The Gatekeepers is a fascinating documentary on the recent history of the Israeli/Palestinian issue. The movie covers interviews from Yuval Diskin, Avraham Shalom, Avi Dichtner, Yaavoc Peri, Carmi Gillon, and Ami Ayalon, the six surviving retired Directors of Israel's internal security organization, Shin Bet. Director Dror Moreh spoke to all six at length, and candidly, about their tenures as head of Shin Bet, and the events and controversies that surrounded each one. According to the film, none of them have ever before spoken in public about their experiences. The core issue of the entire documentary is all the different facets of the Israeli/Palestinian question and Israel's handling of the situation since the 1968 Six-Days War. The only reason I gave this film 3.5 stars instead of four is that it requires the viewer to have more than a superficial knowledge of the issue's history.
What is fascinating, is that all of the interviewees, to a one, agree that the situation has been mishandled. In separate interviews, every one not only agrees that not only should peace talks with the Palestinians go further, but that the Palestinian state should become a reality. Each argues, from his vantage point in his former job, that brutal crackdowns have only resulted in more sophisticated terrorists and more and more violent incidents, culminating in the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin over the Oslo Accords and the two intifadas. They also address how this complex, and very emotional question is not as black-and-white as most politicians make it out to be. There are legitimate complaints on both sides, and elements equally as extreme and viscous as the other in order to achieve their desired goals. Nothing is ignored or glossed over. The allegations of Shin Bet abuses to their prisoners, the intelligence failures that led to Rabin's assassination and the Jewish Underground's role in it, to the killing of 15 people during a targeted assassination of Salah Shihada, leader and founder of Hamas' military wing, when a one-ton bomb was dropped on his house. All of them are looked at and addressed with a surprising amount of candor.
What is important to remember in this film is that the interviewees are not political scientists or armchair policy wonks speaking from uninformed academic ivory towers. These are the men who were directly responsible for Israel's internal security from 1984-2012. There were no buffers between them and the actual decision-makers. They all give strikingly similar narratives and opinions on Shin Bet's overall success. It can be boiled down thusly: Politicians expect binary solutions to incredibly complex issues. When something goes wrong, blame get distributed away from them (ie they are not to be trusted to have your back when the chips are down). Policy failures become intelligence failures because those communities cannot defend themselves because of the nature of information they possess. Harder responses to terrorist attacks, without addressing the real underlying solutions produce more vicious terrorists. Violence begets violence. And most importantly and coincidentally, the hardest to do, reconciliation must occur if there is ever to be forward progress and an end to hostility. And this is where the movie can resonate with us in America.
George Santayana once said that those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. The film does not suggest that one simply roll over for your enemy, but does suggest that violence will continue if you don't try to at least understand your enemy and work to a common solution. This involves, to a degree, forgiveness; not an easy thing to do when innocent blood has been spilled. We cannot just kill them all. The Nazis tried that once and it didn't work too well for them. We can take a warning from the Israeli experience and use it to our advantage. Always be vigilant, ever ready to respond should an attack be coming from the left hand, but always be ready with the right hand to try to reach common understanding and peace. This is anathema to human nature, but it is necessary if we are all to survive the evil demons of ourselves.
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