Foxtrot? Tommyrot! 2

When I responded to Paul Byrnes' Herald review of the Israeli film Foxtrot (see my 21/6/18 post Foxtrot? Tommyrot!), I was under the impression that the grief-stricken Israeli parents of Act 1 were those of an Israeli soldier killed in Act 2. This, it seems, is not the case, as yet another review of the same film in the same paper (why?) indicates (A bloody legacy, Stephanie Bunbury, 23/6/18).

The parents who wake to a knock on their door one morning, only to be told by military officials that their soldier son, Jonathan, has been killed, apparently represent every Israeli parent: "In Israel, actor Lior Ashkenazi says, everyone knows exactly what has happened; in a country with compulsory national service, that morning knock is like a code. This woman's child must be dead. 'In Israel, everybody knows somebody in this position... It surrounds you: the grief'."

To which I can only add - Bunbury doesn't, of course - if the occupying Israelis are enveloped in grief, it is simply beyond imagining what the occupied Palestinians, whose death toll is infinitely higher, are going through. But when was the last time you saw a commercial release featuring Palestinians in a sympathetic light (not to mention getting TWO reviews in the same media outlet)? In fact, what this 'morning knock' business is really all about is hyping a supposed threat to the occupier by the occupied, and casting the occupiers as victims.

Bunbury then says of Michael, the father, that he "fought his own war in Lebanon. Of course he did: there is always a war on. Everyone carries the same burden." It seems she's blissfully unaware that all of Israel's wars have SFA to do with self-defence, and everything to do with acquiring more territory. Such land-grabs, of course, are always hyped as existential threats, and the "burden" in murder and destruction is borne exclusively by Israel's Arab victims.

Moving on to the second act (which, you'll recall from Byrnes' review, is set at a checkpoint in the desert), we're told that it's set at a "checkpoint near the Lebanese border." Here the confusion grows. The soldiers manning the checkpoint are described as lifting "the barrier for a lone camel passing through." There is, of course, no desert anywhere near the Lebanese border, and certainly no camels either. So what gives?

What Byrnes' in his review calls "an accident" is clarified in Bunbury's: "One of their number panics and shoots an entire car of young Palestinians. The solution presents itself: bury the car, including the bodies, in the ever-present mud." Which only leads to further confusion. Who are these mysterious Palestinian youths (over whom, it seems, no tears are shed)? If the checkpoint is "near the Lebanese border," then it's got to be in the Galilee, and the "young Palestinians" would therefore be Israeli citizens. If, on the other hand, they're Palestinians from the occupied West Bank, then all I can say is they're a bloody long way from home.

More confusion arises from the Israeli response to the gunning down of the Palestinians. As anyone familiar with the modus operandi followed by Israeli troops when they murder Palestinians will know, the invariable practice is simply to blame the victims, stick doggedly to the concocted story, and be hailed as heroes by the vast majority of Israelis. Burying the evidence with the help of a bulldozer that just happens to be nearby? I don't think so.

But Maoz, the film's director has an explanation. Bunbury quotes him as saying, "You don't have to be a genius to understand that there is not such a specific roadblock, not such a specific reality."

And you don't have to be a genius to understand that Maoz, quoted elsewhere in the review referring to Israel "a pathetic and anxious society with the distorted perception that comes out of a terrible past trauma," is playing the Holocaust card, a move designed to get Israel off the hook for its crimes against the Palestinians.

I'll let the Haaretz journalist Gideon Levy have the final say on this phony film:

"The film unit of the Israel Defense Forces spokesman's office would not have dared produce such a pro-Israeli and pro-army film like Foxtrot; they would have known that nobody would believe them. Neither could the unit have produced such an aesthetic film - poetic, symbolic and metaphorical. Nor is there a ship of fools that would accept such a demented level of ignorant assaults on the film by the culture minister without having seen it, she might not have realized what a PR treasure it is.

"Her colleague, a general in the war against the boycott, Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan, who is also information minister, should have instructed his ministry to immediately distribute the film worldwide as part of his battle. There's nothing like Foxtrot for beautifying the image of the state. Look how beautiful we are, we Israelis. What great cinema we have, what beautiful homes we live in and how beautiful are our Holocaust survivors; even our much maligned checkpoints are so beautiful.

"Sanuel Maoz made a beautiful film - and a deceptive, misleading film. The last thing it deserves is to be decried as harming the state. Its foxtrot is dirty dancing. Maoz says that the film is a metaphor for universal questions about fatalism, choice, fate and the individual's ability to shape his future. Those are worthy and fascinating subjects. Maoz could have dealt with them by means of a story line about a wrong diagnosis of cancer, a critical date that a couple never went on, or someone who was fatally late for a flight. Instead, he chose to focus the debate in the context of the Israeli occupation. And so he shouldn't play dumb and claim that this is an artistic and imaginary film, without context or obligation to reality and truth. The moment he chose the occupation as the arena for his film, he turned it into a political and current events film. Not only is that not the way to dance the foxtrot, as Maoz discovered too late, this is not the way the occupation looks - in fact, there's no resemblance at all.

"Beautifying the occupation is no less grave than tarnishing its image. Calling Israeli soldiers is a terrible thing, but presenting them at checkpoints the way Naomi Shemer described the soldiers in her iconic 1968 song At the Nahal Outpost, where she saw 'lots of beautiful things,' as well as 'small poetry books on shelves' - that was no less grave. A lie is a lie, no matter what direction it takes. There aren't lots of beautiful things at a checkpoint. Not even one. Maoz decided to embellish it. He has the artistic right to describe reality as he sees it, but he can't ignore the implications of his hallucinations. When an IDF checkpoint looks like a beautiful surrealistic scene in an old-time Italian movie - maybe they'll believe it in Venice. Here it's not possible. There are no beautiful checkpoints like that, with a camel passing silently by and an ice-cream truck with a blond girl painted on it.

"Neither can he shirk responsibility for the message or for the fact that the Palestinians are momentary extras, and even in that context, their depiction is so different from the reality. In Foxtrot, they ride in a collector's Chevy, with Israeli license plates, wearing their finery, on the way to a wedding or back from a party, erupting in wild joyful song.

"There aren't a lot of apartments designed like the one where Yonatan's parents live and there are no soldiers who sit at checkpoints drawing comics in their many hours of free time and checking the incline of the packing container, which is a metaphor for the extent of being stuck in the mud.

"The soldiers at the checkpoints simply don't look like that. They don't throw sorrowful looks and they're mainly busy with brutality, not comics. Most of them didn't grow up in House Beautiful apartments belonging to handsome architects who married their students; the ones that did go to the elite 8200 intelligence unit. They can be shown anyway one wants, but when an Israeli director with political awareness does that, he's making propaganda, not cinema.

"It's not the 'scene' that everyone is talking about that makes this film infuriating. Not the killing by IDF soldiers and not the concealing of evidence that followed. Foxtrot is trying to conceal something else entirely: It's trying to conceal the ugliness." (A beautiful film about the occupation, 1/10/17)

Foxtrot? Tommyrot!

How depressing are those book/film reviews in the msm which, inadvertently or otherwise, distort and cover up the reality of Israel's war crimes. (Of course, it goes without saying that Israeli books/films are virtually the only ones to make it into the msm.)

The latest specimen is Paul Byrnes' review of Israeli 'war' film Foxtrot for the Sydney Morning Herald. Herewith my gripes and grumblings:

"If a film makes war seem fun, you can pretty much know the director has never been near one. Samuel Maoz is an exception. He served in the Israeli Defence Force in 1982 during the Israeli occupation in Lebanon. It's clear that it was a shattering experience." (Painful portrait of war's deep scars, 21/6/18)

Yes, Paul, "a shattering experience" it was - particularly for the over 20,000 Lebanese and Palestinian civilians who got it in the neck (not to mention the more than 30,000 wounded) when Maoz and his mates blitzkriegged into Lebanon at the time. But we don't want to talk about the real victims here, do we, Paul?

"His first feature film, Lebanon, recreated the life of a tank crew on active duty. The whole film was set inside the tank, which was both technically daring and completely terrifying."

C'mon, Paul, seriously now, where else would you set an Israeli film? Except perhaps in a cockpit, or in the space immediately behind the sights of a rifle.

"Foxtrot is a different kind of movie, but just as scarifying. It steps back to dramatise what it's like for the family of an Israeli soldier when they receive news that he has been killed. That's the first act."

But emphatically not what's it's like for the family of a Palestinian blown away by an Israeli soldier.

"The second act takes place in the desert, where a group of young IDF soldiers man a lonely checkpoint."

Just a minute, Paul. You mean there's still some desert left in Israel - after over 100 years of making the desert bloom? Or are we talking about the Sahara or the Gobi here? Is that where Israel's borders are now? But seriously, the whole fucking point of your Israeli checkpoint is that it's set up with only one purpose in mind - to mess with the lives of occupied Palestinians (as in 'how many checkpoints does a Palestinian have to negotiate to get from occupied Bethlehem to occupied Jerusalem?'). Do you get my drift, Paul? Your Israeli checkpoint needs PEOPLE. Ergo, there is NO SUCH THING as "a lonely checkpoint," OK?

"A third act returns to the family, now in post-traumatic disarray."

Hey, Paul, was part of their "post-traumatic disarray" having their home demolished? Oh wait... that only happens to Palestinian families.

"Foxtrot has been hugely controversial in Israel... The right in Israel objected to the film's depiction of Israeli soldiers covering up evidence of a killing."

Noooo! The most moral army in world, lying? You're kidding me. I simply don't believe it.

"One of the soldiers is Jonathan... In one of the film's most surreal moments, Jonathan dances with his rifle as if it's a woman... making his comrades laugh... He's just a kid, horsing around, trying to entertain his pals and relieve some tension; he's also a bulwark, a defender of the nation."

Oh no, Paul. He's neither "bulwark," nor "defender of the nation." He's an OCCUPIER, pure and simple. Strewth, is it really that hard?

Apparently so. Paul Byrnes has given Tommyrot 4 stars.

OMG, Did She Really Say That?

Just had to share this with you...

Among the comments following Phan Nguyen's amazing detective work in his post, 'Apolitical' arts organization combatting BDS is front for pro-settler groups tied to Israeli Foreign Ministry (mondoweiss.net, 24/10/13), was a video convo between Roz Rothstein, CEO of Stand With Us, the US-based organisation which aims to transform otherwise mild-mannered Jewish college students into crusading Supermen for Israel, and Israeli 'communications trainer' Neil Lazarus.

WTF... I muttered to myself, clicking it on. The following jaw-dropping exchange said it all:

RR: For this segment I'd like to talk a little bit about the hottest issues that students are facing when they have to, I hate to say, defend Israel, when they have to have a rich conversation about it.

NL: There's a lot out there. Let's talk about a couple. We always have the issue of criticism of human rights issues. You know they have this fetish about talking about the security barrier which Israel's built, or, um, checkpoints which are there. I live in Jerusalem... I drive past the checkpoints every day. On the one hand I'd like to live in a country which doesn't have a fence, doesn't have a wall, doesn't have a checkpoint. I also know that they stop terrorism... you also have the allegation of apartheid...

RR: Before you leave the issue of checkpoints, I wanna say (places hand on heart) that I live in a country of checkpoints and its inconvenient for me to stand at checkpoints at the airport, but you know, it's funny how Israel is always blamed for the checkpoints as though it's something that's extraordinary that Israel has a checkpoint at the border. That's what's funny to me. 

NL: I think here we have the double standard...

Tit for Tat

Sun-Herald journalist Paul Daley's* report (No end in sight to great divide, 1/11/09) on what he calls "the tit-for-tat conflict between Palestinians and Israelis" or "the cycle of tit-for-tat violence" left me reaching for the smelling salts.

What is this tit-for-tat nonsense? 'Tit-for-tat' implies a symmetry between the parties, but this particular 'conflict' (another woefully inadequate term) has all the symmetry of a criminal and his victim. Characterising the odd punch landed by the colonised on their colonisers, and the latter's always disproportionate response, as tit-for-tat is a grotesque misreading of the underlying dynamic of the relationship. No, what's happening in occupied Palestine is more of a 'hammer-and-anvil' thing.

Still, Daley did use the contextualising 'o' word, something his colleagues often neglect to do: "the long-running Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank"/ the "occupied territories." And he even managed a hint of scepticism in relation to Israel's official line on its reasons for mugging Gaza: "Israel invaded Gaza late last year, ostensibly in response to Hamas rocket attacks on Israeli towns along the Israeli border."

But then he stuffs up big time: "But Hamas has fired more than 50 home-made rockets and mortars at Israel since August. The Israeli Air Force bombed a weapons warehouse and two tunnels in the strip on October 22 after several rockets were fired into the town of Sederot [sic]..." According to wikipedia, there have been 11 incidents involving Palestinian rocket/mortar firings from Gaza since August (List of Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel, 2009). Unfortunately, just how Daley managed to conjure 50 homemade rockets and mortars out of that is anyone's guess. As is what the Israelis were up to in the same time frame. Far from sitting on its hands with respect to Gaza - which is the impression you'd get from reading Daley - Israel was in fact quite busy there, killing 5 adult civilians, 3 children and 7 fighters; wounding 13 adult civilians, 4 children and 5 fighters; arresting 12 people; staging 16 incursions; bombing border tunnels and other infrastrucure; shelling fishing boats; razing agricultural land; and keeping Gaza's borders hermetically sealed (See Palestinian Centre for Human Rights - Weekly Reports, pchrgaza.org) Whatever the Palestinian tit, that's a hell of a lot of Israeli tat, none of which is referred to by Daley.

Now here's a revelation for a mainstream media man: "Gaza is a misery for many of its 1.4 million residents, close to a million of whom are refugees." A million refugees, eh? That'd also be a hell of a lot of Israeli tat, no?

"Israel has played its part too [in improving the lot of the Palestinians in the West Bank]. The previously permanent Israeli checkpoints around some West Bank cities and towns... have been removed while medical services are offered to some Gazans." Daley's uncritical regurgitation of Israeli spin here is belied by an AFP report (based on UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) data) dated 9 October: "Israel has 592 obstacles such as checkpoints, trenches and barriers across the occupied West Bank and a report that Israel was moving 100 such curbs can not be verified... The figure was down from a total of 618 registered in August." (West Bank riddled with Israeli obstacles: UN)

And what is meant by while medical services are offered to some Gazans? Here is what Gazan doctor and human rights activist Mona El-Farra had to say about the state of medical services in Gaza on 17 October: "The emergency health services in the Gaza Strip are in a state of imminent collapse due to shortages of electricity, medicine and other vital, life-saving equipment. Due to a lack of available services in Gaza, many patients are forced to seek medical treatment abroad. However, the closure makes accessing external treatment a near impossible task. To date at least 391 patients have died as a direct or indirect result of the closure." (fromgaza.blogspot.com)

This is nowhere near good enough - even for a slow Sunday.

[See my 29/7/09 post The Sarafand Massacre]