Dialogue: Yishuv - Conversations with Israel's Activist Filmmakers

Yishuv (Settlement)?

Conversations with Israel’s ActivistFilm Makers

By Mitchell Miller

I should say there are other films doing this sort of work, coming from Israel. My films deal with denied topics, taboos – so immediately you have an impact.

Sentenced to Marriage wasn’t just another film about the conflict. It looked inside Israeli society.

Anat Zuria The recent atrocity in Gaza1 is a chilling reminder (were a reminder necessary) that international law is regarded as optional by the Middle East’s ‘only democracy’. Israel may well be regarded as that part of the region most oriented towards the West, but its siege mentality seems incomprehensible to a British or European outlook (though if ‘we’ looked hard enough we would find many a portcullis ready to slam shut in Fortress Europe). America, as always, retains its own categories and its own counsel on its most important client state (save perhaps, for the more circumspect Saudis).

The Kheffiyeh is now as – or more – synonymous with the contemporary British left than the Red Flag.

Not only is it more practical in the perfidious British climate, it indicates the importance of Palestinian Solidarity movements to its increasingly complicated cluster of interests, representing the inexorable shift from ideologies to issues. This, and the inclusion of radical Islamist groups (not to be automatically identaified with Palestinian support groups) promoting ideologies incompatible with international left/liberal aims has made the Israeli conspicuous by its absence.

But this confirms at least, that a moderate/left lobby does exist. Tel Aviv is planning its first Gay Pride march; it will require a ring of steel to get from one end of the route to the other, but it is taking place. Israel is more than settlers, soldiers and pugnacious Russian émigrés. There is resistance, there is debate there are alternatives, but as fear feeds the cult of security, they risk being smothered.

As with America’s beleaguered progressives, film has proved popular with Israeli left-wingers as a potent alternative to the official legislature or mainstream media outlets. This has developed into a highly distinctive and sophisticated style of nonfiction filmmaking. The footage is usually strong stuff, harvested directly from the Gaza Strip or the dark corners of Israeli domestic life. It is a form of cultural criticism (as all good social documentary is) focused on uncovering what is not discussed in polite Israeli society (or that of its Western counterparts). The treatment tends towards the poetic, rarely adopting a straightforward narrative, it favours storytelling through episodes, or ellipsis. It is unapologetically abstract (exploiting the symbolism of army checkpoints, the power of the Samson myth, or the notion of the frontier) and favours a laconic style of storytelling reminiscent of both the sacred and profane extremes of the Jewish tradition; sparse and unadorned, eschewing soundtracks, flashy animations or fancy editing, intellectual yet grimly comedic. At its best it communicates hard, uncomfortable facts while aspiring to more universal artistic truths.

Some would be surprised at the very idea; it is convenient to conceive of Israel simply as a bête noire, a nation of Imperialist stooges. In a recent New Statesman-funded expedition to the region, editor John Kampfner found the prospects grim for moderate or left of centre politics. Emblazoned on its front cover was the image of an IDF (Israeli Defence Forces) squaddie, teeth gritted in a full-on seethe, Uzi clutched tightly by his side and a stained Israeli flag in the other. His eyes are hard, cold and angry. No compromise from these people, it seems.

But these abstractions are rooted firmly in Israel’s most awful realities embroiled in which we find Avi Mograbi, a familiar figure along Israel’s border fences. In his Avenge but one of my two eyes (2005) he snarls his contempt at a group of soldiers detaining Palestinian schoolkids at a checkpoint ‘What hole did you crawl out of? Let them through!’

Half sheepish, half petulant, the boy-officer flees Mograbi and his camera into the armour-plated cocoon of his hum vee. But the gate stays shut.

Kampfner found the left as gloomy and doom-laden as the Israeli right were belligerent and vengeful.

Mograbi is not an especially prolific filmmaker, producing one every few years or so through

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‘Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon…’

(Yahweh gifts Canaan to the Israelites) My point of view was that of an insider. I know it from the inside – I know my kingdom! I think I’m very much attracted to issues of taboo – those things denied by our culture and society. In Israel, in general, I would say if you are secular the constraints of our religion do not have to be dealt with. But if you have to divorce it’s different.With the way we divorce in Israel, it is very similar to Iran – a complete Theocracy … This system is controlled by Ultra-Orthodox rabbis, who are very fundamentalist.

I felt we knew much more about Iran, its fundamentalism, its problems, than we do about our own society. I personally didn’t know very much about these courts until one of my best friends went through it and it was a shock when she shared her experiences with me. Her story was just devastating. I was sure it was a kind of mistake! This couldn’t be the system HERE! I couldn’t comprehend because it was so secretive, so shuttered. Knowledge of it was generally oppressed or just denied.

Anat Zuria We had made a sort of a deal with the devil in that the army had a vote in what was staying in and out of the edit if we went into places that they felt impinged on security issues. I was agreeing to this precise control over the documentation of events, what would go in the film. It’s not something I would do again. Luckily I didn’t have to change anything from the Army’s point of view, but I did from the Settlers. They had a lot of things they thought should be included in the film … But there was this pressure from above that was perhaps more subtle and meant I myself had to get my message across in a more subtle, understated way. But I think that sort of selfcontrol can be a good thing for the film.

Yoav Shamir I was astonished at how these soldiers were becoming these faceless machines, like Robots, Computers, knowing only a few words. In preparing myself for [my trip to] Belfast and looking at films from Northern Ireland it was not so different …

If you look now at what is happening in certain checkpoints they are turning them into these big terminals. [At] the Colandia-Ramallah checkpoint you don’t see anyone.You go through these revolving doors and there are these big opaque glass windows – you are being monitored all the time, but you cannot see them. It’s like a maze – you are examined by people that are not there – you only hear them through a P.A. so it’s becoming systematic, the inhumanity.When the person you talk to is a breath away from you, when you can smell him, not intermediated, he is human. So when you are dealing with these faceless people there is less scruples in what YOU do. And from the artificial it is a short step to lying. It’s a big concept in how to remove soldiers from humane relations with the people they check – and we in Israel are not aware of it.

Avi Mograbi We have never got to the point there is in America where the Army is THEM, you know, separate from us.

It’s US – such as you see in the scene where the Settlers and the Soldiers are dancing together, it shows how connected it all is. So there are all these complex and tragic loyalties within this situation …

Yoav Shamir You see in the 50s after the war, the government gave the marital system to the Orthodox Rabbis as part of a trade between the secular and the religious parts of society. Since then, it has become a builtin part of our system.The Supreme Court doesn’t interfere, though now it is again changing.

But our political structure makes it hard – governments don’t want to offend the ultra-orthodox part of society, so they protect things like the Rabbinical Courts. But there are these stubborn elements that have tried to change this system. And I felt there was a real similarity with their struggle and just making the film – it was so frustrating, but it did raise political and public awareness in a huge way.We held a screening in the Knesset – and it was full.There have since been screenings, usually to Jewish audiences, all over the world. Now there is a big conference of Rabbis coming together to speak about the problems I exposed in my film.

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observing – and resisting – the Israeli state’s activities.

He is controversial – his How I learned to stop worrying and love Arik [Ariel] Sharon saw him dog the steps of the ex-General and ascendant politico in a manner reminiscent of Michael Moore, attracting the same degree of scorn and defamation from conservative quarters. Un like Moore he is also a considerably gifted cineaste, able to craft from his footage fascinating lateral and poetic associations. In this he is more readily comparable to an Israeli Nick Broomfield, a seditious clown who not only questions his own subject matter, but the role of filmmaking itself. Mograbi cheerfully describes himself as ‘a fly in the soup’, setting himself against the wall hugging variety. While Mograbi does freestyle in the MatzoBall broth, the majority of documentarians prefer the conceit of detached observation. It does not go unquestioned. In 2005 I visited the Full Frame Film Festival, where Ariel Dorfman showed a piece of footage from Africa where some terrified villagers are rounded up by a militia.

The cameraman hovered over a terrified woman who was holding onto his hand. Reading from the cameraman’s notes, Dorfman related his moral dilemma over whether to let go of the hand and film what was happening, or to pack the camera away, hold onto the woman and become a part of the situation. He presented this to a panel of documentarians who had each won their stripes in various war-zones, states of emergency and other varieties of human misery. ‘How do you decide’ asked Dorfman ‘to stand back and carry on filming, rather than putting the camera away completely and getting involved in the situation?’

They gave good answers, mostly in the vein of there being a greater good in exposing the objective truth of such atrocities.Valid as this is, Mograbi’s position is more consistent with the active citizen who sees questionable acts take place on his doorstep: ‘There is no such thing as a transparent camera, and I don’t want to continue the charade that it can be – I am here, and my presence influences what they are doing.’

Avenge but one of my two eyes is a film about influence and the subtler modes of violence and oppression. It delves deep into Israel’s deepest collective fears, of being conquered and humiliated, while carefully documenting the seemingly minor indignities against the Palestinians according

to the deadly arithmetic of terrorism; ‘A friend of mine tried to engage me in a discussion about the suicide bombings, and the “death culture of Islam” … I said I didn’t know much about that, but I could easily talk about the death culture of Israel. So I got to thinking about the history of Masada and Samson …’

And so Mograbi takes us to Masada, one of Israel’s most sacred national monuments, where a thousand zealots took their own life rather than surrender to the Romans. Its tour guides come across not as educators but inheritors of the Zealot tradition, sinister ideologues who enthusiastically extol the virtues of mass suicide. But it is Samson who has the widest cultural appeal, esteemed equally by Crypto-fascist rockers, dreadlocked Rastafarians and a schoolteacher who transmits the legend with all the charm and warmth of a Spartan mother. In each case, the ‘Romans/Philistines’ are a fairly transparent stand in for the Palestinians. Added to this are a series of powerful images from the occupied territories, most extraordinary of all being the ‘cyborg’ soldiers who patrol it, encased in Humvees (in one scene, soldiers drive a vehicle up and down as if it were a natural extension of their legs) or sinister watchtowers, where even their voices are distorted by loudhailers. We almost never see their eyes – just the iron mesh, a steel portal, the occasional mouth, or portion of a jacket, lots of ordinance.

The cause and effect of Israel’s neurotic militarism has been a popular theme for recent documentary offerings by Ilan Ziv (Human Weapon, Junction) Eyal Sivan (Jerusalem Borderline) and rising star Yoav Shamir.

Shamir’s Checkpoint (see The Drouth Issue 14) and its sequel, 5 Days portray a more human military, conflicted, and confused over its role in Israel’s perpetual war. Shot in less than a week, 5 Days (2005) deals with the IDF’s top brass and the controversial business of evacuating the Gush Khatif Settlement in the spring of 2005. The film reveals the complex feelings even liberal Israel’s harbour towards their armed forces; ‘In Israel the Army is The People’s Army’ Shamir explains ‘Everyone between 18-21 must do national service and then they go into the reserves until the age of 45… We have never got to the point there is in America where the Army is them, you know, separate from us.’ By extension, to criticise the military is to criticise Israel itself. It gives Shamir

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‘Here am I …’

(Abraham identifies himself to his God)

We had hoped to follow a family and a military unit and see them come together at the evacuation, but we couldn’t pull it off. As it happened, it was a different unit that was deployed. We tried to be in control of the situation but you can’t control reality! When Gen. Harel came to Shirat Hayam where ‘our’ family was I asked him to go and talk to them. But their place wasn’t an important part of the operation. So I was a bit frustrated much of the time …

Once I put people in position I had very little control. Myself and the crew talked a lot and I showed them what I wanted to achieve stylistically and how I saw it looking. Each crew was one man with a camera on his own, just following the events as they happened. And when they came back, we tried to edit it all into a story.

Yoav Shamir The areas [occupied territories] are not so much dangerous as complicated to film. Israel is a wonderful democracy – if you are Jewish. So in my case it is obvious that I am an Israeli and a Jew. The reaction to me was sometimes harsh but were I a Palestinian … We got close to violence but it never really erupted. But we were lucky to be Israeli and Jewish and explore the inherent inequalities of this so-called democracy.

Avi Mograbi I set out to make a film about this ’no way!’ subject matter, from which I was going to build my narrative – like a Kafka story it does not come to any resolution. It is dark – I use almost no exteriors. It is meant to be claustrophobic, to feel like the cage these women find themselves in.

In the case of the hearing, I couldn’t get into them with the camera so I set about thinking of different solutions. I wanted this primitive look.

Something like Big Brother – a Dictator seeing everything, but faceless.

Anat Zuria Those conversations [with a Palestinian friend that punctuates the film] were taped in April-May 2002, before I started to make the film.

At the time there was this big worry about what was happening in Jenin.

I called a number of Palestinian friends to find out what was happening and to express my solidarity.When I started making the film I was talking to a friend who was under curfew in Bethlehem – so through these I had this interesting graph of his emotional changes.This for me could be a voice from within the siege … you should know his voice is not his actual voice, it is an actor. I feel I needed to protect him.

Avi Mograbi Thinking back, I was so naïve. Making the film was so difficult – I didn’t know you couldn’t make a film about the Rabbinical courts in Israel without breaking the law.You see, because Israel is also a democratic country, there’s a lot of privacy laws and civil protections.The only way to get access is from the Courts themselves – and they are not wanting that! To make this film I had to be flexible with the letter of the law. More than that, people were frightened to speak. It was very hard.

Anat Zuria It is always a dilemma for documentary filmmakers brought up on this fly-on-the–wall notion – ‘we observe, we collect, we don’t influence’. First of all, this is a distortion of what happens in reality – whatever the situation, it responds to the camera – whether explicitly or not.There is no way you can introduce a camera to a checkpoint and the soldiers will not acknowledge it. Sometimes it makes them more polite – they will be a little nicer or they will simply stop people moving.The key to filming at checkpoints is that the power is in your pocket – you can almost blackmail everyone into behaving better.There is no such thing as a transparent camera and I don’t want to continue this charade – I AM here, and my presence influences what YOU are doing.

Avi Mograbi It was my passion – my fascination as an artist, this fragile relationship between the real and your imagination, and making something poetic.There’s a relationship between image and reality I was always interested in as a photographer. I love that aspect – you make images that have a dialogue with reality.

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a greater sense of entitlement to point the finger, but also lays him much more open to attack – his reputation as a troublemaker is well-established.

Other filmmakers have challenged institutions more sacrosanct than even the IDF. In detailing the unspoken oppressions of Orthodox Judaism, Anat Zuria has incurred the wrath of Israel’s Rabbinical establishment.

‘I think I’m very much attracted to issues of taboo,’ she explained. ‘Those things denied by our culture.’

In her first film Purity Zuria revealed the extent to which Judaism’s marital laws subjugate Orthodox women, through small, petty indignities. In Sentenced to marriage she confronts Israel’s ultra-Orthodox rabbinical courts, the faceless, (she was not allowed to film the sessions, only tape them) adjudicators of divorce law. Here, only the husband’s consent can validate the divorce, which means that women like Tamara, whom Zuria follows through a maze of red tape and legalese, can be bound and shackled to a philandering, abusive husband by a moral order that devotes much of its scripture to censuring such behaviour. As depicted in the film, Tamara’s was a truly awful predicament; unable to remarry, or claim support for her children, she had to suffer the humiliation of a husband who had already taken up with another woman while the rabbis remained impassively tied to the letter of the law. Men do not acquit themselves honourably in this film.

Zuria’s film is one sided, but she is unrepentant; ‘I spoke to all the husbands…But I wanted to show how, like in Kafka, the system is built in a way that

women are trapped.’ Sentenced to Marriage is indeed, Kafka given flesh and dimension, a horrific evocation of the doorman who stands before the law, refusing access to the country(wo)man, who must surrender or deteriorate. As with other Israeli films, the richness of literary allusion combines with a sparse style of editing, making the most of the blank surfaces of the court building (which we rarely leave) and the dark doorways that lead into the courts, where Zuria’s camera was not allowed. Zuria turns this to her advantage. We hear only the tape-recorded sessions and the harsh, unfeeling snarls of the judges are disembodied voices every bit as abstract as the IDF soldiers enclosed within their steel watchtowers.

Since completing the film, Zuria has used it to embarrass the religious establishment into taking action. She has shown it across the Jewish world and even in a special of the Knesset. The strategy has worked; despite being wedded to the word of God the rabbis have proved to be equally as image-conscious.

Through a special dispensation, Tamara secured her divorce, and systemic reforms are promised.

Few experimental films in Britain or America could claim to have had such an impact on even one life.

But as these filmmakers are all too aware, impact does not equal victory, anger does not easily give way to understanding. There is still work to do.

Endnote The accidental shelling of a Gaza neighbourhood, which resulted in the deaths of eight Palestinian civilians.

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‘One stone tossed into an empty space scarcely warrants a second thought’ (Edward Said explains political causality to a Journalist) I am in contact with all of the women I worked with – we are all very good friends.With the case of Tamara, I think people became infatuated with this unbelievable smile and her vulnerability.The Rabbis were particularly frustrated over her – her case looks so bad, so dirty and she so fragile. It started a lot of debates and in the end her husband faced two trials – one for the divorce, and one a civil case over his treatment of the children and the domestic violence – in parallel … A year later, the Chief Rabbi intervened and put pressure on them to do something about this ridiculous, unstable person – Tamara got her divorce. Tamara has been free of him for a whole year now and there is a big change. But it has tested her faith.

Anat Zuria In the beginning of 2002 there was a raft of suicide bombings [in Israel] that led to this major discussion of ‘the death culture’ in Islam. A friend of mine tried to engage me in a discussion about it and I said I didn’t know much about that, but I could easily talk about the death culture of Israel … and I got to thinking about the history of Masada and Samson. In the case of Masada it was interesting how the roles reversed – the Romans are the Israelis and the Palestinians are the Jews. And with Samson, in a way Samson was the first suicide bomber in history.

Avi Mograbi Many people perceived Checkpoint as being biased towards the left. For me it wasn’t, it was about Human Rights, I didn’t want to push any political agenda. I saw something strange and disturbing going on and I set out to document it – but, I am perceived as a leftist filmmaker – and as a leftist, with 5 Days you had these protagonists – settlers and soldiers – who are not people I would ordinarily sympathise with. How do you tell a story with protagonists you don’t like? I really resent what the settlers stand for, but I needed to find some people, a family the audience could be sympathetic for.

You need to have that in your characters, that pulls the audience in.The family I identified were very reluctant – they only gave us permission a couple of days before we were due to start filming. I got through to them by being honest with them – that I did not approve of what they stood for, but had nothing personally against them.

Yoav Shamir You can’t follow this story without any ill effects! It makes you more critical and aware of this religious establishment – especially, how ridiculous it is. But it didn’t really change my philosophy or faith. Emotionally, it was very hard to observe this kind of evil created by the religious establishment – though I never had good ideas about that!

Anat Zuria I’m not sure people realise the extent to which our identification with Samson is used to indoctrinate our youth. In the film we make a big leap of 2,000 years, but if you look at events now, those narratives indoctrinate our youth who then become these soldiers – these bright young people who do these incredibly dirty jobs without questioning it.

And these myths – of Masada as the last stronghold of those who want to be free – it’s about enhancing our willingness to fight.The whole ‘death culture’ about Islamic culture is a way to inhibit the real discussion – that we have pushed Palestinians to the extent where living or dying is no big difference. Israelis don’t want to acknowledge this.We don’t want to see the Palestinians as living human beings who we drive into this impossible way of living – ‘security’ often means simple oppression. Look – we live al the time in a world of double standards … as we can teach Samson to our kids as a hero and we can’t see that what he is doing would today be a crime against humanity. In the occupied territories we tell ourselves it is ‘security’ and cannot see the moral implications.We have to re-evaluate our culture and our deeds.

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