example? It is probably a bit early for questions of such nature. First of all, then, allow us to introduce you to our project. This collective editorial reflects on our recent trip to the West Bank, Palestine in April 2024. Our trip was motivated by the desire to produce a film, as well as a series of reports and photos on the everyday life of inhabitants of the Bantustan-like cities of the West Bank. The original idea of the trip, then, was to focus on documenting the daily life of the residents of the West Bank. But we quickly realised that the term is not particularly useful in describing a condition where ‘everyday’ is nothing more than the interval between one disaster and the next. Furthermore, such catastrophes and their intervals are complementary, not opposing moments. There is no longer, in other words, rest or peace, only grief for the loss and fear of the future.

So there was a question of what to focus on, if it wasn’t for everyday life. For example, we could have chosen the material realities of these cities, cities that in many ways challenge our conventional wisdom about them being spaces of freedom, freedom at least from social norms and conventions, a safety in numbers that makes them the wonderfully peculiar spaces that have been the focus of this wonderful journal. So then, an occupied city is a contradiction in terms. And yet, we chose to focus not so much on the physical characteristics of the cities of the West Bank—the narrow alleyways, the tremendous density, the crumbling infrastructure—nor on the brutal everyday reality imposed upon them by the Israeli occupation. Rather, our focus has been on memory and witnessing. Why? Quite simply, because our conversations with our Palestinian comrades revealed, very quickly, that memory and witnessing were at the forefront of their struggle. But this decision was also driven by the fact that we felt that these dense urban settings could be ideal environments for these to be preserved, and to be carried forward.

Prior to commencing our trip, we knew that murderous raids by the Israeli occupation army had increased sharply after October 7, and also that a new generation of armed resistance groups had sprung up in several cities there, including Jenin, Nablus and Tulkarm. And so we ended up in the latter, in the northwestern West Bank, seeing as it was getting less coverage at the time. In addition, we knew that this city is home to both the camps of Nur Shams and Tulkarm, two of the refugee camps of 1948: urban areas hosting populations displaced in the Palestinian Nakba of that year. Finally, we consciously chose to remain in the area almost for the entire trip, knowing that in this way we would be more likely to witness one of the frequent Israeli army murderous raids, as well as all that precedes and follows these. Indeed, between April 18 and 20, the Israeli army carried out one of its most destructive attacks in the West Bank since the Second Intifada on the Nur Shams camp, killing fourteen Palestinians, including at least one child.

In the following pages, we share some thoughts between us who travelled to Palestine and were eyewitnesses to this attack (Ross Domoney and Antonis Vradis) and Waleed Samer, a resident of Nur Shams and our partner in the project. We commence, of course, from completely different starting points, with very different experiences and privileges, or the lack of the latter. But the core idea behind our project lies precisely in highlighting these differences: in Nur Shams we were united by our common hope for an end to the war not vaguely speaking, but marked specifically by Palestinian liberation.

Traversing the field (Ross Domoney)

After a dull few days in Tel Aviv, where the sight of hipster-looking Israelis smoking joints became a stale reminder of Western life, we finally got on the road to Palestine. We met our comrade Ahmad, who drove us to our final destination. On route, he tells us the West Bank is like islands in the Sea of Israel. Pockets of Palestinian communities, amongst a storm of settlers and checkpoints. We arrived at Tulkarm checkpoint. A group of Palestinians are asking the soldiers to let them through. A soldier walks past and cocks his gun. He has that same bohemian look I saw in Tel Aviv. Here, nearly every Israeli takes part in this cruel and casual war apparatus. They are all soldiers. They are all settlers. We pass through, and luckily, no one is shot. Welcome to Tulkarm, Ahmad says.

We are dropped off at a strategically located hotel between two refugee camps. The next day, we were outside the entrance of the Tulkarm camp to meet our first contact. Two young Palestinians approach us. Adidas and shaved heads. A blacked-out BMW pulls up. One young lad leans in, pulls out a machine gun and points it at us. Luckily, with a smile, and not a loaded magazine. Respect the camp was the sub-text of this welcoming theatric. Our interpreter, a camp resident, arrives and takes us in. This camp hosts around 50–60 Palestinian resistance fighters. We come across our first fighter, who wears a stern face and a scratched silver M16. The introduction doesn't go well. He's not happy that one of us is British. Our fixer brushes it off, but the encounter doesn't give me hope. Soon after, we are told to leave because Israeli drones are overhead. It's hard to know if this is a polite way to make us leave or an actual threat.

That night, we try our luck in Nur Shams camp. A nagging feeling inside me says this is a bad idea because we are going without an interpreter. On the other hand, we need to somehow make our presence known in the vague hope we will find a new connection. A sea of watchful eyes scans us as we walk the dark road to the camp's periphery. Kids run up to simultaneously greet, mock and welcome us. It's not easy to stay focused. We didn't realise then, but shopkeepers were photographing us and sending the pics to local Whatsapp groups. As we arrive at the food joint, a large group of young men awaits us. A parallel clash of tradition and suspicion unfolds. We are welcomed with food and immense Palestinian hospitality. But at the same time, we are surrounded by men, half of whom are not smiling at us. We tried to call our fixer in Tulkarm camp, who can explain in Arabic who we are. He doesn't answer. Then, a fighter bursts into the restaurant with his gun. We stayed calm, and he made it clear we were not welcome in the camp. There is this looming feeling that the army could show up any minute, and this already abnormal scene could turn into hell.

What would this community make of us if the army turned up soon after our arrival? They could accuse us of being Israeli spies. Fuck I thought, we are we losing access to the second camp now. A young man walks into the commotion called Waleed … his English is good, a sweet smile sits on his face. He tells us, eat your food and leave. Call me if you need anything from the camp, and I will try to help you. We sleep and hope.

Forty million minutes (the witnesses of the testimony, Antonis Vradis)

Very soon, we return to the camp with the help of Waleed. Our primary purpose is to speak with Abu Majen, an 87-year-old survivor of the Nakba.

In his right hand he is holding the key to his house. The house itself has of course ceased to exist for more than three quarters of a century. Seventy-six years, to be precise: one quick calculation tells me that these correspond to forty million minutes, or so. Yet at the moment his much younger relatives enter the room, bag and key in hand, those minutes vanish. Time disappears. We relive with him the flight, the wild pursuit, we see him running away. We now witness his own testimony.

A few minutes later he calls us to the terrace of his house to show us the extent of the destruction from the recent army raids. ‘Look here’, the neighbour's destroyed house. ‘See there’, the uprooted power poles. ‘See across from us, the bomb dropped by the army drone months ago,’ hovering in the rubble ever since. Neither activated nor inactive, not (yet) murderous but by no means harmless, it is a metaphor, a grotesque metaphor and a real danger to his own life: he is not safe here, as he was not there, a witness to an old disaster now placed in the context of a new one. Or, rather, a witness to an old disaster that never went away—even when he did

So what is the value of his testimony? In ‘Remnants of Auschwitz’, Giorgio Agamben claims that what can motivate a prisoner to survive is the future possibility of their testimony, its capturing and transmission in time. He cites the example of Primo Levi, a non-writer who took up his pen in order to tell everyone his story of survival, ‘even if they had other things to do’.

From the beginning of the journey, it has attracted my attention that in Arabic, as in Greek, the term martyr (shahid) had as its primary meaning the one who bears a testimony, in the sense of recording their (religious) experience. Levi with his pen, Abu Majen with his nod, they both are double witnesses: eyewitnesses of their own passions. Subsequently, the term was extended to the ones who were put to death for their testimony.

I look back at Abu Majen clutching the key tightly. I imagine him in his house, before. A child in bygone, relatively more peaceful times. His testimony is two-fold: a part of his life ended the day he left in tatters, an eleven-year-old child loaded as it were in a cart. What remains of his life is now devoted to the testimony-as-record of this partial death. In the absence of a door, the key has since kept locked away the part of his life trapped in his vanished home. Abu Majen is only partially alive, as was Primo Levi. A survivor, a witness to the horror he experienced, then devotes part of the rest of his life to communicating that experience—even to those who have other things to do.

Soon the army invades and we leave the camp as fast as we can. But before doing so, we managed to interview Jafar, one of the resistance fighters. Two days later, while the army is operating in Nur Shams, we will receive the tragic news … 

The value of testimony (Waleed Samer)

Jafar, Jafar, Jafar, my best friend. It pains me beyond belief to talk about someone so influential in my life. Jafar, my mighty twenty-year-old. Jafar, who had a life like you and me. Who breathed like you and me. The difference, of course, is that he no longer has his life, it was taken away from him because he defended Nur Shams, this small strip of land that hosts the refugees from Haifa, Jaffa and Akka, those who were hunted by the Israeli army in 1948 … They killed him because he was a fighter. Think, for a minute, what you will do now that you have learned that Jafar has been murdered. Will you stay silent? I want to be honest with you. Yes, you will remain silent. But why, you ask me. Because it's not your friends who were killed by the Israeli army. Your family lives in safe conditions. You can go to your work, or to your studies, in a relatively easy and safe way. For us Palestinians, none of this is true. Every aspect of our daily lives carries a difficulty. Jafar had something inside him that would not allow him to hide the truth. For this reason, he chose to become a resistance fighter. Jafar, I remember you from so long ago. I remember you showing me a video of children crying and screaming in Gaza, and asking me, ‘is this fair, Waleed?’

Jafar was loved and respected by all. Everyone at the camp knew him since he was a small child, and he is remembered for his smile and his love for the camp. I would now like to speak to you from the heart. Honestly, every day the pain is getting worse. Every day I think about him, every day I see the photos and videos with him on my cell phone, and I ask myself: ‘did that smile go away?’ I won't see him again, but I miss him a lot. How can I live a normal life again? Without his smile, his sounds, his eyes, the pain is unbearable.

I will never forget the moment I saw his picture from the moment he was murdered. His body lying on the ground, blood everywhere. I was in shock for a while, looking at the picture of him, crying. Even now, I look back at that photo everyday, his beautiful face, and I cry. Every day I sit in my room, smell his clothes and remember him. I remember the last moment I saw him and what we said. Honestly, I am very proud of my friend, my friend Jafar, the resistance fighter (kabila) of the camp. It's just a small group of youths in the camp trying to defend it with arms. My friend was part of it and was murdered in cold blood for that reason. Where will they be held accountable? Who can stop them?

If me, as his friend, have so much pain in my heart, what will his only brother, his sisters, his father, his mother feel? With this in mind, I asked his mother to say a few words. This is what she had to say:

Born in 2004, Jafar lived like any other Palestinian child in the camp. When younger he had many health problems, but managed to overcome them. He grew up and received his education in the schools of the Agency (UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East), which he managed to complete. But there were so many things that pulled him away from education. Jafar lived and breathed for the resistance, despite his young age. He did not miss a reception of a parolee, a martyr's funeral, or any time when the defence of his camp would be required.

The first time he was prosecuted by the authorities, he was arrested because he refused to remain silent about the injustice. He remained persecuted for a long time, until a resistance group was established in our own camp. He was one of the first to participate, with passion and drive. I remember once telling him that if the army invaded the camp, he should look to escape. He got so angry with me, and he said: ‘I'm here and I'm waiting for them. How could I think of escaping if they come?’

Jafar Mutabak was martyred fighting, because he did not want to surrender, on April 20, 2024.

Instead of an epilogue

What we recorded here, as well as in a short news video and a larger documentary that we are preparing, is all normal: normal, in the sense that Palestinians face operations of this type almost every day. Everything is normal: the raids, the murders, the destruction of any infrastructure that can sustain life, the collective punishment. At the same time, this violence is normal in an additional sense: it enables and sustains our own privileged Western everyday normality. For every smart device, for every job perk or drink at a trendy bar we enjoy, there is a gun pointed at a Palestinian by a settler in this advanced Western outpost. In this way, the double testimony of the Palestinians, their destruction and its recording, simultaneously functions as a testimony of the moral bankruptcy of our own, the moral bankruptcy of the West. The long spring of 2024, with the courageous student demonstrations in the heart of the universities of the western metropolises, shows that something might begin to change: witnessing our western bankruptcy in the mirror may finally become a fuse. Brutally beaten by the police, the students shout: ‘Palestine is everywhere’. This is true, of course. But Israel is also everywhere: a grotesque example, but not an exception, of the destruction wrought by the West's insatiable thirst for power and privilege. Freedom, then, to Palestine. And freedom to all of us.

This editorial is part of a much larger project celebrating and documenting Palestinian memory, which includes a future documentary. To find out more, and to support our project if you like, please watch our trailer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRRMZ5kfL_k) and visit our crowdfunding (https://gogetfunding.com/help-us-produce-a-documentary-and-support-families-in-hardship-in-the-west-bank/) page.

The documentary is produced by Shadowgraph Media (https://www.shadow​graph.co/), follow @shadowgraph_media (Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/shadowgraph_media) and @shadowgraph_m (Twitter, https://x.com/Shadowgraph_m).

With our warmest thanks to Ahmad Al-Bazz for his kind support throughout our trip.

To accompany this and the previous Editorial, we made accessible twenty articles on Israel/Palestine. Emphasizing the immediate necessity for a ceasefire and end to the occupation, we aim to underscore the urgency of halting violence and advancing peace negotiations.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ross Domoney

Ross Domoney is an award-winning documentary creator and video journalist from the UK. He directs Shadowgraph, a new media platform that explores the Sci-Fi-like quality of contemporary politics. Email: [email protected]

Antonis Vradis

Antonis Vradis works at the School of Geography&Sustainable Development, University of St Andrews, Scotland. Email: [email protected]

Waleed Samer

Waleed Samer is a Linguistics student who lives in Nur Shams, a 1948 refugee camp in the occupied West Bank of Palestine. He is a fixer and co-producer who works with local and international journalists. Email: [email protected]