Waltz with Bashir and Sderock

Explosions lit up overhead and outside our front door as my family gathered together. Our little dog barked incessantly, almost as bad as Marley used to bark at lightning. We got our things together, and took the dog with us, driving along sulfur-smelling streets. In case you haven’t guessed, no, we’re not in a war zone. It’s just the fourth of July, and my family’s on the way to Blockbuster. We found a film, eventually, and although my mom fell asleep during it, it was good. Problem is, now that the explosions from outside have stopped, the ones from the movie are still keeping me awake.

Waltz with Bashir. It has the same look as A Scanner Darkly and Waking Life. The director Ari Folman chronicles his own search for 20-year old lost memories of his time as a 19-year-old soldier. Folman was an Israeli soldier in the first Lebanon War remembering when Christian Lebanese soldiers from the Phalangist party were allowed by Israeli forces to massacre Palestinian and Lebanese civilians from the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut.

This one reviewer summarizes the identity questions faced: “Onlooker, bystander, back-turner - which term describes Folman? Which describes his leaders, his country and its people? Sivan, counseling his troubled patient, offers a most unwelcome diagnosis: "You took on the role of the Nazi” (newsday.com). Meanwhile, another believes Folman wrongly washes his and his nation’s hands of the blood (palestinethinktank.com). While I think that criticism is too strong, the writer makes a good point in saying that, “it was not by accident that when he won the Golden Globe, Folman didn't even mention the war in Gaza, which was raging as he accepted the prestigious award.”

This film does not tell the story of the victims but of the journey of a man remembering them. And although the reviewer also criticizes the last scene, I wonder if Folman was not also aware of who the real victim was in his decision to use real footage: “Not the ones who need a shrink and a drink to get over their experience, but those who remain bereaved for all time, homeless, limbless and crippled.”

----------

Anyone can justify their war by starting the history books to make the enemy the aggressor. And I just jumped in, so I don’t know where I started reading. But what I am reading is that there were shootings “with Israeli supplied silencers” and that the Israeli created army in South Lebanon “kept hundreds of women and children from fleeing for their lives” (atlanticfreepress.com). The US Envoy Richard Draper blamed Israel: “You sons of bitches! You were in control and you gave us your word!” (atlanticfreepress.com). I’m not really sure if it matters whether someone knowingly allowed a massacre they could stop or participated in it. It seems just as bad. Painful when I think about the talk I just had with my brother about North Korean death camps, and my own inaction.

Even more painful when I read about the US response to Hobeika, someone from the Phalange group, attempting to open up a case against Sharon, a leader from the Israeli Defense Forces:
Belgium scrapped the case after US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, told Belgium: “It’s your goddamned Sharon Trial or NATO Headquarters, you choose.”
In January of 2002 Hobeika was assassinated. He, like many people, claimed to have not known about the massacre until it was in the news. Meanwhile people my own age or younger are fighting based on the stories they are fed about good guys and bad guys. They’re commanded to kill, and they’re told, like Israeli soldiers were told last December when they went into Gaza, “I want aggressiveness – if there’s someone suspicious on the upper floor of a house, we’ll shell it. If we have suspicions about a house, we’ll shell it…There will be no hesitation…Nobody will deliberate – let the mistakes be over their lives, not ours” (dailystar.com).

It reminds me a lot of how people talked about Rwanda. People knew something was about to happen. All but one American worker in the country fled the city before the genocide occurred, because they knew. But they said they didn’t know. We’re willing to let suspicion be enough to start a massacre and protect ourselves, but not to prevent a massacre and save others. But in Rwanda it seems that many, although certainly not all, are ready to take seriously the government’s rhetoric of forgiveness and reconciliation. And although I don’t believe “the situation” in Israel is going to be resolved any time soon, I believe there is hope. Because there’s places like Bethlehem Bible College providing love and learning to Palestinian youths. And there’s people like Avi Vaknin, who doubles an Israeli bomb shelter into a music studio and club in order to help “suck the poison” out of the youth in his city.



Peace



- http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/movies/ny-ete6024523feb06a,0,6068543.story
- http://palestinethinktank.com/2009/02/26/gideon-levys-view-on-waltz-with-bashir/
- http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/news/1/5285-the-palestinians-of-sabra-shatila-26-years-after-the-massacre-part-one-.html
- http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=2&article_id=103811