Kevin Sites and Gal Uchovsky

Kevin Sites has a fascinating interview in his ‘Hot Zone’ project– with Gal Uchovsky, the Israeli writer of a new film called ‘Walk on Water.’
Excerpt:

    KEVIN SITES: Your movie deals with a variety of issues, but a prominent theme is how a society’s history defines its present. The Holocaust has defined Israel in many ways — even dominating it — but to evolve a society has to put history in its proper place and move forward.
    Do you think that’s hard to do when you have people like Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad questioning whether the Holocaust actually took place?
    GAL UCHOVSKY: I don’t care about this guy from Iran. He’s not part of my life. I’m not part of the political game to the point that I care what someone in Iran says. But I am interested in how the Holocaust has shaped the Israeli male. It’s been 70 years and we have to make some peace with it. But we still see ourselves as victims of the Holocaust.
    We become victimized to the point that we’ve become aggressors, and now others use terror as a weapon against us. It’s not the tool of the strong, it’s the tool of the weak. So (in our film) we wanted to examine the fact that we still see ourselves as victims — even though we are a vibrant nation and have a strong army that can defend us just fine.
    SITES: It does say on your film’s Web site, “The filmmakers believe that the fact that Israelis are still so obsessed with the Holocaust and their status as victims renders them blind to the fact they themselves have become aggressors, imposing pain and suffering on the Palestinians. The filmmakers believe that the first step in helping the Israelis understand how cruel they themselves have become lies in making some kind of peace with their own traumatic past.”
    What kind of suffering specifically do you mean that the Israelis have imposed on the Palestinians?
    UCHOVSKY: Well, the occupation — building all these settlements on Palestinian lands. Apartheid roads…
    … SITES: Back to the earlier question though, how do Israelis make that peace with their history, keep the Holocaust from making them a society of permanent victims?
    UCHOVSKY: We have to understand that we’re not there anymore. It was 1945. We had long hollow cheeks; we were very, very hungry. Some of our families were turned into soap. It was terrible. But we are not there anymore. We are a vibrant force in the world. We’re not there anymore. Jews are pretty much safe in most places in the world. We are not like sheep to the slaughter. Israel was built on the notion of victimization.

Sounds like a movie worth seeing.

8 thoughts on “Kevin Sites and Gal Uchovsky”

  1. I don’t see anything fascinating about Walk on Water. The problem is, this movie is fiercely political and ideological. Basically, that’s crude PR. The rest is easy to figure out – crude Israeli PR can only be Arabophobic, so this movie is Arabophobic.
    The only diffeference between this movie and recent cartoons is that it has certain artistic value. Nevertheless, those who lament about “Holocaust denial”, etc, have only themselves to blame for their misery. Why should Mulsims appreciate or ignore attacks like this one?
    More later.

  2. I saw the movie over the summer, and it’s not “Arabaphobic” (unless you consider a movie not calling for the dismantling of Israel “Arabaphobic”) and it barely touches on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.
    The main character speaks of the conflict in a few scenes. He is a Mossad agent and definitely does not like Arabs – but he comes off as extremely non-sympathetic when giving his opinions on that topic.
    On the other hand, another major character – a German tourist, is very pro-Arab and comes off as extremely sympathetic and likeable at all times – including when addressing the I/P conflict.
    It is a really good movie, although I’m not sure everything the director says he wants people to come away with from watching it is actually there. Perhaps having read his interview, and then seeing the film, the experience would have been different.

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