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Engaging documentary criticizes Gaza pullout |
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By JOSEPH SERGE
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Friday, 07 April 2006 |
During last summer’s Gaza disengagement, many on the Israeli left surprisingly opposed Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s pullout plan.
Although traditionally supporters of the land-for-peace argument, they felt the way the disengagement was handled violated basic human rights.
This is the premise of confrontational Canadian filmmaker Igal Hecht’s latest documentary, Disengaging Democracy.
The documentary follows the pullout from Gush Katif, a 30-year-old settlement of 8,000 Israelis in the Gaza Strip, before, during and after the unilateral withdrawal.
Although the pullout was ratified by the Knesset, it was a “dictatorial decision” one of the settlers says. Critics say Sharon’s decision was a 180-degree turnaround from his traditional policy and his dismissal of key cabinet ministers was a ploy to stuff the Knesset with supporters of his policy. “It might be kosher, but it stinks,” another settler says.
Hecht and his co-producer Talia Klein of Chutzpa Productions – whose previous films include Not In My Name and Y.I.D. – are fast becoming veterans of the “in-your-face” confrontational documentary style.
Scenes include one of Israel Defence Forces soldiers chainsawing through the settlement’s gate as it falls with a resounding clang, and one of soldiers stopping busloads of protesters on their way to a demonstration. Another scene focuses on a harmless little girl as the narrator recounts how scores of soldiers had been called in to put down a potentially violent protest.
Hecht clearly knows how to make his point.
Although the documentary is strongly anti-Sharon, it rarely criticizes IDF soldiers, who were merely doing their job. Even the settlers accept this as they’re being dragged out of their homes.
Hecht, always able to find emotional scenes amid the chaos, shows a female solder playing with a little girl settler. Another poignant scene is of a rabbi being led out of a synagogue in tears as he carries out the Torah scroll.
Sometimes criticized for being unbalanced in his films, Hecht interviews Rabbi Michael Melchior, a Labor MK and cabinet minister in Sharon’s government, as the sole defender of the Gaza disengagement in the film.
“A democracy has the right and obligation to defend itself,” Rabbi Melchior says. “Overall, [the pullout] was done democratically.”
He added that he feels strongly that the opposition “plays strongly into the hands of the haters of Israel,” by comparing the withdrawal to the Holocaust.
One of the film’s arguments is that little thought was put into the aftermath of the pullout. Five months after the disengagement, we see many settlers living in tents and in what one settler calls “a mobile shanty town.”
But whether the disengagement was right or wrong, even Hecht should admit that being able to film this documentary with little or no apparent government interference is not a sign of an anti-democratic state.
Like Chutzpa Productions’ other films, Disengaging Democracy is well worth watching. It’s an engaging documentary that sets us up for the possibility of a new battle in Israel’s future, one in which the conflict is not between right and left but between religious and secular Jews.
Disengaging Democracy premieres April 18 on the digital i-channel (197 on Rogers, 514 on Bell ExpressVu). Further screenings are planned for the summer and in the fall on the CTS show Israel Today.
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