Waltz with oneself

I suppose it’s a positive step that Israeli war veterans are engaging in the sort of soul-searching reflected in ‘Waltz with Bashir’, the just-released animated documentary about the 1982 invasion of Lebanon that culminated in the Sabra and Shatila massacre. The film portrays haunted ex-soldiers wondering what happened to them when they were sent as fresh-faced teens to conquer their northern neighbor with the intention of putting a final end to cross-border attacks from the Palestinian militants.

Three decades later that doesn’t look like a successful strategy, but the film doesn’t grapple with the whys and wherefores of the invasion, just the impact on these stunned Israeli youngsters who find themselves under fire, then suddenly back in Tel Aviv discos looking for their girlfriends.

The war stories are interesting, and the lead-up to the Phalangist slaughter is illuminating—but only partially. Although the documentary shows how Israel’s military command didn’t respond to early reports that Christian militamen were gunning down everyone in sight, there’s no attempt to probe the decision to let them in there in the first place.

Given the well-known hatreds that had built up over years of civil war in Lebanon, the likelihood of atrocities occurring when the Christian gunmen were given free rein in PLO strongholds was enormous. The film takes the recruit’s perspective, in which the crime appears at first as an unintended consequence, an error of judgment. The filmmakers draw an eerie parallel with what is occurring inside ‘the camps’ and the Poles’ serene indifference to events inside those other ‘camps’ where Whocouldanode? remains the standard reply to this day (as I personally witnessed during a visit to Auschwitz in 1994).


It is unnerving to watch this sad and thoughtful film 24 hours after the Israelis have killed several hundred Palestinian civilians once again, this time in Gaza. Ehud Olmert, the outgoing Prime Minister, gave the order, just weeks after his own sad, thoughtful comments were published in the New York Review of Books, in which he calls for ‘some soul-searching on behalf of the nation of Israel.’ Olmert said in the interview that Israel should negotiate seriously, avoid further wars and try to come up with a satisfactory agreement on border issues and the control of Jerusalem.

That ‘soul-searching’ didn’t stop him from sending in the warplanes to bomb Gazan refugees after cutting off their food for months. Olmert argued that Israel couldn’t tolerate mortar shells falling into its territory from Gaza, and given the exclusive focus of ‘Waltz with Bashir’ on the conquerors’ viewpoint, one can easily see how most of the Israeli public will be nodding in agreement, whether they are sad or gleeful about the Palestinian casualties.

There is something disturbingly narcissistic about the film’s gaze on the murdered women and children in the camps as the black-and-white animated figures give way to actual color footage from the immediate aftermath. The camera lingers on the dead in ways that their surviving relatives might find offensive, but the story being told is not about dead Palestinians. It’s about the sorrow of the victors at finding themselves complicit in a war crime. Alive or dead, the Lebanese and Palestinians are mere silhouettes, silent screens upon which the Israeli psychodrama plays itself out.

But like the more recent crimes committed in the name of fighting terrorism, there is an obvious implicit answer to the Israeli soldiers’ trauma: that war is hell, but necessary for survival. One can search one’s soul and keep right on firing. ‘Waltz with Bashir’ reflects that settler consensus with perfect unconsciousness, even in its title. It attempts to find a humanistic way through the minefield of war and atrocity and is shocked by the dance that results. But it never overcomes or even notices the underlying invisibility of the colonized.