The Alliance for Peace and Justice in the Middle East hosted a film series last night to demonstrate a Palestinian perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The event did not come without conflict though.

Many present argued that films such as Jenin Jenin, directed by Palestinian actor and director Mohammed Bakri, do not serve to educate, but to polarize.

"I was really upset that (APJME) showed (Jenin Jenin). It was very irresponsible and disrespectful," said Near Eastern Studies sophomore and Arizona Israeli Alliance Vice President Rachael Levy.

The film, which is banned in Israel, shows the reactions of Palestinian residents from Jenin, a refugee camp, to Operation Defensive Shield. The operation was launched in April 2002 by the Israel Defense Force in response to suicide bombings in Israel.

After a bombing in Netanya, where over 20 people were killed, the IDF occupied Jenin. The camp was the home of many of the suicide bombers, creating what Levy called a "hotbed" for terrorists.

Presented as a documentary, the film is highly controversial for numerous reasons.

Bill Straus, Arizona regional director of the Anti-Defamation League said that presenting a film containing reenactments and dramatizations as facts is dangerous.

"It's presented as a documentary, but they admittedly put staged scenes in the middle of the film. It just doesn't provide facts," he said.

Despite the film having reenactments, it contained interviews from many residents of Jenin, who claimed to have watched the IDF perpetrate war crimes.

The film presented eyewitness accounts from many Palestinians

present during the operation; however, no Israeli officials were included in the film.

The absence of an Israeli voice, done intentionally by Bakri, left little doubt with Straus that the film is biased.

"It's a work of propaganda. The purpose is to fuel anti-Jewish, anti-Israel sentiment," he said.

However, the lack of perspective is something that APJME Vice President Noah Haiduc-Dale said was intentional and still served a purpose.

"These (films) aren't meant to show facts, they're meant to show perceptions," Haiduc-Dale said.

It's a view that is not often heard, APJME President Carrie Brown said. "It's a perspective that very few people in America see, let alone understand," she said.

Still, others considered the film unfair and biased.

"This film is disgusting because it does not present an educated or balanced perspective," said political science freshman Avi Margolin.

One reason for such disgust for the film was that many of the ideas presented in the film were not substantiated, but relied solely on testimony from residents of Jenin.

Aaron Goldberg, a member of the Israeli office of the Anti-Defamation League pointed out several such inconsistencies in a recent article entitled "Jenin Jenin: Talking Points."

Goldberg argued that many of the facts presented in the film are not facts at all. One such instance is the argument by the director of the Jenin hospital, who said that the west wing of their hospital was destroyed by the IDF.

"Beyond the fact that a west wing of the hospital simply does not exist, the IDF made certain that the hospital was not shelled or attacked in any way," Goldberg said.

The operation was also called a massacre by several of the residents of Jenin, which Goldberg said is inaccurate. Goldberg said the IDF made every attempt to prevent collateral damage and cited how 53 Palestinians and 23 Israeli soldiers died during the nine-day battle.

The United Nations performed an investigation into the operation to see if human rights violations occurred, but it found no such violations took place, Goldberg said.

However, APJME members said the U.N.'s findings couldn't be taken as truth, because they believe both the United States and Israel hindered the investigation.

A major concern in showing the film was that it presented a misguided view of what happened, which Haiduc-Dale said was dangerous. Haiduc-Dale encouraged people interested in learning about Operation Defensive Shield to look on their own for more information that could provide a more balanced idea of the events that happened.

"How bad was (Jenin)? We don't know," Haiduc-Dale said.