Even if Hamas praises “Naza”

Hamas is urging the International Court of Justice in The Hague, UN bodies and human rights NGOs to use the testimonies contained in the Israeli documentary film “Naza” as part of the investigations against Jerusalem regarding the war in Gaza. In a statement released on its official channel, Hamas also refers to the reception the documentary received at the Venice Film Festival, where it was greeted with a standing ovation.

“Before we knew that Hamas had endorsed it and would use it as a tool in the war against Israel by other means, the first thing we heard about this film in Israel was the twenty-five-minute standing ovation” Yossi Klein Halevi, a centrist and liberal Israeli intellectual at the Shalem Centre in Jerusalem, a columnist for the New York Times and author of best-selling books such as "Letters to My Palestinian Neighbour", tells Il Foglio.

“I’ve happened to witness standing ovations lasting a minute or two. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen one lasting longer than three minutes. And even that seemed unbearable to me. I don’t understand how anyone can take part in a standing ovation lasting twenty-five minutes. The only precedent that springs to mind is that of totalitarian states. Under Stalin, as Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote, the first person to stop clapping was taken away and shot. Nobody stopped. The applause went on and on, and people were carried away on stretchers. I believe a similar pathology is at work here. Of course, in Venice nobody would have been shot if they’d stopped clapping. But what sort of groupthink is at work here? Were they afraid of not appearing, in the eyes of the other audience members, to be good, progressive people? Why didn’t they stop applauding after five minutes? There is something immediately pathological about all this. And I thought so even before I knew anything about the film. Before I knew that Hamas had endorsed it.”

According to Yossi Klein Halevi, Israel can afford a film of this kind. “Israel is a country where people are not afraid to express their opinions or their opposition. I have spent the last three years protesting against my own government. Not because I was against the war, but because I didn’t believe the government was doing enough to save the hostages. Israelis are not shy about opposing the government. What these two filmmakers have done is cross a red line, even by Israeli standards: deliberately fuelling the international campaign that seeks to portray Israel as the world’s greatest criminal. These two filmmakers come from the radical anti-Zionist fringe. They are not part of the legitimate opposition in Israel. Even though I despise this government and have done everything in my power, as a citizen, to try to bring it down, I have nothing in common with these two filmmakers. They are people who have forfeited the right to speak on behalf of even the Israeli opposition.” 

It is an unusual film: there is no way to verify any of the allegations. “No one is named by their first and last name,” Yossi Klein Halevi continues in Il Foglio. “No one mentions specific incidents that can be verified.” Essentially, the filmmakers are telling us: ‘trust us’. And this is where their political stance becomes decisive. Because Yuval Abraham, one of the two, recently gave an interview in Arabic in which he said that his aim is to help shift global public opinion against Israel in order to redress the power imbalance with the Palestinians. To give the Palestinians more power against Israel, by undermining Israel’s position. If that is your political objective and you start from an anti-Zionist position — essentially, from the belief that the country has no right to exist — then I do not trust you in a film that has no way of proving its veracity. Here, the messenger becomes more crucial than the message.”

There is another aspect to this film that does not go down well in Israel. “We know the army and we know how things work here. The moment you make a film based on the way the army tried to determine the ratio between terrorists and civilian casualties, you have already completely refuted the genocide argument. One could argue that there have been too many civilian casualties. But that is a very different argument from that of genocide. In fact, it is the opposite argument. Because an army intent on committing genocide does not concern itself with proportionality. It sends planes to bomb indiscriminately. Yes, some will say: ‘Look at the ruins of Gaza; you have bombed indiscriminately’. But if you look at the casualties in Gaza over two and a half years of fighting, under the most brutal conditions of urban warfare imaginable – hundreds of kilometres of tunnels, thousands of mined flats, no distinction between combatants and civilians because Hamas do not wear uniforms – despite all this, there have been 40–50,000 civilian casualties and 20,000 Hamas casualties. Terrible figures. But not genocide in two and a half years of fighting. If the army had wanted to commit genocide, it would have had to cause hundreds of thousands of casualties.”

Today, even a great Israeli pacifist writer like Amos Oz would be booed. “Amos Oz was a great Israeli patriot,” continues Yossi Klein Halevi. “Oz is an interesting example, and I had many differences of opinion with him. But I had enormous affection and respect for him, as an Israeli. I do not harbour the same feelings for these people. Today, Oz would be boycotted by these cultural festivals. Today, Oz would not receive a standing ovation. He would not receive applause in these Western circles. I think there is a desire in Europe to take Israeli outcasts – who have no moral credibility amongst their compatriots – and turn them into heroes. You’ll have to ask a psychologist what need there is, in Europe, for Jewish renegades. It’s an unpleasant and counterproductive phenomenon.”

They have missed an opportunity. “I supported the war and I still do. I believe it was a war that had to be fought. I believe that Israel is on the front line in the war against the most evil ideology in the world today. And whether the West recognises it or not, we are fighting this war not just for ourselves.” From the “500 dead at Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza” (which was not struck by Israel but by Islamic Jihad) to the campaign on deliberate starvation in “Naza”, the terrorists are highly skilled at manipulating Western humanitarianism. And then, as we know, Hamas loves children – their own and the Bibas.