I'd been scared of this movie because I thought it would show exactly what I fear the most. That all the negative press on Israel and the IDF is true, they're an oppressive regime that gets the green light from Uncle Sam to carry out whatever atrocities they deem fit; that the IDF is no better than the Nazis, the party that executed ten million minorities including six million Jews in WW2 and, politically speaking, are perhaps the only reason why Jews have a country of their own at all. I'm afraid that at some point during my IDF service I'll follow orders to do something equally reprehensible as things the Nazis. Or even if I don't, I'll have been part of an army that did. How could I live with myself if that happened?
That's why I was scared to see this movie, but decided it's better to be informed than ignorant. Maybe it would open my eyes to the brutalities of the IDF, I figured. I just finished watching it twenty minutes ago. Here are my initial reactions to the film. In the future, I'll watch the movie again and write another reaction to it, after I've done some more thorough research on the historical events in the movie and can understand the Hebrew better instead of just reading the subtitles. I think that there's an important insight to be gained from a gut reaction to something and then comparing it to a more levelheaded one. For now, this is how I feel about the movie as a prospective IDF soldier concerned about the army's morality:
Like always seems to be the case in life, it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought. I don't mean as a film, because as a film I thought it was great, but rather in regards to the IDF behaved morally. Some fucked up stuff definitely happened, but my worst fear wasn't realized, which was IDF foot soldiers casually executing unarmed civilians and having no second thoughts. Rather, it seemed like an error in Israel's leadership. Like I said, that's fucked up, but the foot soldiers, the fighters, the KIDS actually on the scene seeing everything brought what they saw to the attention of their superiors.
It was chilling in the movie when the Defense Minister or someone of important stature was informed by an IDF soldier in Lebanon of what was happening. "Did you witness it yourself?" he asked over the telephone.
"No, but several of my men have."
"Thanks for bringing it to my attention. Happy New Year."
It's terrible, but what's important I think is that something like that wouldn't happen today; such blatant disregard for human life for innocent, unarmed people. The movie was more about Folman and struggling with his personal demons, and not a factual documentary of the war, so I guess it's not the best source to use as an accurate depiction of the events in question.
What put me at east was to see that the soldiers, the actual people there, didn't know what was happening at first. There was a little willful ignorance, I think, but from the movie it seemed that they truly were unaware that Phalangists were going to execute the refugees. And once they did become aware, they reported what they saw and were far from OK with what was going on around them, as evidenced by several of them, not just Folman, erasing the event from their memories. I think what the movie did that was great was not only depict the horrors of war in a physical way (like the scene where Folman's friend recounts how, during an ambush, him and about five of his friends ran away, and all of them except him got picked off by militants) but also in a mental way; people do what they're ordered. This has been documented famously in the Milgram experiemnt. In Waltz With Bashir, the soldiers didn't do the executing, but they handed over the refugees on a silver platter. They fired flares into the air at night to help the Phalangists see while they executed the refugees.
At this point, the soldiers knew what going on, or at least had a pretty good idea, and still fired the flares. I guess that's the only part of the movie that really gave me something to think about. Would I have fired those flares if I had been ordered to? Probably, because I'm not special. I'm just as much a victim of human psychology as anyone else. I also think that armies are in the business of killing people, supposedly in the name of peace, and that the IDF's humanitarian record isn't much better or worse than any other country's, not the least of which is America's. As is the nature of being in the business of killing people, mistakes tend to be more pronounced and terrible than other less serious pursuits. If you fuck up building a chair, then you might hurt yourself when it collapses from under you, when you fuck up being a nation's army, innocent people die. That's not an excuse, it's just a fact. I think that Israel has learned from its mistakes and does everything it can to be an extremely moral army, which is a pretty notable thing considering that trying to be moral and effective in war is like trying to play organized football with no pads on; you are at a serious disadvantage to people who do have the pads. This is especially true for Israel, when you consider that its enemies are people who by and large don't follow the rules of the war, they only want to see Israel and all Jews wiped off the map.
Like I said, these are my initial reactions. I'm a young, ignorant kid who is always trying to learn about Israel and other things pertinent to my life, and I apologize if there is something blatantly offensive about what I've written. These are my reactions to the movie, unadulterated. When I have done some more serious research on the events depicted in this movie, I will write a more detailed response. For now, the movie hasn't shown me anything to reveal the IDF as the Nazi regiment the press sometimes accuses it of being. It's just an army, and it made horrible, irreversible mistakes, like many other armies have. As an American, I need look no further than my home country's military history to prove that.
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