What should you watch on the eve of the general election? As tempting as it might be to go for something triumphalist on the brink of an electoral landslide, it would be better to remind yourself that things cannot only get better – and that the world of The Night Won’t End shows how we may be complicit in the opposite holding true.
I’ve offered up recommendations for films on the eve of a UK general election before. When doing so, there’s always a temptation to get swept up in the circus, and go down the Have I Got News For You route of withering put-downs and stinging reviews of the truly woeful attempts of the political class to make short films. There would have been plenty to fuel that fire, too.
The Tories’ sixth-form student film on the ‘dystopia’ of high fuel prices and rising taxes you’d get under a Labour Government (completely distinct from the utopia of high fuel prices and rising taxes under the present regime); the terminally middle-class musical satire from the Marsh Family about a “little racist frog”; literally any film centring on the ruddy-cheeked inanity of Wes Streeting. It’s easy targets, all the way down.
But that would be supremely dishonest. This is not an election where any of us should be comfortable enough to make snarky, twee jokes about the state of it all. This is an election which has unfolded with an alleged genocide unfolding over in the background; one which its key figures (including its presumptive winner) have played a key role in aiding and abating. With that in mind, the film I would recommend you watch before heading to the polls tomorrow is Al Jazeera’s 74-minute documentary The Night Won’t End – available for free on the news network’s website, or via YouTube.
Endless night
On October 7th, Hamas fighters evaded Israeli military measures to break out of the Gaza strip. More than 1,200 people – mostly civilians, including children – were killed, while more than 200 were taken hostage. In the months since, however, the Gaza strip has been the target of constant bombardment and a ground invasion by the Israeli military. In that time, Gaza’s Health Ministry holds the official death count at 37,953 – while at least 87,266 Palestinians have been injured in the attacks.
These figures are the cumulative result of countless atrocities which have unfolded during the invasion. That has included the bombings of hospitals, shelling of increasingly crowded civilian ‘safe zones’, and opening fire on Palestinians waiting in line for the little humanitarian aid and food that makes it into Gaza. Israel’s government and military have routinely denied their involvement in these cases, and either directly or indirectly suggested Hamas was to blame.
The Night Won’t End rigorously puts these claims to the test in a number of heartbreaking cases. The one which will likely haunt viewers longest after the credits roll is the story of Hind, a six-year-old girl who was killed beside family members, by an Israeli tank. The story is recounted by Hind’s devastated mother, as well as the Red Crescent workers who answered her emergency call. Hind was riding in a car with her uncle, aunt and cousins, on route to what they thought would be a safe location. But the car was hit by a shell. Everyone but Hind and one cousin, Layan – who called for help – was killed by that first impact. The call to the Red Crescent was interrupted by screaming and gunfire from what Layan said was a tank. When the Red Crescent remade contact with the car, only Hind remained, her voice “growing fainter” as she bled from multiple wounds. When the organisation was finally cleared to send rescuers to the scene by Israel’s military, the ambulance was also hit by a shell, killing the responders. When people finally arrived at the scene two days later, it was far too late for Hind.
The case caused international outrage. But as has repeatedly been the case in this ‘war’, Israel’s military and government sought to muddy the waters by denying their involvement – at least until the churn of the news cycle got bored and moved on. The Night That Won’t End does its best to bring this back to the fore, its filmmakers marshalled by director and producer Kavitha Chekuru sourcing experts from Airwars, using satellite imagery to rubbish claims from Israel’s military that no tanks were in the area that day, they also feature evidence from non-profit Earshot, demonstrating the fire heard on the call was consistent with a weapon mounted on Israeli tanks – and that the vehicle would have been in a position to easily see who was in the wrecked car it had opened fire on. But as conclusive and comprehensive as that evidence might be, it’s not worth much when the Netanyahu government’s leading international allies have trashed international law.
The power of this film is not in the delivery of a “gotcha” moment then. How could it be, when the United States and United Kingdom would not even enforce an ICC arrest warrant for the copious war crimes Benjamin Netanyahu is responsible for? No, there are two more important things at play here. One is that the film goes to lengths to humanise the statistics we have become numb to over the course of this disgraceful chapter in modern history.
The camera gazes into the eyes of mothers and fathers, robbed of their tiny children, their “second soul” as one bereft man puts it, by actions that in no sane world could ever constitute a ‘right to self-defence’. We sit with those same people, huddled together with their surviving children, welling up as they scroll through pictures and videos on their mobile phones – the only remaining images of their loved ones. These are the grieving rituals we are well acquainted with in Europe and America too.
Suddenly, something which might have seemed so far-flung and easy to compartmentalise is here, in front of us. And before long, that won’t just be a figurative statement. The second thing to make The Night Won’t End essential viewing now is that it makes a wider point about the way the world is heading. The US and UK working to undermine international law for its ally is not just out of a sense of obligation: in a world where the ruling class is incapable of facing a number of existential crises, a precedent for unmitigated brutality could prove useful to maintaining control of populations closer to home.
What now?
And that brings me back to the election. This film is something you should watch before going to the polls as a reminder of what is really at stake. Labour’s current leader has set his stall out from day one, asserting that Israel has the right to withhold power and water from a captive population in Gaza. That is a war crime. And while Keir Starmer has tried to row back on that slightly in the coming months, he refuses to comment on whether his government would respect an ICC arrest warrant for Israel’s Prime Minister, at least before the election – while quietly suggesting that David Lammy (who has been utterly terrible on Gaza himself) would not be in his first cabinet, conspicuously following Lammy’s assertion that Labour would respect international law.
While the Labour super-majority might be less prone to killing thousands of disabled people through starvation, what will that mean for the groups it does deem as a ‘problem’ in the coming five years? In the event of a super-majority, what will a Labour Government which is actively hostile to human rights organisations, the UN and the ICC be capable of when addressing the refugee crisis, or the rights of the trans community? And beyond that, what will it invite in when it next loses power?
Ousting the Conservative Party is necessary, because all those things hold true for that gaggle of chinless murderers, times a thousand. But handing this Labour Party a supermajority, ushering in a hundred parachuted Starmerist candidates who will reinforce his toxic politics, and further enabling him to act with impunity will enable a bonfire of the liberties – in Palestine, and closer to home.
If you have the luxury of voting for one of the few Labour candidates not to disgrace themselves over Gaza, go for it. Beyond that, the future Prime Minister has suggested he can do without conscientious support from the left – so give it to someone else: an independent like Jeremy Corbyn, or a Green doing surprisingly well in your constituency. You do not owe Starmer your complicity this genocide. You do not owe him your loyalty as they give rise to the conditions which will see even worse unfold in the future. But when the circus leaves town, politics continues beyond the election, and we all have a responsibility to fight against what comes next.