The documentary Bibi doesn't want you to see
Israel’s ‘Gatekeepers’ break their silence
By Richard Cohen, WashPost, Published: February 4
Imagine six former directors of the CIA talking with a distinguished filmmaker and confessing to the murder of two terrorism suspects, ordering the assassination of others, alleging a lack of real leadership by the president and stating to the camera and the entire world that the war in Afghanistan is an unconscionable botch — a bloody, daily slog without end or justification. This, of course, could never happen in the United States. It did, though, in Israel.
The filmmaker is Dror Moreh, and what he did, simply and astoundingly, is sit down, camera rolling, with six former heads of Israel’s security agency, the Shin Bet, and let them spill their guts. The result is the documentary “The Gatekeepers,” which is up for an Academy Award and which, it seems safe to say, the government of Benjamin Netanyahu would like to see lose. That it was partially made with government funding is, truly, an example of insult added to injury.
The six men’s tenures span the years 1980 to 2011. They served under eight different prime ministers and through a succession of uprisings by Palestinians on the West Bank and in Gaza, a turn-your-face-away series of terrorist attacks against civilian targets — the bombing of city buses, etc. — after which certain niceties of the law were not followed. After a 1984 bus bombing, two captured terrorists were almost beaten to death by the army — and the job was finished on the orders of the Shin Bet’s Avraham Shalom:
“So I said, ‘Hit them again and finish it.’ ”
(More here.)
Imagine six former directors of the CIA talking with a distinguished filmmaker and confessing to the murder of two terrorism suspects, ordering the assassination of others, alleging a lack of real leadership by the president and stating to the camera and the entire world that the war in Afghanistan is an unconscionable botch — a bloody, daily slog without end or justification. This, of course, could never happen in the United States. It did, though, in Israel.
The filmmaker is Dror Moreh, and what he did, simply and astoundingly, is sit down, camera rolling, with six former heads of Israel’s security agency, the Shin Bet, and let them spill their guts. The result is the documentary “The Gatekeepers,” which is up for an Academy Award and which, it seems safe to say, the government of Benjamin Netanyahu would like to see lose. That it was partially made with government funding is, truly, an example of insult added to injury.
The six men’s tenures span the years 1980 to 2011. They served under eight different prime ministers and through a succession of uprisings by Palestinians on the West Bank and in Gaza, a turn-your-face-away series of terrorist attacks against civilian targets — the bombing of city buses, etc. — after which certain niceties of the law were not followed. After a 1984 bus bombing, two captured terrorists were almost beaten to death by the army — and the job was finished on the orders of the Shin Bet’s Avraham Shalom:
“So I said, ‘Hit them again and finish it.’ ”
(More here.)
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