i wouldn't have expected an ex-chief of Shin Bet (the Israeli internal intelligence agency) to quote that.
maybe this is just my impression but i think a lot of people with absolutely no connections with the middle east, feel something about the Israel-Palestine issue. and I don't know why. at least i always have. more than i feel about the North-East of India, or for that matter, more than what i feel for Kashmir. i don't know why. maybe for me, its easier to have an opinion about a region that i'm alien to, than to say something about people who are fighting occupation by my own country. maybe because of the religious legend of the Kingdom of David, of an inability on my part to denounce their occupation that's based on their belief, and yet because i know its wrong. maybe because somewhere deep down there's a belief that in the resolution of the Israel-Palestine issue, lies the beginning to the larger Islamic issue in the entire world today. i don't know. maybe because there's some hope that there will be a resolution to this, unlike what i feel about the Kashmir issue for example. i don't know. all i know is that the words Israel and Palestine generate a lot of thought in people, and in me.
so I went to see this documentary today. a completely un-hyped and yet brilliantly shot movie, 80% of which is just interviews - of some of the ex-chiefs of the Shin Bet. some 4-5 of them. i don't know what i had expected, i had gone simply out of curiosity. but this was better than anything i hoped to see and learn and know. this was honest. and although there wasn't a single Palestinian's version in the entire film, it seemed to tell the tale from both sides. rather, these guys interviewed honestly admitted to their being mindless and cruel at times, admitted that they knew a killing by them set off a retaliation by Hamas and yet what were they to do when the threat of a retaliation was always real, but there never was an inherent promise of armistice (intertwined with the threat) in case of no targeted killing, admitted that morality was forgotten in their goal to protect their peoples. and they talked not just about Fatah and Hamas, but also about the Jewish underground that killed Palestinians. and they talk about uncovering them as well, but how that was futile in the end cos they were all acquitted. they talk about their misjudgments and how one miscalculated and failed operation made them guilty and restrained the next time, resulting in another failed operation simply because it was overcautious. its so honest that they talk about one of their own as if he was a tyrant. you know they aren't scripting their dialogue when the oldest ex-chiefs contradicts himself by first saying there is no morality in such a war against terrorism, and then an hour later denounces someone else's decision to bomb a target in a populated urban neighborhood (only because it actually killed innocents and the target escaped unscathed).
quite a few of these chiefs resigned, one because of some unethical killings of captured 'terrorists', another because Rabin (probably the only Israeli Prime Minister who strove for a solution) was assasinated. and when he says he took the decision to resign after consulting his wife, i suddenly felt how human he was just like you or me. that invited a question to him by the interviewer about what the wife says to him. and his reply, without a thought, and a slightly embarassed laugh, was strangely stirring. he said, "she keeps me alive".
this is one regional issue, where the occupied are not just fighting the regime, but they are just as much fighting the people of the 'other side' who encroach and illegally settle. i was surprised to hear these guys admit that the settlements were a breach of trust, just as Hamas' attacks were.
the movie combines interviews, history, pictures from major events, security videos, to tell a cohesive story, one that everyone needs to know. especially those living in the region, so that the Palestinians know that Shin Bet is human too, that it understands when they are wronged; and that the Israelis know that a balanced version of the issue is so crucial that even their 'Gatekeepers' don't shy from it. that everyone knows that these people who are given the responsibility to take a blind side in a war, find it impossible to do so. and that each of them have the same last words - cooperation, talks, efforts to a solution.
it was a humbling moment when the credits came up with a sombre background music to it. i felt like i had shared something humane with the other 4 people in the audience. and my only self-reaction to the documentary was a wistful sigh.
here's the trailer
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