Interesting interview with the director of the new documentary film The Gatekeepers (see Sep. 5 post).
The Gatekeepers project revolves around interviews conducted with six former heads of Shin Bet, Israel's internal security service. From what is revealed in the film's trailer and the clips shown in this Democracy Now segment, the documentary looks to be sober, honest, as well as realistic in terms of what is and isn't good for the state of Israel.
Dror Moreh, the documentary's director, clearly has his country's well-being in mind. It's worth noting that this project wasn't the creation of a far-left activist looking to produce a hard-edged work on Israel's involvement in the Palestinian territories. Moreh appears quite devoted to and protective of his country, and in an awkward moment in the interview reveals his discomfort in possibly being cast as anything other.
To the point, he insists on couching the Palestine-Israel conflict in inappropriately symmetrical terms. (This is not to suggest that certain Palestinian groups haven't committed acts of terrorism and violence against innocents, but his point on "balance" is a distortion.) However, this only ends up strengthening the film. You have half a dozen men from the top echelons of Israeli intelligence being interviewed by a careful and conservative filmmaker discussing how the occupation and Israel's brutality toward the Palestinians are bad for Israel.
The film was favorably reviewed in the New York Times (notoriously skewed in its coverage of Israel) and has been nominated for an Academy Award. When I first began studying the conflict in the late 1990s, even using the word "occupation" earned you labels like "leftist" and "anti-Israeli." But as the facts continue to come in, and as they're placed in more and brighter light, the ideological and reflexive clamoring little by little gets quieter and quieter. It's a common occurrence when dealing with sensitive political and historical issues: what is at first dismissed as "leftist" moves to the center where it should have been all along.
And once this trend begins, it tends to not stop. As Americans see more and more of what Israel has been doing in the Palestinian territories for the last 45 years, the better it will be for the whole situation and everyone involved.
[For those readers in the Chicagoland area, the film hasn't reached us yet.]
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/1/29/the_gatekeepers_in_new_film_ex
Gatekeepers trailer:
http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/sony/thegatekeepers
