Free The Idea of Israel by Ilan Pappé Page A

these murderers will do when they finish the British?’ The terms ‘murderers’ or ‘assassins’ appear in the film many times when the Stern Gang is mentioned. In the final scene of the movie there is a photomontage of the couple, along with a text which reads: ‘Miriam Seidman was executed and shot by the Stern Gang after being found guilty of treason. Her guilt was never proven, her name was never cleared, and those responsible for her death were never brought to justice.’
    But this is not just a story of the Palestinian tragedy. It aspires to be a more universal tale about humanity in general. In general, when dealing with issues such as this, cinema has an advantage over historiography, as is made clear by the immediacy of this film, which could not easily be produced by a written narrative. It pointedly associates geography and politics. Thus, most of Miriam’s encounters with George take place on the beach where the border between Jewish Tel Aviv and Palestinian Jaffa runs. Only there is it possible for the two to detach themselves temporarily from the hostile environment. The director juxtaposes these encounters on the shore with discussions at the Hagana’s headquarters about Miriam’s fate.
    The stark contrast between the two protagonists and the murky, hostile, violent environment is also achieved through the way George and Miriam appear on the screen, as well as the physical surroundings where they meet. They are both handsome, young, and clothed in beautiful fabrics, very different from the dreary khaki uniforms worn by those around them. They are filmed against sunsets and maritime panoramas, while the rest of the scenes take place amid the ugly hustle and bustle of militarisation.
    Again and again, Miriam and George try to disengage from the national plot into which they were tossed. George throws a bomb into the sea that he promised to detonate in a Jewish area; Miriam’s face appears gloomy amid the sounds of cheering Jews, celebratingdiplomatic victory in the UN. All this comes across in the film, despite the film-makers’ more limited ability to identify with the other side compared with the capabilities of the historians. Cinema focuses on individuals, and its creators can therefore more easily display sympathy with the other side – and with respect to one’s own national myth and narrative, calling up that sympathy poses a challenge. Generally, sympathy arises from emotive identification with a screen hero or from a more universal and critical view on life; rarely is it based, as is the case with historians, on new facts. New documentation for a film with a historical dimension is essential, but it is not the crucial component in the creation of a new historiographical picture of the past. Historical films of course have scriptwriters and directors who must support a historical plot with documentary material, but they can readily identify the more imaginative parts of the story. Even if a film tells a basically true story, such as Oliver Stone’s JFK and Frost/Nixon , or Richard Attenborough’s Ghandi , they are still an admixture of fiction and reality. Such licence is obviously a luxury that documentarians cannot permit themselves.
    The Documentary Post-Zionist Challenge
    Esh Tzolevet was not the only film in Israel that exposed dilemmas and taboos. A few films went so far as to take on the manipulation of Holocaust memory in Israeli politics and discourse. Ilan Moshenson’s 1979 movie Roveh Huliot (The Wooden Gun), for example, conveyed Israeli uneasiness over the possible link between the Nazi wish to annihilate the Jews in Europe and the Zionist desire to see the expulsion of the Jews from Europe for the sake of the Jewish community in Palestine. Some of these themes were treated in television docudramas. Motti Lerner’s 1994 three-part TV miniseries The Kastner Trial , for instance, was based on the true story of a Zionist activist who saved Hungarian Jews by bribing Nazis and who