04/21/2026
The following is a letter sent by the Merrick-Bellmore Board of Rabbis to the Bellmore Movies and Showplace regarding the screening of the film "Palestine 36".
Merrick-Bellmore Board of Rabbis
Merrick, New York
April 21, 2026
Management
Bellmore Movies and Showplace
Bellmore, New York
Dear Management,
We write to you as the Merrick-Bellmore Board of Rabbis, representing the Jewish community of Merrick, Bellmore, and the surrounding area. We are deeply troubled by your theater's decision to screen the film Palestine 36.
We do not write as opponents of free expression, nor do we believe that difficult historical subjects are beyond the reach of cinema. We write because this film has been widely identified — by historians and critics — as a work of serious historical distortion that renders Jewish people as faceless villains and erases their humanity from the record. In the current climate of rising antisemitism, the screening of such a film in our community carries consequences that cannot be ignored.
Oren Kessler, author of Palestine 1936: The Great Revolt and the Roots of the Middle East Conflict — the definitive scholarly work on the very period depicted — has written that the film "defies — and at times invents — the historical record to rewrite the past in service of a contemporary political agenda." He describes it as presenting "the Great Arab Revolt as a morality play of colonial cruelty and Arab resistance, while rendering its primary targets, the Jews of Mandatory Palestine, voiceless pantomime figures at best."
The erasure of Jewish voices from the film is stark. As Kessler documents in his substack article (https://orenkessler.substack.com/p/i-wrote-palestine-1936-the-film-palestine), there is precisely one speaking Jewish character in the entire two-hour film, who utters exactly two words. Nearly 400,000 Jews lived in Mandatory Palestine in 1936 — rendered entirely invisible. Common Sense Media, the mainstream family media guide, independently confirmed that "no Jewish characters are developed in the story" and that Jewish people are referred to throughout only as "the settlers."
The film's historical distortions are equally serious. Spiked magazine concluded that the film "suffers from a big problem: it is not true," documenting how it misrepresents the British role, falsifies the timeline of violence to make Jewish self-defense appear as unprovoked aggression, and omits the Arab High Council's openly antisemitic character entirely. Most glaring is the complete erasure of Haj Amin al-Husseini — the Grand M***i of Jerusalem, leader of the Arab Revolt, and later N**i SS collaborator who advocated for the extermination of Jews during the Holocaust. As Kessler has noted, omitting al-Husseini from a film about the Arab Revolt is like making a film about N**i Germany without Hi**er.
We raise these concerns in a moment of unprecedented danger. Antisemitic incidents have reached record levels across the country. Jewish families in our own community have experienced fear in ways many of us had hoped were confined to history. A film that strips Jewish people of humanity, historical complexity, and even a speaking role does not exist in a vacuum — it enters a community already exposed to hateful rhetoric and adds fuel to a fire that is already burning.
We ask you — as neighbors and as members of this community — to reconsider this screening. We would welcome the opportunity to meet with you in person to discuss our concerns.
Sincerely,
Rabbi Ira Ebbin, Congregation Ohav Sholom
Rabbi Josh Dorsch, Merrick Jewish Centre
Rabbi Mickey Baum, Temple Beth Am
Rabbi Rishe Groner, Congregation Beth Ohr
