Cinephilistinism and the Second Coming

This article argues that Palestinian cinema can collectively be understood as adopting a crip aesthetic that gives expression to how, after Jasbir K. Puar (2017), Palestinians are routinely and systematically rendered disabled, or debilitated, by the Israel Occupation Forces. It is through the twin lenses of disability theory and critical race theory that I propose the concept of cinephilistinism, a term that attempts two things: firstly, to express an essayistic opposition to both a cinematic settler-colonial occupation and the support, be that tacit or explicit, lent to that occupation by various purportedly cinephilic institutions; and, secondly, to function as a means for currying what Steven Salaita might term, apropos of Indigenous and Palestinian relations (but here applied to Palestinian solidarity networks more generally), “inter/nationalism” or “solidarity, transnationalism, intersectionality, kinship, or intercommunalism” with Palestine at this moment of intensified Israeli state brutality. What is more, the article will latterly pitch cinephilistinism against a western theological Zionist myth regarding the (Second) Coming, which has Palestine as its focus, such that the battle for Palestinian freedom becomes the battle for the future of humanity, with cinema playing a key role in this struggle.