New Israeli Film Raises Questions about Israel’s Use of Military Power
TEL AVIV, Israel - In the opening minutes of Joseph Cedar’s new film “Beaufort,” three Israeli soldiers hunker down behind concrete blast walls and talk about what brought them to an isolated mountaintop fortress in Lebanon.”If you are here, you are here by mistake,” one doomed soldier says to a new arrival sent to defuse a roadside bomb. “I wanted to be here. That was the mistake.”
That message, which raises fundamental questions about Israel’s use of military power, has struck a chord with moviegoers here at a time when the country is grappling with a pervasive sense of malaise in the wake of last summer’s 34-day war in Lebanon against Hezbollah.
Filmed before last summer’s war, “Beaufort” is set during Israel’s 18-year occupation of Lebanon, which ended seven years ago. But its story of a shell-shocked Israeli unit charged with defending and dismantling a military outpost established at a 12th-century Crusader castle resonates today as confidence in the Israeli government remains low over what Israelis believe was a disappointing end to last summer’s war.
Next month, a special government committee looking into Israel’s handling of the war, which failed to bring about the release of the two soldiers whose kidnapping on July 12 triggered the conflict, is expected to deliver a caustic critique of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s year-old coalition government.
“Seeing it through the prism of last summer’s war, our nerve endings are more sensitive to the question of: Was this military operation necessary? Did people die in vain?” said Stuart Schoffman, a columnist at The Jerusalem Report magazine.
“Beaufort” has set records for an Israeli film by attracting more than 135,000 viewers in its first two-and-a-half weeks. One critic dubbed it “Israel’s first great war movie.” Last month, Cedar became the first Israeli to be named best director at the Berlin International Film Festival.
Based on true events, the film traces the grim, gray months of a small Israeli unit faced with an unenviable mission as their military prepares to withdraw from Lebanon in 2000. Commandos scamper across open ground amid relentless Hezbollah mortar attacks. Instead of striking back, the unit is largely relegated to a maze of concrete tunnels and observation posts that are easy targets for Hezbollah’s increasingly deadly rockets. One by one, the soldiers are cut down by Hezbollah attacks that bring gasps from the audience. Throughout the film, Hezbollah remains an invisible foe.
As his men are killed, the unit’s 22-year-old commander, “Liraz,” wrestles with his country’s decision to withdraw, his flaws as a leader and his responsibility in ultimately blowing up a symbolic command post that was one of the first strategic points captured when Israel invaded in 1982.
For Cedar, who spent several weeks at Beaufort as a young soldier, the story is the antithesis of Masada, the legendary fortress near the Dead Sea where Jewish revolutionaries took their own lives rather than surrender to advancing Romans.
“A society that feels confident about their values can allow themselves to be weak, to surrender once in a while,” said Cedar, 38. “I thought that the withdrawal from Lebanon signaled that Israel is a state where they are confident enough not to hold onto certain iconic mountains because they know that we’re strong enough, our value system is just enough and we don’t need our flag to show it.”
The movie has been seen by top Israeli generals, leading politicians and young soldiers. Not everyone is embracing Cedar’s message.
Effie Eitam, a conservative Israeli lawmaker and brigadier general who led an officer’s school battalion during the first Lebanon war, criticized “Beaufort” for suggesting that the withdrawal was a courageous step.
“Retreating from military and national positions, lowering the flag and converging behind fences is a recipe for failure and disaster,” Eitam wrote on his blog. “That is not the way to build a nation, national pride or deterrence power.”
Cedar dislikes that his film has been linked to last summer’s war. He said the tie made his film “cheap” when it should be able to stand the test of time.
Still, Cedar said he hopes his exploration of the final months of the Israeli outpost and its fantastic demolition will cause Israelis and their American supporters to think about how Israel uses its military prowess in the region.
“I think that American Jews like to think of their Israeli cousins as brave soldiers and I kind of resent that that’s what’s expected of me,” Cedar said.
The lesson in Beaufort’s destruction, he said, is one of understanding what’s truly important.
“We had to keep the mountain, to keep the myth of how important it was, but it was impossible, and slowly everyone there understood that it was about some kind of national pride that had no substance,” he said. “The only thing of substance is being able to leave the mountain … knowing that no one will ever die there again, and coming home.”
© 2007 McClatchy Washington Bureau and wire service sources.
If Joseph Cedar thinks Israel’s “value system is just enough”, he needs to open his eyes and look around a little more.
The capture of two Gaza civilians, the Muamar brothers, is what led to the capture of Cpl. Gilad Shalit the following day. This fact is almost always overlooked in any discussion of last summer’s destruction of Lebanon.
Also, how can a soldier be “kidnapped”? A uniformed, armed person occupying another people’s land is fair game. Futhermore, this has been going on for years and these exchanges of prisoners have been resolved without destroying a nation.
And from what moral high gound can the IDF spesk? They are bereft of any claim to moral superiority, just as any group which kills innocents is guilty of moral crimes.
I know that a large portion of the people living in Israel are against their government’s use of force, just as a growing number of US citizens are increasingly against the war against the people of Iraq.
These two things didn’t just “happen”. They were planned long ago and there’s more horror to come. The people all know there’s a better way to resolve conflicts than war. I am angry with the leaders past and present who want the middle east to be in constant turmoil. This insanity has to end, and those responsible put in a jail cell for the remainder of their days.
Someone needs to make a film about the Israeli control of the US congress (75 percent of both parties house and senate members attended the recent AIPAC gala), but getting it produced might be tricky in Hollywood, maybe Robert Redford and Jimmy Carter could bankroll the project.
Good point, Concrete man.
I think a Michael Moore/Aaron Russo collaboration could do a good job of it!
Excuse me, but how is a country of about 6 million people (the same amount that the Nazis were able to kill in a few years) the biggest threat to world peace, except for the fact that it exists? I am not saying that Israel is perfect, far from it. But do you really think that if it didn’t exist, everything would be honky dory. Think again. The Arab countried would still be fighting among themselves and hating the West. People use Israel as an excuse for all the ills in the world but you could be sure that if Israel didn’t exist, the Jews would still be blamed for problems that have nothing to do with them. And the world would still be in the same messed up place it is now.
And can we PLEASE get off the idea that Israel controls the US Congress? Get real! What kind of control would that be? Isn’t it just possible that the US and Israel share some of the same values and friends will be friends. Again, I am not saying that it’s all good or right, but supporting and contributing to one another’s mutual goals is what friends do.
Barbara Mckinney, an African American woman who is a representative from Georgia, lost the 2002 primary in her district because she said that the Palestinians deserved to not live in fear. That was all. She said nothing about Israel. And then boom. Nearly a million dollars went to her primary opponent, who entered very late into the race, and it was all from Jewish political organizations. She lost, but came back. Explain to me how that does not constitute taking control of government. Corporations pour in money to Congress, so they control the corporate agenda. Jewish organizations do the same, as do Saudi, and so US foreign policy in the Middle East is run out of Tel Aviv and Riyadh, not Washington D.C. What’s so hard to understand about that?
Correction. She was out from 2002-2004, but since 2004 has been back in office, I think.
To mpk,
How can a tiny island called England control most of the world in 19th century? Or how can tiny little Mascedonia take over all of Europe the Middle East and Far East? I have plenty more but I’ll stop there.
The Nazis killed 12 million people in concentration camps, 6 million were Jews. were is your pity for the other 6 million? And why don’t we have movies, specials and documentaries about these people.
Isreal does control the Congress. There is no getting around it. If you have to pledge your aligance to the protection of Israel in order to get elected (or re-elected) you’ve sold your independence away.
If you don’t see this, your just not looking or your in complete denial.
I am black American but I could not any way shape or form see defending President Mugabe of Zimbabwe for his brutal actions just because we share geographical/historical backgrounds. When your wrong your wrong.
To alex,
Her name is Cynthia McKinney
I suggest to read Jimmy Carters book, Palestine Peace not Apartheid, it is new, short and covers allot of information, even printing the UN resolutions form the 60 through 2004 or 5, knowledge quite needed in this country, lack of knowledge seems rampant, present company excluded. For better or worse the Jewish State of Israel does exist right now,and always will, but the state of Palestine does not, so whom needs to be recognized? It has, and is, a one sided conversation, everyone protects Israel and no one give a flying F… about anyone else! However the Israels are not innocent victims any longer, they are part of the problem, but no one can say it because they are then called antisemitic, but I think it is anti-Palestine, because they are the ones that have no state and no one cares. You will never bully them into what you want, you will need to compromise with them, so hell will freeze over before anyone truly cares.
The Israel Lobby should not be taken lightly they are more involved in our government anyone wants to admit, but they are there.
Just a note to everyone posting, I ask for everyone to post without jumping to conclusions and attempting to make Israel a black and white issue. For as with everything else it is a terribly complicated issue and denouncing them as this or that does nothing in the end. Rather a cool collected approach does more good. Please also note that I am not a supporter of Israel in some of the things they do but that does not necessarily equate to me hating them. Keep up the good posts.
The powers running the “death camps” in Europe have already conceded there were closer to 1.2 million jews killed in them. even the plaques that represent the ELITE in persecuted peoples are left blank because there is mounting evidence that the holocaust as they present and profit from it is false. By the way, it’s a good thing I’m not in Europe or Canada. I’d be arrested, tried, convicted of being a Holocaust Denier and sent to prison for 5 years as many already have…. Explain how a tiny nation of 6 million could accomplish THAT plz.
Paschn. wants an explanation as to how “a tiny nation of 6 million has accomplished” the creation of a juridical system in a number of European countries where denial of the terrible genocide carried out by Hitler and his Nazi followers has been outlawed. The answer is: “a tiny nation of 6 million” hasn’t accomplished this. It has come about in some of the European countries in question because of the great shame and horror felt for what a previous tyranny did “in their (the people’s) name”.
Sound familiar Paschn?
The European peace activists I know and support are careful not to identify “Americans” as the source of the aggression, brutality, torture, arrogance and greed we are now seeing, but to speak “of “the violence and illegality of the United States government”, coupled with the hope that those responsible will have to face a court of law which will decide if they are guilty or not. We do not advocate kangaroo courts to condemn the “American people”.
However, in a country that underwent an almost total trauma after an attack, to the extent of apparently acquiescing in the loss of many of their own civil rights and in the indiscriminate accusation of “terrorism” with respect to many innocent people, it is time that people take a hard look at themselves. To those who pontificate, how much courage would they have if subjected to constant kamikaze attacks in your streets, to the lobbing of missiles from a few miles away from your home, not to speak of maniacal and hate-filled threats from another country that says it is planning your annihilation by nuclear attacks?
I would hope that in such a situation they would continue to look for peaceful ways for combating such possible violence and for dialoguing with your attacker, and above all, would continue to apply democratic law and equable solutions. Unfortunately, as we know from recent history, this has not always been the case, if we look at the “fear” of Cuba or Vietnam or Nicaragua, or now Iraq, and the disproportion between the actual “menace” these countries represented and the treatment meted out to them.
mpk
Former French ambassador to Great Britain, Daniel Bernard, questioned how could “a shitty little country like Israel cause so much trouble”…
In the “urban dictionary” its first entry states “a country the size of your fingernail that gets 10% of all international media coverage and has more trouble than half the rest of the world”….
I’ve been to Israel many times. Beautiful country, beautiful people…but lets face it….. A modern “democracy” is not a society that strictly benefits one group of people. Israel can try to spin it any way it wants. Isn’t that what the Germans tried to do? Create a master race? That whole region will always be mired in war because of its fictitious divisions. Israelis are as much to blame as the Syrians or Lebanese or Egyptians. As humans, one can only hope that we quickly evolve to a higher level of intelligence before we all get sucked further and further into the endless drama of the middle east. I don’t know….maybe people ultimataely feed on drama. It shows lack of psychological growth and maturity.