Monday, September 30, 2013

Wall



"First of all, we see both sides as ours."
In the documentary film "Wall", filmmaker Simone Bitton travels to Jerusalem to chronicle the building of the immense concrete wall that separates the Jewish population from the Palestinians. The wall--which is about 500 kilometers long--is built at the cost of $2,000,000 per kilometer, and it winds in and around Jerusalem.

The film begins with one section of the wall and just the voices of children--many of Bitton's interviews do not include the faces of those filmed. The children speculate about the ethnicity of the filmmaker before she begins to ask them questions about the purpose of the wall. From the voices of these children, Bitton moves onto the construction of the wall itself--it's made from huge interlocking concrete slabs, and the camera focuses on the placement of these slabs until the entire skyline and the beautiful view is entirely blocked.

"Wall" contains moments of startling purity--a young Israeli settler named Moti speculates exactly how he'd...

protection or partition?
In 2002 Israel began constructing a 400-mile "fence" along the Green Line that separates Israel and the West Bank. This "wall" consists of 25' concrete panels, trenches, endless razor wire, guard towers, sensors, alarms, cameras, radars and check points. It is only 50 yards wide, but in fact it symbolizes an immense geo-political gulf. Director Simone Bitton was born in Morocco, educated in Paris, and resides in Jerusalem. Fluent in Hebrew, Arabic, French and English, she uses the crude architecture of this "wall" as a rich metaphor of the political debacle in the region. Yes, in some sense the wall "protects" Israelis from terrorists, but of course it also imprisons them, exacerbates the strife, and partitions normal citizens on both sides, almost all of whom who were interviewed in this documentary hate the wall. "Without peace," remarked a foreman on the job, "this fence is worthless." In Hebrew and Aramaic with English subtitles.

Israel.....wow
They are becoming the same people that prosecuted them in WWII , it seems that they learned how to apply their previous suffering onto others. Sad.

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