review of the movie 'The Gatekeepers'

'The Gatekeepers' starring Ami Ayalon, Avi Dicter, and Avraham Shalom. A documentary by Dror Moreh.


    Is Israel a good thing or a bad thing? I'm a Jew and yet I've never been able to make up my mind on this question.On the plus side, Israel is a homeland for all Jews and that's certainly needed after all the hell that Jews have been put through over the ages. But then there's the 750,000 Arabs that Israel kicked out of the country when it was set up in 1948. And Israelis are still kicking arabs -  or as they're known today Palestinians- out of Israel.
     Once upon a time, Israel was a social democratic state that gave out some generous social programs. That was good. But to-day Israel's an armed state that runs one of the most brutally efficient killing machines in the world. Which is not so good. Israel's existence has raised the self-esteem of most Jews around the world- which is good. But many Moslems now hate Israel and want  to see it destroyed along with world Jewry - which is bad. And so on.
     These thoughts and others flitted through my mind while watching 'The Gatekeepers' an Israeli film by Dror Moreh. Here, four or five past leaders of Shin Bet, Israel's security agency, talked about their wars against Arab terrorist or as some might say freedom fighters. "When you're fighting terrorism," one of the former Shin Bet heads says, "there is no morality."
    Film clips from the 1950's down to today, back up this statement. 'The Gatekeepers' is chockful of endless pictuures of Israelis killing Arabs and vice versa. Also it seems that Shin Bet carries out massive surveillance from the air of all Palestinian towns in Israel. Scenes of Israeli soldiers torturing captives pop up on the screen too while forrner Shin Bet heads discuss the best way to get Palestinian prisoners to reveal their secrets.
    But overall the film left me with a sense of total futility.
     "When you retire," another former intelligence chief says, "you become  a bit of a leftist." No doubt. But when these men headed up Shin Bet they were hard, tough and ruthless. Then they were not leftists. 'The Gatekeepers' is an interesting film by Dror Moreh. It tells us about the insoluble conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Its main message to me was" The killing goes on," whcich is too bad.