What does it say about a country when its sanest citizens appear to be the secret police? In Dror Moreh’s stunning documentary “The Gatekeepers,” a half-dozen grizzled old men talk openly about their experiences running Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service and primary anti-terrorism unit. (Very roughly, the organization is to Mossad what our FBI is to the CIA.) They’re a varied bunch, some cagey, others bureaucratic, more than one strikingly forthright.
And while they confess — sometimes grudgingly — to misdeeds and miscalculations, to blood on their hands both guilty and innocent, they mourn Israel’s gradual turn away from a two-state solution and toward brute force and oppression. These are aging warriors of realpolitik who’ve grown weary of carrying secrets. Says one, upending the old cliché about age turning liberals into conservatives, “When you retire [from Shin Bet], you become a bit of a leftist.”
Comments
Before one accepts the premise of Mr. Burr's review, one has to remember that Israel, a tiny nation of several million Jews (and Arabs) in the midst of hundreds of millions of Arabs and Muslims, has faced hostility and rejection since its birth. When the British mandate in Palestine was partitioned, Arab armies invaded and tried to kill Israel in its infancy. Nothing has changed since then. Israel needs its Shin Bet and Mossad if it is to survive as a homeland for global Jewry and a place where some Arabs enjoy prosperity and human rights.
One can’t help thinking of Joyce’s comment that “History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.” Some will point to the numerical disproportion between Israel and the Arabs while others will point out the decades in which Israel had the vast preponderance in military and economic power and yet did not use it to find lasting peace. There always were and always will be people worthy of hatred. Some will wear a keffiyeh and some a yarmulka. I will see the film next week. But when a head of Israeli security forces starts to compare the occupation of the West Bank with the Nazi Occupation of Europe, someone should really listen to that.
Anti-government comments by a former security chief are to be expected. Israel is a rough and tumble democracy (unlike the neighboring Arab countries) with many political parties. The Labor Party with support from mostly secular Eastern European Jews used to dominate Israeli political and military circles. Now it doesn't because many Israelis trace their roots to Iran. Ethiopia, Russia and Arab nations. Sour grapes within Israeli society helped to write the script for this film.
"Anti-government comments by a former security chief are to be expected." So much for logic! The brutal occupation of Palestine by the increasingly extremist government of Israel is the primary obstacle to peace in the Middle East.