I am convinced that I will never ever be able to get a total grip on the complex realities of the continuing tribulations with Israel and the Occupying territories as much as I try.   And try I do … and typically with me my chosen method is through the medium of film, and so  seized at the opportunity of watching Israeli filmmaker Ra’anan Alexandrowicz’s award-winning incisive investigation into the legal system that is the Law in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

He interviews only the high-ranking military lawyers and judges who not helped to create and refine the laws, but then they were the ones who enforced them onto a reluctant civilian population. As the Occupying Forces they were very quick to point out that they have stuck rigidly to both the Geneva and the Hague International Conventions on War to create  the new Laws.  However when Palestinian residents, whose land had been forcibly taken, then took their cases to the Israeli Supreme Court and won, the Military Authorities simply ignored the rulings one way or another.

Some decades into the conflict and the Israelis had supplanted some half a million Jewish settlers permanently in the Occupied Territories, and Palestinian residents were still being arrested tortured and prosecuted, although rarely found guilty of any felonies. It was obvious by then that there were two distinctly different sets of the Rule of Law for the two different peoples living side by side, but each is administered by the same Authorities.

The argument that Alexandrowicz makes, and proves beyond a shadow of a doubt, is very forceful and is simply that Justice and the Occupation are totally incompatible.

The film is totally riveting and dramatically staged with each of the interviewees sat at a desk on stage in front a giant green screen where footage of whatever incident/case they are discussing is played in the background.  Off screen Alexandrowicz is a courteous questioner as he takes each of his subjects through the cases they dealt with.  What is equally striking is the honesty of these now elderly men, and even though they may not give the answers one would have wished to hear, they are given with sincerity and candour (albeit the latter maybe a tad restrained at times).

Am I any closer to any understanding?  I would say a little, as the movie documented it all factual and without emotion.  And his message at the end was a very persuasive argument, in that when the Law is used to prop up power, and not constrain it as it is meant too, then it really loses its meaning.


★★★★★★★★