This fascinating and extremely well-documented and
well-researched TV series includes an historical chapter, and then delves into
the complicated issues of modern Lebanon.
According to Duki Dror, Israelis are used to thinking about Lebanon
purely as an issue of defending ourselves against terrorist attacks in the
north, but through a TV series such as this one, we are able to see that it is
much more complicated than that! In a DOCAVIV
interview after the screening, the filmmaker stated that the working assumption
of those who conceived, produced and directed this film is that if we can
understand Lebanon in all of its strange diverse components, then we can
understand the Middle East, and perhaps even ourselves.
Episode 1, entitled the Lebanon Kaleidascope,
offers an historical overview, beginning with the artificial creation of the
country in the 1920s. The country was
made up of opposites and developed into a Western paradise quite quickly,
offering extraordinary culture and exciting nightlife. But things rapidly deteriorated in Lebanon
after King Hussein drove the PLO
leadership from Jordan in 1970 during what became known as “Black September”. My husband and I were here in Israel as
students that year, and we remember the news reports of this traumatic event.
The Lebanese were
forced by the Arab world to provide a southern swath of territory to the armed
PLO “freedom fighters”, which included Palestinian
refugees who arrived after the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948,
and those who arrived following the outcome of the Six Day War. At this time, during
the 1970s, the Christians living in Lebanon began to feel endangered, and this
marked the beginning of the civil war.
It also marked the beginning of terrible terror attacks by the PLO against
Israel, when a school bus on the northern border was hit by an RPG. Prime Minister (at that time) Golda Meir
demanded that Lebanon crack down on the terrorist groups, and thus things began
to heat up within Lebanon. Palestinians massacred the Christians living in a
village called Damour. The Christians
retaliated and killed literally thousands of Palestinians at Tel El-Zatar. Then Syria entered the conflict by financing
and arming the PLO. The violence
continued to escalate, and the cycle of civil war and killing got worse
and worse. Since the Christians felt
that the entire Arab world was against them, they turned to the state of Israel
for support and in 1976 then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin agreed to equip the Christian
Phalangists, creating a new alliance, that eventually became stronger and stronger.
Episode 2 added much more to the viewer’s understanding of
the complexity of Lebanon which at that time included Sunni and Shi’ite
Muslims, many different sects of Christians, with the Maronite Phalangists being
the most well known, and then the PLO fighters and Palestinian refugees are thrown
into the mix. Historically, the Maronite
Christians ruled Lebanon and made up the elite with other Christian groups and
Sunni Muslims. The Shi’ite Muslims lived
in the south and were humiliated, discriminated against, and even
persecuted. The Palestinian refugees who
came to Lebanon from Israel are Sunnis and didn’t get along with the Shi’ites
or the Christians in the south. It was an
anarchic situation for a long time, with one persecuted group hating another
persecuted group, engaging in violent reprisals against each other constantly.
Today, the Hizbollah, who are Shi’ite, are supported by Iran and Syria. During the Civil War (which lasted 15 years
approximately), Muslims killed Christians and Christians killed Muslims and
Christians killed Christians. And,
eventually, it brought Israel into the “Lebanese Mud.”
As the citizens of Israel suffered more and more terrorist attacks in the north of
Israel, and the Phalangists, who became the Pro-Israel SLA (South Lebanon Army) tried to protect their
Christian villages in South Lebanon and to stop the PLO fighters from
infiltrating into Israel, the situation went from bad to worse. The constant
escalation catalyzed then-Prime Minister
Menachem Begin (who had just made peace with Egypt in 1979) to appoint a
hawkish defense minister, Ariel Sharon, and, as they say, the rest is history!
The Israeli soldiers who were interviewed for this series who
participated in the 1982 incursion into Lebanon admitted on camera that they
had virtually no idea about the complex and diverse ethnic, political and
religious divisions in Southern Lebanon.
In an attempt to be even-handed and to show both sides of the narrative,
this excellent documentary series reminds us that the young Israeli soldiers who
were fighting, suffered from the cruel and violent images of repeated terrorist
attacks by the PLO at that time. Similarly,
the young Palestinian fighters were motivated by
their perceptions of their people’s sufferings from 1948, 1967 and into the
1980s.
According to the filmmakers, there were more than 100 people
interviewed for this series, including Israeli, PLO, Phalangist and American
speakers, providing different points of view.
Due to the fact that the TV series is an Israeli-German-American
co-production, with international crews, they were able to locate and interview
people who would not usually cooperate with Israeli filmmakers. This enabled the film to truly be a
kaleidoscope of multiple contradictory points of view, helping the viewer to
get a deeper understanding of the complexity of the situation in Lebanon that
we still confront to this very day, as opposed to usual simplistic black and
white, us vs. them view of this very messy situation on our northern
border.
The TV series, Lebanon, Borders of Blood, is
produced for broadcast on KAN, the Israeli public TV station, and we watched
the Israeli version. A different version
will be edited for viewing abroad.
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