Netflix Under Fire over ‘Blood Libel’ Film Depicting Slaughter of Palestinian Family by Israeli Soldiers

Netflix has come under fire for broadcasting a Jordanian movie depicting fictional Israeli soldiers slaughtering a Palestinian family during Israel’s 1948 War of Independence, made by filmmakers who have called Israel a “terrorist” state.

Farha, which was selected to be Jordan’s Oscars contender, was released by the streaming giant on 1 December.

The head of the Otzma Yehudit party MK Itamar Ben-Gvir slammed Neflix over its “hypocrisy” in showing a film full of “incitement,” calling it a “blood libel.”

Israel “is attacked by murderous terrorism even before its establishment. This mind engineering should be handled by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with determination by informing and presenting the true picture of who the murderers and the bloodthirsty are. We must not pass in silence over the attempted blood libel that will echo throughout the world.”

Dan Diker, president of the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs, told the UK-based Jewish Chronicle the film was intended to “destroy [Israel] by all means possible.”

He said: “I find it deeply troubling that Netflix has apparently failed to do the most basic due diligence before supporting and promoting this project.”

Several of the filmmakers behind the project are virulently anti-Israel, the Jewish Chronicle found.

The film’s producer Ayah Jardaneh tweeted last year “Israel is the real terrorist,” “an apartheid state” and posted a “map of Palestine” that left out Israel.

Jardaneh in the past retweeted a post that said “Hamas or his firecracker rockets is not a problem, but seven decades of Israeli brutality and oppression is.”

Co-producer Deema Azar tweeted last year: “the Nakba has not ended. The ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, the indigenous people, has not stopped one day since 1948.”

The film’s director, Darin Sallam, posted on Facebook that “there is still ethnic cleansing” by Israel and has been since 1948.

Farha’s opening credits state that it is “based on true events,” but the film’s director later said that she heard the story as a child.