Jaffa, The Orange’s Clockwork

The orange may not seem like the most obvious point of departure for an examination of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but during the last century, the disputed border area between Israel and the territories was one of the world’s biggest exporters of this ‘orange gold’ (Source: UniFrance 2011, np link).

Long before the founding of the State of Israel, oranges were transported from [the Palestinian city of] Jaffa to all over the world; later, the orange became more famous than the city (Source: Hamdorf 2016, np link).

In Jaffa, The Orange’s Clockwork, director Eyal Sivan … (Source: UniFrance 2011, np link).

… unveils the untold story of what was once a communal symbol, and an industry common to Arabs and Jews in Palestine … (Source: Anon 2020, np link)

… recalls the early days when Israelis and Palestinians still cultivated the [orange] plantations together… (Source: Hamdorf 2016, np link).

… [in] a once economically thriving Arab Jaffa, whose prolific and profit-generating orange groves attracted local and neighboring labor in droves for picking, packaging and export …(Source: Anon nd, np link).

… [and] uses the oranges of Jaffa as a tool to address the [ongoing] Israeli-Palestinian conflict, just like the olive groves and lemon groves that have become metaphors for the Palestinian struggle today. He draws on the symbolic power of Jaffa in the collective consciousness and takes us to the root of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by revealing all the meanings an orange carries (Source: Anon 2012b, np link).

… [including how] Jaffa oranges … symbolize the Palestinians’ lost homeland (Source: Hamdorf 2016, np link).

[To do this, he] uses a great deal of archive footage, from the very earliest photography in 1840 … (Source: UniFrance 2011, np link).

… and cinematographic documents … (Source: Sivan nd, np link).

… right up to crisp, modern video … (Source: IDFA nd, np link).

… with newsreels, advertising and industry films in English, French, Hebrew, and other languages (Source: Hamdorf 2016, np link).

The past Sivan wants to show is quite different. He sought out archival material showing … (Source: Korteweg 2009, np).

… the orange groves at a time when Arab Jaffa was one of Palestine’s most populated and thriving cities[,] … (Source: Sivan nd, np link).

… how Arab transporters loaded their ships in Jaffa, how Jews and Arabs picked, sorted, and packed oranges, how they spoke Arabic with each other (Source: Korteweg 2009, np).

[He projected this archive footage] on the walls of their offices or on tablecloths hung up in [the] living rooms … (Source: UniFrance 2011, np link).

… [of]] contemporary witnesses, historians … … (Source: Hamdorf 2016, np link).

… art experts, poets [,] … political analysts, … [o]range eaters and pickers … each giv[ing] his or her perspective on the archive footage. (Source: UniFrance 2011, np link).

Well-chosen music, from different times and cultures, accompanies the images (Source: Célérier 2011, np link).

The images are asking the questions and the people are reacting to those questions (Source: Caruso 2010, np link).

Their reactions were unanimous: we used to work together, why is that impossible now (Source: Korteweg 2009, np)?

[M]any … remember the more harmonious times when Jews and Arabs still worked side by side in the orchards (Source: UniFrance 2011, np link).

Palestinians and Israelis cross and combine (Source: Anon 2014a, np link).

Israeli poet and journalist Haim Gouri … remembers his childhood when large orange groves still stretched between Jaffa and Tel Aviv (Source: Hamdorf 2016, np link).

[Jaffa: the clockwork’s orange shows how] over the years [the Jaffa orange] has become increasingly laden with ideological significance … [by] reconstructing how Jaffa started out as a Palestinian place name before becoming an Israeli brand name, and how the orange harvest shifted from a joint undertaking into … (Source: UniFrance 2011, np link).

… an ideological bone of contention … (Source: Hamdorf 2016, np link).

… [and] a symbol used by both parties in the escalating conflict (Source: UniFrance 2011, np link).

The [film shows the] image of the orange, rebranded by the Palestine Liberation Organisation as a grenade, is the fruit dripping with the blood of the lost lands and its people (Source: Anon 2012a, np).

By analyzing the Jaffa orange through archive footage and accounts of trauma or victory, dependent on the interviewee, the docu showcases a clear timeline of cooperation to expulsion to destruction (Source: AmyNies 2024, np link).

Photography [as an artform] began in 1839, and Khalil Khaed was the first Palestinian photographer to immortalize Palestinians in citrus fields and their physical relationship with the land. Then the Israelis erased the Arab presence and imposed their own representations. ‘We first appropriated the image, and then the land’ explains an Israeli historian … With painting, too, the settlers saw themselves as a continuation of Orientalism. They disguised themselves as the one they came to replace. The narrative of ‘poorly exploited and infertile Arab land’ took root. Zionist propaganda uses highly organized iconography and completely controls the images produced to construct the myth of an abandoned land where they come to introduce modernity. ‘The cliché that colonization brings progress!’ Elias Sanbar emphasizes. This image will be reflected in images of healthy work, songs, dances, radiant, emancipated women in shorts … It is Israeli-style socialist realism, the colonial dream that produces the oranges that the East sends to the West (SourceL jcdurbant 2010, np link).

Although not treated in any detail, unfortunately, the role the colonial powers played in the region inevitably comes up for discussion. The British imperialists are condemned by both Jews and Arabs. The film asserts that a turning point in the promotion of Jewish settlement to Palestine came in 1936 when dockworkers in the port city of Jaffa walked out for six months. The British, determined to maintain citrus exports, issued a permit to build a port across the bay at Tel Aviv, provoking outrage from the mostly Arab strikers. As one Arab worker relates, ‘It wasn’t the Jews, it was the English. It wasn’t the Arabs. It was the English—and so friction grew between them’ (Source: Parsons 2011, np link).

After the Nakba [in 1948] … (Source: Anon nd, np link).

… Jaffa was ruined under the bombs and most of its population was gone … (Source: Sivan nd, np link).

… the Israeli state rebranded ‘Jaffa’ as a symbol of an Arab-free Israel … (Source: Anon nd, np link).

… [and] registered the Jaffa trademark (Source: Emeraude 2010, np link).

An international advertising campaign imposed the name ‘Jaffa’, [as] a trademark, concealing the city of Jaffa, its more than a hundred-year-old orange groves, and the history of the Jewish Arab cooperation over this legendary fruit (Source: Sivan nd, np link).

From the picking of the fruit to its packaging before exportation, the orange was a source of revenue for thousands of peasants and workmen, not only from Palestine, but from Egypt, Syria and Lebanon too. Jews and Arabs worked together in the orange groves. These images were progressively replaced by socialist realist images, Israeli style, depicting labor and songs, emancipated women in shorts, etc.: it was the spreading of the ‘Jewish Labor’, the socialist call to action, excluding the Arabs (Source: Sivan nd, np link).

In the 1950s and 1960s, the Jaffa Orange finally became an essential component of the ‘nation branding’ with which the young State of Israel advertised itself worldwide. Even stars like Louis Armstrong and Ingrid Bergman had themselves photographed with the fruit, ensuring that the Jaffa Orange became a global brand (Source: Sivan 2010, np link).

The golden apples, as they are called in Hebrew, were Israel’s most important export, and the fruit’s positive image certainly suggested its country of origin. The young state essentially used the brand to conduct foreign policy; the Jaffa citrus fruits, exported worldwide, were simultaneously emissaries and icons, Israel’s public face and global agent (Source: Rebhandl 2010, p.15).

Investments in advertising budgets were considerable (Source: Emeraude 2010, np link).

Discussing the use of the Jaffa orange in advertising campaigns [in Sival’s film], Zvi Kenan, former chairman of the Citrus Marketing Board of Israel admits, ‘We knew we were promoting Israel’s cause to the public…. In ’76 we learned it was second only to Coca-Cola in public awareness’ (Source: Parsons 2011, np link).

[T]he world-famous Jaffa orange [was] at one time an international brand second only in international public awareness to Coca-Cola and, along with the Uzi submachine gun, one of Israel’s most successful exports, particularly from the Fifties to the Seventies, when nearly five million boxes of Jaffa oranges were shipped each year (Source: Crowdus 2012, p.24 link).

[This is how] Jaffa oranges … became a founding myth of the State of Israel (Source: Hamdorf 2016, np link).

[I]n the case of the Jaffa Orange, … [p]olitical propaganda and advertising … are almost identical and become an important building block in a country’s nationalist historiography (Source: Sivan 2010, np link).

Through a careful reading of the visual representation of the [Jaffa] brand, the film reflects on western phantasms related to the ‘Orient,’ the ‘holy land,’ and the State of Israel (Source: Anon 2020, np link).

[The film’s] extremely rich in historical research and contemporary analysis, [this film] manages … to take us to the wonderful scents of the missing orange groves, and to leave us the bitter taste of destructive state violence (Source: Célérier 2011, np link).

[It] use[s] the Jaffa orange to deconstruct the history of Zionism and the project of nationalising and creating a collective Israeli identity (Source: Hammad 2011, np link).

Jaffa’s orange is one of the symbols that helped build the Zionist discourse about Palestine: a ‘desert we have made bloom’ (Source: Sivan nd, np link).

[One historian in the film argues that t]he orange would become a symbol of Zionist ideology [because] ‘The Israel of oranges is an Israel without Arabs’ (Source: Emeraude 2010, np link).

[It] takes Zionism to task in several ways: as a form of colonialism that violently displaced the Arab population; as a censorship force that subjected its own history to a rigid image policy; and as a quasi-Stalinist attempt to create a new, Jewish human being who, nevertheless, navigates capitalism so well that he managed to establish the Jaffa orange as an international trademark (Source: Olbert 2010, np).

Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, professor of history, … says [in the film], ‘There is a difference between those who belong to the country and those who claim that the country belongs to them.’ It’s not the same situation. This ongoing attempt to create belonging ‘this orange is mine…’ shows the impossibility of many Israelis to consider belonging to the place; they have to appropriate all the time. This is what Elias Sanbar is saying in the film, ‘There’s a difference between loving a woman and possessing a woman’ (Source: Sivan in Hammad 2011, np link).

An elderly Palestinian worker explains with no apparent resentment how he came to be employed in the very orchards stolen from his family after 1948. He tells how their lands were seized by the government and run by the Custodian of Absentees’ Land who ‘took the harvests for themselves’, even as he toiled in his own orchards (Source: Parsons 2011, np link).

[O]ne former Zionst / Israeli commander during the battle for Jaffa [says in the film] … ‘This destroyed world still lives inside me. And with the years its presence grows more intense.’ If there is a better description of the manner in which history can haunt one of its ‘victors,’ I have not encountered it (Source: Levine 2023, p.380)

Today, Jaffa is a violence-plagued suburb of Tel Aviv. And Thais pick oranges in Israeli orchards because Palestinian workers are trapped behind the wall, for whose construction further Palestinian groves were cleared. A political solution for the region, torn apart by perpetual war, is hardly conceivable. Nevertheless, Sivan’s film, almost defiantly, offers a spark of hope in the idea of ​​returning to the region’s pre-Zionist history and its cooperative values. That would also mean a conscious rejection of the concept of a Jewish state. An undertaking that is unlikely to gain majority support (Source: Anon 2010a, p.21).

Sivan has been living between France and Israel since 1985 (Source: Anon nd, np link).

He divides his time between London, where he teaches, and Paris, where his family lives. [Sivan:] ‘In a sense, I’m running away from self-censorship. I admire friends who continue to struggle in Israel. It was my choice never to accept government funding; I find it easier to find it here. But I need the contact with Israel. I spend a month and a half there each year teaching’ (Source: Korteweg 2009, np).

Currently, Sivan is a Reader in media production and co-leads the MA program in Film, video and new media at the school of Arts and Digital Industries, at the University of East London (Source: Anon 2011a, np).

A professor at the Sorbonne and then at the University of Lille III, [Sivan] received the Prix de Rome from the Ministry of Culture in 1990 and resided for a year at the Villa Medici. More recently, Eyal Sivan teaches at the Sapir University Institute in Israel and at the Arab Film School in Nazareth (Source: Vé 2010, np).

Known for his controversial films, Sivan directed more than 10 worldwide awarded political documentaries and produced many others. He is the founder and artistic director of the Paris-based documentary films production company momento! and the film distribution agency Scalpel. He is the founder and chief editor of South Cinema Notebooks, a journal of cinema and political critic[ism] edited by the Sapir Academic College in Israel where he lectures regularly. Presently Sivan in an Honorary Fellow at University of Exeter UK (Source: Anon nd, np link).

[He] is an Israeli filmmaker … who doesn’t shy away from controversial subjects in his essay films (Source: Anon 2010b, p.25).

If a competition were held to determine Israel’s most controversial filmmaker, a number of names would surely be in the running – including Avi Mograbi, Amos Gitai [whose 1978 film Ananas (pineapple) will be added to our site in due course], and Simone Bitton – but the odds-on favorite would be Eyal Sivan. As the documentary filmmaker has readily acknowledged, ‘For every person who loves me there are ten who hate me; for every person who supports me there are ten who accuse me.’ Over the last twenty-five years, Sivan has made more than a dozen films exploring the abuse of historical memory, in particular the memory of Jewish persecution and its use to justify current Israeli government policy. As Sivan has described his position, ‘I am not anti- Jewish or anti-Israel; I am anti-Zionist.’ By that, as his films demonstrate, Sivan means that it is not Judaism or even the Israeli national identity that he opposes but Zionism, a colonialist plan for an exclusively Jewish state, which involves the disenfranchisement and even ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population and the expropriation of their land in pursuit of the biblical promise of a ‘Greater Israel’. Sivan has never been shy about declaring the anti-Zionist perspective that informs his work, but it has been the tendency of most of his critics, whether in Israel or abroad, to either conflate or confuse his anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, which has led to vitriolic personal attacks against him and created the overwrought, often preposterous controversies that surround his films. The political and historical critique found in Sivan’s films is essentially no different from that found in the work of many fellow Israelis, including historians such as Ilan Pappé, Avi Shlaim, and Tom Segev; journalists such as Gideon Levy, Amira Hass, and the late Tanya Reinhart; or scholars such as Shlomo Sand, Israel Finkelstein, Ella Shohat, or Nurit Peled-Elhanan. One suspects that Sivan looms as a bigger target for slanderous public attacks and abusive media campaigns because, as a filmmaker, his work has the potential to reach a larger audience than that accessible to authors, journalists, or scholars (Source: Crowdus 2012, p.22 link).

‘It’s not about facts or reality,’ says Sivan in his Paris apartment. ‘The table between us is a fact. But you can tell different stories about the past. Film isn’t about showing, it’s about hiding – that’s what I always tell my students.’ He forms a square with the tips of his thumbs and index fingers. ‘Every story is a framework that obscures a large part of reality. Manipulation isn’t negative; it’s even inevitable. I never claim to show reality. But I do show a part of reality that’s usually hidden behind the frame.’ His choice is that of the middle ground, of sharing, of commonality, Sivan believes. ‘Extremism is the official position, which is expressed by the government. That’s where the radicals are, in the Palestinian Authority just as much as in Israel. They propose separation and expulsion. They deny that Jews and Arabs have anything in common’ (Source: Korteweg 2009, np).

Unlike many of his contemporary directors …, Sivan does not only emphasize the disagreements [between Palestinians and Israelis]; he goes beyond this and also brings the process of Israel’s founding to the screen, seeking an answer to the question that many people are asking today: How can a people who suffered genocide in World War II be so cruel to the Palestinians today (Source: Anon 2012b, np link)?

Sivan has denied Jews the right of self determination, as he does, for example in his co-authored book, Un Etat Commun entre le Jourdain et la mer, in which he advocates for ‘a common sharing of the land by all who inhabit it,’ effectively calling for the elimination of the Jewish state. Additionally, Sivan has demonized Israel, attributing ‘the Nakba’ to ‘the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.’ In the same interview, Sivan also promoted BDS, claiming to be a ‘big supporter of the cultural boycott’ because ‘I think that it is a just and an important boycott…’ In line with this, Sivan has signed several petitions which advocate BDS, including the ‘Boycott of all Israeli Art Institutions’, ‘A support letter to British Writers in Support of Palestine’, and ‘Israeli citizens calling upon international community to stop Israel’. Antisemitic Activity: Denying Jews the Right to Self-determination, Promoting BDS (Source: Anon 2014b, p.99 link).

Many hate the free-speaking filmmaker from Israel’s upper middle class. [Sivan] has received a bullet in the mail with the message ‘next time, it’ll be one of these’ (Source: Lie 2012, np link).

[T]he perpetrator, the child of a [concentration] camp survivor, has been arrested. Yet, ever since, Sivan has felt less at ease in France. …. ‘Not much later, Michael Redeker, editor of the magazine Les Temps Modernes, received a threatening email. It turned out to be from a 16-year-old Moroccan boy. The world was too small!’ (Source: Korteweg 2009, np).

When a director friend of his lost his life making a pro-Palestinian film, [Sivan] started to fear for his safety and that of his family (Source: Lie 2012, np link).

[Journalist:] Does any of the funding for your films come from Israeli government sources? [Sivan:] No, never. I learned long ago from the Dutch documentary filmmaker Johan van der Keuken that the best thing is to ‘take a little from a lot of sources.’ I am fortunate in that a number of television channels and foundations have over the years followed and supported my work. I’m not against taking Israeli money but I have never received Israeli money for any of my films. Interestingly enough, however, the principal producer of Jaffa is an Israeli company, Trabelsi Productions, a fantastic, very courageous production company (Source: Crowdus 2012, p.31 link).

In 2000, the Israeli filmmaker-producer Osnat Trabelsi initiated the first International Human Rights Film Festival in Israel / Palestine. She founded Trabelsi Productions with the specific remit of promoting documentaries that are politically engaged with the injustices being perpetrated against the Palestinians (e.g. … Eyal Sivan’s Jaffa, The Orange’s Clockwork, 2010) (Source: Hayward 2013, p.492)

I’ll tell you a little story about Jaffa, by the way, which you’ll find amusing. My big thing has always been how I won’t be recuperated by Israeli funding sources because my cinema is too complicated. Nevertheless, I lived in Israel for a long time before leaving to live in Paris. I returned to Israel in 2007 when there was a competition to select a film to be made to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel. Channel 8 television, the Jerusalem Cinematheque, and the Rabinovitch Fund put some money together and announced that they wanted an archival documentary film made for the sixtieth anniversary. Osnat Trabelsi, the producer, contacted me and said, ‘Why don’t you propose a film?’ I told her, ‘You know, I have this script that I wrote years ago and then set aside. It’s called Jaffa.’ She said, ‘Let’s go for it.’ So we submitted our proposal and, the first time that I ever asked for money from Israeli sources, the commission decided that Jaffa was the best script submitted (Source: Sivan in Crowdus 2012, p.31 link).

[But, f]rom the moment the [funding] announcement was made, … a press campaign was launched that eventually caused the commission to cancel the grant. One article in Ma’ariv [a Hebrew language newspaper published in Israel] was headlined ‘From Independence to Suicide’ and another in Haaretz [a Hebrew- and English-language newspaper published in Iarael] was headlined ‘Anti-Zionist Israeli to Direct Movie for Israel’s Sixtieth Birthday’ (Source: Sivan in Crowdus 2012, p.31 link).

Wednesday, Ma’ariv‘s columnist Ben Dror Yemini published a front page jeremiad entitled ‘From independence to suicide.’ Yemini reported that three taxpayer-funded bodies – the Rabinovich Fund, the Jerusalem Cinematheque, and Channel 8 – have hired the anti-Israeli and arguably anti-Semitic former Israeli filmmaker Eyal Sivan to make the official movie marking Israel’s 60th birthday next year. Yemini asserted, ‘Anti-Zionists, who make up perhaps a half a percent of the public, control 70% of the cultural institutions in Israel.’ Yemini ended his dirge with an impassioned plea to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to end the disgrace and cancel the deal. ‘Mr. Prime Minister,’ he wrote, ‘You have the opportunity to act as a Zionist and a nationalist, to prevent this enormous travesty. Do not let this opportunity pass.’ But what Yemini failed to note is that Olmert is part of the problem. The corruption scandals that engulf Olmert and his colleagues in Kadima are the fuel that drives the anti-Zionist takeover of the national establishment (Source: Glick 2007, np link).

[T]he debate over Sivan’s film isn’t likely to subside in the near future, even if the Rabinovich Foundation rejects the documentary when it makes its final decision May 10. Government funding for the film, which would explore parallels between Israel’s public image and the Jaffa brand of oranges, has already been called a foreshadowing of Israeli ‘national suicide’ in the pages of Ma’ariv which condemned Channel8, the Jerusalem Cinematheque and the Rabinovich Fund for their willingness to consider subsidizing Sivan’s project. Described in the same Ma’ariv column as an ‘out-and-out hater of Israel’ Sivan has been an activist since his youth, when the Haifa-born director joined a movement protesting religious coercion’ in Jerusalem. The future filmmaker moved to Paris in 1985 not long after bypassing service in the IDF – mental health factors were cited in his military exemption – and saw his international profile rise in 1999 with the release of The Specialist – a documentary about the Jerusalem trial of Final Solution mastermind Adolf Eichmann. Sivan’s anti-Zionist work has intensified in recent years with the director signing a public statement during last summer’s war between Israel and Hizbullah denouncing the brutality and cruelty of Israeli policy during IDF operations in Lebanon and Gaza. Sivan appeared earlier this year as a speaker at Israeli Apartheid Week in London delivering a lecture on ‘Zionism, Israeli Media and Rationalizing Racist Consciousness.’ Reached by telephone Monday in Paris, Sivan declined to comment on his political views or the as-yet undetermined future of his films saying he had ‘absolutelynothing to add’ to remarks he’d made earlier to the Yediot Aharonot Web site. In that interviewSivan said he’d turned down four separate opportunities to take French citizenship in lieuof his Israeli passportand that he’d been the victim ofcharacter assassinationin the Israeli media. Sivan’s refusal to make additional remarks was mirrored by Channel 8 and the Jerusalem Cinematheque, bothof which ignored requests for comment about their decision to bankroll the proposed film (Source: Burnstein 2007, p.5).

There was another fund that later offered to produce the film, but finally I said to them, ‘I don’t want your money; keep it,’ because this horrible press campaign essentially destroyed any possibility of an Israeli audience watching the film, although if they had they likely would have said, ‘Why was there such a controversy?’ (Source: Sivan in Crowdus 2012, p.31 link).

The difficulty was the fact that, usually, you can get a co-production when you bring your own national money. But, because I refused to take Israeli national money, it was more complicated for my co producer but th[ese] were the condition[s] (Source: Sivan in Caruso 2010, np link).

[Question: why choose oranges?] What is interesting with the oranges is that it is not just a symbol of Zionism; it was taken and transformed into a symbol of Zionism. It was also something symbolic of Palestine and something which is common. In this sense I am interested in how Zionism struggled in destroying the commonality and possibility of building something in common, but also in denying and destroying something which belongs to the land. The orange belongs to the ibna’el belid [‘people of the land’], without distinguishing whether the people are Muslims, Jews or Christians (Source: Sivan in Hammad 2011, np link).

The idea of showing images to both the protagonists and the audience is directly related to the theme of the film, namely the assumption that the East, Palestine, the Holy Land, Israel, whatever it is called, is only a Western ideological projection to everyone (Source: Sivan in Volkman 2010, np link).

[To make the film, w]ell, we are talking here about more than five years of research with a great group of researchers, really around the world. I mean, we went from Israel to France, to a lot in Britain. … And many images we [found] in the Library of Congress in the States (Source: Sivan in HFA 2014, np link).

[His] exhaustive archival research … unearthed rarely seen photos and footage, tourism and propaganda films, stereopticon slides, paintings, advertising art, postcard imagery, and propaganda posters, complemented throughout with commentary by Israeli and Palestinian historians, writers, art critics, former growers and exporters, and military and government officials (Source: Crowdus 2012, p.24 link).

We used American and British archives a lot because most of the work in branding the Jaffa orange was done by foreign companies (Source: Sivan in Crowdus 2012, p.29 link).

[Interviewer:] I … enjoyed the newsreels, with Soviet-style cinematography, showing the happy young Israeli agricultural workers dancing on their lunch hour. Today we can look at those films and laugh, and yet at the time they were enormously effective as propaganda in establishing a positive image of Israel as a country where Jews were making the desert bloom. Sivan: Absolutely. Another thing I discovered in making Jaffa is the very strong link – which seems to be even more important today – between the Protestant evangelistic movement and the invention of the cinematic image. I wasn’t aware, for example, that within the Anglican Church the debate with Darwin over evolution led to the creation of the image of Palestine. The first filmmakers traveled to Palestine to prove the truth of what is written in the Bible. Those were the Anglican British who traveled to Palestine, but upon their arrival they discovered that, alas, the text is the text and the land is the land, so they had to find a way to photograph the land to make it accommodate the biblical text. Their images of Palestine, with the camels and oranges and all the rest, is a projection. That’s why I say it’s the notion of a land without an image for an image without a land, the image of the Bible land (Source: Crowdus 2012, p.29 link).

We also used … private collections in the Arab world because there is a big problem of archiving Arab visual material (Source: Sivan in Crowdus 2012, p.29 link).

But thanks to a real network that we [built], we got those images from the Arab world, and mainly from the Palestine Liberation Organization. I mean, this was really difficult, to find all those posters, and the old Palestinian material. But I had great surprises. You know, … I found the Popular Front Liberation Organization in Syria … So I wrote them, ‘My name is Eyal Sivan..,’ and, well, they … never answer[ed]. And then I got back ‘Dear Comrade, Thank you for writing to us. Whatever you want.’ And so it was kind of a funny thing, and suddenly started kind of a movement of people sending me images, you know? People sending in images… ‘I have a collection, I have this, I worked on that.’ But the real [difficulty] was the fact that nowadays, to find in an archive material, you don’t look at the images anymore, you look for keywords, right? Before, in the old times, which are not so far [away], we had to watch material. Now you go on the computer, you put keywords. And of course, I mean, in most of the film done in Palestine, Israel, the oranges appear, but nobody tagged in each film, ‘oranges, oranges.’ So the thing was to go over a lot of material and to find the oranges, and because of financial reasons, the film was really expensive. Because of this archive, I had to renounce on something that I really wanted, which was the appearance of Jaffa in fiction films (Source: Sivan in HFA 2014, np link).

[Audience member:] There was footage you have from the bombing of the Palestinians, how they were jumping into boats. But it looked like it was staged. … [Sivan:] It’s a fiction. It’s a fiction. There are no moving images of the expulsion of 1948, of the Nakba. It’s a lousy Tunisian fiction film that [has] this scene inside, [of a] black-and-white game of people fleeing into the sea. [When] I saw that – It happened that I got an invitation … in Paris to see the premiere of this really lousy fiction – but I recall that moment of trying to represent the Nakba, the Palestinian catastrophe, in moving images (Source: HFA 2014, np link).

[Audience member:] I mean, it seems to me that the heart of the film, in many ways, lies in these memories that people have of Jaffa before 1948. And it sort of points towards, you know, the question of the future of Jaffa and Tel Aviv … [Sivan:] Yeah, but this was also, this was also my big worry during the editing, is how not to create an object of nostalgia (Source: HFA 2014, np link).

I see my role, … first of all [as]one of reviewing, of what I call historical revision, the possibility of creating a new vision out of a review of the past. Or, in the words of Walter Benjamin, to ‘brush history against the grain.’ This involves taking and reworking material from the archives in order to articulate our history, which is also a potential history. It’s not just about the past, it’s a revision and rearticulation. As the Israeli poet Haim Gouri says in Jaffa, the memory of these images is not just nostalgia but can become a ‘memory ticket’ to the future (Source: Sivan in Crowdus 2012, p.31 link).

[Audience member:] I wondered about that. I wondered how you thought about … like it’s constructed basically as an educational experience for the viewer … [Sivan:] Well, it was a big debate, both in the editing room with my editor, the same person that I’m working [with for] the last almost twenty years now, and with myself. Which was, to what extent, I mean, what it means to deconstruct propaganda, in the same time being aware that by deconstructing propaganda, re-articulating it, in fact, you’re re-articulating a kind of propaganda? But I took the decision out of my idea that, in fact, my work in Palestine-Israel, and Israel-Palestine is just… this is my white mice. This is my lab. Indeed, I [made] the decision to make a more educational or didactical film, not by exposing just Palestine-Israel, but coming back to the idea that the image is an object of reading, and the image doesn’t show, the image hides, and that the question is not what there is in the image, but the question is what I’m giving to be seen, etc. So I would believe, or I want to believe that any image that will be seen by my public following this film, will be critically viewed through the ideas of that film. And this was the decision: to take what you call ‘education’ and a pedagogical way of beginning, to go beyond the Israel-Palestine question, and to go out from that idea that I saw in the image, or this image shows (Source: HFA 2014, np link).

[Interviewer:] I got a kick out of the samples of Orientalist advertising imagery in Jaffa. It’s a shame Edward Said is not around to see the film. He would have loved it. [Sivan:] I would say the film couldn’t have existed without [Edward] Said [and his book ‘Orientalism’]. It’s almost applied theory (Source: Crowdus 2012, p.29 link).

Jaffa, the Orange’s Clockwork[‘s] title is a playful reference to Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (Source: Crowdus 2012, p.29 link).

The war between Israel and Palestine and human rights. … ‘Freedom is a supreme good’ is the title of the days of observation and criticism that will take place at the Corte Theater in Coriano from December 3rd to 5th. An event that becomes increasingly interesting thanks also to the presence of the Israeli director Eyal Sivan. In addition to leading the three-day workshop, Sivan will be present at the Italian premiere of ‘Jaffa, the Orange ‘s Clockwork’ on Thursday, December 3rd. The film will be screened at Corte as a special screening immediately following its world premiere at the IDFA Film Festival in Amsterdam (Source: Anon 2009, p.11)

Eyal Sivan, an opponent of Israeli policy, refused to allow the film to be screened at the Forum des Images as part of the international campaign to celebrate Tel Aviv’s centennial (which was supported by the Israeli government). The film will be shown in theaters in April 2010 at Utopia cinemas (Toulouse, Avignon, Montpellier, Saint-Ouen-l’Aumône) and at the 3 Luxembourg cinemas (Source: Emeraude 2010, np link).

Tourists joined local residents in Jaffa’s Old City on Friday and Saturday as the city played host to a two-day festival celebrating Palestinian culture. The Palestinian folklore and culture festival was held at the Elsaraya Theater in Jaffa’s Old City, and included booths selling traditional foods and arts & crafts. Inside the theater’s cobblestone hallways, a book fair featured books in Arabic, English and Hebrew, as well as a bazaar offering traditional Palestinian clothes. Friday evening’s events included a performance of the play Cappuccino in Ramallah and a showing of Jaffa, a film directed by Israeli Eyal Sivan. … One of the festival’s organizers, Jaffa resident Muhammad Jabali, said it was held out of a desire to increase the presence of Arab culture in the Old City. ‘We want to increase the cultural presence of local Jaffans in the Old City. We are the only Old City in the Middle East where there are no Arabs. Every year, the gentrification and development pushes us further and further from the sea, and eventually all of us will be in Lod and Ramle.’ Jabali added that celebrations of Palestinian culture don’t have to be relegated to the West Bank but can find a home for expression in the Tel Aviv area as well. ‘One of the ideas for the festival was to return Jaffa to being one of the centers of Palestinian culture. We wanted to show that it’s possible to have a Palestinian cultural festival in the Old City of Jaffa without having to be afraid of how it will be viewed. Culture is not something to be afraid of’ (Source: Hartman 2010, p.2).

The 7th ‘The Working Class Is Not a Movie’ Meeting, coordinated by André Rosevègue for the Espaces Marx association, decided to explore the complex relationships between ‘class struggles and national struggles’ this year. Or when the idea of ​​the Proletarian International confronts the struggles of oppressed peoples… … The Meetings are starting off strong: the opening evening, under the title ‘Work in Palestine’, will be devoted to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict via the first French screening of ‘Jaffa the Clockwork Orange’ , by the director Eyal Sivan, a fierce opponent of Israel’s policy towards the Palestinian population (Source: Anon 2010c, np).

Film director, Eyal Sivan, will be in Besançon on Tuesday. He will take part in a debate following the screening of his film ‘Jaffa , the Orange’s Clockwork.’ The event is organized by the France Palestine Solidarity Association (AFPS), which presents the filmmaker as ‘an anti-colonialist Israeli’ (Source: Anon 2010d, p.4).

May is shaping up to be a good month for Cinema Cinema. The arthouse association is indeed expecting three directors at the Cap Cinéma multiplex. … [One will be] the Israeli Eyal Sivan for ‘Jaffa , the orange is clockwork’, scheduled for Thursday, May 27 as part of the Middle East Spring … A debate will be organized with André Rosevègue, from the French Jewish Union for Peace (Source: Gibert 2010, p.16).

Solidarity Evening In partnership with the Collective 66 Peace and Justice in Palestine, a support evening is being organized for Jeanne, Yasmina and Bernard, summoned to the criminal court, following a peaceful information action carried out among consumers of a large Perpignan supermarket. An action that called for the boycott of articles coming from the occupied territories and exported. This evening, all supporters and people who are interested in this cause and who want to understand the origin of this conflict are invited to go to the Jaurès Cinema at 7:30 p.m. for an exceptional evening: 7:30 p.m.: aperitif dinner and exhibition and at 8:30 p.m. in the presence of the director Eyal Sivan, [a] screening of the film ‘Jaffa, the orange is clockwork’ (Source: Anon 2010e, np).

The Chicago Palestine Film Festival runs Friday, April 15, through Wednesday, April 27 [this year screening] Eyal Sivan’s documentary JAFFA, THE ORANGE’S CLOCKWORK, about the politicization of the Jaffa orange (Sun 4/17, 5 PM) (Source: ChicagoReader 2011, np link).

Eyal Sivan has kindly made himself available for a QandA via skype after his film … is shown [in Sheffield UK] on Saturday night (Source: Anon 2011b, np).

Without a doubt, [it is] is a milestone in historical documentary filmmaking in Israel and Palestine. Excellently researched, the film sheds light on facts and events previously deliberately ignored by both political sides. Both Israel and Palestine have cobbled together their own histories, each a patchwork of propaganda, nationalism, and select remnants of past reality. The film dispels this very convincingly and with its profound depth (Source: IUsedToBeAUser 2011, np link).

[It’s a]n extraordinary compilation film, its masterful editing combines clichés of the Orient with the trademark of a citrus fruit, creating a highly captivating topography of a region torn apart by countless contradictions (Source: Hamdorf 2016, np link).

This is an extraordinary film, documenting the carefully crafted, decades-long propaganda effort that prepared the West for acceptance of a Zionist, post-WW II, takeover of Palestine (Source: Kansas-5 2012, np link).

Seeing some of the (many) archival images along with the… interviewees was … quite engaging – particularly when they were repeated to share a second perspective. If nothing else, you walk away from this film acutely aware of the importance of imagery and perception (Source: citog 2023, np link).

Even if its own images aren’t always coherent, … [the film] at least encourages viewers to question images. Demanding independent thought from the viewer isn’t a bad idea in principle (Source: IUsedToBeAUser 2011, np link).

[But the film’s] key witnesses from both the Israeli and Palestinian sides … comment on his footage so verbosely that the viewer is left with little chance to form their own opinion (Source: Olbert 2010, np).

[At its international premiere at t]he International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) … [this film] was … the subject of a heated debate about anti-Semitism, Zionism, and the cinematic depiction of the conflict (Source: Gutowski 2009, np).

The director has come under attack for his views, including his declaration that the partition of Palestine and creation of Israel was an ‘historical error’ (Source: Parsons 2011, np link).

[This is a] really strong example of social history in documentary form. [It d]oes a great job of laying out the history of modern Palestine up until the movie was made with a reminder to boycott Israeli goods (Source: EM 2023, np link).

[It’s] an undertaking to demolish Zionism, full of, among other things, historical untruths and artistic misinterpretations and anachronisms, seasoned with hateful sarcasm and nauseating self-hatred, which, among other things, shamelessly manipulates and uses Haim Gouri, and advocates in its own way an anti-Israeli boycott, including oranges that allegedly taste of blood – that of the Palestinian ‘martyrs,’ of course – … comes to the screens …. sponsored, among others, by [French public TV channel] France 5. … Eyal Sivan therefore actively joins with this film the BDS campaign ‘Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions’ – a very active and very well-established, organized and therefore financed anti-Israeli organization (Source: jcdurbant 2010, np link).

Sometimes I would have found a caption with the name and some data of the person being interviewed useful (Source: Bissoli 2025, np link).

To use a historical conflict in your film and not indicate whether any character is Muslim or Jewish; to only really realize at the end that we are listening to an Islamic monologue and not get to hear the Jews… is a really stupid approach. Clarity! That is what the viewer needs (Source: VictorSmet 2022, np link).

[T]he violence in this documentary seems to be too reduced to a Jewish camp, some of whose members are abusing Palestinians who are lying in their land … but the use of violence seems to be confined to the Jews. The documentary would not, it seems, have lost anything to a more nuanced representation of the land and violence of these two populations (Source: Célérier 2011, np link).

[T]racing the orange of Jaffa as a way to trace the Zionist colonialism and disruption, displacement, and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is laid out in such a robust manner (Source: apexa 2016, np link).

[W]ow I don’t have and I will never have words to describe what this movie is (Source: vlonechacon 2024, np link).

[It’s a] meticulous, analytical, and empirical work that, in addition to showing, demonstrates through historical, documentary, and propaganda records, the replacement of a symbolic product of a people, their region, and their land, by a symbol of Zionism, abstracting all its folkloric significance and transforming it into a political and colonialist artifact (Source: João 2020, np link).

No one in Israel will deny that in 1948 the Palestinians were driven from their villages, no one will deny the destruction. But what was the Palestine we occupied? It was a modernizing country, a country with poets, thinkers, cities, entrepreneurs. The 1948 war was a colonial war, against a people with whom the Jews had previously lived (Source: Korteweg 2009, np).

[In this film, the] message of a colonization, meant to bring progress to a world of desolation, becomes an object of ridicule. … [It] is worth seeing for the questions it raises in the viewer (Source: MecFilm 2012, np link).

[Y]ou know what that makes you think? people who love the land could not [bulldoze its orange orchards]. the… [settlers] want to posess it, they don‘t love it (Source: emi 🌛2024, np link).

[But, in the film, a] good deal is overlooked, most notably the relations between the exploiters and the exploited, in both the Arab and Jewish communities. As well, little attention is paid to the machinations of the great powers in fomenting communal and national divisions to serve their own ends (Source: Parsons 2011, np link).

I lived in the Bronx, New York City, through the world war, the 1948 war on the Palestinians, and for almost a decade after the Korean war. At the time there were a million Jews living in the Bronx, more than there were in the British Mandate of Palestine. The neighborhood I lived in was predominantly Christian and overwhelmingly white. Television was in its infancy, so the only news of Palestine we got was through a press that was sympathetic to the immigration that took their land from the Palestinians. I had no idea of the extent of the propaganda that has rationalized the oppression of Palestinians, went back that far. Through my childhood and adolescence, I saw no balance to reporting about that forced colonization. We in the U.S. were collectively ignorant as to the nature of the land seizures, that brutal exodus, the forced diaspora of the indigenous inhabitants. Golda Meir who had immigrated from Russia to Milwaukee as an eight-year-old, then immigrated to Eretz Israel in 1921, eventually becoming prominent in the Zionist government, was a folk hero to us. The mechanism of telling this story is a brilliant instrument. It focuses simply on the produce that was the primary export commodity of an invaded land, using of contemporary film footage and photographs, including interviews with elderly Jews who lived in Palestine before the forced expulsion of a huge part of the Arab population. This film documents the true nature of what has been presented to us in the U.S. for over six decades as a legitimate response to Arab attacks (Source: Kansas-5 2012, np link).

The solution of the conflict is bringing people together. To raise a humanist & open-minded generation of Arabs and Jews that can live together as equal citizens in that land. Just like they do in US for example. There’s enough room in land, once you make enough room in people’s hearts (Source: @Brahmdagh 2020, np link).

Why couldn’t we just plant oranges peacefully instead of *gestures wildly* all of this (Source: ComeOutAndPlay_ 2023, np link)?

I think the whole world should be able to watch this. It is very important that all should be able to watch (Source: binning01 2019, np link).

I hope [it] gets a vigorous worldwide circulation. It would be a boon to media literacy everywhere, as well as a productive jog to better conversations about Middle East politics (Source: Aufderheide 2009, np link).

[I]ts criminal that it didn’t get a wider release / more coverage and screenings. A very intelligent and engaging piece of work (Source: Khalil 2011, np link).

I … watched this documentary online a few years ago. Today, It seems basically impossible to find it anywhere. Its as if it was erased from the internet. Every link to watch it is broken and the list of searches for it comes up really short (Source: simontcomputer 2017, np link).

[It’s s]uspiciously hard to find. I watched this on Aljazeera’s program ‘Witness’ several years ago. … Now I’m suspicious as to why it is next to impossible to find the full movie in English or even with English subtitles now. Maybe the Israelis or Arabs didn’t like the idea of a film that promotes peace among these two groups. After searching for an hour here is the only link that I could find online that has the English video. There doesn’t appear to be any other way to secure this video in English other then buying it off [IMDB]. BS (Source: jsc-50572 2015, np link).

I had a hard time finding the full version of this movie but it exists on vimeo through the movie’s distributor (Source: EM 2023, np link).

{Savin’s film] certainly does not revolutionize cinematographic language but it is truly interesting and educational (Source: Bissoli 2025, np link).

A superb documentary, one hopes will be a big hit in cinemas and hopefully won’t end up as educational material (Source: Siefen 2010, np link).

With a groan, we entered the cinema. A mandatory viewing scheduled in our schedule, on an evening when we wanted nothing more than relaxation and free time. Even on the way there, a plan was already being made to consider an escape attempt. Because even though we all didn’t want to go, fearing a potential scolding from our teacher, we weren’t allowed to show our faces there. So, let’s go in, watch for the first 10 minutes, and then escape, or so we thought… The plan was to sit in the back row, in the corner closest to the door, to attract as little attention as possible. But when we entered, as if fate were against us that day, our teacher was sitting right in the middle, talking to the director. The plan immediately failed, and with complete despair, we sat somewhere in the middle (Source: lena_o 2024, np link).

[I] had to watch this for class so it doesn’t feel right giving it a star rating but definitely a must watch for anyone interested in palestinian history (Source: sam 2023, np link).

[It’s] really interesting to see the conflict through Jaffa oranges (Source: bosswomanTigre 2025, np link).

[It’s a] pretty standard documentary but enjoyed it! and most importantly – learned a lot (Source: richmond 2025, np link).

[I found it] informative, but a bit dull.  u get the feeling of watching movie that was made for a museum (Source: Domi 2024, np link).

[It has] the typical documentary style, which here is basically an hour and a half of talking head – talking head – insert of landscape – talking head – found footage fragment, made it difficult to keep my attention. So in the end I took a short nap of about fifteen minutes (Source: lena_o 2024, np link).

ngl. i was rlly sleepy before watching this after working the whole day, so i fell asleep in part of the first half. buuut, in the second half i did learn a lot about israel’s appropriation of Yaffa’s oranges and their pervasive propaganda spreading of settle colonial forces (Source: richmond 2025, np link).

[Me too. D]espite [my nap] I did get the message. At least it wasn’t difficult, because the film kept repeating stories and examples, as if the maker was hitting you in the head with an information stick (Source: lena_o 2024, np link).

The content is interesting but the form … was long (Source: thildma 2024, np link).

The film could easily be shortened by half an hour (Source: lena_o 2024, np link).

The meeting with the author after the screening was splendid. He had an arsenal of printed photos and videos, he made conversations choosing whether to show the photos or the videos and spoke (Source: Bissoli 2025, np link).

I tried to make the premiere in Jaffa, but Jaffa doesn’t have even one cinema nowadays. It was a city that had seven cinemas before 1948. There is not even one place that you can screen today a film. I mean, there is a small theater, the Arab Jewish theater, that there are fifty seats. So it was in Tel Aviv (Source: Sivan in HFA 2014, np link).

I’m not completely unknown in Israel, so the press, and the media, and the politics are preparing the public for my films. So before this film was released, there was all this big scandal around the fact that I got the grant, that I didn’t get the grant. And one of the Israelis’ big newspapers, local, it’s not Haaretz, that is now around the world, but it’s Maariv, which is a very big popular newspaper said, ‘Well, next week will be presented the next terrorist attack of Sivan on the screens of the cinema.’ So you can imagine, you come, you expect (Source: Sivan in HFA 2014, np link).

What I can tell you is some anecdotes about what happened in the premiere of the film … I… invited all the people that are in the film. And it’s the first time that some of the Israelis that you see in the film and the others that were not filmed, or that helped, etc. I mean, a huge bunch of people that are there. Palestinians, Palestinian citizens of Israel, and Israeli Jews. And there’s this very moving moment. … [A]ll those people that were sitting in the [Tel Aviv] Cinematheque, when they went out, there were a lot of people with tears in their eyes. And one of the things that many people said, they said, ‘what a waste, what a waste.’ And it was fantastic to see this commonality that suddenly happened. And the discovery … of something that they just, or I would say, we didn’t know about. Which is that moment, that there is a society that lives together. I mean, as any couple, it’s not an ideal. It’s not paradise. But it’s living together. So there was a deep feeling of sadness, of yeah, a waste, what a waste, in fact (Source: Sivan in HFA 2014, np link).

I can tell you that when I’m screening the film for my students in Israel, which are young, which finished the army, for them, it’s a total discovery. And one of the main feelings that they have, and here I’m talking about Israeli Jews, is suddenly to realize that we were lied to, I mean, we were really cheated. And we continue to be cheated. And this is a dominant feeling of people watching that film, you know, among Israeli Jews (Source: Sivan in HFA 2014, np link).

[The film] partly explains why Palestinians not getting to see orange and green on their flag … felt so poignant. As it represents a lost chance to show its importance to the wor[l]d. And as a reminder of what was taken, what became of the fruit as a symbol (Source: citog 2023, np link).

Here’s to the day we have the orange in our flag (Source: Abdallah 2020, np link).

[T]he fond reminiscences of both Palestinians and Jews of a prewar period when both communities lived and worked together harmoniously can be seen not only as nostalgia but also, ideally, as a tantalizing indication of a potential future for the region (Source: Crowdus 2012, p.24 link).

By telling the surprising, sobering and to some, shocking, untold story ‘Jaffa – The Orange’s Clockwork’, will surely encourage a brand of hope for the future and help to redefine Jewish existence based on Palestinian rights (Source: Gallagher 2010, np link).

In the middle of a war, [it provides] a lot of memories of peace to pay attention to (Source: user024 2024, np link).

This Wednesday, the Palestine Committee of Stuttgart will screen a film that serves as the basis for a discussion about perspectives in the Middle East conflict. The filmmaker of ‘Jaffa , The Orange ‘s Clockwork,’ Eyal Sivan, will be present at the screening at 6 p.m. in the Atelier am Bollwerk, Hohe Straße 26 (Source: Anon 2017, p.24).

The history of Palestine and Israel is based on representations, on images and visual clichés. Among all the accepted symbols, only one is shared by both people: the orange. Screening: ‘Jaffa, The Orange’s Clockwork’ by Eyal Sivan Date: Saturday October 28, 2023 Time: 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM (Source: Anon 2019, np link).

[Screening] Jaffa, the Orange’s Clockwork (2009, Eyal Sivan) [date] 27/11/2024 19:00 – Location CINEMA RITCS Antoine Dansaertstraat 70 1000 Brussels (Source: RITCS 2024, np link).

The France Palestine Solidarity Association (AFPS 72) is organizing, with the La Fonderie performance hall, a series of events on the theme of Gaza, as the Israeli army’s strikes against Hamas continue. [On] Monday, January 15, at 8 p.m., at the Cinéastes, Place des Comtes-du-Maine, [it will screen] the film by Eyal Sivan, Jaffa , The Cuckoo Clockwork Orange ( 2009). … {then, on] Saturday, January 20, at La Fonderie, In the Mirror of Gaza: Conversations from 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. ‘In order to clarify the understanding of what is happening to the Palestinian people, the Israeli people and to ourselves,’ La Fonderie and AFPS have invited historians, artists and researchers (Saleem Albeik, Raed Andoni, Yvan Corbineau, Joëlle Marelli, Sophie Mendelsohn, Abbas Obeid, Ruth Rosenthal, Lana Sadeq and Eyal Sivan) who work on political and legal issues related to this conflict to ‘provide factual and analytical elements.’ To facilitate discussions, the public will be able to submit their questions in writing at the entrance. A meal (11 (EURO)) is offered between 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. (Source: Anon 2024, np).

[Hammad:] What projects are you working on now? [Sivan:] I’m working on writing counter-history in documentary. This is my big project; and using the Palestine question as the case study. It’s about what it means to counter history. It’s both a project of cinematography, aesthetics, and politics. I am starting to elaborate on a film that will be something around the one-state question, and about trying to think of other possibilities in the Palestine-Israeli space (Source: Sivan in Hammad 2011, np link)