If films can describe a narrative arc, then the ones about Israel show how the Jewish State has evolved in the eyes of the world –- and itself.

 From the glorious founding days in 1948 to the ongoing grinding conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, the story line has shifted several times as Israelis and their Arab neighbors have fought wars, endured two very bloody intifadas and even had moments of relative calm and cooperation. Through it all are the continuous painful and often costly efforts at rejection and coexistence.

“This is a subject that we think is really important to the Jewish and the larger community,” said Batya Abramson-Goldstein, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council, as she explained the focus of a planned film series on Israeli films in the fall and next spring (see accompanying story on Page 5). A preview to this new series, including the screening of the 20-minute film “Barriers,” will take place at 7 p.m. Monday, June 17 at the Arts and Education Building at the Jewish Community Center as part of the “Can We Talk?” discussion series sponsored by the JCRC, JCC and Jewish Light.

“Film reaches individuals in a different way,” Abramson-Goldstein continued. “They provoke an emotional reaction, so we have a different kind of conversation.”

To some, the passage of time also has affected how these stories are told. The themes today often feature the Palestinian-as-victim, whereas films depicting events through the 1970s showed Israelis as the underdogs.

“Among academic and media elites, there is no question in my mind that Palestinians have been privileged in telling their story,” said J. Martin Rochester, professor of political science at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and a member of the panel that is choosing the Israeli films for the festival. In Rochester’s opinion, “It is very hard to find films that have a pro-Israeli point of view.”

Films produced in Israel today and in the last two decades reflect major changes from the early 1960s, when films were few and mostly propaganda, said Isaac Zablocki, director of the Israel Film Center at the Jewish Community Center in Manhattan. He noted that today, “99 percent of Israeli films made are sponsored by the Israeli Film Fund,” which includes a number of films that are implicitly or explicitly critical of government policies. “Many Israelis realize this is a healthy thing,” he added.

    

Context — and confidence — are critical

If you set aside the polemic films in which one side or the other is portrayed as the epitome of evil, there are many thoughtful-though-difficult-to-watch films that help explain an aspect of the conflict then and now.

Some of the best, whether feature or documentary, simply tell stories of Israeli soldiers, Arab villagers and young people, Palestinian and Jewish terrorists and resisters, settlers, doctors and patients – the gamut of everyday people whose lives are deeply affected by the conflict that’s entering its second century.

“Israel is an established country now,” Zablocki said. “So Israelis have confidence in themselves. They have learned to be critical of themselves. They are comfortable as presenting Israel as not perfect. This is where Israel is thriving. Israelis are telling good stories.”

And most films made by Israeli directors, writers and actors who are evidently determined to tell stories of Jewish and Arab lives don’t resort to stereotypes. The freedom to write and produce such films that illuminate these lives is an implicit statement about the freedom of expression people living in Israel generally have.

This a point Zablocki emphasized: The films coming out of Israel today show that a Middle Eastern democracy can allow public criticism and debate through film.

Some however, like the documentary “Checkpoint,” filmed in 2001 and 2002 during the second intifada, lack context, an explanation of why the Israelis believe checkpoints in the West Bank and Gaza were necessary.

Context, though, would hardly mitigate the ordeal that many Palestinians endured as they tried to pass through checkpoints. There were many standoffs between soldiers and Palestinians, and where checkpoints exist today, the personal dynamics are apt to be similar.

Most encounters between soldiers and Palestinians are relatively benign, but as the film shows, some become intense because of the personal give and take, insults and defiance. And yet, an odd snowball fight among Palestinians at a Ramallah checkpoint causes soldiers to laugh.

Other films, most notably “Lemon Tree,” is a richly complex and refined feature about a Palestinian widow whose livelihood in the West Bank depends upon a lemon grove. Then the Israeli defense minister moves in nearby and the security service declares the grove must be cut down and the woman compensated.

The 2008 film, directed by Israeli Eran Riklis with a mixed Arab and Jewish cast, has won numerous awards. It is among the best today because it tells the story of two people struggling for control of one piece of land and develops nuances of the conflict without resorting to demonizing either Israelis or Palestinians.

Another excellent film came out in 2010, and it’s one that focuses on the hope that one day Israelis and Palestinians will find mutual cause in cooperating with each other and ending their generations-long conflict.

“Precious Life” tells of a Palestinian boy from Gaza who will die if he does not receive a bone marrow transplant. His mother, Raida, at first displays many biases against Israelis, telling her young son Muhammed, who is in a Tel Aviv hospital, that “Jews are dangerous. They are scary.” Yet Israeli soldiers surprise her when they bring gifts to the patients and their families, be they Jewish or Arab.

Raida’s Jewish Israeli doctor is an idealist, and he hopes that his generation or his descendents and Muhammed’s or Muhammed’s grandchildren’s generation will accept each other and learn to work together. The obvious yet unstated point of the film is that Israel is a comparatively rich Middle Eastern country that can offer many benefits to its Arab neighbors if peace were to become real and durable.        

Inspiring but irrelevant

Perhaps any discussion of film about the Israeli-Arab conflict should begin with the American-made epic “Exodus,” starring a ruggedly handsome Paul Newman and set to an inspiring score. For much of the decade of the 1960s the film defined the image of Israel in many Western minds: virtuous, industrious, resourceful and brave Jews shaking off the devastation of the Nazi terror to create their own state despite British oppression and intense Arab hostility.

“Exodus” may be the dream picture for Zionists of 50 years ago, but Zablocki said for today’s Israelis, “ ‘Exodus’ and the old-school pioneers could not be more irrelevant.”

In a superficially similar, also American-made film “Cast a Giant Shadow,” Kirk Douglas plays the leading role of U.S. Army Col. Mickey Marcus, a West Point graduate who rediscovered his Jewish identity as he shaped the various Jewish militias into a force that could repel Arab armies in the 1948 war of independence.

This film was released in 1966, the year before the Six-Day War changed so much for Israel and the Middle East, with Israel capturing East Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza, the Sinai and the Golan Heights. Today most films focus on the interaction and frequent conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Some are more hopeful – and helpful in terms of understanding — than others.

Both “Exodus” and “Cast a Giant Shadow” can be inspiring yet misleading because they are essentially one sided. Both more or less faithfully chronicle the founding of the Jewish state while portraying the Arabs during and after the British mandate of Palestine as mostly one-dimensional collaborators or terrorists.

    

From ‘Munich’ to ‘Beaufort’

The Munich Summer Olympics in 1972 brought the Black September faction of Palestinian terrorists into the worlds limelight. They invaded the Israeli quarters, made demands about freeing Palestinian prisoners and after the horribly botched attack and rescue attempt were over, 11 Israelis were dead. “One Day in September” (1998), a documentary, lays out details of the standoff and conclusion that are painful to watch.

Then in 2005, Steven Spielberg released “Munich,” a fictional account of Israel’s never-acknowledged systematic killings of the men who planned and carried out the massacre. While some critics have pilloried it, the film is worth watching because it shows pretty well how Israel has struck back at those who harm its people, sometimes in the face of international law.

Skip to the following year. Several films that followed made the plight of Israeli soldiers the center of the narrative.

For a sense of the confusion of an Israeli reserve medical rescue team that must treat and evacuate injured comrades on the Golan Heights in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the 2000 film “Kippur” brings that surprise war into sharp focus. The director, Amos Gitai, a veteran of fighting on the Golan, knows and shows in long takes the near desperation of the soldiers as they struggle to aid the wounded. Some of them are killed or wounded as well.

It’s notable that many of the directors, production crews and actors in many of these movies are veterans themselves of conflicts with the Arab states or the Palestinians. For the most part, therefore, unlike many American war movies, these films don’t show gratuitous violence. Yet they do not shy away from filming the insults and injuries that fly back and forth between Israelis and Arabs, who sometimes seem to be mutual captives of this decades-long conflict.

Ten years after Munich came Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, which tied up Israeli forces for 18 years. “Beaufort,” a film by Israeli director Joseph Cedar, a Lebanon war veteran, is a microcosm of the deadly experiences of an army unit before it pulls out of an old Crusader castle in southern Lebanon.

Several men die or are seriously injured, and the young officer in charge has moments when he is less than courageous or sure of himself. In other words, he is real and in many ways a contrast to the idealistic Israelis-to-be fighting for independence in 1948.

An exceptional and strikingly original film about the war in Lebanon is “Waltz with Bashir” (2008). The title refers to Bashir Gemayal, once president of Lebanon who was supported by Israel after its invasion and then assassinated. Director Ari Folman, also a Lebanon war veteran, uses animated characters to show his own quest to uncover the sources of his haunting, recurring dreams. He traces them back to the Lebanese Christian Phalange militia’s killing of several hundred Palestinians in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. He feels guilty because he, as one of many Israeli soldiers, fired flares so the Phalange militia could see to murder old men, women and children.

    

Film mirroring real-life

When the second – the Al-Aqsa – intifada broke out in late 2000, suicide bombings in Israel shot up, as did the death count among Israelis and Palestinians. Several excellent films deal with this period. One of the most striking is “To Die in Jerusalem,” a documentary about a young Palestinian woman who explodes the bombs around her body as she enters a Jerusalem market in 2002. She kills a young Israeli woman who is one year younger than she is.

The film follows the Israeli mother as she tries to talk with the Palestinian’s mother. The Israeli mother is distressed while the Palestinian mother seems to be proud of her daughter. The film explores the differences in perception about the conflict and definitely does not leave the viewer with a sense of hope. But for that moment, the documentary was a reflection of real feelings on both sides.

Another, even wryly hopeful film of the same period is “Paradise Now,” the story of two Palestinians shahids – suicide bombers – who decide they don’t want to die in Tel Aviv after all. When films like this take a close look at the motives of would-be terrorists and explore their minds and emotions, one can nourish hope that reason eventually will prevail in this conflict.

“Five Broken Cameras” is an Israeli-made, Oscar-nominated film that follows a Palestinian from a small West Bank village who uses five camera in succession until they are broken. He records the lives of his family members and endless, mostly non-violent protests against the Israeli occupation.

It’s a powerful film that again lacks an explanation for the Israeli barriers and activities, much less the origin of the occupation in 1967. But it shows how relatively mildly the army and security forces sometimes react to provocations and how they allow not only demonstrations but journalists and foreigners to be present many times.

    

Reflecting life and culture of the times

Two important films look closely at Palestinian life in Israel within the 1949 ceasefire line, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. One is “Ajami,” a feature film from 2009 that uses non-professional Arab and Jewish actors to tell the story of life in the Arab area of Jaffa. Drugs and illegal workers are part of the mix, as are corrupt Jewish cops and Bedouin extortionists.

Zablocki of the Manhattan JCC cited “Ajami” as another step in the evolution of Israeli filmmaking. “It’s all internal,” he said. “It’s about problems and issues in Israel, not about the wars or other countries. It’s about the problems Israelis face at home.”

The other film, which provides an eye-opening sense of what Palestinian young people are thinking today, is 2009’s “Slingshot Hip Hop.” The story line follows young Palestinian men and later women as they develop their non-violent voice of protest against the occupation and their second-class status in Israel.

 They make the distinction between the 1948 Arabs who remained in Israel after the war for independence and the post-1967 Palestinians who have lived in Gaza or the West Bank. Their performances in villages and Gaza and parts of Israel break the stereotype that all Arabs under Israeli control are or want to be terrorists.

From “Exodus” and “Cast a Giant Shadow” to “Ajami” and “Precious Life” is quite a journey through film, but it illustrates how the conflict has come back to where it began so many decades ago: Two peoples trying to find ways to live together on the same piece of land.

Or as Zelda Sparks, director of arts and culture at the St. Louis Jewish Community Center, puts it: “People would like to think there’s got to be an answer to this.”