Netflix is under fire for screening a movie depicting Israeli soldiers executing a Palestinian family in cold blood, made by filmmakers who have a track record of inflammatory comments about the Jewish state.

The film, Farha, set in the 1948 Israeli War of Independence, is being launched on Netflix in most countries from 1 December, and is likely to be Jordan’s entry to next year’s Oscars.

Dan Diker, president of the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs, told the JC that 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.”

Mike Pence Tweet and Ayah Jardaneh

A tweet from one of Farha's producers

In an investigation into the filmmakers, the JC and activist group GnasherJew discovered that producer Ayah Jardaneh tweeted last year that “Israel is the real terrorist” and posted a “map of Palestine” that erased all trace of Israel.

She also tweeted that Mike Pence was supporting “an apartheid state, an occupier and Zionism”.

Addressing Mr Pence, she wrote: “If you love them so much give them your land and leave your house live as a refugee and let them live there instead”.

In 2014, Ms Jardaneh retweeted a post that said “Hamas or his firecracker rockets is not a problem, but seven decades of Israeli brutality and oppression is”.
She has also used the hashtag #27027KM, described as “the area of all Palestine from the river to the sea”.

Ms Jardaneh, who works at the Amman-based company TaleBox, is not the only member of the team to have made such controversial statements online, the JC found.

In 2012, co-producer Deema Azar — who has also used the provocative #27027KM hashtag — attended a talk by controversial vicar Stephen Sizer, who was accused of posting antisemitic material online.

At a disciplinary hearing in May, a Church tribunal heard 11 allegations of antisemitism against Mr Sizer, who was accused of causing “profound offence to Jews” between 2005 and 2017. He denied the charges, saying he attacked only Israel, not Jews.

farha director Darin J. Sallam credit Talebox

Farha director Darin J. Sallam (Talebox)

Ms Azar posted at the time that his talk was “great, informative about the topic of Zionism”.
And in June 2021, she tweeted: “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, has also made anti-Israel comments on social media. In May 2021, she posted on Facebook that “there is still ethnic cleansing” by Israel and has been since 1948.

Controversy also surrounds the accuracy of the film. Its opening credits state it is “based on true events”, and its makers say it portrays the war from the perspective of Palestinians, who call it the “nakba”, or catastrophe.

However, it appears not to be based on a documented incident, but on a story told to its director in childhood.

The film’s director, Jordanian Darin Sallam, has said that its main character, a teenage girl named Farha, who witnesses the massacre of her family while locked in a basement, is a “Palestinian Anne Frank”.

But in an interview, Ms Sallam revealed that the story was based on a tale she had once been told about a girl who had escaped from the war to Syria, not recorded fact.

Israel’s new security minister Itamar Ben Gvir attacked it this week as a “blood libel that will reverberate across the world”.

Ms Jardaneh, Ms Azar and Ms Sallam did not respond to requests for comment in time for publication. Netflix said it was “looking into the matter”.