A Radical Critique of Zionism
By Judd
Ne'eman
From 3rd Edition--
(cont'd from page 1)
The second cycle of Grail romances differs significantly from the first cycle in that the quester himself is the cause of misfortunes. The deconstructed Zionist master-narrative in the 1980s Conflict Films corresponds with the late cycle of the Grail romances. The Jewish hero, no matter if he is a pioneer arriving in post-World War I Palestine as in UNSETTLED LAND (Uri Barabash, 1987), a middle class farmer in a Jewish village in 1980 Israel, (HAMSIN), or a military-government officer serving in the occupied West Bank as in SMILE OF THE LAMB and A VERY NARROW BRIDGE (Nissim Dayan, 1985), constantly fails to inquire as to the meaning of iwhat he perceives to be a wasteland.
Unlike the master-narrative in early Zionist cinema in which the hero
restores the land to fertility, the 1980s hero fails to carry out his
mission and instead brings about misfortune: the exile of the Palestinian
peasants in HIRBET HIZ’AH, the brutal killing of the Palestinian farmhand
in HAMSIN, the killing of the son of the Arab patriarch as well the
Israeli military physician in SMILE OF THE LAMB, and the exile of the
Palestinian school teacher in A VERY NARROW BRIDGE. The key to the freeing
of the waters in the Grail romance is in asking the right question.
In AVANTI POPOLO, a thirsty Egyptian POW asks the “right” question in
order to receive water from his Israeli captors. An Egyptian reserve
soldier whose civilian vocation is in the theatre recites to his Israeli
captors a famous Shakespearean monologue that starts with the line,
“I am a Jew, has not a Jew eyes?” and ends “If you poison us do we not
die?” When asked by one of his men “What the fuck is he saying?” the
Israeli patrol leader retorts: “He got the roles mixed up.”
The
Jews who excelled in the art of asking questions in the great Talmudic
tradition seem to have lost this gift while the Arabs have adopted it
successfully. French-Jewish philosopher Edmond Jabés comments, “All
of Jewish tradition is a tradition of posing questions, and this point
has been totally ignored. Israel is a Jewish state, but it is not Jewish
in its character.” (Jabés: 252). Whereas early Zionist cinema constructs
the protagonists as pioneers conscious of their historical-utopian role,
1980s Conflict Film disrupts this sense of telos, featuring heroes who
“cannot ask the right question” and suffer from a blurred vision of
reality. The soldier, who in Israeli history replaced the pioneer, no
longer strives to revitalize the wasteland for the mutual benefit of
both Jews and Arabs. Instead he becomes the ultimate cause of suffering
to both peoples.
SHADOW CINEMA
Holocaust representations in Israeli cinema appear primarily in the
period right after World War II and again after 1978 marked by the production
of WOODEN GUN (Ilan Moshenson, 1978). The “new wave” Holocaust related
cinema consists of a small number of feature films such as HIDE AND
SEEK (Dan Wollman, 1980), TEL AVIV - BERLIN (Tzipi Trope, 1986), BECAUSE
OF THAT WAR (Orna Ben-Dor Niv, 1988), THE SUMMER OF AVIYA (Eli Cohen,1988),
and NEW LAND (Orna Ben-Dor Niv, 1994). Post-World War II films show
the Holocaust survivor arriving in Jewish Palestine as a candidate to
join the ranks of the pioneers. In these films the mentally broken survivor
becomes fit for pioneer settlement by means of group training in an
established kibbutz that concludes with an initiation rite. In both
MY FATHERS HOUSE (Herbert Kline,1947) and THE GREAT PROMISE (Joseph
Leits, 1947) Holocaust survivors undergo personality regression; resurrected
from the ashes they are reborn identifying with the Zionist project
in Palestine. This short term therapy reflects the Zionist leadership’s
perception of survivors as the last human reservoir for pioneer settlements,
and for the Israeli armed forces in the 1948 War of Independence. For
example, OUT OF EVIL opens and ends with a sequence in which the narrator,
a Holocaust survivor, stands in a fortified position overlooking Jerusalem
under siege in 1948, aiming his rifle at the Arab enemy. OUT OF EVIL
suggests that unlike the Holocaust victims, we the New Jews will not
be going like lambs to the slaughter. Becoming a fighter has always
been considered by Zionist ideology as the necessary corrective for
the endemic reluctance of diaspora Jews to take up arms, even for self-defense.
The metamorphosis of the diaspora Jew to the New Jew has been a major
objective of Zionism ever since its inception. It was claimed that the
New Jew would supersede the diaspora Jew of Eastern and Central Europe.
The now-notorious coinage “shelilat ha-gola,” literally meaning “negation
of the diaspora,” expresses this Zionist attitude. The destruction of
the European Jews by the Nazis may have accelerated the accomplishment
of the Zionist program in Palestine, but at the same time it meant the
disappearance of Zionism’s principal human reservoir. Thus, as a result
of the Holocaust, converting diaspora Jews in Europe to the New Jew
in Palestine practically ceases. In 1943 Ben-Gurion stated that the
Jewish question in Europe will be resolved in one of two ways: “Either
Hitler or Palestine. And the most horrifying and tragic meaning of this
dilemma is that maybe Hitler will solve the problem...” (Weitz: 103)
When the European Jews were destroyed, transformed to ashes and not
converted to the New Jew, conceptually speaking, half of this Zionist
scheme was accomplished by the Nazis - the Old Jew ceased to exist.
The tragic entanglement of Zionism with Nazism, on the conceptual level,
has unremittingly blemished the relation between the children of Zionist
Utopia and the memory of the Holocaust. Guilt and its social manifestations
in relation to the Holocaust occupy the 1980s Shadow Cinema.
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Israeli Cinema of the 1980's & 1990's:
A Radical Critique of Zionism
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Articles:
Introduction
Producing Your Own Film Festival
Independent Jewish Film in America
Sephardic Cinema
Israeli Cinema
Film & The Holocaust
The SFJFF In Moscow
