Mikey, it’s a film worth seeing on its own terms.

I just read the novel Beaufort on the same subject which I also found fascinating.

However, I don’t know what any of this has to do with the thread subject which is Burg’s notion of the Holocaust mindset.

I assume you do not believe that the film “Shindler’s List” was a propaganda movie because it only dealt with one specific part of WWII and did not include information about the Weimar Republic or the bombing of Dresden.

The film is about the memories of soldiers in a war, it just so happens that these were Israeli soldiers in a war that they were involved with. It just so happens that the psychological issues that the former soldiers had in their recollections may well be applicable to soldiers from other countries in any amount of other wars - and that is in my opinion one of the reasons why the film is so good.

Of course they are Mikey, but to make film, say of the Viet-Nam war and concentrate narrowly on one battle without looking at the wider war including the immediate aftermath is to make a propaganda film and not an historical one.

The same with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan; any such film that doesn’t include the Western creation of an Islamist resistance movement isn’t going to understand the history of Afghanistan.

What is the point of making a film about the Lebanon civil war if you are not going to examine its contemporary history?

The film may be a good one from a cinematographic point of view but is it good history?

The fact that it won a number of cinema awards in Israel doesn’t answer that question.

One more thing, I never said that people shouldn’t see it. I am just questioning its validity as an historical document.

You ask “What is the point of bringing it up now, 26 years after the Fact?” I find this a bizarre question. Are people not allowed to talk about historical issues? Can we no longer discuss the war in Vietnam that took place 40 years ago, the Russian invasion of Afghanistan from almost 30 years ago and the list goes on?

Whilst I do care what foreign audiences may or may not do with some of the information in the film or how they will abuse it, I do not care so much that I would silence Israelis from making such a film in the first place. Nor would I want to be a censor and say “This film is only for Israelis or Diaspora Jews who have donated money to the United Joint Israel Appeal in the last year.”

The film is about the 1982 war. It is not about 1985 or 1986 and it is not so much about the war as to the recollections of Israeli soldiers who participated in that war and how they dealt with the memory of their own actions and what they lived through. It is about soldiers confronting their past. Since it is about Israeli soldiers and the army is quite central to Israeli life, it is also about the Israeli nation confronting its own past.

The reason I posted my comment on this thread was because a large part of Ben’s post is about Atzmon’s discussion of this film. Ben also placed a Youtibe clip from this film on his post. I mentioned that I also liked this film and that does not mean to say that I think the same way as Atzmon! A lot of Israelis liked the film and it was highly acclaimed in Israel. The film won 6 Ophir Israeli Academy Awards.

I think the film was superb and I urge everyone to go and see it.

What is the point of bringing this up, now 26 years after the fact?

Is Israel still in Lebanon?

I have no right wing point of view but I agree with Gerald Steinberg’s view that “foreign audiences will be blaming Israel for everything and this could reinforce that.”

Besides, the Independent isn’t known as an Israeli friendly newspaper. It tends to take a pretty consistent anti-Israel point of view.

In any case, films and grand juries have this in common, the can make anyone, and anything, look guilty or innocent.

However, I have one final question did the film only deal with the massacres of 1982 which took about a thousand (the exact number is in dispute) lives.

Or, did the film also deal with the so called war of the camps in 1985, 1986 in which different sects of Muslims fought each other for control of the camps. The number of casualties in these battles for Sabra and Shatilla between Amal and Palestinians took the lives of over three and a half thousand people.

Why is it that we don’t hear about this more often, Mikey?

The one point that Hitchens’ made on another thread here with which I agree is that

“One can just about picture a worldwide campaign to redress the injustices of Pakistan, in which unions of British teachers and journalists would join with their own courageous boycotts, but I confess to a slight difficulty in picturing the same level of enthusiasm and commitment. There is some sense in which any challenge to what can be viewed as specifically Jewish power is more exciting and possibly more “transgressive”, and we might be more honest if we admitted as much.”

http://blog.z-word.com/2008/11/hitchens-on-antisemitism/#comments

One more question, Mikey, why did you post this comment on a Holocaust discussion thread? I am just asking.

I think the article on the film in the The Independent makes some important points:

One reviewer, Eitan Weitz, writing for the website Parshan (Commentator), termed it “required viewing” for those aged 16 and 17 nearing their mandatory military service, for army reservists in their thirties and for mothers of soldiers. But not everyone is happy about the film’s screening abroad. Gerald Steinberg, a political scientist at Bar Ilan University with right-of-centre views, voiced concern even though he has not seen the film. “The Israeli audience knows the atrocities were committed by Lebanese Christian militiamen and can sort out how much responsibility is ours and how much is theirs. Foreign audiences will be blaming Israel for everything and this could reinforce that.”

I was just comparing Burg’s distaste for Holocaust remembrance with Atzmon’s hysterical cris de Coeur on his blog: “United Against Shoa Education!”
This little gem made me understand why Ben wrote above that “Burg also reminds me of Gilad Atzmon.”

That’s all I had in mind.

I don’t think this is a correct impression. Burg is pretty much a shallow braggart of limited talents, making a lot of noise where he thinks he can generate some attention to himself. He made a pretty nice and cushy life for himself, enjoying the political fruits that his name provided for him, within mainstream politics.. Now that his peak is over (and for good reason - what has he ever achieved as a political leader?) he finds he can still generate some mild interest in himself and his books by making these provocative statements. Essentially, he is still a spoiled kid from Rehavia.

Atzmon, on the other hand, is a true believer. His is a soul haunted by the specter of his own “evil blood”. He is a Jew, and no amount of words and pleading and disavowing is going to redeem him from this fate, this tainted blood.

I wasn’t being ironic when I said he deserves our pity.

I daresay his most enthusiastic supporters know and exploit his pathological neediness, for their own ends. From the way his rhetoric gets more extreme and demented, I suspect he also knows it.

What is it about the “Auntie Shelomi” comment that appealed to you?

Did you take a look at his website?

Perhaps you found this gem posted there appealing?

“United Against Shoa Education!”

I can see now why Ben thought Burg and Atzmon had something in common.

“Godwin’s Law (also known as Godwin’s Rule of Nazi Analogies… states:

“As a … discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.”

It’s actually a rhetorical fallacy and intends to clog up the conversation, even when inserted in sarcastic form.