The Sea: A Palestinian narrative wrapped up as human-interest - And directed by an Israeli for some reason.
Israel has been a target of Palestinian terrorism since the early 1920s. The unwillingness of the Arab Palestinians (now referred to as just Palestinians) to share the land with the Jews was on display during the Mandatory Palestine era when, in 1936–1937, as the British Peel Commission resolved to divide the land into two states. It should be noted that the British, who held the Mandate for Palestine and were required to facilitate the re-establishment of the Jewish homeland, had reduced the recognized Jewish homeland by 77% when they created Transjordan — today’s Jordan. The Peel Commission resolved that the Arabs would receive 75% of the land while the Jews stood to receive 17% (most of which was desert). The Jews accepted the deal; the Arabs adamantly rejected it. An Arab terror campaign known as the “Arab Revolt” ensued under the leadership of Adolf Hitler’s ally, the mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amim al-Husseini. Thousands of Arabs, Jews, and British soldiers died, simply because the Arab Palestinians refused to accept the presence of Jews on the land, let alone a sovereign entity
The 1947 U.N. Partition Resolution recognized the establishment of a Jewish state. The Arab Palestinians rejected the latest Partition Plan and opted, along with the surrounding Arab states, to wipe out the Jewish presence. Arab Palestinian rejectionism of subsequent opportunities for self-determination followed: the July 2000 Camp David Summit with President Clinton, Yasser Arafat, and Israeli premier Ehud Barak and again, eight years later, when Mahmoud Abbas, like his predecessor Arafat, rejected a most generous offer made by Israeli premier Ehud Olmert.
At the root of these rejections is the unwillingness on the part of the Palestinians to accept the existence of a Jewish state and a generations-long commitment to its destruction. Successive generations of young Palestinians have been “educated” or indoctrinated to becoming agents of annihilation of the Jewish state. This commitment, to eradicate the Jewish state, goes beyond the educational system, to include summer camps, where young attendees are trained in paramilitary techniques, as well as in mosques and the media.I provide the above for background to a film called The Sea, directed by Israeli Shai Carmeli-Pollak, funded by Palestinian and Israelis donors, with virtually all the actors being Palestinians and the language of the movie being Arabic. Israel’s culture minister, Miki Zohar, criticized the film as being “pro-Palestinian” and subsequently moved to defund the Israeli Academy of Film and Television in favor of a new, government-sponsored alternative.
The deception in this film is its innocent and well told story of a 12-year-old Palestinian boy named Khaled, from a village near Ramallah in the West Bank, who dreams of visiting the Mediterranean Sea in Tel Aviv. His dad, a gentle soul who works in Israel illegally as a construction worker without a permit, finds out that his son is missing and has ventured to Israel.
Earlier in the film, Khaled and his schoolmates are seen going on a field trip to the Tel Aviv shore when they are stopped by an IDF soldier at a checkpoint. Khaled, who hasn’t been cleared and has no permit, is taken off the bus. His sweet and good-natured grandma tries to console him, but in his frustration, he hits his little brother and breaks his tooth. His father hears about it from his workplace in Tel Aviv and promises to settle things with Khaled. The boy, who speaks no Hebrew, then decides to get to the Sea on his own. He joins a group of Palestinian infiltrators looking for day work who cut border wires and enter Israel.
Throughout the film, Israeli authorities — army and police — are portrayed as gestapo-like goons. In the final scene, Khaled is almost at the beach, his dad has just caught up with him, but the “cruel” Israeli policeman stops the boy and questions him as to where he is going. The cop orders Khaled to lift up his shirt, the boy who doesn’t understand Hebrew, and the dad (who does speak Hebrew) explains what he needs to do. The police officer then orders both of them to line up on the wall to check for suicide bombs, and they are then taken away in a police car. In the final scene, Khaled’s father nods to Khaled as the police car passes by The Sea.
The Palestinian producer of the film wants the audience to grasp how the “occupation” and denial have caused suffering for Palestinians at the hands of Israelis. Early in the film, there is a fleeting mention of Khaled being a good warrior, and we see him practicing with a sling shot loaded with a sizeable rock. Absent, however, is the mention of pay-for-slay policy of the Palestinian Authority. Nor is there any reference to Palestinian teenagers stabbing Israeli civilians, as reported on March 13, 2024, in the Times of Israel:
A Palestinian teen stabbed two Israelis at a checkpoint along a West Bank highway leading to Jerusalem on March 13. Israeli police said in a statement that soldiers from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) shot and killed 15-year-old Muhammad Abu Hamed after he stabbed a 25-year-old civilian security guard and a 19-year-old female military police officer at the Tunnel Crossing checkpoint on Route 60.
The film was released in July 2025, amid the national trauma Israelis were suffering following the horrendous, unprovoked massacre of 1,200 Israelis by Hamas terrorists on October 7, 2023, and while hostages were still being held in tunnels deep underground in Gaza. The film was produced while Israelis continued to endure rocket fire and drones raining down on them. The film completely ignored the anguish of Israeli children, who had and still have mere seconds to run for cover out of fear for their lives. The Israeli director would have done well to show a split screen showing Khaled’s journey along with an Israeli boy yearning to play football outside his shelter, and his inability to see his friends in school, which had been closed because of the war.
This film is a clever piece of Palestinian propaganda wrapped in a humanistic story of a young boy wanting to see the sea. I too had a dream when I was twelve, to see the biblical sights in Jordanian-occupied Judea and Samaria. But for me to have ventured there, as Khaled did to Tel Aviv, would have meant certain death.