Censored Voices by Mor Loushy

Today is 48 years since the beginning of the Six Day War.  

Following the euphoria of winning the war, a group of kibbutzniks, led by Amos Oz, interviewed soldiers who had recently returned from the battlefield.  Although mostly censored by the military censor, the sound recordings of these interviews were published in a book called The Seventh Day (in hebrew: Siach Lochamim), edited by Avraham (Patchi) Schapira.   

Now, so many years later, the censorship has been lifted and the rest of the recordings have been made available.  Filmmaker Mor Loushy has taken these soundtracks and created a fascinating documentary film, Censored Voices ( שיח לוחמים ), which raises issues of morality during wartime.  This is not an easy film.  We see the soldiers today, men in their 60s and 70s, sitting and listening to themselves talk about their experiences, about their emotions, and about some of the terrible things that they did at that time.  In a very open interview, Avraham Schapira talks about the fact that these acts during the Six Day War -- and the ongoing atrocities by soldiers against Arab citizens of the West Bank -- is "a betrayal of the Zionist vision." 

The film was shown at the Jerusalem Cinematheque this week, and has received a lot of publicity, mainly due to the controversial nature of the material.  

Recently, my husband and I had the chance to preview the film.  For an in-depth look at some of the issues, see my husband's blog posting on The Times of Israel site. 

The film Censored Voices (documentary, 87 minutes) is distributed by Dogwoof  (ana@dogwoof.com).