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Director Yeud Levanon's Personal Journey:
From Tel-Aviv to Hebron and Back
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BAY AREA
PREMIERE
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119 BULLETS + 3
Israel, 1996, video, 62 min., color, Hebrew w/Eng. subtitles.
Director: Yeud Levanon.
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"Lets go see what's happening in Tel-Aviv." With these words,
moments after seeing the assassination of Prime Minister Yizhak Rabin on television,
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Director Yeud Levanon grabs his video camera and starts documenting his personal journey
that will take him from his home in Tel-Aviv to the West Bank and back.
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Tel-Aviv, November 5th, 1995.
"Tomorrow is a national day of mourning and 70 world leaders will
arrive for the funeral. And tomorrow they
will bring psychologists to the schools and try and explain to the school-children
why they killed the Prime Minister" narrates Director Levanon in real-time, with
hushed tones, close-up to the camera. |
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His voice shaking, himself incredulous and
grappling with the absurdity of the events he is documenting, the
mourning scenes unfold in Malchei-Yisrael Square where thousands light candles in stunned
silence in memory of slain Prime Minister Rabin 24 hours after the assassination.
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In 1976 Levanon wrote and directed THE HONEY CONNECTION, a fictional film
about a Jewish underground in the Occupied Territories. The film tells
the story of an underground organization of Jewish Settlers
that with government assistance, plots to and murders a left-wing playwright who
threatens to expose it.
Na'omi Shemer, a leading Israeli song-writer and
singer, strong supporter of the right-wing, lynched the movie in the press, and the movie was
censored and its screening outlawed.
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In the early 1980's a Jewish Underground was discovered in the Occupied Territories,
its members captured and brought to trial, and THE HONEY CONNECTION was released
for screening.
"Without us the State will disintegrate" sings the Underground to a military
rhythm in THE HONEY CONNECTION.
"Don't you know who did this? Are you blind? The country is full of them!"
says a friend of the murdered playwright in THE HONEY CONNECTION.
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"This is the man I once created in my imagination and years later reality revealed
that such a man exists." Says Director Levanon of Yehudah Etzion, whom
he interviews at his home in Ofra, in the Occupied Territories, where he lives,
in house arrest,
serving the remainder of his 7-year sentence for leading the Jewish Underground.
"What exactly did you do to the Mayors of the [leading
towns in the] Occupied Territories?"
asks Levanon for the record.
"We amputated their legs" answers Etzion, referring to the
effects of car bombs they placed in
the Mayors' cars. "Contrary to how it is perceived" he adds "as far
as I'm concerned, that
was of marginal importance with respect to our other activities."
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Etzion recounts: "What took center stage of our attention
was 'Har Ha-Bayit', The Temple Mount.
The plan revolved around causing significant damage,
perhaps even to totally destroy the Dome of the Rock, that is the structure that
is built over our own Temple."
Levanon: "How many kilograms of explosives are necessary?"
Etzion: "For a good explosion 300 kilograms." [660 pounds]
"All of which you were able to assemble" states Levanon for the record.
"Yes, but not by ourselves" add Etzion with smiling pride.
"Spiritual leader is jailed for 7 years" Israeli TV reports live (above right)
as the
sentenced Yehudah Etzion and his comrades leave the courtroom in the mid-1980's.
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"I'm a pacifist" says long time peace activist Abie Nathan"and today
[following the assassination] my feelings
are much more violent. For me these
[people who shot or supported the shooting of Rabin] are not Jews, not
Israelis, not Human Beings, they are animals, ANIMALS!"
"I broke the law and sat a YEAR! in prison" [for meeting Yassir Arafat
while the PLO was still an outlawed organization in Israel before the Olso Agreements].
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"They break the law and walk free!" says Nathan [referring to the
Presidential amnesty given to the convicted members of the Jewish Underground].
"Ghandi taught us not to be cowards!" points out Abie. In the early 1960's
he took off in a single engine plane from Israel and flew directly
to Cairo to offer Gammal Abd El Nasser an olive branch. In the 1970's he
staged hunger strikes for peace and
operated a pirate radio station The Voice of Peace from a ship anchored
outside Israeli territorial waters.
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"Right-wing rabbis called upon soldiers to disobey orders to evacuate
army bases or settlements in the occupied territories. In a direct
confrontation with the state, the rabbis of the Religious Zionist
movement expanded their call from one year ago that soldiers should
refuse any orders to evict settlers" reports Israel Television.
"Meir Kahane Tourist Park, Martyred Lover of Israel" reads the chiseled
inscription on the right. Baruch Goldstein is also buried here. Many
visitors frequent their grave sites.
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"The laws of the Torah supercede the laws of Man"
reads aloud the sign Noam Arnon who lives in the Hadassah House
situated in the Avraham Avinu Quarter in Hebron.
"Ask any Jew and they'll tell you it's true" says Arnon,
'Foreign Minister' to this tiny community of Hebron Settlers
which functions as a quasi-independent Jewish State in the heart of Hebron.
"This "Peace" is Killing Us" proclaims another sticker colored red on a
Hebron wall, double-quoting "Peace", but it is Rabin the Peacemaker who died.
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"I, Rabbi Levinger and the entire community hereby state that
[Prime Minister] Rabin
and [Foreign Minister]Peres will answer for their
Actions" declares Rabbi Levinger, settler, 'Prime Minister' of Hebron-
suburb Kiryat Arbah after Baruch Goldstein shot 119 bullets into the backs
of praying muslims in the Tombs of the Patriarchs.
"Death to Rabin!" chant the demonstrating crowd in a Likkud rally
carrying a montage poster
of Rabin in a Nazi uniform only weeks before the assassination.
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"They have to stop and think" reasons settler-spokesman Noam Arnon.
"Like a driver, [in a vehicle] stuck in the mud,
they [the secular Tel-Aviv minded Israelis] shouldn't hit the gas pedal."
This settler-based logic blames the massacre carried
out by Goldstein on the Peace Process.
"Anyone with a Peres poster - burn it here" cries the announcer in another right-wing rally
as the fires are fed by the crowd.
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Director Levanon find an album published in honor and in memory
of "Saint Baruch Goldstein" on the same book shelf at Yehudah Etzion's
house where he also found Israeli classics by A.B. yehoshoua.
[Memorial albums are a sacred tradition for the fallen heroes of the I.D.F., Tzahal.]
"Yigal Amir can't be compared with Goldstein because the differences
[between their acts] are enormous" says the pretty dark-eyed teenager to the camera
while having dinner at the Settler's Restaurant in Hebron. "While they are both
religious Jews, Goldstein is righteous, he is a Saint!" she adds emphatically
with street-wise, sun-bleached, raw Hebrew.
Images of Rabin's funeral are broadcast on a TV screen above, Rabin's personal
secretary is shown sobbing at the podium,
holding the blood-stained lyrics to the 'Song for Peace'
found in Rabin's breast pocket after his death.
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"Yigal Amir, not that I know him, but he killed a Jew!" she admonishes.
"Goldstein killed Arabs!" she makes the final point that differentiates for
her one murderer from another, the latter a Saint, the former somewhat less so
because even though his motives were justified, his target was a Jew.
The young girl's father strolls with Director Levanon to visit the graves of
Meir Kahane and Baruch Goldstein. "Here rests another very dear Jew, Goldstein" he
adds with sadness as they approach the grave. "Doesn't it remind you a little of
Hertzl's tomb?" he asks, referring to Zionizm's visionary famous
black marble resting place and
pilgrimage site that tops Jerusalem's Mt. Hertzl.
"Did you love him [Goldstein]?" asks Yeud.
"You can't hate him" answers the settler diplomatically and in a melancholy voice.
"Every father would have wanted a son like Goldstein."
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"Even those who did not agree with your special way in life stand here
today shocked and speechless in the face of this abominable crime. The
murderers hands were aimed not only at you but against all of us. What
have we come to? Here in the land of salvation, that Jews kill Jews and
for what?"
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This eulogy was not for Yizhak Rabin, it is from the film
THE HONEY CONNECTION, a 1970's fiction film come true.
"With his death he willed us peace" and "The late Yizhak Rabin, where
are his equals?" read large Tel-Aviv road-side bill-boards after the assassination.
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"... and all other friends pale in comparison to you ..." sings the crowd
at a memorial to Rabin a week after his assassination . "... we burst
into life like waves against a pier ..." in the same square where Rabin
was shot. "...We'll remember you always, we'll meet again, you know..."
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"... sleep my son, do not cry, your mother is watching over you ..." laments
the singer in a lullaby during a memorial for the slain author in the 1976
film THE HONEY CONNECTION.
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Haggai Segal heads the news division of the settler's radio station, former member
of the captured Jewish Underground, prison-cell mate with Yehudah Etzion
during their incarceration and neighbor to Etzion in Ofra, calmly offers his analysis
after Rabin's assassination: "Murder breaks the Rule of Law and in that sense
it undermines the State. It is necessary to measure, however,
supposing I do such a thing [murder], the harm to the State.
But you also have to weigh it against what it achieves."
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"This is not a war with the Right or with the Left, it's much much deeper than
that" says Yehudah Etzion in a conversation with Yeud Levanon at his West
Bank home in Ofra. "This is a war against everything, against the entire system
and its foundations" he concludes.
"No doubt we will resist you, what will
you do, shoot us?" asks Levanon testingly.
"I won't shoot you Yeud" replies
Etzion with a half smile for a veil "Just don't give me a reason to."
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"It doesn't bother me when I'm kicked out of Baruch Goldstein's synagogue
because it's not exactly an establishment I'd like to be a member of" recounts Levanon
of his film-crew experience in Hebron. "My friends are in Tel-Aviv and when I
return home the sun is soft and the colors are bright."
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"YOU'LL NEVER WALK ALONE" reads a quote from Shimon Peres' eulogy of
Yizhak Rabin on the pedestrian
bumper-sticker worn by a young
woman on Sheinkin Street, secular stronghold and popular-culture
watering-hole of Tel-Aviv. "I believe it too!" she adds facing the camera with a smile,
"It will happen!"
"This is my home" declares Director Yeud Levanon. "On Saturday, November 4th 1995,
I felt I should begin to defend it."
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Transcribed and edited from the video by Ev Shafrir.
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CASTRO, TUESDAY JULY 23
7:45PM - Ticket code 723C
UC THEATRE, TUESDAY JULY 30
5:30PM - Ticket code
730B
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