Vol. 73/No. 18      May 11, 2009

BY GEORGES MEHRABIAN  
Waltz with Bashir, the Oscar-nominated documentary about the 1982 Israeli invasion and subsequent occupation of Lebanon, has caused a surprising uproar from some supporters of the Palestinian people’s struggle for liberation.

Directed by Israeli filmmaker Ari Folman, it is an animated account of the recollections of an Israeli soldier who took part in the 1982 events in Lebanon. The soldier has suppressed the events from his memory and is attempting to remember what happened.

The film culminates with his apocalyptic recollection of the massacre of close to 3,000 Palestinians at the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in Beirut at the hands of the Fascist Phalange militia—a Lebanese force allied with the Israeli invaders.

The soldier was stationed outside the camps, assigned the job of shooting flares to illuminate the night so that the killers could see. He asks himself, "Am I guilty, an accomplice?"

Criticism of the movie has come from some who oppose Israeli government oppression of the Palestinians. For example, Gideon Levy, a correspondent for the Israeli daily Haaretz, wrote in a February 21 column that “we would do well to remember that this is not an antiwar film. It is an act of fraud and deceit, intended to allow us to pat ourselves on the back, to tell us and the world how lovely we are… . so different from the bloodthirsty soldiers at the checkpoints, the pilots who bomb residential neighborhoods, the artillerymen who shell women and children, and the combat engineers who rip up streets.

"Here, instead, is the opposite picture. Animated, too. Of enlightened, beautiful Israel, anguished and self-righteous, dancing a waltz, with and without Bashir.” Bashir is a reference to Phalange leader Bashir Gemayel.

Yet the film shows unmistakably the Israeli command's complicity with and control of the massacre. A ground commander calls Ariel Sharon, then commanding the invasion forces, and tells him about the massacre. Sharon simply thanks him and hangs up. The film shows Israeli soldiers allowing Phalangist militias in and out of the camps and illuminating the night sky during the whole massacre.

In one of the final scenes, a fellow soldier whose family had survived the Holocaust says that the scenes of the massacre remind him of the stories of the killing of the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II. There could be no clearer condemnation of Israeli government policies.

Critics of the film seem to argue that unless there is a condemnation of all Israelis and a collective mea culpa then it is simply a cover-up—sort of like the demand for collective guilt made on all Germans as a way of redemption for the crimes committed by the Nazis.

Israel is a class-divided society with a capitalist ruling class pursuing its interests at the expense of the oppressed Palestinian people and the Jewish Israeli workers who are the cannon fodder for the Israeli rulers’ military policies. The task is to win these toilers to the side of a common struggle with the Palestinians.

Waltz with Bashir is an attempt to question the stated policies under which soldiers invaded Lebanon, creating the horrors that ensued. While it does not take the side of the Palestinian freedom fighters it does show the brutality of the Israeli invasion and the responsibility of the Israel Defense Force at the highest levels in the destruction and massacres.

The film illustrates the questioning that does and will emerge amongst Israeli Jewish toilers as they are assigned the police tasks of brutally suppressing the Palestinian people. It shows the real potential to win over sections of Israeli working people, intellectuals, and artists to the side of the Palestinian toilers. It bodes well for those who argue that Palestinian and Israeli Jewish working people can struggle collectively for a democratic and secular Palestine.
 
 
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