"I think, after retiring from this job, you become a bit of a leftist."
Ever since I read Tony Scott's review of The Gatekeepers, the talking-head documentary-cum-interview with six retired chiefs of Israel's Shin Bet internal security service that played for the last week of last November in Manhattan to qualify it for an Academy Award (the ploy was successful; it's nominated for Best Documentary), I've been champing at the bit to see it. Director Dror Moreh's film sounds a bit like Errol Morris' The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara, only moreso.
Scott described the scope of The Gatekeepers thusly:
"'The Gatekeepers' is in part a history of post-’67 Israel, in which familiar events are revisited from an unusual and fascinating perspective. The leaders of Shin Bet, who answer directly to the prime minister, are not part of the country’s military command structure. Nor, because of the clandestine nature of the agency, are they visibly part of the Israeli political establishment, though they sometimes function as public scapegoats when politicians make mistakes. What is most astonishing about the interviews Mr. Moreh has recorded is how candid and critical these six spymasters are, inflecting their stories with pointed, sometimes devastating assessments of the failings of successive governments."
Richard Cohen, in his 4 February column for the Washington Post, notes that "[W]hat is clear is that some of these former spy chiefs view right-wing Jewish militancy as more perilous to Israel than the restive and seething Palestinians on the West Bank. It was a Jew, after all, who killed the revered Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 because that prime minister was determined to make peace....All of the former officials are traditional Israeli secularists, and they show a commendable loathing for the religious militants that Israeli governments continuously pandered to."
It should come as no surprise, though, that Jodi Rudoren, writing in the 27 January edition of the New York Times, quotes one of the former heads of Shin Bet, Ami Ayalon, as saying that "'Most Israelis are not listening'" to the message of the interviewees of the film; "'most Israelis who saw it are Israelis who are convinced.'"
Oh, the quote in the subject line of this post is from Yaakov Peri, "who ran Shin Bet from 1988 to 1994, during the first Intifada and the negotiations that led to the Oslo peace accords," according to Scott's review in the 26 November 2012 NY Times. Scott went on to observe:
"But while it is true that Mr. Peri and his colleagues generally favor the curtailment of Jewish settlements on the West Bank and a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they are hardly doves or bleeding hearts. And their shared professional ethos of ruthless, unsentimental pragmatism is precisely what gives such force to their worries about the current state of Israeli politics."
I might have to settle for seeing The Gatekeepers on DVD, when it's finally released as a DVD.
Scott described the scope of The Gatekeepers thusly:
"'The Gatekeepers' is in part a history of post-’67 Israel, in which familiar events are revisited from an unusual and fascinating perspective. The leaders of Shin Bet, who answer directly to the prime minister, are not part of the country’s military command structure. Nor, because of the clandestine nature of the agency, are they visibly part of the Israeli political establishment, though they sometimes function as public scapegoats when politicians make mistakes. What is most astonishing about the interviews Mr. Moreh has recorded is how candid and critical these six spymasters are, inflecting their stories with pointed, sometimes devastating assessments of the failings of successive governments."
Richard Cohen, in his 4 February column for the Washington Post, notes that "[W]hat is clear is that some of these former spy chiefs view right-wing Jewish militancy as more perilous to Israel than the restive and seething Palestinians on the West Bank. It was a Jew, after all, who killed the revered Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 because that prime minister was determined to make peace....All of the former officials are traditional Israeli secularists, and they show a commendable loathing for the religious militants that Israeli governments continuously pandered to."
It should come as no surprise, though, that Jodi Rudoren, writing in the 27 January edition of the New York Times, quotes one of the former heads of Shin Bet, Ami Ayalon, as saying that "'Most Israelis are not listening'" to the message of the interviewees of the film; "'most Israelis who saw it are Israelis who are convinced.'"
Oh, the quote in the subject line of this post is from Yaakov Peri, "who ran Shin Bet from 1988 to 1994, during the first Intifada and the negotiations that led to the Oslo peace accords," according to Scott's review in the 26 November 2012 NY Times. Scott went on to observe:
"But while it is true that Mr. Peri and his colleagues generally favor the curtailment of Jewish settlements on the West Bank and a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they are hardly doves or bleeding hearts. And their shared professional ethos of ruthless, unsentimental pragmatism is precisely what gives such force to their worries about the current state of Israeli politics."
I might have to settle for seeing The Gatekeepers on DVD, when it's finally released as a DVD.