THE 50 YEARS WAR: ISRAEL AND THE ARABS PART 6 OF 15
The 1999 documentary, The 50 Years War: Israel and the Arabs, that was widely hailed in the United States as groundbreaking in its objectivity and fairness. They both tell their stories through interviews with Arab and Jewish participants, thus making a show of "balance." In treating the rise of Israel, they both begin with the UN partition plan and emphasize Arab intransigence in refusing to accept it.
They both ignore the pre-1948 period of colonization and suggest that Israel was founded chiefly as a refuge for the Jewish victims of the Holocaust. In covering the war itself they both focus almost exclusively on the war in Jerusalem and in particular the Jewish efforts to break the Arab siege. They both only show images of Arab terror. They both dwell on Deir Yassin, admit the horror, but suggest the exceptional nature of the crime.
They both point out the anguish with which Jewish sensibilities reacted to the massacre. In both accounts, the focus on Deir Yassin becomes a kind of badge by which fairness is proclaimed, while in fact each account obscures the dimensions and causes of the larger refugee problem. These similarities are not accidental, but point to a shared and socially maintained structure of interpretation.
Source Watch
Category
✨
People