Palestinians Have Ceased to Exist for Jews
There is nothing interesting or new in the depiction of Palestinians -- they have no names, they don't speak, they are anonymous. But they are not simply faceless victims. Instead, the victims in the story that Waltz with Bashir tells are Israeli soldiers. Their anguish, their questioning, their confusion, their pain
Few Israelis talk to Palestinians. They rarely visit a Palestinian home except in uniform with a flack jacket and an assault rifle. With the wall we announced we didn't want visitors from the territories. Day laborers, ambulance drivers and freedom fighters were forbidden. If the wall ran in the middle of the street separating an Arab family, they had to walk a kilometer to a check point. After they passed security, they had to hike another kilometer to reach the relative's home just across the barrier.
Then, there was always the danger of losing your papers or answering the security guard's questions in an evasive or contradicting way. This could earn a night's stay in the lock-up adjacent to the check point. If the Police had a file on you, it could lead to an indefinite prison stay sometimes including investigation under torture.
This is an insult and a gross violation of human rights.
Moreover, the wall is
Ralph Ellison author of "The Invisible Man" could have written the following movie review.
"To say that Palestinians are absent in Waltz with Bashir, to say that it is a film that deals not with Palestinians but with Israelis who served in Lebanon, only barely begins to describe the violence that this film commits against Palestinians. There is nothing interesting or new in the depiction of Palestinians -- they have no names, they don't speak, they are anonymous. But they are not simply faceless victims. Instead, the victims in the story that Waltz with Bashir tells are Israeli soldiers. Their anguish, their questioning, their confusion, their pain -- it is this that is intended to pull us. The rotoscope animation is beautifully done, the facial expressions so engaging, subtle and torn, we find ourselves grimacing and gasping at the trials and tribulations of the young Israeli soldiers and their older agonizing selves. We don't see Palestinian facial expressions; only a lingering on dead, anonymous faces. So while Palestinians are never fully human, Israelis are, and indeed are humanized through the course of the film."
Naira Antoun, The Electronic Intifada, 19 February 2009
Psychic Pain Is a Symptom of Evil and not Evil Itself
Currently, the Arab World ignores the Palestinians fit only for lip service. Blockaded, they are cut off from the world. Israelis and Hamas won't sit at the same table.
The sides have endured 61 years of acrimony and strife. Do they have anything left to say?
Sanity Through Indifference
A graduate student 1967 through 1969, I saw my country go mad. Yet, I was the only one in my graduate school seminars who had shot a rifle in anger and who had made out an Income Tax Form.
Years later I met a former professor who looked back on those years as the best of his life. After
After I made Aliyah in 1983, I wondered how people could keep their sanity after 35 years of continuous war. Five months later I had enough Hebrew to understand Yom Shoah [Holocaust Day] 24 hours of movies, dramas and pictorials relating to that terrible era. The mental torment became physical pain, but I remained glued to the TV. I came to realize that many of us had gone at least a little bit mad. It's like being a doctor who has become de-sensitized to patient suffering and death. At some point every combat soldier thinks he will come home in a box. He accepts death and that is the moment he begins to live.
A human being only begins to live when he comes to grips with the inevitability of death. Then, he is free to go forward in life.
We don't hate the Palestinians. Essentially, we are indifferent to them. Our way of dealing with 61 years of war is to ignore the experience and the people who fought us.
Anymore,
If the Palestinians insist on reliving the perpetual war years mired in blood and hatred, let them. We are neither our brother's keeper nor his slave. We have more important things to do.
I published an Electronic Intifada review of "Waltz with Bashir" that criticizes the director's ignoring the Palestinian characters. Naira Antoun is upset that he has nothing to do with them.
She will get used to it.
FILM REVIEW: "WALTZ WITH BASHIR"
By Naira Antoun, The Electronic Intifada, 19 February 2009
To say that Palestinians are absent in Waltz with Bashir,
to say that it is a film that deals not with Palestinians
but with Israelis who served in Lebanon, only barely
begins to describe the violence that this film commits
against Palestinians. There is nothing interesting or new
in the depiction of Palestinians -- they have no names,
they don't speak, they are anonymous. But they are not
simply faceless victims. Instead, the victims in the story
that Waltz with Bashir tells are Israeli soldiers. Naira
Antoun reviews the film for The Electronic Intifada.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10322.shtml
Palestinians Have Ceased to Exist for Israelis
Ms Naira Antoun has a right to be outraged. The Jews are not fit to be occupiers. Ehud Barak has often said, if he were a Palestinian he would have become a terrorist. Indeed, in the 1940's many Jews not serving in the British Eighth Army were terrorists.
The 1967 War marked a big change. The Israelis should have dropped the newly conquered territories like a hot rock. Those who did want to dump the territories needed at least a recognition of Israeli's right to exist. When this was not forthcoming
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