"I've never seen the world be so cruel": performances of Mizrahi masculinity under a state of emergency in Sderot, a sociological-gender analysis of the film "Hula and Natan"

Robby Elmaliah’s documentary film Hula and Natan. The film is about two brothers—Aaron Maimon, nicknamed Hula born in 1957, and his younger brother, Natan born 1961. The two are poor laborers, residents of Sderot. They run an unlicensed auto-repair and used-car lot behind their late father’s house, on a piece of land that they occupy illegally and claim as their own. This is the landscape of the film, in which we are exposed to the marginality of their lives. The plot takes place over a one-year period beginning on Israel Independence Day 2008 and finishing on Independence Day 2009. The film highlights the constant state of emergency in Sderot, occasioned by rocket attacks from Gaza, and reaches its climax in a scene during Operation Cast Lead (late 2008–early 2009)....