이스라엘, 팔레스타인, 이란, 터키, 인도, 월남, 쿠바: Ex-spymaster: First Lebanon War was Mossad success, despite Sabra and Chatila - Haaretz

Ex-spymaster: First Lebanon War was Mossad success, despite Sabra and Chatila - Haaretz - Israel News

Last update - 16:40 22/02/2009

Ex-spymaster: First Lebanon War was Mossad success, despite Sabra and Chatila

By Nachik Navot

Tags: Bashir Gemayel, Israel News

Ari Folman's Oscar-nominated film, "Waltz with Bashir," is a brilliant cinematic work, even if the scenes of the Sabra and Chatila massacre, which have unjustly become the signature images of Operation Peace for the Galilee, the first Lebanon War, are difficult for me. At the time, I was responsible in my capacity at the Mossad for nurturing relations with Lebanon's Christians.

One of the Mossad's most important missions from the day of its inception was Israel's "special relations" with countries that did not recognize it and with minorities like the Christians in Lebanon and the Kurds in Iraq. This was the declared policy of the governments of Israel: Israel will be prepared to come to the aid of any threatened minority that is fighting for its existence - but it will not fight in its stead.

The relationship with the Lebanese Christians warmed up in 1976, when Syria entered Lebanon at the invitation of the Christian president, Suleiman Franjieh. At the time, we warned the U.S. about the danger of a radical Syrian-Palestinian takeover of Lebanon. Iran, under the shah, took an interest in Lebanon and flew in arms to defend the Christians.

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At that time, Palestinian terrorist organizations were establishing a foothold in Lebanon, with the encouragement of Arab states that saw in this a solution, albeit temporary, to the Palestinian problem. On the ground, a state within a state was being established, with Lebanon acting as a base and training camp for terrorist operations against Israel.

As the terror operations from the north increased, the Israel Defense Forces carried out defensive operations against Palestinian terrorist forces, which did not stop attacking northern Israel. Such was Operation Litani on March 15, 1978 and other short operations by Israeli forces.

On June 15, 1980, I became the main broker of the Mossad's relations with the Christians. A month later, Bashir Gemayel established the Lebanese Forces as a paramilitary defensive force aimed at defending the Christians of Lebanon from repeated acts of slaughter by the Palestinians. During 1980 and 1981, the IDF engaged in preparations for a more comprehensive offensive. The Mossad's relations with the Christians enabled the senior IDF brass, including the commanders of the forces in the field, to reconnoiter as far as Beirut, and to receive the necessary intelligence.

The IDF's battle plans were also based on the Christians' participation. The head of the Mossad at the time, Yitzhak Hofi, had reservations about an all-out war and the IDF's possible entry into Beirut, where the Palestinian Liberation Organization's political and military center, headed by Yasser Arafat, was located. We expressed concern about a large-scale war and its results. Despite the differences of opinion, the Mossad continued to aid the IDF as needed and insofar as possible. At the same time, we also worked on a diplomatic level, in the context of the Syrian bloodletting of the Christians at Zahla in May of 1981. At that time I went to the Vatican for a meeting with its foreign minister Achille Silvestrini, to ask for help in saving the Christians of Lebanon.

The agreement at the Camp David summit to establish Palestinian autonomy made things very difficult for then prime minister Menachem Begin. In the IDF's initiative toward an all-out war, he saw a chance of eliminating the Palestinian problem in Lebanon. In September 1981, he was also positively disposed to entering Beirut, as the IDF commanders had proposed. During 1981, on the eve of Ariel Sharon's appointment as defense minister in the summer of that year, preparations for an extensive operation known as Operation Pines were completed. This eventually turned into Operation Peace for the Galilee.

In January 1982, at a meeting in Beirut with top Christian leaders - Pierre Gemayel, Camille Chamoun, Georges Adwan and Etienne Saqr (Abu Arz) - Sharon set forth the battle plans. Pierre Gemayel made it clear then that we had to remember that Lebanon must maintain its bridges to the Arab world, as Henry Kissinger had advised them to do.

'Strayed from the path'

Then an excuse that would "justify" the action was needed. This happened only in June 1982 with the attempted assassination of Israeli ambassador Shlomo Argov in London. The Christian leadership in Lebanon, however, was not prepared to jump on the bandwagon of the IDF's operation. Nonetheless, Bashir Gemayel, the commander of the Lebanese Forces, supported all of our plans and enabled the IDF to carry out preparations for any and all actions. We sometimes clashed with him, in part in the context of his relations with other Christian groups in Lebanon. After the National Assembly elected Bashir president of Lebanon he was murdered, apparently by the Syrians, in a car bomb in Beirut. As Pierre Gemayel said of him at his graveside, Bashir had "strayed from the path," contrary to the position of the Christian leadership in Lebanon.

It was not the Mossad that defined the objectives of the war and it was not the Mossad that participated in its preparation. Bashir Gemayel was not alive at the time of the massacre in Sabra and Chatila, which bore an element of revenge for his assassination and for the many pogroms the Palestinians had carried out against Lebanese Christians.

From the Mossad's perspective, the "waltz with Bashir" was a successful intelligence operation, because of the extraordinary capabilities he put at the disposal of the IDF. The Mossad came out "clean" in the Kahan commission investigations of the Sabra and Chatila massacre. It is also important to remember that the 1982 war led to the start of diplomatic relations with the Palestinian movement, as should happen after every military campaign.

It is just a great pity that every such struggle is accompanied by the bloodshed of innocent civilians.

The author was deputy head of the Mossad.

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Gideon Levy / 'Antiwar' film Waltz with Bashir is nothing but charade

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ast update - 18:53 23/01/2009

Israel's 'Waltz with Bashir,' on 1982 Lebanon War, nominated for Oscar

By Haaretz Service

Tags: lebanon war, israel news

'Waltz with Bashir,' the Israeli animated film depicting the 1982 Lebanon War, was officially nominated on Thursday for best foreign-language prize at the Academy Awards.

The Oscars will be held on February 22. Folman's film is up against French director Laurent Cantet's "The Class," German director Uli Edel's "The Baadr Meinhof Complex," Austrian director Gotz Spielmann's "Revanche" and Japanese director Yojiro Takita's "Departures."

The American film "Milk," on the life of slain Jewish gay activist and San Francisco city supervisor Harvey Milk, was nominated for an Oscar in seven categories, including best picture, original screenplay, costume design, directing, film editing and musical score.

Sean Penn, who starred in the title role as Harvey Milk, has also been named for best leading actor.

'Waltz with Bashir,' directed by Ari Folman, won best foreign film at the 66th Golden Globes ceremony in Hollywood earlier this month.

Folman's critically-acclaimed film traces the author's journey to put together his memories from his time as an Israeli soldier during the invasion of Lebanon in 1982, and later the massacres at the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps in Beirut.

The film uses a striking combination of frame-by-frame and computer generated animation to create a powerful and at times surreal portrayal of war and the way memory plays tricks on the mind.

The film was screened in Lebanon last Saturday, although it is officially banned in that country.

The documentary has already been screened in Ramallah and may soon be shown in the Arab gulf states as well, Folman told Haaretz.

Related articles:

'Waltz with Bashir' wins Golden Globe for best foreign film

Israeli film on Lebanon War 'Waltz with Bashir' shown in Beirut

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Last update - 09:20 21/02/2009

Gideon Levy / 'Antiwar' film Waltz with Bashir is nothing but charade

By Gideon Levy, Haaretz Correspondent

Tags: israel news, walz with bashir

Everyone now has his fingers crossed for Ari Folman and all the creative artists behind "Waltz with Bashir" to win the Oscar on Sunday. A first Israeli Oscar? Why not?

However, it must also be noted that the film is infuriating, disturbing, outrageous and deceptive. It deserves an Oscar for the illustrations and animation - but a badge of shame for its message. It was not by accident that when he won the Golden Globe, Folman didn't even mention the war in Gaza, which was raging as he accepted the prestigious award. The images coming out of Gaza that day looked remarkably like those in Folman's film. But he was silent. So before we sing Folman's praises, which will of course be praise for us all, we would do well to remember that this is not an antiwar film, nor even a critical work about Israel as militarist and occupier. It is an act of fraud and deceit, intended to allow us to pat ourselves on the back, to tell us and the world how lovely we are.

Hollywood will be enraptured, Europe will cheer and the Israeli Foreign Ministry will send the movie and its makers around the world to show off the country's good side. But the truth is that it is propaganda. Stylish, sophisticated, gifted and tasteful - but propaganda. A new ambassador of culture will now join Amos Oz and A.B. Yehoshua, and he too will be considered fabulously enlightened - so different from the bloodthirsty soldiers at the checkpoints, the pilots who bomb residential neighborhoods, the artillerymen who shell women and children, and the combat engineers who rip up streets. Here, instead, is the opposite picture. Animated, too. Of enlightened, beautiful Israel, anguished and self-righteous, dancing a waltz, with and without Bashir. Why do we need propagandists, officers, commentators and spokespersons who will convey "information"? We have this waltz.

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The waltz rests on two ideological foundations. One is the "we shot and we cried" syndrome: Oh, how we wept, yet our hands did not spill this blood. Add to this a pinch of Holocaust memories, without which there is no proper Israeli self-preoccupation. And a dash of victimization - another absolutely essential ingredient in public discourse here - and voila! You have the deceptive portrait of Israel 2008, in words and pictures.

Folman took part in the Lebanon war of 1982, and two dozen years later remembered to make a movie about it. He is tormented. He goes back to his comrades-in-arms, gulps down shots of whiskey at a bar with one, smokes joints in Holland with another, wakes his therapist pal at first light and goes for another session to his shrink - all to free himself at long last from the nightmare that haunts him. And the nightmare is always ours, ours alone.

It is very convenient to make a film about the first, and now remote, Lebanon war: We already sent one of those, "Beaufort," to the Oscar competition. And it's even more convenient to focus specifically on Sabra and Chatila, the Beirut refugee camps.

Even way back, after the huge protest against the massacre perpetrated in those camps, there was always the declaration that, despite everything - including the green light given to our lackey, the Phalange, to execute the slaughter, and the fact that it all took place in Israeli-occupied territory - the cruel and brutal hands that shed blood are not our hands. Let us lift our voices in protest against all the savage Bashir-types we have known. And yes, a little against ourselves, too, for shutting our eyes, perhaps even showing encouragement. But no: That blood, that's not us. It's them, not us.

We have not yet made a movie about the other blood, which we have spilled and continue to allow to flow, from Jenin to Rafah - certainly not a movie that will get to the Oscars. And not by chance.

In "Waltz with Bashir" the soldiers of the world's most moral army sing out something like: "Lebanon, good morning. May you know no more grief. Let your dreams come true, your nightmares evaporate, your whole life be a blessing."

Nice, right? What other army has a song like this, and in the middle of a war, yet? Afterward they go on to sing that Lebanon is the "love of my life, the short life." And then the tank, from inside of which this lofty and enlightened singing emanates, crushes a car for starters, turning it into a smashed tin can, then pounds a residential building, threatening to topple it. That's how we are. Singing and wrecking. Where else will you find sensitive soldiers like these? It would really be preferable for them to shout with hoarse voices: Death to the Arabs!

I saw the "Waltz" twice. The first time was in a movie theater, and I was bowled over by the artistry. What style, what talent. The illustrations are perfect, the voices are authentic, the music adds so much. Even Ron Ben Yishai's half-missing finger is accurate. No detail is missed, no nuance blurred. All the heroes are heroes, superbly stylish, like Folman himself: articulate, trendy, up-to-date, left-wingers - so sensitive and intelligent.

Then I watched it again, at home, a few weeks later. This time I listened to the dialogue and grasped the message that emerges from behind the talent. I became more outraged from one minute to the next. This is an extraordinarily infuriating film precisely because it is done with so much talent. Art has been recruited here for an operation of deceit. The war has been painted with soft, caressing colors - as in comic books, you know. Even the blood is amazingly aesthetic, and suffering is not really suffering when it is drawn in lines. The soundtrack plays in the background, behind the drinks and the joints and the bars. The war's fomenters were mobilized for active service of self-astonishment and self-torment.

Boaz is devastated at having shot 26 stray dogs, and he remembers each of them. Now he is looking for "a therapist, a shrink, shiatsu, something." Poor Boaz. And poor Folman, too: He is devilishly unable to remember what happened during the massacre. "Movies are also psychotherapy" - that's the bit of free advice he gets. Sabra and Chatila? "To tell you the truth? It's not in my system." All in such up-to-the-minute Hebrew you could cry. After the actual encounter with Boaz in 2006, 24 years later, the "flash" arrives, the great flash that engendered the great movie.

One fellow comes to the war on the Love Boat, another flees it by swimming away. One sprinkles patchouli on himself, another eats a Spam omelet. The filmmaker-hero of "Waltz" remembers that summer with great sadness: It was exactly then that Yaeli dumped him. Between one thing and the other, they killed and destroyed indiscriminately. The commander watches porn videos in a Beirut villa, and even Ben Yishai has a place in Ba'abda, where one evening he downs half a glass of whiskey and phones Arik Sharon at the ranch and tells him about the massacre. And no one asks who these looted and plundered apartments belong to, damn it, or where their owners are and what our forces are doing in them in the first place. That is not part of the nightmare.

What's left is hallucination, a sea of fears, the hero confesses on the way to his therapist, who is quick to calm him and explains that the hero's interest in the massacre at the camps derives from a different massacre: from the camps from which his parents came. Bingo! How could we have missed it? It's not us at all, it's the Nazis, may their name and memory be obliterated. It's because of them that we are the way we are. "You have been cast in the role of the Nazi against your will," a different therapist says reassuringly, as though evoking Golda Meir's remark that we will never forgive the Arabs for making us what we are. What we are? The therapist says that we shone the lights, but "did not perpetrate the massacre." What a relief. Our clean hands are not part of the dirty work, no way.

And besides that, it wasn't us at all: How pleasant to see the cruelty of the other. The amputated limbs that the Phalange, may their name be obliterated, stuff into the formaldehyde bottles; the executions they perpetrate; the symbols they slash into the bodies of their victims. Look at them and look at us: We never do things like that.

When Ben Yishai enters the Beirut camps, he recalls scenes of the Warsaw ghetto. Suddenly he sees through the rubble a small hand and a curly-haired head, just like that of his daughter. "Stop the shooting, everybody go home," the commander, Amos, calls out through a megaphone in English. The massacre comes to an abrupt end. Cut.

Then, suddenly, the illustrations give way to the real shots of the horror of the women keening amid the ruins and the bodies. For the first time in the movie, we not only see real footage, but also the real victims. Not the ones who need a shrink and a drink to get over their experience, but those who remain bereaved for all time, homeless, limbless and crippled. No drink and no shrink can help them. And that is the first (and last) moment of truth and pain in "Waltz with Bashir."