#lyd

A new film about the once-thriving Palestinian city of Lyd, now known as the Israeli city Lod and home to Ben Gurion Airport, has begun screening in the United States. The film is a “science fiction documentary” that depicts the Palestinian city both with and without the 1948 Nakba, when over 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes and villages. In Lyd, Israeli soldiers massacred hundreds of Palestinians in Dahmash Mosque during their takeover of the city. “We use the story of Lyd to symbolize the story of the Nakba, the Palestinian Nakba, the demolition and expulsion of over 600 villages all across Palestine,” explains Rami Younis, a descendant of Nakba survivors from Lyd. Younis and Sarah Ema Friedland, the co-directors of Lyd, join Democracy Now! to share excerpts from their film and discuss the vision behind their project.

transcript:

Join Eyewitness Palestine on Wednesday, March 27th at 12PM ET for our Live from Lyd webinar, featuring a special virtual delegation led by Tamer Nafar (see interview below with EP staff member Moureen), who will take us around Lyd on a custom tour of the city. Lyd, like many Palestinian cities, is an ancient city that's been home to multiple civilizations over its 5,000-year history. It was the site of one of the most grueling massacres of the Nakba and remains haunted by the injustices brought on to it. Today, the community of Lyd--one of the few cities with an integrated Palestinian and zionist population--is marred by addiction and gun violence. We'll hear from Lyd residents about the resilience and struggles they face in the community.

By Moureen Kaki

Tamer Nafar wears many creative hats—he’s a hip-hop artist, a screenwriter, and actor. Nafar is probably most well known as a member and founder of the first and still-leading Palestinian rap band, DAM. Readers should know that the Son of Palestinian Hip-Hop doesn't give very many interviews. He says what he needs to say through his arts: "I chose hip-hop because it gives me a verse of 64 lines," he says. Nafar and the band have released well over 100 songs through single-releases and three albums. They primarily rap in Arabic but will often integrate English and Hebrew. They’re not just known for their music, though, but the resistance-nature of their work. DAM’s music is riddled with themes of Palestinian identity, resistance, and culture. According to Nafar, the band’s founder, the music itself is less a form of resistance and more “resistance-adjacent.”

"Well, nowadays when you have more than 30,000 people killed and art is not stopping it, I'd say that art's role is documenting. I don't think it rescues lives, but I think it's documenting--it's the soundtrack of a revolution. I try to document my life and the lives of Palestinians like me. When you say 'Palestine,' people think of Gaza or the West Bank, but not a lot of people understand what life is like for Palestinians who have an Israeli ID, so I took the initiative to document us. Art is a medicine, but like Advil. It's a certain kind of medicine. It can help but it cannot cure. But to create real change is an economic thing, a power thing, it's a militant thing and lobbying this. This is where change happens. If revolution were a movie, I think art would be mentioned in the credits, not as the main force of change."

If Nafar is right and the arts are indeed more of a method of documentation than resistance, then it might be fair to call Nafar a sort-of experiential historian, too. Beyond the work of DAM, his solo work and film experience tell the many stories of Palestinians in Lyd and beyond. Nafar stars in Junction 48, for which he also did the screenwriting. Junction 48 tells the story of Palestinian rapper from Lyd who’s trying to “make it” in the industry, crossed with the unique struggle of being treated like an outsider in your own homeland, as all Palestinians are treated in Lyd by the Israeli majority. It incorporates challenges that are unique to Lyd: identity crisis and confusion, gun violence, and drug trade and addiction. Those familiar with Nafar personally would be forgiven for thinking the story was loosely based on his own life as a Lyd-based Palestinian rapper. But the film captures a narrative much bigger than any one person. It tells Lyd's unique story of the generational consequences of Zionism in Palestine.

In a different world, one in which Palestine was never colonized, Nafar would have likely never been a Lyd resident. His father's family fled there in 1948 when they were exiled from Yaffa by Zionist militias. They were supposed to leave for Jordan but found what they thought would be temporary refuge in Lyd. The family stayed and eventually, Nafar was born into the Lyd scene. Nafar succinctly and concisely defined Lyd and its possibilities: "[Lyd] would have been the best, most beautiful salad in the world if the chef weren't racist." The effects of that kind of systemic racism are apparent in Lyd's massive drug market and related gun violence. Its history and socio-economic problems often compared with the systemic destruction of Black American communities throughout the United States. Nafar, like many others, has lost community members, including his cousin, to gun violence.

On top of the gang-related violence in Lyd, Palestinians are doubly threatened by armed settlers and the state. Because of the ongoing genocide in Gaza, tensions are particularly high in the mixed Palestinian-Jewish city. Nafar says that the current situation reminds him of 2021, when Occupation Forces attacked Gaza during the Great Return March. But coupled with the increased rise of the extreme Israeli right-wing and power of settlers this time, he says, feels slightly different, "you feel it with the silence. Something that is not tangible. We're not used to the silence." While the situation remains grim, Nafar says that there's only one way for him to find solace.

"With what is happening now in Gaza and the way they managed to silence the Palestinians in Israel, and with the rise of the extreme [Israeli] right-wing, and me losing my cousin, I'm too emotional right now to give you a thoughtful message for good or bad. I know that people want a happy, optimistic view, but our comfort now is just acknowledging the darkness. All of our comfort now is just finding people to sit with us in the darkness. This is my aim now, just finding people in the darkness to share that moment with. I personally don't want to feel good. My people are dying. Why the f**k should I feel good?"

Nafar's blunt honesty goes further. When asked about the future of Lyd his response is succinct: "khara," the Arabic word for sh*t. Sure, it might be pessimistic, but to Nafar's point, many Palestinians, the rapper included, are exhausted by a life dictated by Zionism. It feels unreasonable to expect a rosy, hopeful outlook on the future when so much of Palestinian life is rife with injustice. Nafar lost his cousin to gun violence in Lyd. His family lost his ancestral home. Even the landscape of his life is riddled with these reminders. When shooting a music video for his song, the Son of Lyd, Israeli police stopped him and the video crew six different times while they were trying to record all because they were using a Palestinian flag as a video prop. Nafar explained that he had to go out of his way to cut scenes in the video to ensure that the police did not make too much of the final cut because he wants viewers to know that there is more to Lyd than the drug market and violence.