After having shown the plight of the million Jews who, from the mid-1940s, had to flee the countries they and their forefathers had lived in for centuries, those most discreet refugees whose story had never been told this way, Pierre Rehov has filmed the other side of a same coin: the fate of the Palestinians refugees that everyone has heard about.

Refugees that are shown on the world’s television screens practically day in day out and whose plight is supposedly so well-known. But refugees whose fate we, in fact, know so little about.

In his latest film, “The Hostages of Hatred” Pierre Rehov sets out to tell us the real story of those men, women and children, who have been shamefully used as mere pawns for over 50 years, by Arab leaders at first, by Palestinian leaders later on and until this very day but also by the United Nations’ body that was specially created to supposedly take care of them: the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, UNWRA.

To tell the real story of these people Pierre Rehov has sent teams to film actual refugees in refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, the Gaza Strip and he has shot footage himself in the West Bank. As in all his films, he exposes thus nuggets of truth hidden among the well-rehearsed propaganda speeches. We see the poverty the refugees are deliberately kept in, we see the pain, we see the nurtured hatred, we see the false hopes those people are raised on. But we also see the same hatred combined with a wealth you would not expect.

And, as usual too, Pierre Rehov mixes these first-hand testimonies with the counterpoint of extremely well-researched and enlightening documents, in-depth analyses form historians and politicians like Shlomo Ben Ami, former Israeli Foreign Minister, or the Congressman Eric Cantor. And also a Palestinian Oslo negotiator, an advisor to Arab leaders or a Palestinian Human Rights Activist.

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