POLICEMAN (Ha-shoter) B
Israel (100 mi) 2011
d: Nadav Lapid
While analysts may view the Arab-Israeli dispute and
conflicts between Muslim and non-Muslim communities through political grievances,
the roots of such conflicts lie as much in culture and Arab tribalism. Seventh-century Arab tribal culture influenced
Islam and its believers’ attitudes toward non-Muslims, where today, the
embodiment of Arab culture and tribalism within Islam impacts everything from
family relations, to governance, to conflict.
According to Philip Carl Salzman from The Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2008, The Middle
East's Tribal DNA :: Middle East Quarterly - Middle, for Arab Muslims
confronting Jews, the opposition is between the dar al-Islam, the land of Islam, and the dar al-harb, the land of the infidels, where the Muslim is obliged
to advance God’s true way, Islam, in the face of the ignominy of the Jew’s
false religion. Islamic doctrine holds
that all non-Muslims, whether Christian or Jewish dhimmi or infidel pagans, must be subordinate to Muslims. Jews under Qur’anic doctrine are inferior by
virtue of their false religion and must not be allowed to be equal to Muslims. For Muslim Arabs, the conceit of Jews
establishing their own state, Israel, and on territory conquered by Muslims
and, since Muhammad, under Muslim control is outrageous and intolerable. In a 2006 interview, Pierre Heumann, a
journalist with the Swiss weekly Die
Weltwoche, asked Al-Jazeera
editor-in-chief Ahmed Sheikh whether enmity toward Israel is motivated by
self-esteem. Sheikh explained,
"Exactly. It’s because we always
lose to Israel. It gnaws at the people
in the Middle East that such a small country as Israel, with only about 7
million inhabitants. can defeat the Arab nation with its 350 million.” The Arab situation, compared to Israel’s, is
bleak. In all spheres of life except for
religion, Arab society and culture has declined in importance and
influence. Muslim Middle Eastern
countries, from Morocco to Iran, are dictatorships, where the propensity of
Arab states and Iran to dictatorship also has roots in tribal culture. There is an inherent conflict between
peasants and nomads. Peasants are
sedentary, tied to their land, water, and crops while tribesmen are nomadic,
moving around remote regions. Peasants
tend to be densely concentrated in water-rich areas around rivers or irrigation
systems while pastoral tribesmen, in contrast, are spread thinly across plains,
deserts, and mountains. In global
competition with other societies and cultures, Arabs have for centuries been
losers. Israel, on the other hand, is a
parliamentary democracy with established civil liberties. It is perhaps the most multiracial and
multicultural state in the world, gathering as it has Jews from all corners of
the world. It has also accepted and,
albeit imperfectly, incorporated a substantial population of Arab Bedouin and
Palestinian Arabs, both Muslim and Christian.
Throughout the span of Middle East history, tribes have often posed a
credible threat to central governments, and have played an important role in
the making and dismantling of ruling dynasties.
Tribes
and Tribalism in the Arab Spring - Center for Middle ... Khaled Fattah, October 26, 2011
The Romans, the Persians, the
Ottomans, the French, the British, the Italians, Arab kings, Imams, Sultans and
the post independence Arab military officers, have all attempted, with various
degrees of success and failure, to destroy, co-opt, subordinate and manipulate
tribes. The Romans, for instance, allocated payments to tribes in the region to
guard the frontiers against external intrusion. The Persians, on the other
hand, used tribes as buffers against emerging powerful neighbouring dynasties,
while western colonial forces promoted tribalism as a counterbalance to the
rising urban sentiments of nationalism. Tribes, however, posed the most serious
challenge to the political elites of the post-colonial independent Arab states.
At the heart of this threat lies the obsessive preoccupation of the 20th
century political regimes in the region with the total confiscation of the
political arena, and the forcible submission of all social actors to the will
of political leadership.
By looking through the wrong end of the telescope, many in the Western world think of tribal people as nomads, riding camels and living in harsh and remote desert areas. This is not the reality in the Arab Middle East, where the distinction between tribal and non-tribal does not correspond in any significant way between nomadic and settled populations. The majority of Middle Eastern tribes do not move. Tribal populations, for instance, in Iraq and Yemen are settled farmers, who plant fruits and vegetables beside their sorghum and millet. Remarkably, tribal identity in the region is still alive in the socio-political consciousness of millions of Arabs residing in modern globalising cities. This unique phenomenon is one of the excellent mirrors to reflect how tribalism in the Arab world is not a way of life. Rather, it is an identity, which is grounded in cultural psychology and politics. In other words, tribalism in the Middle East is culturally rooted and politically shaped. It’s uneven development and strength in the region is the outcome of the divergent and changing types of state formation, colonial penetration, economic growth and societal changes.
One does not normally associate tribalism when speaking of
Israel except as the traditional divisions of the ancient Jewish people as
depicted in The Old Testament. Yet what’s interesting about this film is how
it depicts modern Israeli society through a tribal context, where layered
within the fabric of ordinary life are various subset groups, each containing
their own shared rituals and beliefs with other members that seem to express
their unique identity. What’s perhaps
most surprising is how these rival groups vie for power and are often at odds
with one another, becoming part of the continuing struggle to define what it
means to be an Israeli. It’s not often
one sees this degree of self-analysis and criticism coming from within Israel
itself, where it would be hard to imagine a similar film attacking the inner
fabric of American society, particularly one winning awards at the Jerusalem
Film Festival before being exported around the world. The key is the understated tone, where this
is not some exaggerated farce or overblown melodrama making claims on a
particular point of view in order to pacify the ardent believers, instead it is
the meticulous attention to detail that likely raises eyebrows here, and the
changing shift of the story. From the
outset, the viewer is taken inside the ritualistic mindset of an elite
anti-terrorism police unit of the Israeli government, something akin to the
American Navy Seals, as these are the guys that specialize in only the most
difficult operations, normally against Arab terrorists. Through the eyes of Yaron (Yiftach Klein),
perhaps the Alpha-male of the all-male group, these are highly trained experts
whose close-knit camaraderie is essential, as they lay their lives on the line
for each other on a daily basis, seeing themselves as true patriots, looking
out over the vast emptiness of the desert to exclaim, “This is the most beautiful
country in the world,” where
they greet one another with hugs and loud pats on the back, always expressing a
physicality in their interactions that borders on the homoerotic, though not as
exaggerated as Claire Denis’s sublime imagery in Beau
Travail (1999). They maintain this
same bond of affection during their down time, extended to each other’s wives
and children, where love of country, family, and each other are the building
blocks for an impregnable nation, all believing they live in the greatest
nation on earth. Alone with his pregnant
wife, Yaron has a fairly bland personality, where his ambitions of building a
safe home for his family are no different than anyone elses. What’s interesting is how the individual is
sublimated for a group mentality of cohesiveness and seeming invincibility,
where these men are used to succeeding when working as a collective group.
After spending nearly an hour with this Israeli commando
unit when they’re not on duty, where the camera simply observes their behavior,
the scene inexplicably shifts to a group of neo-Nazi’s roaming the streets,
aggressively kicking in cars they pass along the way, finally smashing one car
to bits, purely at random, where we see the car owner staring in disbelief,
helpless to do anything about it. Shira
(Yaara Pelzig) is then seen as part of another group of college age kids
walking along the outskirts of the desert when simultaneously they pull guns out
of their knapsacks and fire at a lone tree on the road ahead, unleashing their
rage as they use it for target practice.
We see them again meeting in the plush upscale confines of Shira’s
parent’s home rehearsing some revolutionary message they intend to deliver,
trying to reduce their manifesto to its bare essence, “It is time for the poor
to get rich, and the rich to start dying…”
While their leader Nathanael (Michael Aloni) approves or disapproves
various recommendations, they are a band of Jewish radicals who naively plot
class warfare through violent means, part of the Israeli bourgeois, raised in
middle or upper class homes, from good schools and universities. In a momentary diversion, Shira is seen
visiting a lesbian nightclub spouting plenty of musical rage, but when someone
actually tries to talk to her, she instantly despises them and all that they
stand for. These fanatics infiltrate the
Jerusalem wedding of a billionaire’s daughter, taking three Israeli
billionaires as hostages, using the moment to air their anti-capitalist grievances
through the national media, allowing a film crew to take pictures of each of
them pointing guns to the heads of the hostages, like some sort of Bonnie
and Clyde (1967) outlaw group.
Yaron’s anti-terrorist group is called in to restore order, as these
capitalists are near heads of state in their own industries, Israeli success
stories, and are to be protected at all costs, where in a preliminary review,
each terrorist is targeted in a planned raid.
In the first hour of the film, one would never have anticipated this
kind of outcome, but what grabs one’s attention is how none of these radicals
would be pulling off this kind of gun-toting violence on their own, but are
acting as a group collective, seemingly with one voice and one purpose. Likewise, so is the police unit, who perform
their duties flawlessly. In reviewing
the ensuing carnage, Yaron stares in disbelief at what he sees, young Jewish
terrorists who are little more than kids themselves, children of privilege
raised to be the future of the nation, both groups fighting for the “collective
soul” of Israel. It’s an interesting
comment on the power of tribal collectives, where people can become lost in the
dream-like utopia of a better world, falling in love with the idea, even dying
for it, even as reality proves far more complicated.
