The Gatekeepers Exposes Shin Bet Tactics

This 2012 documentary film by Dror Moreh interviews the last six Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) intelligence chiefs.  Much has been made in Israel that "spooks should not speak." Their revelations are compelling.  Some Israelis gave high praise.  Rafi Gamzu, Israel Foreign Ministry, called film "proof of the highest order of Israeli democracy."  Moreh decided that Netanyahu poses a great threat to the existence of Israel. Politicians prefer binary solutions in the war against terror, but those in charge of eradicating terror deal daily in grey.  The film starts in 1967 with the Six Day War.

The film consists of 7 chapters:

1.  No Strategy, Just Tactics.  After the Six Day War, the terrorists were gone (the dog could no longer chase the rabbit), so the Israelis decided to do a census in the Territories.  Much effort was spent in learning spoken and literary Arabic.  Unfortunately, Jinna nehsikum ("We come to count you") sounds a whole lot like Jinna nekhsikum ("We come to castrate you").  Ultimately, terrorism appeared in Nablus, with many training in Syria (sounds familiar in the modern world of ISIS), but while terrorism was mitigated, the problem of the Occupation remained.  Meir and Begin paid little attention to Palestine.

2. Forget About Morality. Shin Bet recruited informants in the 1982 Lebanon War, under leadership of Avraham Shalom, who basically did whatever he wanted.  The No. 300 bus incident is recounted (1984) in which 4 terrorists hijacked the bus en route from Tel Aviv to Gaza, in which the Army beat to death two of the hijackers.  Shin Bet had no such concept as illegal order, when the killings were made public Shin Bet was accused of operating above the law.  Yet Shamir gave Shin Bet authority to kill.  It was Avraham Shalom, who resigned in disgrace in 1986.

3.  One Man's Terrorist is Another Man's Freedom Fighter. The First Intafada was insurrection with no precedent.  The Oslo Accords recognized Israel's right to exist by the PLO.  Tel Aviv bus bombing in 1995 was start of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

4.  Our Own Flesh and Blood.  Illegal West Bank settlements began in 1974 in reaction to the Government policies under Rabin.  Moreover the Government ignored the settlements.  In 1980, a Fatah cell blew up a synagogue in Hebron.  The Jews responded with revenge attacks on the Nablus mayor Bassam Shaka'a and Ramallah mayor Kasim Halaf.  Everyone knew the Jews were instigators.  Shin Bet had no records on Jews, it was a wake up call to identify the Jewish Underground. Shin Bet foiled an attempt to bomb 250 Arabs on Arab buses in Jerusalem, they caught them in the act.  They also foiled a plan to blow up the Dome of the Rock with Semtex.  The entire Islamic world, including Iran and Indonesia would have waged war against Israel.  Nevertheless, Shamir signed the Clemency Law for the Underground.  Yigal Amir (Israeli extremist, Jew) assassinates Rabin on Nov 4, 1995 - a punk can eliminate entire peace process.

5.  Victory is to See You Suffer. Shin Bet was in crisis after Rabin's death.  Protecting against terror no longer enough.  Relying on force rather than brains a poor strategy.  Shift from field operations to computer monitors (see film poster).  Meetings with Palestinian intelligence improved terror rate.  After Rabin, Israeli leadership lost interest in peace initiatives.  Israel wanted more security and got terror.  Palestine wanted a State and got more settlements.  After 50 years, Palestinians achieved a balance of power.  Israel's F-16s vs. the suicide bomber. 

6.  Collateral Damage.  Yahya Ayyash was brilliant improvised explosive expert and most wanted man in Israel.  Shin Bet arranged for his execution through a smuggled cell phone laden with explosives (Jan 5, 1996).  Two months later, the whole country exploded.  Collateral damage or inevitable ?  Banality of Evil issues relevant to collateral damage.

7.  The Old Man at the End of the Corridor. This phrase refers to Ben-Gurion.  Avraham Shalom refers to Israel as modern day Germany occupying territories.  Final film thought - Israel is winning most battles but losing the war.

Rudoren (NYT) opines:  The Occupation is immoral and ineffective.  Israel should withdraw from West Bank as it did from Gaza in 2005.  The prospect of a 2-state solution diminishes daily, threatening the future of Israel as a Jewish democracy.

Les Quatre Cents Coups is Wonderful Collision Betweem Bazin's Realism and Truffaut's New Wave Launch

Released in 1959, Les Quatre Cents Coups (The 400 Blows), is one of the greatest films of all time.  Marilyn Fabe, UC Berkeley Lecturer in Film Studies, captures the subtle cinematographic details in her book Closely Watched Films (2004).  It is 27-year-old Francois Truffaut's autobiographical first feature film. It launched the French New Wave from 1959-1963.  Other New Wave directors included Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, Jacques Rivette, and Eric Rohmer, all of whom wrote polemical articles in the film journal Cahiers du Cinema.  Their cinematic innovations were influenced by their film theories and the nature of the film medium.

Since the inception of motion pictures, the author of the screenplay was felt to be the
'auteur" of the film, as the directors were merely attempting to create a film faithful to the screen writer's vision.  New Wave directors embraced the theories of Alexandre Astruc that cinema was a language in which an artist can express his thoughts in a powerful form, like literature.  New Wave theorists thought the director was the auteur, in control of images, actors, and screenplay revisions.  Auteur theory was challenged by Marx and Freud, who were interested in understanding the process by which a culture's ideology, be it capitalist consumer values or patriarchal ideas about gender, were reproduced and maintained through mass media.  Roland Barthes also invoked a challenge, announcing the death of the author and birth of the reader.  Meaning is determined not by the intent of the author, but by the reader of the text.

In The 400 Blows, Truffaut demonstrates that film can be as emotionally and intellectually evocative and complex as literature.   The story of the film was based on Truffaut's own childhood.  The "400 blows" of the film's title comes from the French idiom "faire les quatre cents coups" which means "to raise hell."  The title has a double meaning.  It also alludes to the blows dealt by insensitive neglectful parents and the bullying school and state authorities.  An unwanted child neglected by his parents, Truffaut took refuge in film.  Antoine Doinel, played by Jean-Pierre Leaud, has the same life history as Truffaut.  Also born out of wedlock, his parents find him a burden.  This is given poignant visual expression when Antoine takes out the garbage.  In a sense, his mother wanted to throw him away in an abortion.

Truffaut ran away from home at age 11 after an excuse for playing hooky backfired.  He claimed he was not in school because his father was taken away by the Germans.  Antoine claims his mother died.  Both Truffaut's and Antoine's adoptive fathers turn them over to the police.  He ends up in the Center for Delinquent Minors where he makes a mad dash for the beach.  Truffaut films Antoine in his moments of freedom in wide angle exaggerating the distance between foreground and background, making the world seem expansive.  At the times when he is caught, Truffaut films him in tightly framed close shots.  His images of Antoine through the grillwork of a holding cell are iconic.  In one shot his face is framed by the grid pattern, resembling a noose around his neck. 

At the ocean's edge, he is trapped.  For his part, Truffaut was rescued by Andre Bazin, who became his substitute father. Since many of the New Wave directors wrote for Bazin's Cahiers du Cinema, the style of their films was influenced by his realist aesthetic.  Antoine's escape from the soccer game and his run to the sea are an homage to Bazin. The 75-second tracking shot in which Antoine runs to the sea demonstrates Bazin's idea that some actions need to be represented in real time in order too be dramatically effective.  We are able to experience the adrenaline-filled exhilaration of his run for freedom.

Finally, Truffaut shocked audiences in 1959 by use of a freeze frame technique to end the film.  The sudden freezing of the frame foregrounds the film medium.  Classic films always hid any awareness of the medium.  Truffaut was willing to expose the artifice of the medium, in effect abandoning Bazinian realism, acting as a metaphor for Antoine's entrapment.  Even the word of the title (FIN) functions not just as a word but as an image.  The letters F-I-N resemble the bars that obscured our view of him in the prison scenes, signaling that Antoine's hope for escape are finished too.