On the evening television magazine shows, panels of white-haired male analysts in their 60s reminisced in tones of near-nostalgia about their army service in the 1967 and 1973 wars with Egypt. They mentioned the porousness of the border in the south and implied that without Mubarak to hold them back, hordes of hostile Arabs were just waiting for an opportunity to infiltrate the country. They offered no insight into the issues that had inspired the revolution, nothing about Egyptian society, no analysis of why Mubarak was an unpopular leader, and no logical reason for implying that the peace accord would end with his rule.

A handful of journalists with dual nationality flew in to Cairo on their alternate passports. They checked in to hotels near Tahrir Square and tried to bring some insight to their reports on the revolution. Mostly, with the exception of one television report by super journalist Itai Anghel, they failed. They could not run the risk of asking anyone to speak for attribution to the Israeli media, so they were reduced to describing the atmosphere around them in broad brushstrokes.

But somehow the enthusiasm of the popular uprising, which introduced young Israelis to telegenic, articulate young Egyptian activists via social media, did have an impact.

Fast forward five months to July 2011, when tens of thousands of Israelis took to the streets to demonstrate in what became known as the social justice uprising.

From the start, it was completely clear that the organizers of the demonstrations were profoundly influenced by the Egyptian revolution. They adopted the chants of Tahrir, customizing them for their cause. Instead of “the people demand the fall of the regime” in Arabic, they chanted “the people demand social justice” in Hebrew. They carried placards that read, “Ben Ali, Mubarak, Qadhafi … Netanyahu.” One enormous banner was emblazoned with the Arabic word “erhal” – “leave” –the same word Egyptians chanted rhythmically leading up to Mubarak’s resignation. On the same banner, in Hebrew: “Egypt is here.”

In Tel Aviv, Israeli social justice activists in the summer of 2011 hold a banner emblazoned with the Arabic word “erhal” – leave. Below, the line in Hebrew reads, “Egypt is here.” (credit: Oren Ziv/Activestills)

But when Israelis tagged their tweets about the social justice demonstrations with #J14 (because the demonstrations began on July 14), in homage to the revolutionary hashtag #Jan25, Egyptian activists on Twitter made their displeasure known in very forceful terms. They were not amused to see Israelis identifying with their revolution, nor did they share any sense of camaraderie via what the Israelis thought was a global movement: Occupy, the Middle East Version. Several Egyptian activists tweeted bluntly that as far as they were concerned, Israelis were the enemy – colonizers, oppressors of Palestinians, occupiers. They were not interested in the political views of their Israeli peers.

Today, with Syria lurching into its third year of bloody civil war and Egypt governed by Islamists, Israelis have become uneasily accustomed to the new status quo. They are perhaps less reconciled to a domestic situation that is pretty much status quo ante. The social justice movement of July 2011 fizzled without bringing any change and the new Egyptian government has proven to be much like the old Egyptian government in terms of its relations with Israel, Islamists or not. Even the Syrian civil war does not seem poised to spill over Israel’s borders.

In an interview for this article Matan Drori, the foreign news editor at Maariv newspaper, characterized the mainstream Israeli view on the Arab uprisings as “pessimistic and nervous.” But he acknowledged that Israelis do not understand Egypt well, and also said that he had changed his mind about some things over the past two years. Mubarak, he realizes now, was not really such a great friend of Israel’s.

“I think we had this impression of cooperation and peace with Egypt during the Mubarak years. In reality, he was no different from the other Arab leaders who did not have a peace agreement with Israel. He cooperated because it was good for his own interests – aid from the U.S., security and prosperity.”

Drori continued, “It’s too early to judge the revolution. Egypt is focused on its own issues. Morsi is getting plenty of opposition, which surprised me a lot. The fact that people are raising their voice is cause for optimism and makes me think that maybe I was not giving the Egyptians enough credit. So in that aspect my opinion about Egypt and the revolution has changed over the past two years.”

On the other hand, he said, he “prefers walls for the time being.” Drori emphasized, “I don’t have any racial problem with them or with their religions. But I don’t accept their political culture. They are extreme and they see the world in black and white. That’s dangerous.” Drori acknowledged that Israelis were also nationalists who needed to mature politically, but insisted that Arab political culture had a much longer journey to travel before it saw liberal democracy.

Khulood Badawi is an Arab Palestinian citizen of Israel. Born and raised in Nazareth, she obtained her undergraduate degree from Haifa University and now lives in Jerusalem, where she is a human rights activist. She makes her living as a media and communications consultant. Of the half dozen Palestinian citizens of Israel I sought to interview for this article – writers, lawyers, journalists, political activists – she was the only one who agreed to speak to me about perspectives on the Arab uprisings from within Israeli society. The rest rebuffed me, very politely.

“I think that after more than two years of revolutions and after the results of the Egyptian elections with the victory of the Islamists, and given the results of what was once a very promising revolution in Syria, they don’t want to talk about it because it’s painful, confusing and very frustrating, and they are afraid they won’t find the rights words to express themselves,” she explained. “We don’t know if this is just a stage that we have to go through or if it’s the beginning of the end and khalas we lost the Middle East and this is the way it’s going to be forever.”

The Arab uprisings, she said, had created fissures within Israel’s minority Palestinian population. “We have huge divisions about the Syrian revolution, even within families, between those who are pro and against the regime,” she said. Badawi continued, “It’s easy to be optimistic about Egypt. Despite everything – the harassment of women, the killings – you can see the light at the end of the tunnel. But in Syria it’s dark and people don’t see light at the end of the tunnel. We are afraid it will be another Iraq.”

On the other hand, Badawi said, the revolutions had clarified matters within the community. “Now it’s clear that we are an integral part of the Arab nation and not Israelis. We share the fears, hopes and internal politics.”

The internal political issue she spoke most passionately about was Islamism versus secularism. “The revolutions gave us a chance to put the cards on the table. Now we no longer hesitate to challenge the Islamists and the dictators in our community. It is the real struggle for the face of our community – that is, to decide who represents us [as Palestinians] and with what values and principles.”

Badawi and Drori represent disparate Israeli subcultures. He is an Israeli Jew, a patriot from the heart of the Ashkenazi elite who is ambivalent at best about the uprisings, while she is a Palestinian Arab patriot with little patience for the “paranoia and schizophrenia” of the Israeli government toward the Arab revolutions. What they do share is a fierce commitment to personal and political freedom, and to secularism. And both are waiting, a bit nervously, to see where this period of transition will come to a resting point.

This article was originally published by TahrirSquared.com.

Emad Burnat (left) and Guy Davidi at a screening of 5 Broken Cameras in New York City (credit: Lisa Goldman)

“I lived in the village for two months in 2005,” he recalled, during a conversation that took place at a coffee shop in New York, where he was promoting the film ahead of the Oscars. “That was an intense time, with the [Palestinian Legislative Council] election. That was also the time of the night raids and arrests. The struggle was just beginning. I used to go out and film the soldiers, or try to stop them. And that was when I started to get to know Emad, because he used to go out and film when I did.”

Over the next five years, Burnat shot 700 hours of footage. Every Friday afternoon, week after week, through the present day, the villagers have been holding demonstrations against Israel’s wall, which severed them from their agricultural land. Burnat filmed the tear gas, the bullets, the arrests, the beatings — and the death of his cousin, Bassem Abu-Rahmeh (“Phil”), who died when an Israeli soldier shot a tear gas canister directly at his chest.

With another 300 hours of footage from other sources, Davidi and Burnat scripted and edited the film so that the narrative focuses on the 2005 birth of Burnat’s son Gibreel, who grew up against the background of the village’s struggle and all the attendant violence; and on the eponymous five cameras, broken successively by tear gas canisters, rubber bullets and similar violent incidents.  The result is a deeply moving, thought-provoking documentary that won critical acclaim and a major award at the Sundance Festival. Then came the Oscar nomination, in the category of best feature documentary.

Emad Burnat with his five broken cameras (credit: film PR materials)

The making of a film is always an enormous undertaking, even under the best of circumstances. But when a Palestinian and an Israeli Jew set out to produce jointly a documentary about Israel’s occupation as seen through Palestinian eyes, the physical, social and political challenges are enormous. At first, Davidi was not sure he wanted to take the project on.

“I’m Israeli and he is Palestinian, so of course I knew we would be heavily criticized for working together,” said Davidi. But Burnat was determined to make the film and Davidi was the most obvious partner — an experienced filmmaker who knew Bil’in and was involved in the anti-occupation struggle at the grassroots level.

One of the challenges the two men faced was the anti-normalization position in Palestinian society, which some advocates interpret as going beyond a boycott of Israeli goods and institutions to include cultural or artistic partnerships.

When the Israeli media began referring to 5 Broken Cameras an an Israeli film, a competition between the Palestinian and Israeli press over over national credit ensued. Finally, it was screened at a large cultural center in Ramallah. Davidi was not invited.

“Emad did not get a lot of exposure for this film. In Ramallah people criticized him for working with Israelis.” He continued, “I believe the film succeeds not only because it’s good, but because it shows the partnership between Jews and Palestinians.”

“The Israeli Left likes to see 5 Broken Cameras as a film that points the finger of blame at Israeli society. This is also the strategy of Palestinian society, to point the finger at Israel. So the whole discussion of the occupation is about guilt, which is very destructive. I’m saying there is no room for guilt. There is only room for taking responsibility. A lot of Israelis say it’s so great that Israelis and Palestinians are working together — but then they go off and cry [about the occupation]. There is no place for tears and guilt here. Only taking responsibility.”

Even after the Sundance Award, said Davidi, the film was ignored in Palestine. Similarly, Davidi could not find a commercial cinema to screen the film in Tel Aviv. Instead, it found a home at the Cinematheque — the local art house cinema. Then came the Oscar nod, and the Israeli media rushed to claim the film as one of their own. It was broadcast on one of the local cable television stations, and then finally on the widely watched Channel 2 this week — albeit at 11 p.m.

“I do want to challenge the anti-normalization discourse,” said Davidi. “It’s an important topic and an important discussion to have. I support some aspects of anti-normalization, but I think it’s out of all proportion in Palestinian society. Of course it’s true Israelis don’t pay the same price as the Palestinians. They are occupied. But we should talk about these things.”

With a touch of cynicism, Davidi commented, “There were times I felt I had not sufficiently proved myself. I thought to myself that maybe we needed an Israeli activist to die in order to win credibility. Perhaps not enough Israeli blood has been spilled.”

The young filmmaker has been trying to ignite a conversation within Israeli society, too. He crowd-sourced the funds and led group discussions about the film with high school students, then realized after the first screening that the teenagers would need some advance preparation before seeing the film.

“The Israeli high school kids who saw the film without any prior preparation went into shock,” he said. “They had gone through a school system that prepared them for the army. It wasn’t fair to come to them and break that image with a hammer all at once, to break that world of lies they live in.”

He continued, “Of course they got angry at me, accused me of lying and being a traitor. But the anger is really against the whole system that lied to them. And I know what that’s like because I lived through it. So I tell the kids, ‘Go ahead and get mad at me. Take it all out on me. Soon you will realize that your anger is not against me, but against the whole system that lied to you.’”

“I hope,” he said, “That there will be enough time for them to think about these things before they go into the army. I want to tell them, ‘Hey you’ve got a couple of years between the ages of 16 and 18 to think about what you’re doing and choose a different path.’”

Davidi was drafted to the army at age 18 along with his peers, but knew immediately that he could not serve (“I saw that everything was totally corrupt in the army. They teach you to steal and lie“). He obtained a psychological discharge three months into his basic training. It was that brief experience in the army that politicized him, said Davidi. “My family is not Leftist.”

Davidi’s mother now lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, where she teaches at a Jewish day school. Tonight she will accompany her son to the Academy Award ceremony in Los Angeles. But when we spoke less than two weeks ago,  Davidi told me she had not yet seen the film.

“It’s hard for her, “ he said. “People – Jewish Americans and Israelis – told her that her son was a traitor.”

Despite their political differences, Davidi says that he and his family get along well today. About the film, he says, “I made it for spiritual reasons. Without those spiritual reasons, there would be no film.”

In a post for +972, Mairav Zonszein wrote eloquently about the outrageous attempts to intimidate the college into canceling the event. Alan Dershowitz started the whole controversy, but New York City public officials were quick to follow, with several threatening to cut the college’s funding. The New York Times published an editorial of quiet dismay, noting that “critics have used heated language to denigrate the speakers,” adding, “The sad truth is that there is more honest discussion about American-Israeli policy in Israel than in this country. Too often in the United States, supporting Israel has come to mean meeting narrow ideological litmus tests.”

Mayor Bloomberg expressed himself a bit more bluntly. “If you want to go to a university where the government decides what kind of subjects are fit for discussion,” he said, “I suggest you apply to a school in North Korea.”

And after all that, the event turned out to be a non-event. An audience of about 300 people sat quietly and listened to Judith Butler and Omar Barghouti speak, which they did — without interruption. People lined up quietly to ask questions at the microphone during the Q&A. As always, there were a few eccentrics who made statements, usually of the UFO variety, instead of asking questions. There was some post-panel schmoozing in another room, with books for sale laid out on a table and Omar Barghouti sitting behind another table to sign his tome on BDS.

And then everyone went home.

There were no heated arguments and no disturbances. The atmosphere was relaxed and friendly. No-one shouted “death to Israel”or anything remotely similar — except a contingent of Neturei Karta, who always show up at this type of Palestine-related event.

Neturei Karta at Brooklyn College

I’m always a bit disturbed to see BDS advocates, who talk about Palestinian rights in the same breath as LGBT rights and feminism, rush to photograph and be photographed with these men, whose beliefs and lifestyle tolerate neither homosexuality nor women’s rights. Anyway, they were the only ones shouting that Israel must end, it had no right to exist, etc.

Outside the student building there was also a small group of young Orthodox men, accompanied by New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who was particularly involved in trying to intimidate Brooklyn College into canceling the event. One man, who wore the black fedora of an Orthodox Jew, handed me a photocopied page titled WHY BDS IS THE SAME AS AL QAEDA. On Facebook, someone posted a photograph of a page distributed at the college by a group calling itself Mobilization for Israel. EMERGENCY RALLY AGAINST HAMAS SPEECH, it announces.

Flier handed out at Brooklyn College

But despite all the semi-coherent drama of the flier, only a handful of protestors showed up. They did not try to stop anyone from entering the student building where the event was held, nor did they try to enter themselves. Up on the sixth floor I could hear them outside on the street, faintly. They sang “David, Melekh Yisrael,” (David, King of Israel) and shouted a few semi-audible slogans for the first part of Judith Butler’s talk. But soon they dispersed and there was no sign of them when we came out.

But the college and the city clearly anticipated trouble. There was a heavy police presence, both uniformed and plainclothes officers, outside the student building and inside. They were supplemented by uniformed college security and volunteer marshalls who kept the sidewalk clear, checked IDs and made sure all the people queued up for the event were on the list. Everyone had to submit to a bag search and go through a metal detector. The metal buckles on my boots beeped, earning me a pat down. It would have felt just like being back at home in Israel, except it was freezing cold outside and everyone was remarkably courteous — friendly, even.

According to an email I received yesterday, the event was filled to capacity — but there were at least 20 empty seats, possibly because the speakers started exactly on time, while the people who had been waitlisted were still going through security. No-one was admitted during the talks, to avoid causing a disturbance.

The audience was a mixed bag of the usual suspects. There were political activists, many of them Jewish “red diaper baby” types. There was also a very heavy Arab Muslim presence, noticeable because many of the women wore the hijab. And journalists, of course.

I was impressed by Judith Butler’s remarks, in which she touched on issues of free speech, BDS as a nonviolent civil society movement, the definition of anti-Semitism,  and Jewish identity — all in her inimitably dense, intellectual and erudite style. You can read the text of her talk on The Nation’s website. Below is an excerpt:

One could be for the BDS movement as the only credible non-violent mode of resisting the injustices committed by the state of Israel without falling into the football lingo of being “pro” Palestine and “anti” Israel. This language is reductive, if not embarrassing. One might reasonably and passionately be concerned for all the inhabitants of that land, and simply maintain that the future for any peaceful, democratic solution for that region will become thinkable through the dismantling of the occupation, through enacting the equal rights of Palestinian minorities and finding just and plausible ways for the rights of refugees to be honored. If one holds out for these three aims in political life, then one is not simply living within the logic of the “pro” and the “anti”, but trying to fathom the conditions for a “we”, a plural existence grounded in equality.

Barghouti’s speech was less intellectual and more populist. I did not like it, not because I disagreed with anything he said, but because I dislike populism and am suspicious of speakers who rely on their charm to ingratiate themselves with audiences. He read out a long laundry list of Israel’s evil deeds (none of which I dispute), followed by a lengthy explanation of why he was not anti-Semitic, with liberal quotes from Yeshayahu Leibowitz, Shulamit Aloni and Avraham Burg, amongst others. He also gave a shout-out to Israeli Jewish partners of BDS, specifically the Boycott from Within movement.  The audience responded positively.

This event at Brooklyn College should have been a minor one. If the subject of discussion had been anything but Palestine-Israel, there would have been a very small audience indeed. Not many people are willing to take a subway to the last stop on the 2 line on a cold February night in order to sit for more than two hours on uncomfortable folding plastic chairs in a bare room lit by fluorescent strip lighting. But thanks to people like Alan Dershowitz and Dov Hikind, they came out in pretty impressive numbers. The minor event became a big deal.

Besides the deeply shameful attempts of Dershowitz, Hikind, et al to limit freedom of expression in a liberal democracy, I am pondering a few other things as I write this post. Despite all the publicity, only a very small group of hardcore Orthodox Jewish men — yeshiva boy types — showed up to protest this event. And they did not last long. Also, it is very interesting to see how the hardcore “My Israel right or wrong” types in the Jewish community have split off from the liberal, Obama-supporting majority of the Jewish community. The latter are uncomfortable with strong criticism of Israel, with many seeing BDS as an ideologically suspect movement, but there is no way they will come out to demonstrate against academic freedom and free speech.

So we had a Jewish mayor making a strong statement in support of academic freedom and free expression; we had a Jewish philosopher, Judith Butler, speaking in support of BDS and freedom of expression; we had a certain Jewish Harvard professor who equates any criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism; we had some marginalized hasidic Jews who hate Israel  and want it to cease existing; and we had a handful of yeshiva boys who actually believe BDS is the same as Hamas, which is a reincarnation of Nazism, and who equate unquestioning support of Israel with love of God and Torah. Which is so beyond absurd that I can’t even think of an adjective. Sorry.

Often, I feel as though the whole Palestine issue is more about the divisions within the Jewish community than about actual Palestinians.

On February 4, 2013, a Palestinian resident of the West Bank received this entry permit when he crossed the Allenby Bridge from Jordan. The big blue letters at the top inform the holder that the State of Israel’s Border Patrol has granted him entry, making it look as though the territory he was entering — Palestine — was actually Israel. Under the blue letters at the top, next to the words “Entry Permit,” the Hebrew words say, “Owner of Palestinian ID card.” But at the lower right, where it says in Hebrew “le’um,” or nationality, the border control typed ISR, for Israeli.

He is not, by the way, an Israeli citizen.

With very rare exceptions, Israeli citizens are not allowed to use Allenby Bridge; they are supposed to use Sheikh Hussein Bridge in northern Israel when they cross between Jordan and Israel, so that they do not traverse the West Bank.

Perhaps the border guard made an error when s/he typed ISR. It’s possible. But if so, it is a very telling mistake. As more and more people talk about Israel and the West Bank becoming a de facto single state, with liberty for some and unequal rights for all, the State of Israel suddenly, without any announcement, changed its procedure for Palestinians crossing Allenby Bridge. Until February 4, Palestinians entering the West Bank from Jordan used a permit issued by the Israeli army. The army also issues these permits to Palestinian applicants wishing to cross one of the checkpoints along the separation barrier. Now Allenby Bridge has become an entry point into what the State of Israel seems to regard as its territory — and its residents, like the man who received this document, are labeled “Israeli,” although they do not have any of the rights of an Israeli citizen. He cannot even visit his family in East Jerusalem; the army will not grant him a permit.

The procedure apparently changed overnight, with no prior announcement.  The person who received the document in the photo crosses the bridge frequently but was given this piece of paper for the first time on Monday crossing. A cousin who crossed on the day before (February 3) said that he did not receive this entry permit, nor did he see any of his fellow travelers receive it that day.

A couple more things to note: All Palestinian births and deaths are registered with the State of Israel’s population registry. Palestinian Authority ID cards and passports are issued by the Israeli Ministry of Interior, just like Israeli ID cards and passports. Perhaps the Israeli Ministry of Interior notified the Palestinian Authority that they were changing their procedure at Allenby Bridge; but if they did, the PA did not make a public announcement. According to the person who received this entry permit, the border police officer who stamped his documents said they were issued in coordination with the Palestinian Authority.

Perhaps partly in response to Moreh’s personal charisma and partly out of what seems to be deep concern born of real patriotism, these men are strikingly candid and thoughtful. Avraham Shalom, head of the Shin Bet under Menachem Begin, speaks for the first time about the 1984 Kav 300 affair, when terrorists who attacked an inter-city bus were photographed alive upon arrest and were then killed in custody. Carmi Gillon speaks about his personal crisis after failing to prevent the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. They speak openly about the great danger posed by Jewish terror, particularly given that the men who plotted to blow up the Dome of the Rock, for example, are part of the Israeli establishment. They describe in detail the process of establishing control over occupied territory — learning to speak fluent Palestinian Arabic and memorizing the layout of every Palestinian village and town, building by building, house by house. The suffocating sense they convey is that the Palestinians living in occupied territory have no personal freedom; they are under perpetual surveillance, no matter what they are doing.

What these men describe is the process by which Israel became after 1967 a state that is ruled by the Shin Bet, rather than governed by the prime minister’s office. And in doing so, they confirm everything the so-called loony left has been saying about the occupation and its destructive effect on Israeli society.

We are winning the battle and losing the war, they say. And more: The only way to resolve this conflict is to sit down and negotiate, and yes that includes speaking with Hamas; we have made the lives of the Palestinians miserable and unbearable; the occupation has made Israel into a Shin Bet state; we are the edge of an abyss; there is no-one thinking for the people in the prime minister’s office; the future is bleak and gray.

In response to a quote from Israeli philosopher Yeshayahu Leibovitz about the danger to democracy and the immorality of being an occupying power, Yuval Diskin responds that he agrees with every word.

Advance reviews for the film, which goes into limited release in New York and Los Angeles on Friday, have been very strong. New York Magazine calls it “strikingly lucid,” adding: “You know the Holy Land is an unholy mess when the professional paranoiacs with a license to kill come off like peaceniks.”

These men are not really peaceniks, although Yaakov Peri does say at one point that heading the Shin Bet makes one into “a sort of leftist.” In fact they are pragmatists and they are ruthless. Their descriptions of notorious assassinations committed by the Shin Bet, even those that involved substantial “collateral damage” (dead innocent bystanders), are cold and detached. But they blink when Moreh confronts them with the consequences of those assassinations — i.e., retaliations, counter-retaliations, more dead civilians and no end in sight. They acknowledge that they have been engaged in short term tactics without any long-term goal.

Moreh, visiting New York to promote the film ahead of its release on Friday (it was released last month in Israel, to sold out screenings and strong reviews), was at the end of a long day of interviews by the time we sat down to talk. But he was energetic and passionate and spoke volubly.

“Of course I am worried!” he said. “I was worried before I made the film and I am more worried now.” If Obama doesn’t “roll up his sleeves and use his power to make change,” he said, “We are doomed.”

He acknowledges readily that he was motivated to make the film by a desire to start a conversation in Israeli society. “I’m not interested in people who look away from their reflection in a cracked, rusty mirror because they don’t like what they see,” he said. “I’m interested in the people who can look unflinchingly at their reflection, even if they don’t like it.”

Moreh is deeply troubled by the uncritical stance toward Israel adopted by the organized Jewish community in the United States. In an interview with the Huffington Post’s Ahmed Shihab-Eldin, he said that the American Jewish view “…that they have to support Israel, no matter what” is actually “damaging the state of Israel” and “damaging their own goal of protecting Israel as a safe haven for them,” because if Israel continues on its present path it will soon be a place they would not want to live in — i.e., an apartheid state.

“The Jewish American attitude toward Israel must change,” he said to me. “AIPAC can change that attitude. Not JStreet! But AIPAC can. They have to think what’s best for Israel. You have to decide what you believe in. You cannot be for Rabin and Netanyahu. Decide what you believe in!”

The Gatekeepers is a gripping, disturbing film. The production values are unusually high, with superb editing that presents a clear narrative — which is not, by the way, particularly left wing. But because the clearly heartfelt, knowledgeable opinions of these undeniably well informed men are so disturbing to those who believe in the received narratives about Israeli security policy being morally or tactically motivated and therefore justifiable, many will find this film unbearable to watch.

The Gatekeepers will go into limited release in New York and Los Angeles on Friday, February 1.

New York – For Yael Berda, the unexpectedly strong showing of Yair Lapid and his Yesh Atid (There is a Future) party in Israel’s recent national elections is no reason for centrists or liberals to celebrate. Lapid’s party labels itself centrist, she says, but its domestic and security policies are so similar to the right wing parties’ that it will only serve to bolster their agenda. The neophyte politician is from Israel’s wealthy Ashkenazi elite, which identifies with Europe and the United States. “In that cultural sense,” she said, “You can call Lapid a liberal.” But not in terms of his views on security and wealth distribution.

“The best way to understand Yair Lapid,” she said, “Is to see him as an Israeli Sarkozy.”

Berda, an Israeli studying for her doctorate at Princeton University, joined together with a group of Israeli academics at various universities in the United States to form a group called the Israeli Opposition Network. Yesterday they sent out a global email announcement that amounts to a sort of manifesto:

Israelis living in the United States who oppose current Israeli Leadership launch “Israel Opposition Network” warning that election results threaten democracy and rule of law in Israel

 [January 23, 2013, New York] A group of highly engaged young Israeli intellectuals and professionals living the United States who are concerned about Israel’s increasingly fragile democracy have launched the ‘Israeli Opposition Network’ , a political movement opposed to the current political leadership in Israel.

“It’s a mistake to look at the results of today’s election in Israel as a division between two blocks,” says Nitzan Lebovic, a professor of history and a member of the Israeli Opposition Network. “The large majority of the parties in both blocks represent something closer to a Conservative agenda in American and European terms.”

“As advocates for human and civil rights, we fear election results still reflect a political deadlock that stifles the possibility for change. The rise of a centrist party calling for the draft of the ultra religious is not expected to address the more serious concerns about Israel. As long as control is maintained over a large population of Palestinians with no representation and no citizenship, Israel’s label as ‘democratic’ remains an unfulfilled promise,” says Itamar Mann, an Israeli lawyer at Harvard Yale Law School.

“With over 25% under the poverty line and the wholesale privatization of national assets to a small number of families, while most of the public struggle with massive debt and the inability to afford a home, the current leadership benefits the few while over four million Palestinians whose lives are controlled by the Israeli Government could not participate in the vote,” says Liron Mor, currently at Columbia Cornell University.

“We want Israel to be a democracy. We are part a growing opposition in Israel, not only to the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza but also to the corrupt and unjust economic policies that have sent the middle classes spiraling into poverty. We care deeply for the public in Israel, are extremely concerned for the residents of the occupied territories and for future of the state in the region. We believe we must raise our voices in the US to show that there is a young and capable democratic opposition to the current Israeli leadership,” says Yael Berda, an Israeli Lawyer at Princeton University.

Yesh Atid succeeded in capturing votes that might otherwise have gone to the old Likud party (before it kicked out the moderates and merged with Yisrael Beiteinu), because, explained Berda, “People don’t want to vote for Lieberman. That’s also a cultural thing that goes beyond the fact that he’s right wing. He makes Israel look bad. He’s also a Russian. And Lapid is an Israeli.”

Lapid is also a certain type of Israeli — a type  that most Israelis in the greater Tel Aviv area, where the bulk of the country’s Jewish population resides, see as a reflection of themselves, or how they would like to be seen — i.e., secular, western in cultural outlook, uninterested in the Palestinian issue as long as it causes them no personal pain, and against the ultra-Orthodox. In fact, a significant aspect of Lapid’s politics is the populist issue of expanding mandatory military service to include the ultra-Orthodox, who are currently exempt. The issue of drafting the ultra-Orthodox has long been a populist issue in Israel. The late Tommy Lapid, Yair’s father, headed a party that ran in the 2003 elections on a secular, anti-Orthodox platform. His party, Shinui, won 15 seats in 2003 but fizzled and died by the next round of elections. In the early 1980s a party called Tzomet was successful with a similar platform; it, too, is a relic of history. As is Kadima: seven years ago it was a powerhouse party; this election it barely won enough votes to keep a single seat in the Knesset.

One of Lapid’s first post-election actions was to announce that he would be willing to join a coalition with Netanyahu — but not with Haneen Zoabi (the controversial Balad MK). In other words, said Berda,  ”He was completely delegitimizing 20 percent of the population and their representatives. That is exactly the same language the right wing uses.”

Lapid has said almost nothing about the social justice protests of the summer of 2011, which drew hundreds of thousands to the streets to demonstrate against a range of issues, mostly connected with unequal wealth distribution, deteriorating social services and education, and the prohibitive cost of housing. That summer, said Berda, was a defining event for a generation of Israelis, inspring dozens of grassroots initiatives.

Berda said she and her colleagues were shocked to discover that American Jews had not heard about the social justice protests, and that they seemed to know so little about Israeli society in general — even though the organized community was reflexively supportive of the government.

“We think the Jewish community has a very skewed view of Israeli politics and society and democracy. They didn’t understand the social justice protests. They don’t believe there are 2 million Israelis living in poverty.”

On the other hand, she and her colleagues at the ION believe the Jewish community in the United States has a lot to teach them about community organizing (“not fundraising”) and that they have a legitimate interest in Israel that goes far beyond donating money. “When you look at American Jewish history you can see that there is a lot to learn from it,” she said.

Berda and her colleagues want to build an alliance between the Israeli Opposition Network and the American Jewish community.

“We believe the entire regime in Israel has to change,” she said bluntly. “Right now Jewish Americans support Israel no matter what it does. And that has got to stop. The government of Israel does not reflect the public; nor does it care about the public. It is making no efforts toward peace. Israel is a democracy only for some of the Jews some of the time. We are afraid. We are at a point where we need help.”

The ION, which Berda estimates is currently composed of between 40 and 50 members, wants to be a political home for like-minded Israelis living in the United States, as well as a bridge to local Jewish communities. The academics, journalists and activists in the group are experienced public speakers, available to speak to Jewish communities across the United States.

Corrections: Following publication of this article, Yael Berda contacted +972 with two corrections to the press release she sent out the previous day. Itamar Mann is at Yale Law School and not Harvard, as in the original text; and Liron Mor is at Cornell University rather than Columbia. The text has been edited accordingly.

In an image that Mordecai Richler and Philip Roth would recognize, the video shows a short, swarthy, curly-haired man standing next to a gorgeous, statuesque blonde under the huppah, or marriage canopy. Behind them stands a stern-looking security guard, arms folded over his chest. Relatives frame the couple on either side. According to the script in the video (subtitled in English, below), the blonde’s name is Marina and she’s just obtained a quickie conversion, courtesy of Avigdor Lieberman’s party, Yisrael Beiteinu.

In broken, heavily-accented Hebrew, she tells him that all she has to do is dial 1-800-CONVERT on the fax machine while they’re standing under the huppah and  - voila! –  a conversion certificate pops out.

Intermarriage is a big no-no amongst religious and traditional Jews. Traditionally, Jews are not enthusiastic about converts, either. The Israeli rabbinate makes conversion a very onerous process that includes months of living under scrutiny in an Orthodox community. Non-Orthodox conversions are not accepted. Civil marriage performed in Israel is not legally binding, but there is a loophole — getting married abroad, then registering the union with the Ministry of Interior, thus bypassing the religious authorities.

But if the mother is not Jewish, the state will not recognize the children as Jewish. This can be meaningless or problematic, depending on how attached one is to having officials bless rites of passage like weddings, coming of age, army service and death / burial.

For some non-practicing Jews, the religion of their spouse is immaterial. This drives the ultra-Orthodox crazy, because it goes against a central precept of their religious and cultural practice — i.e., keeping the bloodline pure.

Like the secular-liberal parties, Yisrael Beiteinu advocates civil marriage, since a fairly large percentage of its constituents are halakhically non-Jewish. Israel defines a Jew for immigration purposes as someone who has a single Jewish grandparent on either side of the family, while according to halakha the identity is strictly matrilineal. Once in Israel, the halakhically non-Jewish Jews resent being made to feel less Israeli — hence the party’s name, which means Israel is Our Home. The name could’ve been “Israel’s OUR home too, dammit!” or “Israel’s Our Home and Don’t You Tell Us Otherwise!” (but that’s a bit long for a political party’s name).

It could very well be that Shas and its followers are worried about keeping the bloodlines pure. But there are other issues as well. Shas’s constituents tend to come from the socio-economic class that is now locked in its third generation of deprivation, living in neglected development towns, increasingly unemployed and impoverished. It took Shas considerable time to work its way into political prominence, using methods similar to the Muslim Brotherhood’s (free kindergartens, food distribution in poor neighborhoods and so on). Now Shas is competing with Yisrael Beiteinu for votes, power and perqs. That’s got to rankle.

Also, it’s kind of funny to see yet another reprise of that cliched image — the blonde “shikseh” tempting the swarthy Jewish boy away from his people.

Using Instagram, Twitter user @RanaGaza tweeted a photo of the message on her father’s mobile phone.

Arabic text message sent by the Israeli army to mobile phones in Gaza

During the 2008-9 Israeli military assault on Gaza, the army sent thousands of similar messages to mobile phones in Gaza. But according to several friends and acquaintances who were there, the messages were often either false alarms or designed to sow panic. “What do you do if you receive a message warning you to go a safer place if you are already in the safest place in Gaza, or if you have nowhere to hide?” one friend asked rhetorically.

This same woman — a journalist — said that often the text messages would warn of impending bombardments that did not happen, in a sick version of The Boy Who Cried Wolf.

In what is possibly a social media precedent, the Israeli army spokesperson’s office (@idfspokesperson) today announced a military action against Gaza — on Twitter.

This came shortly after the IDF announced — again on Twitter — that that the Israeli Air Force had assassinated senior Hamas operative Hamas military chief Ahmed al-Jaabari.

The responses came in immediately, from various sources and in many languages.

Fania Oz Salzberger (@faniaoz), a prominent academic who is the daughter of Amos Oz, one of Israel’s most famous authors, tweeted:

Lt. Colonel Avital Leibovich (@AvitalLeibovich), the IDF spokesperson for the international media, went on Twitter to announce the name of the military operation — Pillar of Defense. Helpfully, she included the hashtag #PillarOfDefense in her tweet.

But Hebrew speakers immediately noted that the Hebrew name for the operation was actually Pillar of Cloud, a name taken from the Book of Exodus in the Hebrew Bible. According to the Bible, after the ancient Hebrews escaped Pharaoh and slavery in Egypt, they were guided through the desert by a pillar of cloud during the day and a pillar of fire at night.

John Cook of Gawker caught the discrepancy between the Hebrew and English names for the military operation and wrote about it, commenting:

This post was originally written for techPresident.com. Please click here to read the whole thing.

Bassem Tamimi arrested at the Rami Levy supermarket protest (credit: ActiveStils)

Last year, Haaretz reported that the supermarket had instituted a policy of separating male Arab grocery baggers from female Jewish cashiers after two such employees became romantically involved.

The protest, which was staged as a sit-in, was broken up by riot police.

Tamimi’s main activism, however, is centered on his home village of Nabi Saleh, population 530. Since 2009 the village has been holding weekly demonstrations to protest the confiscation of their land by the neighboring settlement of Halamish. In 2009 the settlement, which was already built entirely on Nabi Saleh-owned land, confiscated a spring that the Palestinian villagers relied on as a main source of water for agricultural purposes. The settlers of Halamish physically prevented the Palestinians from accessing the spring; to protest, the villagers assemble and march toward the spring every Friday after noon prayers, waving flags and banners as they chant slogans. They are usually stopped before they advance 200 meters by soldiers who enter their village in armored vehicles, leap out of the back and fire volleys of tear gas canisters and rubber-coated steel bullets at close range. At that point, the young village men usually scatter and throw stones at the soldiers who have entered their village.

This past Friday, while Bassem Tamimi was still in Ofer Military Prison and denied bail following the Rami Levy protest, his 16-year-old son Wa’ed was arrested at the weekly village demonstration. He is now detained in a different section of the same prison, but his father is not allowed to see him.

Nabi Saleh children try to prevent soldiers from taking Wa’ed Tamimi, who is inside the vehicle. The blonde girl with the ponytail is his sister (credit: ActiveStills)

Last year Mustafa Tamimi, 28, was killed (murdered) when a soldier shot him directly in the face, at near point-blank range, with a tear gas canister. On another occasion a European woman who was present at a Friday demonstration was shot in the neck by a rubber bullet.

My own experiences at Nabi Saleh contributed considerably to what I sometimes refer only somewhat facetiously as my “radicalization.” The first time I attended a Friday demonstration I stood on the roof of a village home, together with three teenage girls, and watched as a soldier lifted his weapon, aimed it and deliberately fired a tear gas canister directly at us. It landed on the roof, narrowly missing the arm of one of the girls. We fled, gagging, as the commanding officer stood by and watched.

On other occasions I saw unarmed people kicked, beaten and dragged by soldiers; I saw old women gagging and spitting as the tear gas that blanketed the village seeped in through cracks in the windows and doors; and I saw a woman carrying a baby from her car to her home cower and scream as a soldier shot three tear gas canisters in a row directly over her head.

The people of Nabi Saleh are regularly terrorized by night raids, which usually take place between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m.. Armed soldiers enter their homes and force parents to rouse their sleeping children. Sometimes they photograph the children and note down their ID numbers; other times they drag them off to a police station and interrogate them all night, without the presence of a guardian or an attorney. Nariman Tamimi, Bassem’s wife, had to deal with several night raids while her husband was in jail last year and she was home alone with four children.

Bassem Tamimi has been arrested several times and has cumulatively spent years in jail, usually just waiting to be charged and tried — in military courts that have a 98 percent conviction rate.

Tamimi spent most of 2011 in jail after he was charged with organizing battalions of children to throw stones at IDF soldiers. The evidence for this charge was based primarily on testimony from 14-year-old Islam Dar-Ayyoub, a village boy who was arrested in the middle of the night and interrogated at a police station by the Shin Bet. A video of the interrogation shows him weeping and sleep deprived, denied an attorney or the presence of a parent. The judge allowed the testimony, although no-one denied that the child was interrogated under duress, without the presence of a guardian or lawyer.

Bassem Tamimi with his wife, Nariman (credit: ActiveStills)

I should add that I personally saw Bassem Tamimi tackle a teenage Nabi Saleh boy to stop him from throwing a stone in the general direction of a fully armed soldier who was wearing protective riot gear. The idea of him organizing battalions of rock throwing children is absurd.

Amnesty International posted this video about Bassem Tamimi.

The bottom line is that Palestinians living under Israeli jurisdiction are not allowed to protest injustice. If they do, they will be crushed. The crushing proces is happening now to Nabi Saleh. The settlers of Halamish decided they wanted Nabi Saleh’s main source of water, so they took it. And when the villagers tried to protest, the army and the Shin Bet stopped them — with tear gas, bullets, beatings and skunk spray; with night raids, arrests, interrogations and long jail terms on trumped up charges; and, in the case of Mustafa Tamimi, with murder. With any means necessary.

And the few Israelis who protest this massive injustice are marginalized as “radicals” and “extreme leftists.”