This film begins with the documentary filmmaker being led through the destroyed houses in the refugee camp of Jenin. A woman and her children are wading through the rubble, looking for remnants of their lives. She is dazed, unable to believe that she has lost everything in that one attack.

The women tell us about the actions of the Israeli soldiers in destroying their homes, sometimes even bulldozing houses with people in them. And Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch spokespeople explain that there is documented evidence of war crimes and atrocities committed: a wheelchair-ridden Palestinian man who was rolled over by a tank being one case.

Yet the film deals with much more than only what happened at Jenin this summer. We learn that this war against the Palestinians is total: it is assault not only on the houses, possessions, land and bodies of Palestinians, but also a concerted and deliberate attempt to eliminate the very traces of Palestinian history and culture that prove their claims of belonging and very existence on the land. How else to explain the missile fired through the roof of a famous centuries old mosque, located far away from any "terrorist" activity?

What is positive about this documentary is that it also provides a glimpse at the resistance within Israel to the madness. We see Women in Black demonstrating with placards on the streets of Jerusalem (only to be faced with a counter demonstration by young Jewish settlers); an Israeli soldier describes why he became a refusenik; and both Israeli and Palestinian academics alike provide analysis and valuable background history of the Israeli-Palestinian crisis from the 1948 up to the Oslo Peace Accords.

There are unforgettable images of greenery: an unimaginable green in a land we think of as arid; birds which flutter and chirp among the olive groves, accompanied by a beautiful Arabic song. It is a pastoral picture which simultaneously belies the reality of the situation while posing an alternative vision of what peace could look like. A Palestinian olive orchard owner takes the filmmaker-with some risk to his own personal safety-to see his olive orchard which is now land appropriated by the Israeli government. He and other farmers discuss what to do after receiving a note that their land will be appropriated for more highway construction. He tells us that sometimes, it is Israeli settlers who shoot them, not just the soldiers, Israeli settlers who live on fortified settlements built on mountain tops that loom like ancient castles over the surrounding occupied land.

The film juxtaposes contrasting images: tanned Israelis at a beach, playing, swimming, sunbathing, taking their pet dogs out for walks, complaining about how they no longer feel safe to go shopping at the malls. They look and dress like Americans and it could have been Miami had we not known the context. In contrast, we see a group of Palestinian children in a workshop, being entertained as a form of de-stressing after a long curfew. Families mourn, weep and curse at Sharon for not even allowing them time to bury their dead. The progressive Israeli academic interviewed admits to feeling ashamed of his country's actions while Palestinian academic, Hanan Ashrawi, can only feel sorry for Israeli Jews who have lost their humanity in the pursuit of more and more violence in the name of security. Finally, when we are shown the beginnings of the construction of the wall that will divide Palestinians and Israelis, after seeing such contrasting images of unequal power between the two populations, "apartheid" becomes the most appropriate definition of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict today, one imposed by a modern colonial state on the people of the Occupied Territories.