The Gatekeepers Keeps Information from Viewers
The Gatekeepers — currently Oscar-nominated for Best Documentary, opening February 1 in New York and Los Angeles — is a movie that could only have been made in Israel.
Six former heads of Shin Bet, the Israeli agency dealing with domestic terrorism, each spent 12-15 hours in filmed conversations with Israeli filmmaker Dror Moreh, who spliced excerpts into a 97-minute film dramatized with archival footage and animated recreations. At the end, Moreh shows some of the “gatekeepers” saying Israel is winning battles but losing the war; that the use of force can never be wholly successful and eventually degrades those who use it; and that Israel is in danger of becoming “a Shin Bet state.”
It is a well-made, thought-provoking film, but the conclusions in the last two minutes are not entirely supported by the 95 minutes that precede them. In significant ways, they are in fact contradicted by at least one of the “gatekeepers” — Avi Dichter, who served under Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon from 2000 to 2005. Dichter summarizes Moreh’s apparent position: if we use force against the Palestinians, they will use force against us; and if we stop using force, they will stop using force. Dichter tells him the first part of the equation is true, but that the second is not.
In another exchange, recounted by Moreh at a recent screening, Dichter recalled receiving a 5 a.m. call with intelligence that a terrorist would bomb a bus later that morning, while Israelis were commuting; someone was found who fit the description of an alleged accomplice, but he was unwilling to talk; you have two hours, Dichter said, to find a person on his way to perpetrate a mass murder. So what do you do? At the screening, Moreh did not hazard an answer; and the non-response reflects the lack of easy answers to the issues in the film.
The film’s press materials claim that “for the first time ever,” the former Shin Bet heads are sharing their insights publicly, and Moreh says he was “startled” they agreed to talk to him. But in fact they have spoken publicly before — in a two-hour joint interview in 2003, published at the time in Israel’s largest newspaper, Yedioth Aharonoth, in which the “gatekeepers” expressed the same conclusions. The 2003 interview was instrumental in influencing Ariel Sharon to withdraw from Gaza — with results different from those confidently predicted at the time. But the 2003 interview goes unmentioned and unaddressed in the The Gatekeepers.
As a result, while the film raises important questions, it also withholds important information needed to answer them. The film uses allegedly “first time ever” interviews to push the same points that were pushed back in 2003 by the same people, which produced disastrous results. A better film would have explored why things failed then, and why they have failed since, rather than simply push the same points again as if they had not already been given a real-life test.
The Yedioth Aharonoth interview was published on November 13, 2003, featuring all four ex-Shin Bet chiefs at the time — Avraham Shalom, Yaakov Perry, Carmi Gillon, and Ami Ayalon (Avi Dichter was serving as head of Shin Bet, and Yuval Diskin, the sixth ex-chief who appears in The Gatekeepers, served from 2005 to 2011). The Washington Post reported the interview the next day on its front page, under a headline reading “Ex-Security Chiefs Turn on Sharon.” The Post’s story began as follows:
Four former chiefs of Israel’s powerful domestic security service said in an interview published Friday that the government’s actions and policies during the three-year-old Palestinian uprising have gravely damaged the country and its people.
The four, who variously headed the Shin Bet security agency from 1980 to 2000 under governments that spanned the political spectrum, said that Israel must end its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip …
Carmi Gillon told the Post the group sat down together for “the first time ever” because of their “serious concern for the condition of the state of Israel.” In Britain, The Guardian published its own story, with a headline reading “Israel on road to ruin, warn former Shin Bet chiefs”:
“We are heading downhill towards near-catastrophe,” Mr. Perry said. “If we go on living by the sword, we will continue to wallow in the mud and destroy ourselves.” Mr. Shalom called the government’s policies “contrary to the desire for peace”. …
“[The government] is dealing solely with the question of how to prevent the next terrorist attack,” Mr. Gilon said. “It [ignores] the question of how we get out of the mess we find ourselves in today … It is clear to me that we are heading toward a crash.”
The former intelligence chiefs agreed on a need to take swift steps towards ending the occupation by dismantling some Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza.
In the AP story on the interview, former Israeli President Ezer Weizman accused the ex-Shin Bet leaders of undermining the government, calling them the “four musketeers.” The interview had a profound impact on Ariel Sharon: less than a month later, he announced his Gaza disengagement plan — the removal of every settler and soldier from Gaza, and the dismantlement of four settlements in the West Bank (to show it would be “Gaza first, not Gaza last”).
Almost a decade later, the four gatekeepers have the same concerns, expressed in virtually the same terms. The film fails to inform viewers that the concerns are not new; that they were considered and acted upon by the Israeli government a decade ago; and that the result was not peace but two rocket wars, involving thousands of rockets, from Judenrein Gaza. Call it the Avi Dichter false-equation insight: if Israel retains land, the result may be war; but it does not follow that transferring land will produce peace. In fact, it produced the opposite.
To its credit, Israel has offered the Palestinians a state not once, but three times, on substantially all of the West Bank and Gaza, with a capital in Jerusalem. Each time, the Palestinians walked away, and Palestinian democracy has been a failure. Moreh is a fan of the “everyone knows” peace plan — a Palestinian state along the 1967 lines, with the Palestinians forgoing the “right” of “return.” But the Palestinian public has repeatedly rejected such a plan in public opinion polls taken since 2004, including a poll taken two months ago. None of this appears in Moreh’s film.
In the press materials, Moreh says the “idea to do this movie came to me while I was working on my previous film, Sharon.” At that time, he says, “I learned how the critique of some of these Gatekeepers influenced Sharon’s decision to disengage from Gaza.” He thinks “the time has come for the Gatekeepers to address the people at large, and not just the inner circles of decision-makers,” and he hopes his film will “initiate that dialogue.”
But the dialogue Moreh wants to “initiate” has in fact been going on in Israel for many years; it resulted in a Gaza withdrawal that blew up in Israel’s face, contrary to the public advice of the ex-gatekeepers at that time. Moreh’s film, made years later — and after the Palestinians rejected yet another offer of a state in 2008 — is not as new or bold as its self-congratulatory advertising declares. In fact, the film is a bit of a repeat of a two-hour interview from 2003.
None of this is to say that the issues in this film are not important. But one should take with a very large grain of salt the suggestion by Yuval Diskin that Israel is in danger of becoming a “Shin Bet state.” A “Shin Bet state” would not have allowed this movie to be made. A “Shin Bet state” would not have men such as these heading its Shin Bet — intelligent, articulate people honestly addressing the moral issues involved in their jobs. A “Shin Bet state” would not address such issues so often and so publicly, over so many years, dealing with the less-than-perfect use of power in a less-than-perfect world while under existential attack.
In a world where Avi Dichter’s false-equation observation is repeatedly proven accurate, there is no easy solution. The tragedy of the “peace process” is reflected in the fact that Israel is the only state in the Middle East where a movie such as The Gatekeepers could be made.
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Check out Kathy Shaidle’s Guide to Your First Visit to Israel at PJ Lifestyle:
Strange, I haven’t seen either the 2003 interview or the film but over the years I’ve come to slightly different conclusions. Israel has to stop trying to court World Opinion and stop playing nicey-nice. Does anyone remember what a farcical exercise the building of the West Bank fence entailed? A job that could have been carried out in a matter of months lasted years as Israel allowed itself to be tied into legalistic knots and submit to hysterical breast-beating on the part of the worldwide Leftist propaganda Wurlitzer. Once completed, the fence actually worked. The suicide bombing era abruptly stopped. The just completed Sinai fence will also work and the soon-to-be-commenced Golan fence will also perform as needed.
The Palestinians are eternally convinced that they can outlast the Israelis no matter what. That always struck me as hilarious. These world champion welfare recipients would have to either join the civilized world or eat each other if the gravy were cut off. How can it be called a “war” when one side provides electricity, fuel, clean water, sewage service, tax revenue and free health care to the side that’s trying to kill them? Not to mention all the UNRWA bennies and payments from the EU and US? Just cut them off and tell them to go to the Saudis and George Soros for their sustenance. It’s when conditions are good for them and their morale is riding high that they are at their most violent. The Palestinians actually do have great human potential but it will never be realized as long as they think the world will feed and clothe them. The World can do what it wants but if the Israelis stop playing the game and wiping the Palestinians butts the World would be unable (and unwilling, considering how much the aid and charity has already declined in the current economic situation) to pick up the slack.
If the Great and Good can so readily accept the idea of Syria going to hell in a handbasket I’m betting they can get used to the idea of their precious pets going hungry.
The ex-Shin Bet chiefs in this unfortunate film, except for Dichter, have the basic mindset of the Israeli left, and also of the “international community” regarding Israel and the Palestinians: I want something to happen, ergo it will happen. I do not like overseeing Palestinian autonomy in the West Bank and would rather they have their own independent, peaceful state living beside me; ergo the Palestinians will grant me this. In other words, it’s on an infantile level: that which I want, is what will be. It also has features of addiction; the proponents of this view–”land for piece”–cannot relinquish it no matter how much harm it causes, and do not seem able to live without it. It should also be noted that these ex-Shin Bet chiefs are from the old “elite” of Israeli–Ashkenazi, highly secular, often of kibbutz origins–that is still heavily attracted to the mindset of the left.
US Imperialism, International Law and the United Nations By Julie Lévesque Global Research, January 30, 2013
http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-imperialism-international-law-and-the-united-nations/5314381
Doesn’t Israel have some kind of “keep your mouth shut” policy in regard to her spymasters? I am appalled these men feel it is OK to discuss these subjects in such an open forum as a movie. But leftists are leftists aren’t they. Apparently the criminal and or unethical activities of an Olmert isn’t a matter that concerns them.
The former shin bet directors are kneekerking to the usual self-denying, looking for an impossible reward ( to be loved even when you are a cop ): They formulate a puerile “I love my job but I hate my work “. Nu ? So what ? this is the basic , puerile, Peter Pan israeli left , who has been brainwashed by the gentile medias and their israeli relays ( Peace Now, Betselem, Yeshgvul, women in black etc..) to express a perpetual regret at being alive. Actually , those former shin bet do overplay their own character in a game of grand posing:to pretend that you are something totally different from the person who did that job 24h/day for years.Call it narcissism, call it inflated ego, call it estrangement from brutal reality.Those behaviours are the typical brainchild of the “yid parvenu ” of the 19th century in Europe. The ” yid parvenu” was trying to look as much as a gentile, so he toned down as much as he could to the external world pressure, and was passing his time to find excuse to explain that most of the other jews were mentally backwarded by religion and that with patience and assimilation, most of the defects of being a jew would disappear.But back in 2013 it is pretty annoying to hear that those fellows with their very discernable pattern of self-depreciation could influence a guy like Ariel Sharon.The strategic blunder they cooked with the total evacuation of Gaza, is still weighing very heavily on Israel.As an old jewish proverb says ” tsifil kilg, nicht es git ” ( too smart is not good ).Those guys are lacking ” common sense ” .
The Israeli Left in conjunction with peaceniks and neo-isolationists here and in the U.K. are of one mind. It is reflected in the series NCIS, which I have blogged about with lots of controversial comments. See http://clarespark.com/2009/10/15/the-christianization-of-ziva-david-ncis/See also http://clarespark.com/2012/08/06/gellhorns-blind-spot-on-israel/.
I was telling a relative (who is a member of the Academy and gets to vote on the Oscars) about this, and he said it’s “the quality” of the documentary that matters to the Academy, not “the background.” In other words, truth is not a consideration. A “docufiction” can pass for a documentary as long as it’s of “quality.” How warped can you get?!
Interesting – it reminds me of a book I read “While America Aged” which described the pension fund problem (from the perspective of a liberal/socialist), Very good book in describing the time lines and occurances in the pension problems of GM (who American taxpayers were forced to bail out, NY City Subway, and San Diego) in that the documentary seems to describe the problems (as the book did). BUT after doing so well in describing the problem the author drew conclusions that could only be drawn by a liberal socialist could come to – that freedom is the problem and only governent intervention can solve the(any) problem.
In this case – war is not the answer only disarmament and gettting along is the answer.
Like the book I mentioned. No matter how many times the premise (socialism) has failed in practice (pick a county) the next dear leader (in America’s case) Obama will get it right if only he can do only what he wants.
In this case If we give up our guns or our will and ability to fight – there will be peace.
How Niave.