In 2021, Netflix moved to create a new movie collection for its viewers.
“Netflix will launch the Palestinian Stories collection, showcasing films from some of the Arab world’s finest filmmakers,” said an announcement of the new grouping. “[T]he collection is a tribute to the creativity and passion of the Arab film industry as Netflix continues to invest in stories from the Arab world.”
Thirty-two films were slated for inclusion, with more additions planned.
Now, however, following a purge of at least 24 films from Netflix’s library, the landing page for the collection contains just a single film for streamers in the United States: Lina Al Abed’s 2019 documentary “Ibrahim: A Fate to Define” — and that’s just if you access it from the U.S.
“This erasure of Palestinian voices by Netflix follows many ugly decades of suppression of Palestinian viewpoints.”
Accessing the page from an Israeli IP address, not only are the 24 films gone, but “Palestinian Stories” doesn’t exist at all: The URL for the landing page instead yields to 404 error page saying the site can’t be found. The Israeli page reportedly used to include 28 movies.
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