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Nov. 5th, 2007 03:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rhuLast night, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
introverte and I watched Storm of Emotions on PBS's Independent Lens documentary series. (Yes, that's the same series that showed Wordplay a few weeks ago.) Storm of Emotions documents the evacuations from Gush Katif two summers ago.
This was an incredibly powerful, moving film about a very difficult time. At one point, when the synagogue in Neve Deqalim is being evacuated, and the police, soldiers, and settlers are standing intermixed, crying, singing Hatikvah, I too broke into tears. In what other country could the government send in unarmed police and soldiers to evict people from their homes of decades, which they believed God had given them, and in the end they manage to talk it out?
There was a fascinating triangle where a settler is yelling at a policeman, and the settler's rabbi intervenes, saying to the settler "'No violence' includes 'no verbal abuse.' You will stay calm while you tell him this is wrong," and then to the policeman "I know that this is hard for you, and you have to do what you have to do," and the policeman responds "I understand that you are in mourning for your home, and I am sorry that you have to leave, but you do have to leave". And then the three of them cry, hug, and walk to the bus together.
I don't know if the film itself is pro-police or if it was unbiased and I was seeing my own feelings reflected, but it did make the police and IDF look like heroes for the humane -- nay, Jewish -- way that they handled the evacuation.
And a minor note: The film is entirely in Hebrew, with no narrator, but the subtitles were excellent. I rarely felt the dissonance that I did when watching Ushpizin, for example, when the subtitles sometimes represented different dialog than the spoken Hebrew.
introverte and I watched Storm of Emotions on PBS's Independent Lens documentary series. (Yes, that's the same series that showed Wordplay a few weeks ago.) Storm of Emotions documents the evacuations from Gush Katif two summers ago.This was an incredibly powerful, moving film about a very difficult time. At one point, when the synagogue in Neve Deqalim is being evacuated, and the police, soldiers, and settlers are standing intermixed, crying, singing Hatikvah, I too broke into tears. In what other country could the government send in unarmed police and soldiers to evict people from their homes of decades, which they believed God had given them, and in the end they manage to talk it out?
There was a fascinating triangle where a settler is yelling at a policeman, and the settler's rabbi intervenes, saying to the settler "'No violence' includes 'no verbal abuse.' You will stay calm while you tell him this is wrong," and then to the policeman "I know that this is hard for you, and you have to do what you have to do," and the policeman responds "I understand that you are in mourning for your home, and I am sorry that you have to leave, but you do have to leave". And then the three of them cry, hug, and walk to the bus together.
I don't know if the film itself is pro-police or if it was unbiased and I was seeing my own feelings reflected, but it did make the police and IDF look like heroes for the humane -- nay, Jewish -- way that they handled the evacuation.
And a minor note: The film is entirely in Hebrew, with no narrator, but the subtitles were excellent. I rarely felt the dissonance that I did when watching Ushpizin, for example, when the subtitles sometimes represented different dialog than the spoken Hebrew.