{"id":5172,"date":"2013-03-05T16:39:45","date_gmt":"2013-03-06T00:39:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forallevents.com\/reviews\/?p=5172"},"modified":"2013-03-17T20:14:19","modified_gmt":"2013-03-18T03:14:19","slug":"the-gatekeepers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forallevents.com\/reviews\/the-gatekeepers\/","title":{"rendered":"“The Gatekeepers”"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Gatekeepers, directed by Dror Moreh who also conducted the interviews.\"Poster<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

AN ENDLESS PROBLEM OF INSURMOUNTABLE PROPORTIONS.<\/p>\n

By Gaetana Caldwell-Smith<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Gatekeepers\u201d is a riveting documentary film that reveals the behind the scenes actions of one of Israel\u2019s key tools for maintaining its repressive rule over the Palestinian community\u2014Israel\u2019s secret intelligence operations: the Shin Bet (appellation for Israel Security Agency or ISA, formerly Mossad) through candid interviews with ex-leaders, including archival, black and white film clips.\u00a0\u00a0 The film opens with a clip of Israel\u2019s six day war with Egypt (UAR at the time), Syria and Jorden in June 5th-10th<\/sup>, 1967.\u00a0 One result was that one million Palestinians were put under Israeli rule.\u00a0 Shin Bet had focussed on internal affairs, but now expanded into combating foreign terrorists. A former member, Avi Dichter, shown being interviewed, was only eleven years old during the war.\u00a0 He had to ask, \u201cWhat is war?\u201d<\/p>\n

Dror Moreh was inspired by Errol Morris\u2019s documentary, \u201cThe Fog of War,\u201d where Morris interviewed Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War.\u00a0 Moreh\u2019s interviewees either retired or resigned from Shin Bet having gained a conscience regarding their actions. The film contains many memorable yet unsettling images, some\u00a0 seem right out of a Bond or Bourne film, such as a successful bomb in a cell phone triggered to explode in the user\u2019s ear; and the inhumane conditions of prisons where Palestinian suspects are tortured and held without trial.<\/p>\n

Acting under Shin Bet orders, Israeli soldiers\u2019 actions were not unlike those of the US military in Afghanistan.\u00a0 Taught simple Arabic commands, they went to Palestinian homes to count how many lived in each.\u00a0 Those who didn\u2019t comply got their doors kicked down.\u00a0 Soldiers grabbed men, bound and corralled them into trucks and hauled them off, leaving wailing women and children behind.\u00a0 Unfortunately, one of the commands was mistranslated by one vowel so that \u201cWe want to \u2018count\u2019 you\u201d came out as \u201ccastrate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moreh interviewed one ex-leader who spoke of the beauty of the Palestinian olive groves.\u00a0 Here, he included grainy black and white shots of soldiers driving through them.\u00a0 Yet soon the land was confiscated and people were sent to refugee camps. \u00a0\u00a0A Shin Bet leader, curious about the camps, paid a visit and was sickened by the conditions.\u00a0\u00a0 Illustrated by archival film clips, we saw people who once lived freely on their land relegated to rows and rows of one room concrete blocks.\u00a0 Demeaned, Palestinians protested with rudimentary acts of terrorism against Israelis they now saw as\u201d occupiers.\u201d\u00a0 As these acts increased, a curfew was instigated and as many as a hundred people a night were arrested and tortured.\u00a0 One Shin Bet member laughingly bragged that some of the methods were such that a victim would confess to killing Jesus.\u00a0 Shin Bet also relied on human intelligence (HUMINT).\u00a0 We witnessed films of warehouses filled with rows of file cabinets containing dossiers on hundreds of thousands of alleged suspects.\u00a0 Clerks sat at Microfiche machines running countless records from which Shin Bet recruited people to betray friends and family.\u00a0 I imagined that their record-keeping rivaled those of the Nazis.\u00a0 Villagers, fearing for their safety, ratted on each other.<\/p>\n

One of the most unsettling interviewees was Avram Shalom.\u00a0 In 1982, after the Israeli war with Lebanon, the organization recruited him to head it.\u00a0 He\u2019d been an officer. \u00a0\u00a0He told Moreh that he felt he could do whatever he wanted and if you didn\u2019t go along, heads would roll.\u00a0 Sitting for the camera with his glasses and argyle sweater, Shalom, looked more like someone\u2019s grandfather than a leader of a ruthless killing machine.\u00a0\u00a0 One incident was the blowing up of a bus transporting suspected terrorists, killing most.\u00a0 Moreh asked him about it; Shalom couldn\u2019t remember.\u00a0\u00a0 When asked if he thought the attack was illegal, Shalom replied that there was no such thing as an illegal action.\u00a0 Moreh pressed on, \u201cNot even shooting people with their hands behind their backs?\u201d \u00a0He said he ordered killings instead of trials because he didn\u2019t want the chance of an armed terrorist in court. \u00a0(Ironically, this sounds like a sound-bite from today\u2019s US administration speaking about the \u201cwar on terror,\u201d especially how it dealt with Osama bin Laden.)\u00a0 Impassively and coldly, he answered Moreh\u2019s questions:, \u201cIn a war against terrorists, there is no morality.\u201d Anyone who argues with an Israeli soldier is shot in cold blood.\u00a0 When questioned about their intelligence, he snickered, \u201cAll the intelligence in the world could not have predicted the worst terrorist acts,\u201d which made me think of 9-11- there was plenty of intelligence, but no one acted..\u00a0 He actually chuckled when he said that Shin Bet reminded him of the Nazi\u2019s handling of Jews during the Second World War.\u00a0 \u00a0Palestinians see Israelis as terrorists.\u00a0 Another interviewee said that one man\u2019s terrorist is another man\u2019s freedom fighter.\u00a0\u00a0 One of their mottos is: \u201cVictory is to see you suffer.\u201d\u00a0 Yet in n November 2003, four former heads of Shin Bet ( Shalom, Yaakov Peri, Gillon and Ami Ayalon) called upon the Government of Israel to reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians.<\/p>\n

Retaliation for the bombing of the bus resulted in a suicide bus bomb in Tel Aviv.\u00a0 It was hard to watch the news coverage of mangled, dismembered bodies among twisted, blackened metal.\u00a0\u00a0 Talks about the peace process between Shimon Perez, Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat angered radical, right-wing Jews.\u00a0 Rabin said, “We who have fought against you, the Palestinians, we say to you today, in a loud and a clear voice, enough of blood and tears … enough!\u201d\u00a0 Meanwhile, Israel soldiers were fighting Jews building illegal settlements in the West Bank.\u00a0 Radical Jews were organizing to bomb buses carrying Palestinians.\u00a0 They also plotted to destroy the Dome of the Rock, clips illustrated how they would do it. \u00a0This would bring on Armageddon and the long-awaited Messiah would appear, was their thinking.\u00a0\u00a0 Shin Bet infiltrated the Jewish underground to make arrests and succeeded in preventing further attacks. \u00a0Shin Bet did double-duty: investigating both Palestinians and their own people.\u00a0\u00a0 Yet they could not prevent the 1995 assassination of Rabin by Yigal Amir, a radical right-wing Orthodox Jew, for his signing of the Oslo Accords.<\/p>\n

Their matter-of-fact attitude, calmness, and lack of emotion (except for Shalom\u2019s giggles), made them appear as pathological killers.\u00a0 Still, they verbalized their remorse.\u00a0 Whether or not they meant it, only they would know.\u00a0 With decades of stale-mated peace talks, the dismantling and building of settlements; the separation wall; promises, and on-going devastating attacks on both sides; two deadly intifadas; and the division between Hamas and Fatah, between radical, orthodox and moderate Jews; with Palestinians continuing to lob missiles into Jerusalem and Israelis retaliating with air wars and successful missile intercepts; the disagreement on the possibility of a two-state or one-state solution appear to be an endless problem of insurmountable proportions.\u00a0 Shin Bet has its work cut out for them.<\/p>\n

In 2007, the organization started a public recruitment drive with a blog where current members would answer questions; a Web site, and an international ad campaign aimed at computer savvy people.\u00a0\u00a0 Shin Bet\u2019s heads stated that all this is geared towards \u201cpromoting a more accessible and positive public image for the secret service, long associated with \u2018dark, undercover and even violent activity\u2019.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Gatekeepers, directed by Dror Moreh who also conducted the interviews.   AN ENDLESS PROBLEM OF INSURMOUNTABLE PROPORTIONS. By Gaetana Caldwell-Smith \u201cThe Gatekeepers\u201d is a riveting documentary film that reveals…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"yasr_overall_rating":0,"yasr_post_is_review":"","yasr_auto_insert_disabled":"","yasr_review_type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[837],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-5172","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-joe-cillo"},"yasr_visitor_votes":{"stars_attributes":{"read_only":true,"span_bottom":"