Rewarding terrorists

Editorial

Next week marks the opening of DOXA, Vancouver’s documentary film festival, which brings a host of fascinating and provocative presentations for audiences whose tastes run beyond the Hollywood fiction machine. But even the term documentary does not guarantee veracity, and a particular inclusion in this year’s festival seems certain to distort more than it illuminates.

Out of 60 films this year, at least eight have content of particular interest to our community. Of these, seven feature Holocaust-related content, which is positive in the context of a world that needs to remember. The other one is Tears of Gaza, which is part of the festival’s new “Justice” series, which began last year, and is presented thanks to funding from the Law Foundation of British Columbia and support from the Mentoring Connections program of the Immigrant Services Society of British Columbia.

Tears of Gaza is a Norwegian film by Vibeke Løkkeberg, but fear not if your Scandinavian languages are not the sharpest. “There is no narration nor analysis offered in the film,” according to publicity for the May 8 screening. Why? Because pictures don’t lie, right? Yet, of course they do. Jenin? Muhammad al-Dura? Photos and video are regularly manipulated and used to sell everything from war to deodorant. There’s no such thing as an objective, apolitical image.

Regardless, DOXA and the film’s makers make damn sure to tell viewers in words what they’re supposed to take away from seeing the film. The publicity material continues: “On Dec. 27, 2008, Israel executed extensive military actions in Gaza, one of the world’s most populated areas. It lasted 22 days. Tears of Gaza shows exactly what happens to a civilian population in the middle of a war zone. It is not easy to witness, but it is necessary to see and understand the human cost of conflict.... A searing indictment of military violence directed at a civilian population ... Tears of Gaza is a powerful companion to a number of other films presented at DOXA this year, which look at topics like the Geneva Convention (War is Not a Game) and the International Criminal Court (Prosecutor).”

The conceit that Tears needs no narration and does not take sides is defied even by the DOXA organizers. Lumping it together with a film about the Geneva Conventions and the International Criminal Court, implies, not at all subtly, that it is Israel, rather than Hamas, that is betraying international law.

And the lack of narration or analysis in the film will almost certainly mean a correlative absence of context. The Hamas leaders of Gaza initiated the war through incessant missile attacks on civilian targets in Israel, knowing (because it has been proven in the past) that “disproportionate” numbers of dead Palestinians are a public relations victory for their side, turning the world’s revulsion against Israel instead of the instigators. With both military and PR strategy in mind, Hamas deliberately constructs its installations amid civilian populations knowing, first, that Israel’s military ethic will prevent complete destruction of the terrorists’ infrastructure and, second, that those civilians who are killed will be martyred in the name of increased global sympathy for the terrorist cause and heightened hatred of Israel. So when Tears of Gaza depicts what will no doubt be grisly and inhuman images of war, it does so deceptively, inverting cause and effect.

Promising a “searing indictment of military violence directed at a civilian population,” the filmmaker and her promoters make the very accusation of war crimes that Judge Richard Goldstone has just recanted. While Hamas places its civilians in harm’s way because human life is secondary to sympathetic global PR, Israel’s military does everything in its power to limit civilian deaths. Goldstone’s report, debunked by decent, thinking people and now by the author himself, made the allegation that the Israel Defence Forces targeted civilians. This accusation delineates the difference between the military actions of civilized nations and the murderous trade of terrorist actors, yet listen to what happens when media that should perhaps limit themselves to reviewing Hollywood pablum turn their attention to complex international affairs.

Variety magazine reported that “Tears doesn’t take sides as much as obliterate politics: the wounded parents carrying maimed children are not in uniform, and the bullet holes in the two-year-olds did not arrive by accident.”

The fact that Israel’s enemies do not wear uniforms, which the Variety reviewer naively notes, is central to the difference in morality. And, no, the bullet holes did not get there by accident. Tragic as they are, the bullet holes are there because the terrorists who run Gaza are determined to provoke Israel into permanent war with the intent of eliminating the Jewish presence in the region. By exploiting and celebrating the images that result, Tears and, indeed, DOXA, reward those who are responsible for the death and destruction.

^TOP