Description d'un combat (1960) - full transcript
Chosen nation, wandering nation,
martyr nation, resurrected nation,
Israel has known struggle
in all its forms.
today it is discovering a new one -
the struggle that a young state, full of strength,
must wage against itself,
to remain faithful, in victory,
to what was its glory during oppression.
The following images of daily life in Israel
engage in this inner struggle at every moment,
a struggle less apparent than warfare,
but perhaps the only crucial one.
DESCRIPTION OF A STRUGGLE
Signs,
This land speaks to you first...
in signs.
Signs of land...
Signs of water...
Signs of man.
Signs.
This is the promised land,
this is Jerusalem on earth,
This is... Israel.
You have heard all about Israel.
12 years of statehood,
nearly 13,
2 million inhabitants,
soon 3 million.
and as we all know,
the wedding between
the West and East...
even though for the moment
they have... separate rooms.
Signs have but a short life.
This tyre dump at Jaffa
no longer exists,
And this man, standing mid the waves
at Tiberias, may be gone too.
Lasting signs carved on tree bark
and on the skin of Man.
Market place signs.
Money, a sign...
Colour, a sign...
A world is born.
Shouts and songs hailing
a dawn in strawberries, or of onions.
"Innocent as a salad,
wise as an olive"
Markets are the last reservoirs
of similes for innocence
pending the psychoanalysis
of vegetables.
Signs are not only for the eye.
In the bustle of the Carmel street market,
the Rue Mouffetard of Tel-Aviv,
they express an urge as old as the Jews
and as new as thirst
To communicate.
Communicate: to establish a relation
between things hostile or incomprehensible.
The oscilloscopes of the Weizmann Institute
pursue a solitary reflection,
which resemble, and are perhaps akin to -
those of contemplative creatures.
These remote control owls
live in Jerusalem.
This is the biblical Zoo where each animal lives
in the shadow of a verse
which attests to its participation
in the Book of Books.
that's to say...
the human condition,
and to give it in this,
a right of inspection.
For the nation in exile
the Bible was a sacred equivalent
of the catalogue of Arms and Cycles
made in Saint-Etienne:
Whatever was not included,
did not exist.
Here the Antelope and the Cassowary
justify their existence.
"I am brother to dragons
and companion of ostriches."
I greet my cousin the flamingo,
my sister the owl,
"whose flesh is not to be partaken."
Deuteronomy 14:16.
And he, in charge of the oscilloscope,
is a pious man,
as shown by his skull-cap,
which is to say that...
he abstains from owls
and his God is the God
of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Here we are at Rehovot,
by the electronic brain
where they come to consult,
like the Sibyl, each in turn,
the scholars, the wise, the ministers...
Those who sing.
The Hebrew University, Jerusalem
is another privileged place,
where the false symmetries in which
one wants to confine Israel fall away.
The piety of the old
opposing the technicality of youth
For many young, the cupola of the
planetarium and that of the synagogue
are not two enemies -
but two halves.
Contradiction, perhaps...
But the silence of prayer
and that of research
have at least one thing in common,
one which counts...
And that is silence.
The rest...
whether it be pleasure
or piety,
transistors or procession,
the rest...
is bedlam.
A miraculous rabbi is buried
by the Sea of Galilee.
Each year, the Sephardim
come to sing his praises,
and ask him to grant their wishes.
After them, signs of the night.
Truck lights in the Negev,
gantry cranes in the copper mines,
Lights that guide,
and others that guard.
From the heights of Carmel,
Haifa, phosphorescent city,
And at Be'er Sheva, surrounded by desert,
the last bar before the Red Sea.
The Red Sea to the South,
The Dead Sea, East,
To the West the Mediterranean,
A sea pink...
or blue,
according to the time.
A new day breaks on this narrow land.
On the Western shore...
on the mountains of the North,
at Manarah.
The entire width of Israel here
is in the camera's eye.
Daybreak on Haifa,
Daybreak on Tel-Aviv,
city built on sand,
On Jerusalem, in no man's land,
where Jews lament over
the loss of the wailing wall,
because the old city
belongs to the Arabs,
On Be'er-Sheva,
where Zazie crosses the Negev,
On Eilat finally,
the little port on the Red Sea
with its future promise
of Suez and Miami.
A group of kids
have spent the night on the beach.
When this skyline is cluttered
by factories and motels
shall we vainly long for such a morning
and its shrill voiced girls,
the boy dragging his gun,
another praying on a swing?
End of the line.
The Arkia plane takes off for the North,
laden with tourists,
prospectors, producers.
At the other end of the runway, Haifa.
On the slopes of Mount Carmel,
by the Druze villages,
descendants of the Crusaders,
Ali, descended from the infidels,
returns his prayer desk on wheels
from a delivery.
And so sports are born.
Javelin was born of the hunt,
boxing from intolerance,
the marathon of victory,
the sprint of defeat.
And this primitive form of karting
is born in a steeply built town,
where such poor boys
roll along in their little jobs,
in dreams of Olympic glory.
Many dreams have been seen
in this land of Galilee.
Dreams of Messiahs...
of Kings, of Wonders.
Dreams of a land called
Israel,
where against common sense,
against history, a shepherd people
were brought together,
according to an ancient promise.
This land would come to be,
the dreamer
would awake from
a two thousand year sleep of nightmares,
and cities would rise
like the sun in the desert...
all at once.
And the country exists.
Disguised as tailors and bankers,
the shepherds have returned,
They have built the towns,
peopled the roads.
But after centuries of confinement,
their shepherd instincts overflow
and invade other fields
For example, education.
And here, boy-scouts.
Many a young state is a scout in heart.
It's a form of khaki measles.
The oriental spirit has
a good opportunity to practice it,
but for the lack
of another representative.
The sun cracks the Spartan varnish
and the uniform is shed.
For the Israeli adult
the young are a wonder.
The pleasure of parents is also
mixed with a certain bewilderment.
The search for the missing link
between the soft, small ghosts
of the ghettos
and these young animals
whose bodies run free
and whose piety casts no shadow.
Yet ghetto children still exist.
Cheek by jowl with their opposites.
In Mea Sharim,
the orthodox quarter of Jerusalem,
where brick walls,
kaftans and pigtails
revive the ghetto,
save for the pogroms
and only this, because
the Israelis restrain themselves.
Here, time lies frozen.
Jewish destiny is locked within these walls
that Israel had sworn to build.
But here Israel is rejected.
"Only the Messiah will deliver us,
not proud men."
That is to say: should
one exchange a wondrous expectation
in place of a fulfilment, where
one will know for all eternity
the deserts it releases?
But over these moribund house fronts,
and these fearful children
hangs a certain yearning
for something called Spirit.
And the question asked by Mea Sharim,
Israel is forced to hear:
Will fifty years of freedom succeed
where two thousand years
of persecution failed:
in forgetting the Law?
Today the walls of Jerusalem
revive biblical names,
alongside other legendary ones.
A language revived: Biblical Hebrew
not spoken in Palestine
since the time of Jesus.
It lends itself to
a secular form of pilpul.
Pilpul is, in the synagogues,
an endless dialogue with God.
But when God isn't on call,
a friendly neighbour fills the part.
One hears Arabic spoken too,
Sees the Bedouin garbs,
The silent Pharaohs.
One hears Yiddish, German,
French, Russian.
And also hears that special language,
grammatically extremely limited,
which is touristese.
Tourists love the picturesque
but also offer a spectacle
to picturesque-loving natives.
But they have come to Israel
to meet the tough pioneers.
They hardly recognize the others.
Neither the cock-sure, delighted,
full of health and enterprise,
Nor the subdued,
disappointed, embittered,
for whom life is hard.
One who dreams of a fabulous America,
which he copies already,
And this infinite variety
of the human face,
that tourists sometimes photograph...
but never see.
Tourist take their photos,
When by chance,
the photos return home,
the reactions are varied.
his could be gratitude,
despondency...
exuberance...
or pride, even if mixed with envy.
But the man proudest
of his pictures,
in the whole of Israel
is Mr. Klein,
"a Jew, friend of the cats"
as it says in Giraudoux's Judith.
Mr. Klein gets off the
Jerusalem bus each day at noon.
He says "cat" in Hungarian.
And all the cats that know Hungarian,
dozens, run to him.
Another face - Noah Rosenfeld,
chess champion at 11 and,
like his opponent Yehuda Arel,
members of the Manara Kibbutz.
They live in a world
where money doesn't count,
A fragile world,
one doomed to disappear.
But which might leave behind,
in retrospect
a memory as disconcerting
as those ephemeral communities
which once existed
on the banks of the Dead Sea.
The Dead Sea.
A lunar landscape embedded
in the Earth like shrapnel.
A place of Essene Communities
and of Bar-Kochba's guerrillas,
where one finds today
signs and message.
The decor if we believe
a Russian scientist
of the first atomic explosion,
3,000 years before Christ,
A Judean Hiroshima
named Sodom.
Dead sea... dead land.
Palestine in pioneer days.
Here dunes, here rocks,
elsewhere marshland,
Everywhere... desert.
To pass from desert to pasture,
from yellow to green
and measure other than by
the exclamations of tourists
what was achieved on this land,
one need submit it to x-rays,
like paintings of the Louvre where
an older canvas rises to the surface.
And then, from above these crops,
with the sweeping arcs
of the Piper-Cub,
discover a lake.
All this Northern region
was once a marshy lake, the Hule,
with malaria and quagmires,
and gunfire, as everywhere.
Imagine the first settlers,
sadly surveying the work to be done,
making a list of what needed to be done.
Notions of agriculture, of tools
weapons against Arabs,
remedies against malaria,
and how to build on the swamp.
And someone at that moment said
"All we need is a miracle",
and everyone was at ease.
Because if the Jews knew little of
agriculture, weapons and building
miracles, yes... they know.
Now, the miracle is being organized.
Sergei Darsky, on the ground,
and Etan Ayalon, in the air,
work in a vast collective enterprise.
The Piper flies, lands, takes off,
capers, then lands
like a great mechanical pigeon.
It happens, from time to time,
a Piper crashes into the mountain,
and from time to time
a Sergei is shot at.
If the work is amazing,
the stoppage is astounding.
It's Shabbat,
the Israeli Saturday
compared to which the English Sunday
resembles a carnival in Rio.
Buses don't run.
They gather for
the bus prayer.
Cinemas stand closed,
machines don't run.
In this mood of general strike,
atomic alert, of Spanish flu,
History hoists its signals..
because Israel is looking
for another way
than that of the resignation
of the martyr.
It's been found in Bar-Kochba,
head of the resistance
against the Romans,
whose traditional bonfires,
lit by his children
have become funeral pyres
of all the enemies of the Jews,
from Titus to Hitler.
But for the pious,
by the candlelight of Friday evening,
before the first evening star,
and the great kerosene flames
of Saturday, after the first star,
there's nothing but prayer.
It's Saturday evening and
the General Assembly of the kibbutz.
If the Kibbutz is the most
original expression of Israel,
the originality
of the kibbutz is above all
in the functioning of that assembly,
where all decisions are taken
by common consent.
It's a limited,
but absolute form of democracy,
Let there be silence.
These man, these woman, own nothing..
They have no money, no budget.
no bank account, no salary.
Everything comes from the community,
children are raised collectively.
But all these unique acts
in the life of the kibbutz
are founded in this weekly,
familiar practice, of utopia.
Good, does anyone
have anything to add?
No more bright ideas? Let's vote!
I'd like to say something.
Let's have your idea.
I'd like to speak.
Very good, what have you got to say?
Well..
We should be represented at
the General Assembly of the Kibbutzim.
To put forward our point of view.
Even if it's only to say,
there's nothing more to say.
You might as well be in Parliament
Everyone knows in advance
how the votes will go.
To its own particular problems
add those of liaising
with the other kibbutzim,
and those they share in common.
Since life in the kibbutz has become
relatively more comfortable,
recruiting has fallen off.
This only appears to be paradoxical.
Recruiting for battle
is easier than for maneuvers.
And if its normal that
experience evolves and forms change,
many are worried
by the direction of these changes.
Being heirs of a stern idealism,
in the middle of a world
where evolution is somewhat different,
isolated in their own country,
isolated from the socialist states,
how long will their purity last?
I don't understand any more.
Enough pilpul, comrades.
Those who don't understand,
vote against.
The others, for...
16 for. Now, who is
for sending a delegate?
For, for, FOR!
Against, you've already voted...
18 for.
We'll send a delegate.
Proposed.
It's looks like you've voted for
Uri Tennenbaum.
At this point
the discussion seems close,
and Uri is chosen
to represent the kibbutz.
But historical determinism
has its pitfalls.
And in this case,
it's the woman knitting.
I veto it.
- What?
I veto it.
And because Uri's wife has decided
that her husband shouldn't leave
probably due to
a bad biblical precedent
the election is annulled,
and the Assembly gives way.
The kibbutzim are a minority in Israel,
but a powerful and exemplary one.
Soothing the conscience of
those Israelis less adventurous,
who have brought to the Promised Land,
with neither imagination nor scruple,
capitalist structure.
At the other end of the scale
there's another minority...
one however that is
a thorn in the flesh of Israel,
and gives a bad conscience
to even the best...
The Arab minority.
In Nazareth, one man is, despite himself,
at the centre of the problem.
Father Gauthier, a French priest,
has come to Nazareth
to work on
narrowing the gulf
and lowering
some of the barricades
which separate the two communities.
He has created
a construction cooperative,
run by the Arabs,
aided by State and Trade Unions
where improvements in living conditions
are in the hands of those who benefit.
Because of the urgent need to improve
living conditions in Arab villages,
it will only be of use if all traces
of colonial benevolence are absent.
However, it is urgent.
In a house, like many others,
in the souks of Nazareth
Mouna is busy.
Mouna is the eldest of seven children.
Her brother is a baker's apprentice.
Five more children surround her.
The father is in an asylum.
He has become mad from misery...
The mother is in hospital.
Mouna is the head of the family.
Three things enable her to go on:
The co-operative, which has
promised her a new apartment,
dancing, which she loves most,
And the third, what to call it?
that shy, durable light
in her face.
To smile in misery,
dance on a volcano
man has a great gift for that.
A border incident, last night.
At noon in a friendly Bedouin's tent,
Captain Chaim
referees a discussion
on horses' comparative merits,
Each one praises his own
and looks with pity
on his neighbour's one-eyed mule.
A scene from Shakespeare,
Henry V (act 3).
Nine in the evening, Haifa,
members of Carmel's Culture Centre
meet in an Essentialist dance cellar.
Casualties reported on the border.
Many of these young men
were called to their units.
The following noon...
- Gaby, who did you dance with?
- With the folk dance instructor.
Isn't he handsome!
Here are schoolgirls from
Kiryat Moskin, out of class.
Comparing their instructors' merits,
in classic and folk dance,
of ballroom dancing
and youth movements.
Pretty birdlike chatter.
Classic dance, ballroom dance,
dancing on a volcano.
Conversations on horses,
cellars, dance, this is a dance.
The volcano is war.
War has left its mark.
It is in this Middle East landscape,
this troubled climate,
burdened with murders,
bombings and reprisals,
surprise attacks, surprises of fate.
It's in the memory,
all memories older than 12 years.
Twelve years... Israel was born of war,
war and a lack of foresight.
Herzl didn't foresee his utopia
would be born in blood.
England didn't foresee that this result
of her promise of a homeland
would lead to a nation.
The West didn't foresee
that the Middle East would one day
cease to be a service station
and that the original occupants
would have their say.
It's true that no one foresaw
that one day, the US and USSR
would agree at the UN, and vote
for the birth of the state of Israel
then wash their hands of it.
But this, the Bible had predicted.
Twelve years.
And already a generation
who could misquote Oscar Wilde:
Why did you come to Israel?
To forget.
To forget what?
I forgot...
Twelve years of peace, relative.
And already on the face of this peace,
the first wrinkles.
Laxity appears, nostalgia,
and the problems of youth.
The right to an ordinary life,
paid for with Jewish blood,
now beset by everyday drudgery,
maladies of happiness.
The day of the locust.
"The sleep of reason produces monsters,"
generally imported.
If there is still a David,
there are always Philistines.
The trappings of happiness
take the place of happiness.
radio, refrigerator, soon television.
What is born where values die,
doesn't replace them.
And the question resounds:
Did we fight for the right to err,
scandal and boredom and sin?
The destiny of the chosen ones...
To achieve the common fate of nations?
This is answered by the question:
What have we done to prevent this?
A newsreel dated Dec 16th, 1947.
Somewhere South of Rome,
Jewish refugees from Central Europe
finally embark
on an illegal Haganah vessel,
under an Italian flag.
At journey's end, the hope
of a landing, equally clandestine,
on the only place on Earth
where they would cease to be
in a remarkable understatement
displaced persons.
The crossing took two weeks.
Christmas was spent on board.
On Boxing Day there was an alert.
Shortly after
a British man-of-war appeared.
The ship discarded
its false Italian identity,
and retook its true name:
Unafraid.
The 30, refugees,
entered the port of Haifa.
And were then re-embarked,
for Cyprus.
This we have done.
We Europe, who boast
of our spiritual values,
we have caused thousands
to risk all by fleeing us,
just to flee us.
Camp survivors, camp orphans,
born in camps, crushed by camps,
they fled from us
We, Germany, with our crimes,
We France, with our indifference
and when they turned to us, England
all that we knew to do
was to put them back
into camps.
Away from fear, children are born.
They come to you and say
"Tsalemoti" - photograph me.
They are beautiful.
Rumored to be all tall and fair.
In fact Oriental grace sometimes
deflects European type,
and among the Rubens,
there's many a Chagall.
They multiply. You photograph
this drawing boy,
but the next time you film,
there are already two...
How many will there be next year?
Who will they be?
Who will she be, this Jewish girl,
who will never be Anne Frank?
We must watch her.
Her very being, her freedom,
The stakes of the first struggle.
Those were miraculous days.
But miracles die with their witnesses.
A second struggle begins.
To become a nation implies
the right to the selfishness of nations.
To the blindness and vanity of nations.
But Israel's history cries out
against strength
for the sake of strength,
power for the sake of power.
Strength and power,
are merely signs.
And the greatest injustice
which weighs on Israel, is perhaps
the denial of the right to be unjust.
Look at her.
There she is.
Like Israel.
To understand her,
talk to her, perhaps...
Remind her often
that injustice on this land of Israel
weighs heavier than elsewhere,
because this land itself
is the ransom of injustice.
Also, think of the threats
weighing on her,
to which she gives no cause.
Yes, look at her.
Until she becomes an enigma,
like words endlessly repeated
which one no longer recognizes.
Until, amongst all the inexplicable
things in this world,
the most inexplicable is
That she is there... in front of us,
like a bird, or a cipher,
like a sign.
Subtitles: Corvusalbus, ValVerde, LaJetee
martyr nation, resurrected nation,
Israel has known struggle
in all its forms.
today it is discovering a new one -
the struggle that a young state, full of strength,
must wage against itself,
to remain faithful, in victory,
to what was its glory during oppression.
The following images of daily life in Israel
engage in this inner struggle at every moment,
a struggle less apparent than warfare,
but perhaps the only crucial one.
DESCRIPTION OF A STRUGGLE
Signs,
This land speaks to you first...
in signs.
Signs of land...
Signs of water...
Signs of man.
Signs.
This is the promised land,
this is Jerusalem on earth,
This is... Israel.
You have heard all about Israel.
12 years of statehood,
nearly 13,
2 million inhabitants,
soon 3 million.
and as we all know,
the wedding between
the West and East...
even though for the moment
they have... separate rooms.
Signs have but a short life.
This tyre dump at Jaffa
no longer exists,
And this man, standing mid the waves
at Tiberias, may be gone too.
Lasting signs carved on tree bark
and on the skin of Man.
Market place signs.
Money, a sign...
Colour, a sign...
A world is born.
Shouts and songs hailing
a dawn in strawberries, or of onions.
"Innocent as a salad,
wise as an olive"
Markets are the last reservoirs
of similes for innocence
pending the psychoanalysis
of vegetables.
Signs are not only for the eye.
In the bustle of the Carmel street market,
the Rue Mouffetard of Tel-Aviv,
they express an urge as old as the Jews
and as new as thirst
To communicate.
Communicate: to establish a relation
between things hostile or incomprehensible.
The oscilloscopes of the Weizmann Institute
pursue a solitary reflection,
which resemble, and are perhaps akin to -
those of contemplative creatures.
These remote control owls
live in Jerusalem.
This is the biblical Zoo where each animal lives
in the shadow of a verse
which attests to its participation
in the Book of Books.
that's to say...
the human condition,
and to give it in this,
a right of inspection.
For the nation in exile
the Bible was a sacred equivalent
of the catalogue of Arms and Cycles
made in Saint-Etienne:
Whatever was not included,
did not exist.
Here the Antelope and the Cassowary
justify their existence.
"I am brother to dragons
and companion of ostriches."
I greet my cousin the flamingo,
my sister the owl,
"whose flesh is not to be partaken."
Deuteronomy 14:16.
And he, in charge of the oscilloscope,
is a pious man,
as shown by his skull-cap,
which is to say that...
he abstains from owls
and his God is the God
of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Here we are at Rehovot,
by the electronic brain
where they come to consult,
like the Sibyl, each in turn,
the scholars, the wise, the ministers...
Those who sing.
The Hebrew University, Jerusalem
is another privileged place,
where the false symmetries in which
one wants to confine Israel fall away.
The piety of the old
opposing the technicality of youth
For many young, the cupola of the
planetarium and that of the synagogue
are not two enemies -
but two halves.
Contradiction, perhaps...
But the silence of prayer
and that of research
have at least one thing in common,
one which counts...
And that is silence.
The rest...
whether it be pleasure
or piety,
transistors or procession,
the rest...
is bedlam.
A miraculous rabbi is buried
by the Sea of Galilee.
Each year, the Sephardim
come to sing his praises,
and ask him to grant their wishes.
After them, signs of the night.
Truck lights in the Negev,
gantry cranes in the copper mines,
Lights that guide,
and others that guard.
From the heights of Carmel,
Haifa, phosphorescent city,
And at Be'er Sheva, surrounded by desert,
the last bar before the Red Sea.
The Red Sea to the South,
The Dead Sea, East,
To the West the Mediterranean,
A sea pink...
or blue,
according to the time.
A new day breaks on this narrow land.
On the Western shore...
on the mountains of the North,
at Manarah.
The entire width of Israel here
is in the camera's eye.
Daybreak on Haifa,
Daybreak on Tel-Aviv,
city built on sand,
On Jerusalem, in no man's land,
where Jews lament over
the loss of the wailing wall,
because the old city
belongs to the Arabs,
On Be'er-Sheva,
where Zazie crosses the Negev,
On Eilat finally,
the little port on the Red Sea
with its future promise
of Suez and Miami.
A group of kids
have spent the night on the beach.
When this skyline is cluttered
by factories and motels
shall we vainly long for such a morning
and its shrill voiced girls,
the boy dragging his gun,
another praying on a swing?
End of the line.
The Arkia plane takes off for the North,
laden with tourists,
prospectors, producers.
At the other end of the runway, Haifa.
On the slopes of Mount Carmel,
by the Druze villages,
descendants of the Crusaders,
Ali, descended from the infidels,
returns his prayer desk on wheels
from a delivery.
And so sports are born.
Javelin was born of the hunt,
boxing from intolerance,
the marathon of victory,
the sprint of defeat.
And this primitive form of karting
is born in a steeply built town,
where such poor boys
roll along in their little jobs,
in dreams of Olympic glory.
Many dreams have been seen
in this land of Galilee.
Dreams of Messiahs...
of Kings, of Wonders.
Dreams of a land called
Israel,
where against common sense,
against history, a shepherd people
were brought together,
according to an ancient promise.
This land would come to be,
the dreamer
would awake from
a two thousand year sleep of nightmares,
and cities would rise
like the sun in the desert...
all at once.
And the country exists.
Disguised as tailors and bankers,
the shepherds have returned,
They have built the towns,
peopled the roads.
But after centuries of confinement,
their shepherd instincts overflow
and invade other fields
For example, education.
And here, boy-scouts.
Many a young state is a scout in heart.
It's a form of khaki measles.
The oriental spirit has
a good opportunity to practice it,
but for the lack
of another representative.
The sun cracks the Spartan varnish
and the uniform is shed.
For the Israeli adult
the young are a wonder.
The pleasure of parents is also
mixed with a certain bewilderment.
The search for the missing link
between the soft, small ghosts
of the ghettos
and these young animals
whose bodies run free
and whose piety casts no shadow.
Yet ghetto children still exist.
Cheek by jowl with their opposites.
In Mea Sharim,
the orthodox quarter of Jerusalem,
where brick walls,
kaftans and pigtails
revive the ghetto,
save for the pogroms
and only this, because
the Israelis restrain themselves.
Here, time lies frozen.
Jewish destiny is locked within these walls
that Israel had sworn to build.
But here Israel is rejected.
"Only the Messiah will deliver us,
not proud men."
That is to say: should
one exchange a wondrous expectation
in place of a fulfilment, where
one will know for all eternity
the deserts it releases?
But over these moribund house fronts,
and these fearful children
hangs a certain yearning
for something called Spirit.
And the question asked by Mea Sharim,
Israel is forced to hear:
Will fifty years of freedom succeed
where two thousand years
of persecution failed:
in forgetting the Law?
Today the walls of Jerusalem
revive biblical names,
alongside other legendary ones.
A language revived: Biblical Hebrew
not spoken in Palestine
since the time of Jesus.
It lends itself to
a secular form of pilpul.
Pilpul is, in the synagogues,
an endless dialogue with God.
But when God isn't on call,
a friendly neighbour fills the part.
One hears Arabic spoken too,
Sees the Bedouin garbs,
The silent Pharaohs.
One hears Yiddish, German,
French, Russian.
And also hears that special language,
grammatically extremely limited,
which is touristese.
Tourists love the picturesque
but also offer a spectacle
to picturesque-loving natives.
But they have come to Israel
to meet the tough pioneers.
They hardly recognize the others.
Neither the cock-sure, delighted,
full of health and enterprise,
Nor the subdued,
disappointed, embittered,
for whom life is hard.
One who dreams of a fabulous America,
which he copies already,
And this infinite variety
of the human face,
that tourists sometimes photograph...
but never see.
Tourist take their photos,
When by chance,
the photos return home,
the reactions are varied.
his could be gratitude,
despondency...
exuberance...
or pride, even if mixed with envy.
But the man proudest
of his pictures,
in the whole of Israel
is Mr. Klein,
"a Jew, friend of the cats"
as it says in Giraudoux's Judith.
Mr. Klein gets off the
Jerusalem bus each day at noon.
He says "cat" in Hungarian.
And all the cats that know Hungarian,
dozens, run to him.
Another face - Noah Rosenfeld,
chess champion at 11 and,
like his opponent Yehuda Arel,
members of the Manara Kibbutz.
They live in a world
where money doesn't count,
A fragile world,
one doomed to disappear.
But which might leave behind,
in retrospect
a memory as disconcerting
as those ephemeral communities
which once existed
on the banks of the Dead Sea.
The Dead Sea.
A lunar landscape embedded
in the Earth like shrapnel.
A place of Essene Communities
and of Bar-Kochba's guerrillas,
where one finds today
signs and message.
The decor if we believe
a Russian scientist
of the first atomic explosion,
3,000 years before Christ,
A Judean Hiroshima
named Sodom.
Dead sea... dead land.
Palestine in pioneer days.
Here dunes, here rocks,
elsewhere marshland,
Everywhere... desert.
To pass from desert to pasture,
from yellow to green
and measure other than by
the exclamations of tourists
what was achieved on this land,
one need submit it to x-rays,
like paintings of the Louvre where
an older canvas rises to the surface.
And then, from above these crops,
with the sweeping arcs
of the Piper-Cub,
discover a lake.
All this Northern region
was once a marshy lake, the Hule,
with malaria and quagmires,
and gunfire, as everywhere.
Imagine the first settlers,
sadly surveying the work to be done,
making a list of what needed to be done.
Notions of agriculture, of tools
weapons against Arabs,
remedies against malaria,
and how to build on the swamp.
And someone at that moment said
"All we need is a miracle",
and everyone was at ease.
Because if the Jews knew little of
agriculture, weapons and building
miracles, yes... they know.
Now, the miracle is being organized.
Sergei Darsky, on the ground,
and Etan Ayalon, in the air,
work in a vast collective enterprise.
The Piper flies, lands, takes off,
capers, then lands
like a great mechanical pigeon.
It happens, from time to time,
a Piper crashes into the mountain,
and from time to time
a Sergei is shot at.
If the work is amazing,
the stoppage is astounding.
It's Shabbat,
the Israeli Saturday
compared to which the English Sunday
resembles a carnival in Rio.
Buses don't run.
They gather for
the bus prayer.
Cinemas stand closed,
machines don't run.
In this mood of general strike,
atomic alert, of Spanish flu,
History hoists its signals..
because Israel is looking
for another way
than that of the resignation
of the martyr.
It's been found in Bar-Kochba,
head of the resistance
against the Romans,
whose traditional bonfires,
lit by his children
have become funeral pyres
of all the enemies of the Jews,
from Titus to Hitler.
But for the pious,
by the candlelight of Friday evening,
before the first evening star,
and the great kerosene flames
of Saturday, after the first star,
there's nothing but prayer.
It's Saturday evening and
the General Assembly of the kibbutz.
If the Kibbutz is the most
original expression of Israel,
the originality
of the kibbutz is above all
in the functioning of that assembly,
where all decisions are taken
by common consent.
It's a limited,
but absolute form of democracy,
Let there be silence.
These man, these woman, own nothing..
They have no money, no budget.
no bank account, no salary.
Everything comes from the community,
children are raised collectively.
But all these unique acts
in the life of the kibbutz
are founded in this weekly,
familiar practice, of utopia.
Good, does anyone
have anything to add?
No more bright ideas? Let's vote!
I'd like to say something.
Let's have your idea.
I'd like to speak.
Very good, what have you got to say?
Well..
We should be represented at
the General Assembly of the Kibbutzim.
To put forward our point of view.
Even if it's only to say,
there's nothing more to say.
You might as well be in Parliament
Everyone knows in advance
how the votes will go.
To its own particular problems
add those of liaising
with the other kibbutzim,
and those they share in common.
Since life in the kibbutz has become
relatively more comfortable,
recruiting has fallen off.
This only appears to be paradoxical.
Recruiting for battle
is easier than for maneuvers.
And if its normal that
experience evolves and forms change,
many are worried
by the direction of these changes.
Being heirs of a stern idealism,
in the middle of a world
where evolution is somewhat different,
isolated in their own country,
isolated from the socialist states,
how long will their purity last?
I don't understand any more.
Enough pilpul, comrades.
Those who don't understand,
vote against.
The others, for...
16 for. Now, who is
for sending a delegate?
For, for, FOR!
Against, you've already voted...
18 for.
We'll send a delegate.
Proposed.
It's looks like you've voted for
Uri Tennenbaum.
At this point
the discussion seems close,
and Uri is chosen
to represent the kibbutz.
But historical determinism
has its pitfalls.
And in this case,
it's the woman knitting.
I veto it.
- What?
I veto it.
And because Uri's wife has decided
that her husband shouldn't leave
probably due to
a bad biblical precedent
the election is annulled,
and the Assembly gives way.
The kibbutzim are a minority in Israel,
but a powerful and exemplary one.
Soothing the conscience of
those Israelis less adventurous,
who have brought to the Promised Land,
with neither imagination nor scruple,
capitalist structure.
At the other end of the scale
there's another minority...
one however that is
a thorn in the flesh of Israel,
and gives a bad conscience
to even the best...
The Arab minority.
In Nazareth, one man is, despite himself,
at the centre of the problem.
Father Gauthier, a French priest,
has come to Nazareth
to work on
narrowing the gulf
and lowering
some of the barricades
which separate the two communities.
He has created
a construction cooperative,
run by the Arabs,
aided by State and Trade Unions
where improvements in living conditions
are in the hands of those who benefit.
Because of the urgent need to improve
living conditions in Arab villages,
it will only be of use if all traces
of colonial benevolence are absent.
However, it is urgent.
In a house, like many others,
in the souks of Nazareth
Mouna is busy.
Mouna is the eldest of seven children.
Her brother is a baker's apprentice.
Five more children surround her.
The father is in an asylum.
He has become mad from misery...
The mother is in hospital.
Mouna is the head of the family.
Three things enable her to go on:
The co-operative, which has
promised her a new apartment,
dancing, which she loves most,
And the third, what to call it?
that shy, durable light
in her face.
To smile in misery,
dance on a volcano
man has a great gift for that.
A border incident, last night.
At noon in a friendly Bedouin's tent,
Captain Chaim
referees a discussion
on horses' comparative merits,
Each one praises his own
and looks with pity
on his neighbour's one-eyed mule.
A scene from Shakespeare,
Henry V (act 3).
Nine in the evening, Haifa,
members of Carmel's Culture Centre
meet in an Essentialist dance cellar.
Casualties reported on the border.
Many of these young men
were called to their units.
The following noon...
- Gaby, who did you dance with?
- With the folk dance instructor.
Isn't he handsome!
Here are schoolgirls from
Kiryat Moskin, out of class.
Comparing their instructors' merits,
in classic and folk dance,
of ballroom dancing
and youth movements.
Pretty birdlike chatter.
Classic dance, ballroom dance,
dancing on a volcano.
Conversations on horses,
cellars, dance, this is a dance.
The volcano is war.
War has left its mark.
It is in this Middle East landscape,
this troubled climate,
burdened with murders,
bombings and reprisals,
surprise attacks, surprises of fate.
It's in the memory,
all memories older than 12 years.
Twelve years... Israel was born of war,
war and a lack of foresight.
Herzl didn't foresee his utopia
would be born in blood.
England didn't foresee that this result
of her promise of a homeland
would lead to a nation.
The West didn't foresee
that the Middle East would one day
cease to be a service station
and that the original occupants
would have their say.
It's true that no one foresaw
that one day, the US and USSR
would agree at the UN, and vote
for the birth of the state of Israel
then wash their hands of it.
But this, the Bible had predicted.
Twelve years.
And already a generation
who could misquote Oscar Wilde:
Why did you come to Israel?
To forget.
To forget what?
I forgot...
Twelve years of peace, relative.
And already on the face of this peace,
the first wrinkles.
Laxity appears, nostalgia,
and the problems of youth.
The right to an ordinary life,
paid for with Jewish blood,
now beset by everyday drudgery,
maladies of happiness.
The day of the locust.
"The sleep of reason produces monsters,"
generally imported.
If there is still a David,
there are always Philistines.
The trappings of happiness
take the place of happiness.
radio, refrigerator, soon television.
What is born where values die,
doesn't replace them.
And the question resounds:
Did we fight for the right to err,
scandal and boredom and sin?
The destiny of the chosen ones...
To achieve the common fate of nations?
This is answered by the question:
What have we done to prevent this?
A newsreel dated Dec 16th, 1947.
Somewhere South of Rome,
Jewish refugees from Central Europe
finally embark
on an illegal Haganah vessel,
under an Italian flag.
At journey's end, the hope
of a landing, equally clandestine,
on the only place on Earth
where they would cease to be
in a remarkable understatement
displaced persons.
The crossing took two weeks.
Christmas was spent on board.
On Boxing Day there was an alert.
Shortly after
a British man-of-war appeared.
The ship discarded
its false Italian identity,
and retook its true name:
Unafraid.
The 30, refugees,
entered the port of Haifa.
And were then re-embarked,
for Cyprus.
This we have done.
We Europe, who boast
of our spiritual values,
we have caused thousands
to risk all by fleeing us,
just to flee us.
Camp survivors, camp orphans,
born in camps, crushed by camps,
they fled from us
We, Germany, with our crimes,
We France, with our indifference
and when they turned to us, England
all that we knew to do
was to put them back
into camps.
Away from fear, children are born.
They come to you and say
"Tsalemoti" - photograph me.
They are beautiful.
Rumored to be all tall and fair.
In fact Oriental grace sometimes
deflects European type,
and among the Rubens,
there's many a Chagall.
They multiply. You photograph
this drawing boy,
but the next time you film,
there are already two...
How many will there be next year?
Who will they be?
Who will she be, this Jewish girl,
who will never be Anne Frank?
We must watch her.
Her very being, her freedom,
The stakes of the first struggle.
Those were miraculous days.
But miracles die with their witnesses.
A second struggle begins.
To become a nation implies
the right to the selfishness of nations.
To the blindness and vanity of nations.
But Israel's history cries out
against strength
for the sake of strength,
power for the sake of power.
Strength and power,
are merely signs.
And the greatest injustice
which weighs on Israel, is perhaps
the denial of the right to be unjust.
Look at her.
There she is.
Like Israel.
To understand her,
talk to her, perhaps...
Remind her often
that injustice on this land of Israel
weighs heavier than elsewhere,
because this land itself
is the ransom of injustice.
Also, think of the threats
weighing on her,
to which she gives no cause.
Yes, look at her.
Until she becomes an enigma,
like words endlessly repeated
which one no longer recognizes.
Until, amongst all the inexplicable
things in this world,
the most inexplicable is
That she is there... in front of us,
like a bird, or a cipher,
like a sign.
Subtitles: Corvusalbus, ValVerde, LaJetee