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31 July 2009

Cry, the Beloved Country: A Torah portion chronicling a tragedy foretold

Cry, the Beloved Country

A Torah portion chronicling a tragedy foretold

By Liel Leibovitz | 7:00 am July 31, 2009 Print This Post

An Israeli settler girl walks up to the illegal outpost of Givat Tzuria

CREDIT: David Furst/AFP/Getty Images

Summers are the hardest.

Any other time of year seems tailored for exile. Autumns, for example, are much better in New York than they are in Tel Aviv, the city in which I was born and which I left, not without considerable pain, in 1999. Back there, on the coast of the Mediterranean, all of autumn’s tenderness is crushed by the long reach of summer’s clammy hand. Leaves changing colors? That earthy smell singeing the nostrils with the first gusts of brisk air? Forget about it: in Tel Aviv, you can still lounge on the beach in December.

Similarly, winters are largely absent as well, and springs are like short and furious arms races, with each month rushing the next into the escalation of summer’s inevitable heat. Come June, however, there’s no better place to be than Tel Aviv. As humid as the city is, as humming with the discontent of sweating, heated souls, the first Hebrew town in modern history was really for summer born.

Growing up, my friends and I would start our summer mornings running around on the beach, playing matkot —a popular beach game played with two paddles and a rubber ball that makes a frightful thwacking sound—and eating lemon popsicles before lying down for a nap. A few hours later, our skins roasted and our heads dazed with sun, we’d amble over to one of three or four nearby cinemas to catch a silly action film, then rush to the local burger joint to soothe our gurgling stomachs. Greasy, sunburnt, and wildly happy, we’d return home late in the evening. I’m many years and thousands of miles removed from those glorious summer days, and yet I still miss them terribly.

It was with much interest, then, that I read recently about some Israeli children spending their summers not in similar pleasurable pursuits but by building settlements on the rocky hills of the West Bank. As I reported earlier this week, “Youth for the Land of Israel,” a new non-profit organization, is offering Israeli youth a summer stint on the hills of Judea and Samaria where they can learn about the importance of our ancestral land and partake in its settling, government strictures and international condemnations be damned.

Reading the committed campers’ accounts, I was stirred by feelings of admiration. Unlike myself at their age, these ideologically driven youth could return home at the end of a sizzling summer afternoon and say that they had done something to further their beliefs. They sacrificed their idle days—a teenager’s most precious resource—for the greater good. Their voices pealed with conviction, with the kind of clarity that is ours in abundance when we’re young—and that grows ever dimmer as we age.

Shlomit Amitai, 16 years old, a counselor in the settlement camp, was quoted as telling her young charges that the Zohar, the sacred book of Kabbalah, teaches us that the land of Israel is like our collective mother. “Just like you would dress your mother’s wounds,” she said, “empty land is a wound we need to dress by settlement.”

It is probably useless to tell Ms. Amitai that the Zohar, so mighty in its mystical force, was traditionally available only to scholars 40 and older who’d reached a level of mastery in Judaism’s earthly foundations before being allowed to travel to its more ethereal realms. I’m not so far removed from my own youthful years to remember that there’s nothing teenagers like less than being preached to by didactic dunderheads; but if I could, I would suggest to her and her friends a better book to read this summer: Deuteronomy.

They wouldn’t even have to read the whole thing. This week’s parasha is enough. It’s short, and it’s as heartbreaking as anything in literature. It’s Moses’s farewell speech. Weary and elegiac, the dying leader, done retelling the past, speaks to his people about the future.

Me, says Moses, I won’t make it to the Promised Land. But you will. And, once there, you will mess things up.

“When you beget children and children’s children,” he prophesies, “and you will be long established in the land, and you become corrupt and make a graven image, the likeness of anything, and do evil in the eyes of the Lord your God, to provoke Him to anger, I call as witness against you this very day the heaven and the earth, that you will speedily and utterly perish from the land to which you cross the Jordan, to possess; you will not prolong your days upon it, but will be utterly destroyed. And the Lord will scatter you among the peoples, and you will remain few in number among the nations to where the Lord will lead you.”

But things, he continues, aren’t all grim: this terrible exile, Moses concludes, will reawaken Israel’s appetite for righteousness, the people will once again keep the laws of the Torah and worship the Lord, and He, in turn, will redeem them and return them to their ancestral home. The saga of Israel will have a happy ending after all.

This story is often taken by biblical scholars to be a bit of a retroactive rewrite, the work of post-exilic scribes wishing to fortify the faith by peppering the story with premonitions, supposedly authentic, of the doom that is to come. But as is so often the case with scripture, reality’s concrete details are eclipsed by a grander, eternal meaning: Moses’s story is not some sliver of Jewish history, but a warning that is, has always been, and will always be timely.

To those who revere the land above all, seeing it as a wounded mother (somewhat of a graven image there, some might say, the bleeding and martyred woman), Moses’ story couldn’t be more relevant. Jews, it reminds us, have had Hebron and Jericho and Shechem once before. They were long established in the land. And, doing evil in the eyes of the Lord their God, they speedily and utterly perished from it. They returned again, once again transgressed, once again perished, once again returned. It’s not for lack of territorial sovereignty that Jews had suffered terribly, not for forfeiting a holy hill or a sacred wadi. The answer to our suffering lies not in the soil but in the soul. This summer, may we all listen to Moses, and believe him when he tells us our true, eternal, and only strength lies in justice, in compassion, in love. By now, we know all too well what happens when we ignore him.

29 July 2009

Israel's enemies take no prisoners

A personal observation: I am one of the, I believe, lucky few who has actually purchased Claude Lanzmann's 1985 masterpiece "Shoah". I have watched it at several different points in my life. If there is Jewish paranoia, it is well deserved and is to be understood by all who deal with her, especially her enemies. In the end, the title of this piece (and a very important one in my opinion, considering its source material) refers not to the actual State of Israel, but we Jews, am Yisroel. We have proof that, over the centuries, the non Jewish, anti-Jew world indeed take no prisoners. One viewing of "Shoah" will drive the point home as eloquently as any newsreel footage, and the opinion of this man is to be heeded. 


Randy Shiner




06/07/2009

Israel's enemies take no prisoners

Max Dax interviews director Claude Lanzmann about his film "Tsahal"

On March 12 2009 Jewish director Claude Lanzmann published his memoirs in France. 'Le Lievre de Patagonie' (Gallimard) has since sold over 100,000 copies and the 600 page tome has brought Lanzmann literary stardom. 

Lanzmann's immense popularity in France is explained in his biography. The 83-year old was a Resistance fighter, a signatory of the Manifesto of 121 against the war in Algeria, he was a member of the red circle surrounding Jean-Paul Sartre, he was Simone de Beauvoir's partner for many years and is currently the publisher of Les Temps Modernes, France's left-wing intellectual conscience. But Lanzmann rose to fame in 1985 as the director of his 9 1/2 hour film "Shoah" about the murder of the European Jews in the death camps. There is no need to waste any words explaining the importance of this film, suffice it to say that a German company, Absolut Medien film, has just released the film as a 4 DVD set for 75 Euro (the studio version is available for just 29,90) After "Shoah" Lanzmann made "Tsahal" in 1994, a film about the Israeli army which also appears with Absolut Medien for 39,90 Euros on June 29 and includes a discussion between Lanzmann and Ehud Barak.

The unofficial second part of "Shoah" has been the subject of heated debate since its release in 1994. The film focusses on the Israeli military and the wars it has fought. Claude Lanzmann's film is appropriately glistening with weapons and according to the director's statements, often martial in tone
The starting point for "Tsahal" is an impossibility. How was Israel able to build the first Jewish army in history and what particular historical events have to be taken into account if we are to pass judgement on this army, and with it the State of Israel in the Middle East – especially from the German perspective. To answer this and the question of the connection between the extermination of the Jews and the self-awareness of an army that is surrounded by enemies, Lanzman spends 4.5 hours interviewing soldiers and politicians, teenagers and Palestinians. Like "Shoah" before it "Tsahal" eschews action sequences and images of war. Instead the viewer is mesmerised by interwoven monologues of the protagonists' stories. 
Max Dax

tazMonsieur Lanzmann, exactly 15 years ago your film "Tsahal" was showing in cinemas. It deals with the particular context in which the Tsava Haganah Leisrael, or the Israel Defence Forces should be seen.

Claude Lanzmann: Is it really such a long time ago?


Claude Lanzmann

Would you have made a different film after the Al-Aksa Intifada and the two Israeli-Arab wars that have happened since?

No, I don't think so. I would make the same film. "Tsahal", after all, is not reportage. The film looks at the Six Day War of 1967, the War of Attrition between 1968 and 70 and the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Not even the first Lebanon war of 1982 plays a role in my film. This is because the question that concerns me is a very different one: why should we judge Israel's army according to different criteria than other armies? Why is human life in Israeldeemed more valuable than elsewhere? As an answer to these questions "Tsahal" is still as important as it was at when it premiered 15 years ago.

Could you try to answer your two questions using the example of the two most recent wars.

In both campaigns, in other words against Lebanon and Gaza, Israel felt exposed to constant rocket fire over a long period of time. Northern and Southern Israel respectively were showered with rockets. Thousands of them were fired, often from katyushas, onto Israeli soil, at Israeli kibbutzim, villages and towns along the border. To answer your question this bombardment was unacceptable on two accounts Firstly, because the civilian population was directly impacted, and was forced into bunkers for months at a time. Secondly the government felt it was being subjected to constant provocation. I know lots of people don't want to hear these facts any more. But real arguments do not lose their truth, just because they are repeated.


All stills from "Tsahal" courtesy Absolut Medien
Soldier Adam Ben Tolila



That doesn't answer the question of why human lives in Israel are worth more than elsewhere.


The answer goes back to the Shoah, the murder of the Jews in the Second World War. There are very few families in Israel who did not lose one or several members in the Shoah. The number of Jewish victims killed in wars and attacks must at all costs – and I mean that absolutely literally– be kept as low as possible. That is the maxim. The paradox is that the Israeli army operates on the principle of high-precision, high-impact attacks on specific targets. For example the houses, bases or offices of the Hamas. Yet no matter how precise they try to be, there are always civilian casualties. Hamas and Hezbollah on the other hands, strike at random. Day after day, month after month, year after year they fire their rockets into Israeli territories where they explode at random. Whether they hit a kindergarten or a military base is all the same to them. The main point is that people are killed. Because in the eyes of Hamas or Hezbollah, every Israeli is the enemy, children and civilians included. They want to see Israel wiped off the map. This is why the Israeli army should be judged according to different criteria than other armies. 

Thousands of rockets might be fired out of Gaza and Southern Lebanon, but Israeli losses are minimal.


The problem is that the world press only condemns what it sees as Israel's inappropriate use of violence. No one ever talks about what Israel should have done instead. Not respond? Accept the hail of rockets, and chalk up more casualties. That's absurd! We all know that the wars against Israel were never about occupying Israel. No, the idea, which Iran is propagating again today, is to eradicate Israel. The Israeli army finds itself in the thankless situation that, unlike the Lebanese or Egyptian army, it cannot lose. Not once. This is a fatal situation.


David Grossman


This is what your film is about, the paradox that must be overcome. 


Normal armies take prisoners; Israel's enemies don't. In my film I try to put myself into the soul of a soldier who knows that if the enemy gets the better of him, he's doomed. The pressure is inhuman. This is why Israeli soldiers are psychologically trained to look death in the eye. If a soldier with this sort of training is outnumbered and ambushed, he has the psychological means to fight back with everything in his power and without hesitation. Indeed a steady stream of assailants are caught unaware by such unexpected resistance and are forced to concede victories despite their starting off in the better battle position.

Is that the logic of war?


Of course. The logic of war is kill or be killed

And the logic of peace?


All this endless talk about peace! And yet nothing has come of it.

In a recent interview from March 2008 which was added as an extra feature on the "Tsahal" DVD, you talk with the current defence minister, Ehud Barak. He says that Israel is partially responsible for the existence of Hamas and Hezbollah – because of the long-term occupation of Southern Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.

He is touching on a dilemma. The situation is so incredibly complicated, because Hamas and Hezbollah have no interest in reaching a solution with Israel. They don't want irredentism, in other words a multi-ethnic state like Ireland. And they don't want a two-state solution. It was during Barak's term as prime minister that the Israeli armies pulled out of Southern Lebanon. And it was Ariel Sharon of all people who ordered the retreat from Gaza. When Sharon had Abbas as a counterpart on the Palistinian side, a man who talked differently from the Palistinian leaders before him, I really did hope that something would change for the good. But then Sharon had a stroke and the process ended. It is a tragedy. 

Ariel Sharon plays a central role in your film. But you hardly mention the Sabra and Shatila massacre during the 1982 Lebanon War. You were heavily criticised for this on the Palestinian side. 

Not only from the Palestinian side. From the Israeli side as well. The critics like to overlook the fact that my film is not a documentary. "Tsahal" is an auteur film and I am the author. Sabra and Shatila have nothing to do with what my film is saying. There are plenty of things that I leave out of "Tsahal".


Ehud Barack 


Instead of talking about Sabra and Shatila, you show images of Sharon as a shepherd surrounded by sheep.


You should not forget that the massacres in the refugee camps were carried out by Arabs on Arabs, not by Israelis. They were carried out to avenge the murders of the newly elected Lebanese president Bashir Gemayel by PLO assassins. People like to forget this. 

Arafat and the PLO fighters left Lebanon and headed for Tunisia, with French help. The Israelis disarmed the militias in the camps and then retreated. So whose fault was it? The Israelis'? The PLO? The French? The international troops who left the country prematurely? Simone de Beauvoir wrote an article about it in Les Temps Modernes. Her core message was that the finger of blame would be pointed at everyone, except the murderers. But it's also clear that Sharon bore political responsibility for the massacre carried out by the Phalangist militias, because the Israeli army stood back and let the bloodbath happen. He was then forced to resign as defence minister.

But why show images of Sharon as sweet-tempered shepherd?

Because I know him personally since the war of attrition in 1968. He was a commander on the Southern Front in Sinai. I was with him at the Suez Canal, when this section of the front was under heavy fire from the Egyptian military. He saved my life there. We were being fired at and he threw me to the floor and threw himself on top of me. I was not surprised by his push for peace just before his stroke, because I knew him as a man of courage. Only courageous men can lead peace talks. I filmed him on his farm surrounded by sheep. I chose this image and it's stood the test of time.


Claude Lanzmann with Israel Tal


Was "Tsahal" difficult or easy to film compared with "Shoah"?


The difficulties involved in the research and filming were very different from those in "Shoah". It is probably pretty difficult to make a film about the military in any country. It's even more difficult to make a film about an army which has never been filmed before because it is in a permanent state of alert or war.

In "Shoah" you knew what you wanted to tell. You were dealing with a dark past which had to be wrenched from the clutches of oblivion. In "Tsahal" on the other hand, you are talking about the present. An incredibly difficult task, don't you think?


You are mistaken. In "Tsahal" I also knew exactly what I wanted to tell: the creation an army, the construction of an army, the creation of courage. This army represents a victory of the Jewish people over themselves. There had never been a Jewish army before. My film tells how Jews took their fate into their own hands to avoid ever become victims again. I show how they overcame the victim role and overcame a mental predisposition. 


Claude Lanzmann, Ariel Shifman with Palestinians


This new Jewish mentality, you believe, was born in the death camp of Sobibor – where in 1943 the only successful uprising against the SS in such camps took place.


The uprising in Sobibor was lead by Jewish-Russian officers who had fought in the Red Army against the Germany. They were sent to POW camps and then deported to Sobibor, where instead of being gassed immediately like so many others, 50 of them were singled out for fatigue duty. These 50 plotted and spearheaded the uprising. This revolt, in which all involved put their lives firmly on the line, has had a decisive influence on the Jewish identity ever since. This was something new. Of course we should not forget the Jewish Uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto. This was another attempt to resist destiny. But as we know, it ended in tragedy.

Your film "Shoah" ends with a haunting description of the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising.

Haunting is the right word.


Reservists above Gaza


You reserved your optimism for "Tsahal".


In the Israeli army life is valued higher than anything else. And yet every soldier in the Tsahal is prepared to give his life. Unlike other armies of the world, the soldiers of the Tsahal do not die for the glory of their fatherland, they die for life alone. You should not forget that the genocide of the Jews in the Second World War was not just a murder of innocents. It was also a genocide of the defenceless. My film describes the path to overcome defencelessness. It describes how the Jewish people empowered themselves with weapons and it describes the psychological metamorphosis that the people had to undergo, in order to build an army like the Tsahal, in order to be able to defend themselves, to be able to kill. 

For decades, young Israelis have been growing up with the insecurity of knowing that no-one can guarantee that "Israel will still exist in 2025". The novelist and children's author David Grossman says these words in "Tsahal". He is a member of the peace movement. His son Uri died in August 2006, only days after Grossman, together withAmoz Oz, published a petition that called upon Ehud Olmert to pull out of the conflict with Lebanon immediately. Uri, who I have known since he was 10 years old, died in the last days of the fighting, burned in a tank.

The tank is the central motif in "Tsahal". You tell the story of the Tsahal as the story of the Israeli Merkava tank. Do tanks fascinate you?

Weapons play a central role in my film. But I don't know whether I would say they "fascinate" me. That's not a fair word. Because the film is never about fascination. And yet I can certainly say that tanks are the most extraordinary machines. And the most extraordinary tank of all is the Israeli Merkava, because it was built in absolutelyimpossible conditions. The tank commanders love their Merkavas. The tank units spend at least three years of their lives in them. The Merkava was developed by the Israeli General Tal. He features prominently in my film. He says that Israel is an ideal country in which to develop tanks further and wage wars with them. 


Amos Oz


Have you ever ridden in a tank yourself?


Of course I rode in a tank during the filming of "Tsahal". I have also shot grenades from a Merkava. It was really easy to hit a stationary target, but I found it extremely difficult to hit a moving one. I have also flown on reconnaissance missions. During the work on my film I also saw the first prototypes for unmanned flights, drones, which were invented and developed in Israel. They are very unusual machines, but they do not feature in my film. 

Have you also seen the bomb?


Pardon me?

Have you seen the atom bomb?

No, no. I haven't seen that. But have have seen the rockets. They were very impressive, powerful weapons. 

*

This interview originally appeared in the taz on 
19.06.2009 
Translation: lp

Maximilian Bauer, alias Max Dax, is a journalist, photographer and grafic designer. He is the author of a number of biographies of rock musicians and has been editor-in-chief of the music magazine Spex since 2006. His book of interviews "Dreißig Gespräche" was recently published by Suhrkamp Verlag.

08 July 2009

Iranian Filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf: Ahmadinejad's a Terrorist – Just Like Bin Laden

View from a booth: I am delighted that a mainstream Arab media outlet like Al-Arabiya allowed this gentleman to speak frankly. He is of course correct, but the problem in Iran is not all the fault of Ahmedinejad. The problem lies in the "Supreme Leader" (out of "Rocky and Bullwinkle") and his friends who really run the country. When the mullahs come to their senses and realize that the way to peace is through peaceful engagement and not jihad against the non-Islamic ("infidel") world, we will have peace. That, however, is a long, long way off. We are dealing with religious fanatics.

Randy Shiner


Iranian Filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf: Ahmadinejad's a Terrorist – Just Like Bin Laden

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The following is an interview with Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf, which aired on Al-Arabiya TV on July 2, 2009:

To view the clip on MEMRI TV, visit
http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/2173.htm.

"Ahmadinejad is a Terrorist – And He Does Not Represent the Iranian People, Who Hate Him"

Mohsen Makhmalbaf: "We call upon the world not to recognize Ahmadinejad's presidency and not to sign any agreements with him, because the Iranian people will subsequently reject these agreements.

"Along with Marjane Satrapi, who is also a filmmaker, I went to the European parliament and asked them to do the same. I have been invited to go to the European parliament next week, in order to explain the current situation in Iran.

"We demand to be allowed to demonstrate in Iran, and we demand that the elections be held again, under the auspices of the U.N.

"I reiterate: Ahmadinejad is a terrorist, and he does not represent the Iranian people, who hate him. The whole world hates him, along with the nuclear bomb issue, through which he seeks popularity among the Iranian public.

"I declare today that if the world does not help the popular revolution against Ahmadinejad in Iran, you will be forced to accept his conditions tomorrow. Unfortunately, it will be too late."

"How Can the World Expect Us to Abandon This Freedom-Seeking People to Ahmadinejad and His Leader – Who Are Just Like Bin Laden and Mullah Omar?

Interviewer: "Were you satisfied with Obama's conduct? How did you feel when he greeted the Iranian people on the occasion of the Nowruz holiday, and reached out to Iran?"

Mohsen Makhmalbaf: "Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Khamenei are toying with you. They have the ability to produce a nuclear bomb. They have been procrastinating for years in order to buy time – month after month, year after year. Ultimately, this bomb will be aimed at you.

"This is why I demand that no one recognize Ahmadinejad's regime, and that they be patient until the people elect their president. Otherwise, peace in the region will be jeopardized. The world accused the Iranian people of being an enemy of democracy because it had voted for Ahmadinejad – but today, the world sees how it was deceived by the regime of the mullahs.

"Today, the Iranian people has proven its support for democracy. Millions have demanded freedom. How can the world expect us to abandon this freedom-seeking people to Ahmadinejad and his leader, who are just like bin Laden and Mullah Omar?

[...]

"Khatami and Mousavi seek stability and peace for the region. Peace constitutes Mousavi's strategy for the region. Ahmadinejad, however, is heading for war. Ahmadinejad helped the Palestinians against Israel. He didn't do this for the sake of Palestine. He wanted to shift the war to Palestine, instead of a war in Iran." [...]


"We Want Peace... But Ahmadinejad is Killing People in Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan, And Palestine – [and] the Victims Are the Arabs"

"We want peace and a dialogue of civilization in the region and the world. We do not want war, but Ahmadinejad is killing people in Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan, and Palestine. The victims are the Arabs.

"Ahmadinejad does not like the Arabs. He just uses them for his political purposes. If he liked the Arabs, he should strive for peace, not war. Today, all the Arab countries have problems with Ahmadinejad. How can we say that Ahmadinejad likes the Arabs more than the Arabs themselves? Ahmadinejad and the leader Khamenei deceive the Arabs and the world, in order to remain in power and maintain the dictatorship in Iran.

"In contrast, the Iranian people want peace for Palestine, and a resolution of its problems through dialogue. I hope that the Palestinians will achieve their own independent state. This will not be accomplished through war and rockets."

Interviewer: "How do you view Israel and its people?"

Mohsen Makhmalbaf: "I am an artist, not a politician, I love human beings. All the people born on this Earth have the right to live. Wars are launched by leaders, and the peoples are the victims. A child, whether Israeli or Palestinian, must live. I embrace both of them.

[...]

"I want to see a young girl, holding hands with a young man and walking in a free society, without any war. I want to see peace prevail in the world. I want to see Palestine laughing, and no war in any part of the world."

03 July 2009

"Krugman Blues" - Loudon Wainwright III

Here's a little video of Loudon Wainwright singing "Krugman Blues". If you can't see the embedded video below, just click on the title to this post and get taken straight to YouTube. Enjoy.