By S. Reed
The Israeli animated documentary, Waltz with Bashir was released in the United States in 2008 and became the first Israeli film to win a Golden Globe. But what is significant about this particular film is the use of animation to express the complex military experience of a soldier at war. Equally intriguing is that this film presents an anti-war position in a country which historically makes films that express a nationalist point of view. Waltz with Bashir punctures Israeli national thinking, presenting the moral dilemma of a soldier, who attempts to reconcile the first war with Lebanon in 1982. Folman attempts to break the barrier of silence, resurrecting the massacres which took place in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila outside of Beirut. The war in Lebanon was a direct response to Palestinian resistance fighting, believed to have originated in refugee camps. While the film cannot be considered a direct response to international public concern that emerged as a result of the massacres, it is an anti-war film. The 1982 war in Lebanon was essentially Israel’s Vietnam. Folman’s motivation then is to tell the story and ask the question of whether it was moral or immoral for the Israeli Defense forces to facilitate the Lebanese Christian militiamen who carried out the killings. When Israel withdrew from Lebanon, it was in response to an emerging peace movement who were calling for an end to the war. Folman attempts to document the actions of Israeli soldiers, through the action, standing several hundred feet from the killings, to reflection, years after the war ended.
The use of animation was a tactical move, one that ultimately builds empathy for the soldiers who are caught in a quagmire---lost between duty and morality, seemingly frozen by what they witness. Here we have the Sesame Street theory at work, if the same material had been delivered using realistic imagery, it would have failed. Instead animation palpable, because it is an animated character speaking, not a real solider. The film has a failing however, which is that Palestinians are not engaged in the film in any way. They appear only in death, and it is at this point that Folman employs real footage. In this way, the film isolates the portrayals of Palestinians in my view, making it, like other forms of media focusing on the Palestinian community, at odds with reality. If Folman had employed stories of the survivors, and the Phalangist fighters who carried out the massacre, it would have been more about finding intellectual justice for an unthinkable act.
Waltz with Bashir was released during the second invasion of Lebanon in 2006. Several other films made by members of the “Lebanon generation,” a term coined to describe those filmmakers who are former Israeli Defense soldiers seeking to explore the effects of war were also released. When Lebanon (2010), Beaufort (2007) and Waltz with Bashir (2008) emerged both domestically and abroad, they were perceived as minority voices of dissent. None of these films could have been made twenty years earlier, and if they had, they would have likely been censored. Amos Gitai, a young first time filmmaker convinced Israeli television in 1980 to let him produce a documentary for broadcast, entitled House. The film detailed the transfer of a property from a Palestinian, who lived in the house until 1948, when Israel became a state and re-issued it to a Jewish settler. Israeli television not only refused to broadcast the film, they confiscated it. Gitai left Israel to shop a videotape copy to film festivals throughout Europe, challenging the perceived majority, as a minority voice, and ultimately transforming an industry, and public opinion.
Historically speaking Zionism has been used in media as a nationalistic propaganda tool. Unlike earlier Israeli films, Waltz presents a different kind of war narrative. To fully understand the impact of media portrayals of Palestinians, one must understand there exists the imbalance in military and economic power in Israel and its occupied territories. One must also realize, that the resistance movements have never accepted a country the international community has long welcomed as a country among other nations. This is the underlying problem of all peace talks both presently, and historically between Israel and the Palestinians, and as such has been inherited by the United States, and many Arab countries in the Middle East.
In looking at how Palestinians are portrayed, it is important to remember that what is perceived internationally is as important as what is perceived domestically, because diplomatic and/or military support benefit those in power.
Because Israel has a mandatory draft, all of its citizens who are between the ages of 17 and 49 serve in the military. There is a minimum three year service after high school, followed by reserve duty until the age of 49. Thus it is no surprise that military dramas are popular in Israel, the first was Hill 24 Doesn’t Answer which was made in 1955. Immigrant stories later became mainstream when filmmaker Menachem Golan emerged in 1964, producing Sallah Shabatti. But aside from a handful of domestically produced features annually, foreign films dominated the film market. According to Stuart Klawans in an article for Tablet magazine, ninety percent of movie tickets sold in the year 2000 were for foreign films (Klawans 1). Israeli cinema developed slowly, because of filmmakers like Golan, who went abroad, and others like Gitai, who sought out the international market. Publicly funded institutions like the Israel Film Fund and the New Foundation for Cinema and TV were established by the Israeli government to suffuse domestic production, and in the 1980’s the country’s film school was established in Jerusalem, as was the first film festival (1).
A typical narrative in Israeli, American, or even British media shows that Israel responds to threats by the perceived “other” or terrorists. This, in the court of popular and judicial opinion, means that retaliation by Israel then, is simply perceived as a form of self-defense, and a justified action. This pervasiveness on the part of media coverage internationally has encouraged a clear majority. A 2008 study by a group that focuses media research specifically on British press, Arab Media Watch, found that “coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was limited to a tendency to represent Israeli as “retaliating” to Palestinian attacks 72 percent of the time” (Dingare 2).
Another study by a British professor of Political Science, Corina Filipescu, analyzed how Palestinians were portrayed in the Israeli media during periods of non-violence, finding that “newspapers try to impose superior legal and political domination by suggesting that the Palestinians are a soaring threat toward Israel’s survival and safety, while Israeli values, beliefs, and forms of action are only imposed to counter the inherently negative traits of the so called negative other. This...has an impact on the power relations between Israel, Palestine, and the peace process. (Filipescu 1).
Fair and Accuracy in Reporting created smearcasting.com to analyze stories in the wake of 9/11 which are racist, biased, and inaccurate to address the growing problem of demonizing Muslims in the United States.
Israeli’s accept that fatalism is part of what it means to live in Israel. Many people have a lot of hope every time the peace process is reinvigorated with a new compromise, until it falls apart, because of an oversight, or a lack of consensus. Waltz with Bashir shows that the potential for peace may lie in the hands of the media. A media rooted in reality would seek out these kinds of stories which are under reported. Of the Palestinian population who live in Israel, most are extremely poor, and although they are officially citizens of Israel, they identify nationally as Palestinians. Palestinians who live in the occupied territories are descendants of people who did not flee, after the 1948 war. And those who live in refugee camps, in the outer reaches of the country’s borders, in the West Bank, and Gaza, are descendants of those who did in 1948. Folman’s Waltz with Bashir makes it plain that violence is never a rational solution to conflict.
Works Cited
Campbell, Richard, and Bettina Fabos. Media & Culture: An Introduction to Mass Communication. 7th ed. Boston: Bedford, 2010. Print.
Filipescu, Corina. “The Representation of Palestinians in the news: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Israeli News Reporting.” 24 May 2011. http:www.allacademic.com/meta/
Klawans, Stuart. “Time of Favor: Israeli Cinema Has Finally Come Into Its Own.”
Tabletmag.com. Tablet magazine, 3 July. 2008. Web.
Dingare, Shipra. "The British Media & 'Retaliation' in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict." Electronicintifada.net. Arab Media Watch. 24 February. 2009. Web.
