Pierre Rehov
Pierre Rehov is the pseudonym of a French-Israeli film maker and novelist, most known for his movies which are almost exclusively based on the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Rehov was born to a Jewish family from Algiers, then a French department. According to his website, there he experienced terrorism at a young age. In the sixties, Rehov with his mother and younger brother left Algeria to join his father, already in France.[1] So his family became a part of as many as 250,000 other Jews and about one pied-noirs (French settlers) fleeing Algeria, which was to become independent the next year. He made later a film on the Jewish refugees (Silent Exodus) describing the fate of the million Jews who fled Arab countries after 1948. He chose not to describe his own community from Algeria, since the Algerian war was a colonial problem involving France more than the Jewish community. Although he recalls that Jews in Algeria, had been suffering of Muslim antisemitism for decades, even when Algeria was part of France.
Rehov says he was not a pro-Israeli activist until 2000, when he saw the death of Muhammad al-Durrah on television, and doubted its authenticity. He, among others, requested an investigation into the murder of al-Durrah, in which he claimed that it was Palestinian gunfire that killed the child. This investigation was also featured in the film Decryptage. Since then, he has been working mostly in the Palestinian territories, and other Arab countries, including in Iraq, where he was embedded in the US army as a free lance reporter.
His film "The road to Jenin" lists number of casualties acknowledged by both Palestinians and Israelis.
Rehov claims that every reporter must be (or appear to be) pro-Palestinian to work in the Palestinian territories safely and this, among other things, creates systematic anti-Israeli bias, especially on French media outlets. He advocates a two-state solution, for Palestinians and Israelis to live side by side, but does not believe that peace will be possible for many generations.
In January 2008, Rehov was embedded in the 4/1 US cavalry in Baghdad, where he filmed hours of dailies, showing the situation in Iraq from the field. Those images are part of his last documentary "The path to darkness".
In 2008 Rehov moved to the United States due to what he described as a growing climate of antisemitism in France, but three years later moved to Tel Aviv, Israel, where he now lives.
Rehov has a girlfriend, as well as a son and daughter.
Filmography
Rehov has created 8 films about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its treatment in the media:
- The Road to Jenin - a response to Jenin, Jenin, a controversial documentary produced by Mohammed Bakri, in order to portray what Bakri calls "the Palestinian truth" about the "Battle of Jenin".
- The Trojan Horse - this film argues that Yasser Arafat's true intentions were not a two-state solution, but a Palestinian state on the territory of all of Israel.
- Holy Land - Christians in Peril - a film which exposes the flight of Christians from PA-controlled lands.
- Silent Exodus - a film that talks about the Jewish exodus from Arab lands.
- Hostages of Hatred - how the Palestinian right of return, supported by the UN, has left Palestinians in camps for half a century and, as Rehov argues, originated the present unsolvable situation in the Middle East.
- From The River to the Sea was voted Best Film at the 2006 Liberty Film Festival
- The War of Images
- Suicide Killers - 2006 documentary film that purports to explore the psychological condition of suicide bombers. Released in theaters, in New York and Los Angeles, and distributed on DVD by WEA, Suicide Killers was considered for the Hollywood Oscars but not nominated.
- First comes Saturday, then comes Sunday - 2007 documentary film about the persecution of Christians under Islamic rule in the Middle East
- The Path to darkness - 2011 ( to be released )
Novels
- Cellules Blanches - Published by the major French publisher, Albin Michel. Soon to be translated in English, under the title "White Cells". A thriller about terrorism.
See also
- Media coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict
- Muhammad al-Durrah
- Pallywood