Palestinians Don’t Need Sidewalks
Produced by Dare to Struggle Film Projects, 2025
Screening in communities around the country
Dare To Struggle Films launched their first documentary about the occupation of Palestine, Palestine Under Siege, shortly after Israel’s retaliation for Gaza’s uprising on October 7 had begun. Palestinians Don’t Need Sidewalks is its sequel, and premiered in Sydney on February 4.
Palestinians Don’t Need Sidewalks takes us into the streets, dwellings, refugee camps, communities and lives of those who have suffered under Israel’s occupation. It also gives a voice to the highly informed activists who have stood up en-masse around the world in solidarity.
Its title conjures up an image that a Palestinian can be relegated to the gutter, forced to make space for the occupier, the boss, the Ubermensch — like a black person in Apartheid South Africa, or a Jew in Nazi Germany, was bullied into obedience.
Those four words bring together the personal and the political, the human experience and the system. They delineate the framework of the film’s investigation and place the extreme acuteness of the present Palestinian reality in its historical context. The title also hints at the normalisation of abuse and impunity.
The film delivers and we plunge deeply into the many issues at hand, and uncover what the world at large would rather we did not see.
The film tackles a complexity of issues in three parts: Genocide, Resistance and Complicity. Footage taken in 2023 in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, and in a refugee camp in Lebanon, is interspersed with historical footage, and augmented with footage shot in Sydney since October 7, 2023, and from news coverage.
The images, interviews, portraits, quotes and news clips are masterfully sequenced to form a whirling stream. Fortunately for us (unlike for Palestinians under occupation), the filmmakers also allow us to catch our breath and reflect, so we can refine our own perspective.
We witness violence and cruelty — from physical and psychological harassment and humiliation, to dispossession, arbitrary detention, food rationing, starvation, assassination, mass murder and beyond.
At the same time we become aware of the indelible spirit of a people resisting extreme injustice, and as the film progresses, of the importance of the solidarity movement that has erupted worldwide.
The film’s sophistication lies in its compositional structure, its adding of layer upon layer, perspective upon perspective, fact upon fact, transparently interconnected, shifting deftly between times, events and locations.
These lively dynamics prod us to join the dots while they build up to numerous break-through moments for us to see, feel and make sense. At such moments the film frees us from the suffocation of the Zionist narrative. We prick through the propaganda and the doublespeak of politicians while the agenda of the powerful is exposed.
We follow the exploits of three Australians (Arts student Rand Darwish, Philosophy professor Peter Slezak and former Greens senator Lee Rhiannon) as they travel to Palestine determined to find out if the assertions that Israel is an apartheid state and that Zionism is a settler colonial project have any foundation.
Genocide
This section examines the history and root causes of the conflict, while we observe the present situation with our Australian trio. Commentary and historical footage corroborate their findings. Such as:
… normal life is disrupted day and night … soldiers armed to the teeth menace unarmed civilians, including children, at checkpoints and anywhere they like … going to school has become an act of resistance … the determination to stay in one’s home has become an act of defiance against the constant threat of eviction … the Israeli authorities control every aspect of Palestinian life … confiscation of Palestinian land and property is ongoing and ruthless … there is one set of laws for Israelis, another for Palestinians … since 7 October ‘23 violence against the occupied Palestinians has intensified … Israeli settlers have been given arms with a licence to kill while they keep stealing more and more land … the killing of minors in the streets has been normalised … arrests, detention and torture ditto…
Some refugees speak about the time before the arrival of Zionism in the region. How friendship between Arab Muslims and Arab Jews was normal then.
When they recall the betrayal by the British, the mask of the real perpetrators of the conflict is taken off: a big empire with its system of white supremacy, reproduced by a little empire under a biblical name claiming supreme rights to a biblical land.
In this first part, the pattern of apartheid, ethnic cleansing and collective punishment is established, implying that the logical next step will be genocide.
Resistance
The filmmakers engage with prominent advocates for Palestinian rights in Australia such as Randa Abdel Fattah, a fearless academic who put her job on the line for speaking out against the Israeli regime, Nasser Mashni, president of the Australian Palestinian Advocacy Network (APAN), and Jordy Silverstein from the Loud Jew Collective.
Their comments contextualise the history of Palestinian resistance. For example, during the Great March of Return in 2018‒19, which was an attempt by refugees in Gaza to claim their homes and farms in Israel, unarmed Palestinians approached the separation fence, but were shot down ruthlessly. More than 30,000 were seriously injured and more than 300 killed, including people wearing media or medic vests. The world at large remained silent and Israel got away with murder.
After the second Intifada (uprising) in 2000, Israel constructed the wall to separate Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank, cutting economic ties and dividing families and communities from each other. The wall is illegal under international law, but still stands today.
Meanwhile our Australian trio find out that the camera has become a powerful means of resistance for an occupied population, documenting Israeli crimes, such as evictions, arrests, demolitions, harassment and killings, then publishing their videos through social media as evidence.
Complicity
On October 7, 2023, Hamas broke out of the Gaza concentration camp, because living conditions there had become unbearable. The White House called the attack “unprovoked”. Israeli leaders openly declared their genocidal intent by bombing the place and its people (“human animals”) to smithereens. This so-called “self-defence” was undertaken with full military support from its western allies, including Australia.
At this point in the movie, images of devastation and survival alternate. And we are made aware of the propaganda and lies blindly regurgitated by the media and political leaders, justifying extreme retaliation and prompting unconditional support. Moreover, by turning the Palestinians into the aggressors and Israel into the victim, Israel was given carte blanche.
Meanwhile our three friends want to know who is cashing in on the profits of war. They had already learned that Israel profits handsomely from its methods of suppressing resistance, by training police in foreign countries and by selling their inventions worldwide. Their surveillance equipment, drones and other weaponry, are regarded as superior, because they have been thoroughly tested out on the Palestinian people.
Darwish, Slezak and Rhiannon return from their trip just before October 7, convinced that Israel is indeed an apartheid state with genocidal intent. We follow them as they join the wave of pro-Palestinian activism.
The ABC and the mainstream media shield Israel from accountability. The Israel lobby — with its influence in Australian politics, media, the arts and public institutions like universities — maintains that Israel has the right to defend itself, even if that means an unthinkable amount of “collateral damage” among ordinary civilians. It also repeats the claim that all Jews unequivocally stand behind Israel at this moment in history.
The film however, shows us another reality, where Jewish Australians proudly proclaim that Zionism is not synonymous with Judaism. We see them participate in the weekly rallies on the streets of our capital cities, as well as in campaigns against Australia’s shameful involvement in the arms trade.
In interviews we learn that Australia is heavily invested in the arms industry and has been secretively building up this engagement for years. Australia has been delivering crucial parts for the weapons Israel uses in their unlawful war, and feeds Israel vital intelligence via Pine Gap, a joint US-Australia military spy base near Alice Springs.
This information, these campaigns and consistent demos rarely make it into the broader news. Australian audiences rely on films like this to find out how their “lucky country” actively contributes to Israeli and US barbarity. Some protesters call Australia “the lackey country”.
The film finishes with an homage to the Palestinian people, and with the sober observation that liberation may only happen through the strength of tenacious international action.
[The film is screening in Magan-djin/Brisbane on February 13 and is available for community screenings. Watch the trailer here.]