Waltz with Bashir : Euro-Funding Backs Israeli ‘Anti-War’ Film

By accusing Jews of complicity in “Nazi-like” crimes, Ari Folman’s film releases Germans from the heavy burden of their past.

February 19, 2009 - by John Rosenthal
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For the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, which has nominated it for an Oscar as Best Foreign Language Film, the animated feature Waltz with Bashir is an “Israeli” film. As discussed in part one of this article, the film paints a grim portrait of Israeli forces during the 1982 Lebanon War and even accuses them of complicity in “genocide,” drawing unseemly parallels between Israel and Nazi Germany. To this extent, the “Israeli” label is undoubtedly crucial to the effect that the film has on its audience. If Israelis say so themselves, after all, it must be true. …

But is Waltz with Bashir an Israeli film? Well, director Ari Folman is Israeli. Folman is also the star of the film and his ostensible “reconstruction” of his personal experience in Lebanon provides the storyline. But closer inspection of the film’s financing reveals that Waltz for Bashir was in fact largely produced with European money — and not just European money, moreover, but European public money.

As Folman acknowledges in an interview with the publication France-Amérique, the film’s “most important source of financing” and “principal sponsor” was the Franco-German “cultural” channel ARTE. ARTE is a public television channel that is jointly funded by the French and German governments. In addition to broadcasting in the two sponsor countries, ARTE also provides programming to other European television channels and co-produces films. A French subdivision of ARTE, ARTE France Cinéma, co-produced Waltz with Bashir.

It is hardly surprising that ARTE would have been receptive to Folman’s project. ARTE, both in its television programming and its film productions, has been beating the drum about the Middle East conflict for years now and its basic “orientation” in the matter has never been hard to find. For example, ARTE also co-produced Hany Abu-Assad’s 2005 ode to a Palestinian suicide bomber Paradise Now. The film depicts the bomber as a kind of Christ-like figure: a shot of the bomber dining with friends the night before the attack is clearly modeled on Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper of Christ.”

Nor are Israeli/Nazi comparisons anything new to ARTE. In 2003, ARTE broadcast a four and a half hour documentary titled Route 181 on the 1947 UN partition line between Israel and a prospective Arab state. The film employed visual and thematic allusions to Claude Lanzmann’s classic documentary Shoah, in order to suggest a parallel between the displacement suffered by Palestinian Arabs as a result of the creation of Israel and the fate suffered by European Jews under the Third Reich. The film juxtaposes an interview with a Palestinian Arab barber about the “Naqba,” or “disaster,” and a shot of train tracks. One of the most memorable moments in Lanzmann’s Shoah occurs during an interview with the barber Abraham Bomba: a Holocaust survivor who begins to cry as he talks. Shoah famously features images of train tracks. Those train tracks led to Auschwitz. Route 181 was co-produced by ARTE France Cinéma and WDR, one of the public television broadcasters making up the German pole of ARTE.

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John Rosenthal’s writings on European politics and transatlantic relations have appeared in English, French, and German in such leading publications as Policy Review, Les Temps Modernes, and Merkur. He holds a PhD in philosophy and he taught political philosophy and classical German philosophy before turning to journalism. More of his work can be found at Transatlantic Intelligencer.

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11 Comments

1. gboisjo:

European hate for the Jew is old news. With the exception of a few scandinavian countries during world war two all of Europe was
complicit in the atrocities against Jewish people. As Europe continues to hate jews and embrace Islam I can only hope that when the totality of this choice is felt and caos ensues, that America won’t once again save the merciless Europeans from themselves.

Feb 19, 2009 - 4:24 am 2. e:

Nothing unexpected. The Liberal ideology is that nothing is sacred. All good things must be equivocated with evil, evil with good. The whore is wiser than the preacher. A suicide bomber is Jesus. Jews are Nazis. The moral are secretly sexually degenerate. The list goes on.

Feb 19, 2009 - 5:35 am 3. Beate Schmidt:

Thank you for your article!
I am german and have to read american blogs to
be informed what happens here and in Europe…
The media did not even tell about Geert Wilders beeing bannned from England!

Feb 19, 2009 - 6:22 am 4. Marie Claude:

Well, I think you are a bit partisan on that article, cuz Arte is one of the left TV, where you still can watch interesting “docu” and or movies. Generally they are pro-Jews, at least that is what the local muslims reproach to Arte.

Though it might be that the palestinian side gained some credit in the late years, I would say that Arte reflects more the “intello” spectre of lefty obedience, that isn’t anti-semite but rather anti-sionist, though this happened to be reflected by 15 % of the french population, acording to the last poll saying that the whole EU was going to the anti-semiism of the thirties. I can attest that the kind of old anti-semitism is obsolete, only retardeds would profess it like the half-African, Dieudonné, an extremist, at the beginning from the left, that has joined the extreme Lepen right. Generally his shows are cancelled because of the “hate” speech, that are not allowed as free speech in our country

ie my post :

13. Marie Claude:

“her counterparts in Europe/Eurabia is the rabid European anti Semitism which is getting as bad now as it was in the 1930’s.”

Néanmoins, en France, c’est l’extrême gauche à l’origine, qui porte l’accusation, plus encore que les staliniens, pourtant zélés, et alors que l’extrême droite française est, quant à elle, massivement pro-israélienne.

nonetheless, in France the extreme left is at the origin, that bears the acusation, more than the marxists, though zealous, while the extreme french right is fully pro-Israel

extrem right, ~5%

Les soutiens aux Palestiniens comme ceux d’Israël doivent en finir avec cette pose qui consiste à se saisir de la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Il n’y a ici nul nouveau nazi, ni le Hamas ni Tsahal n’étant comparables au phénomène national-socialiste.

The supporters to the Palestinians as well to Israel must stop their rethoric about WW2, there isn’t new nazi parti, neither Hamas nor Israel can be compared to the national socialism phenomenon.

Nicholas Lebourg, Historian

http://www.rue89.com/2009/02/16/israel-palestine-jerusalem-n-est-pas-nuremberg

Si 31% estiment que les juifs sont “en grande partie” ou au moins “un peu” responsables de la crise économique mondiale, ce chiffre varie largement d’un pays à l’autre: c’est en Hongrie que cette opinion est la plus forte avec 46%, devant l’Autriche (43%), la Pologne (38%), l’Allemagne (30%), l’Espagne (25%), la Grande-Bretagne (16%) et la France (15%).

if 31% think that the Jews are soewhat responsible of the global economy crisis, the numbers differ frome one country to another. It’s in Hongary that this opinion is the strongest, before Austria, Poland, Germany, Spain, UK and France !!! (uh oh, got to mark that France is last in the rate, though we have the biggest muslim population)

Canadian press

http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5iVmASXr_TsjDZbWbBQ2JRW6CmPlg

Feb 16, 2009 – 5:22 am

14. Marie Claude:

forgot to mention : extreme left ~5 % too

Feb 19, 2009 - 7:45 am 5. Azores:

“With the exception of a few scandinavian countries during world war two all of Europe was
complicit in the atrocities against Jewish people.”

You should also include Portugal. A lot of Jews escaped through Portugal comin from the south of France. Many of them lived there some time before leaving.

Feb 19, 2009 - 3:29 pm 6. Marie Claude:

Azores you are right


the crucial factor was Portugal’s readiness to accept these refugees. ‘Had Portugal – which did itself expect a rapid departure overseas [of the refugees] – refused the transit of the refugees, Spain’s policy would have turned out differently…

… bid., 130-2. In June 1940, when the first major wave of refugees reached the Pyrenees, the Portuguese consul in Bordeaux, Aristides de Sousa Mendes, issued about 2,000 Portuguese visa – against the wishes of his own government; Rother, Spanien, 114. See also Jose Alain Fralon, A Good Man in Evil Times; The Heroic Story of Aristides de Sousa Mendes – The Man who saved the Lives of countless Refugees in World War II, trans. Peter Graham, Carroll & Graf, 2001. Fralon claims that, in a period of six months in 1940, Mendes wrote visas for more than 10,000 refugees.

http://wais.stanford.edu/Spain/spain_FrancoWantedWWII(110303).html

Feb 19, 2009 - 4:11 pm 7. Shef Rogers:

Another interesting difference: the difference between “more than sixty years ago” and “last week.”

Feb 19, 2009 - 5:59 pm 8. Juancho:

Continental Europe is still very anti-Semitic, and Spain is about as bad as it gets. Comparisons of Israel and the Nazis are routine in the mainstream press, as are demonstrations organized by leftist parties that abuse both Jews and Israel.

There are so few Jews in Spain that most Spaniards have never met one, and they often have outlandish stereotypes of power and riches and conspiracies. Something you frequently hear is “Hollywood controls American opinion, and the Jews control Hollywood, so the Jews control American opinion, QED.”

Feb 20, 2009 - 6:08 am 9. Iseutz:

Hi,
i’ve been looking for a more neat critque on Waltz with Bashier. Thats why, i found this two articles. In the beginning, i was happy to read a something more distinguished view onto this movie. I was bored by the more or less congruent and – so it seems to me – simply copied and reconfigured mainstream articles about WwB.

But when it comes to conclusion respectivly questioning the motivations of Ari Folman, the distinguished reflectons were left aside and made space for a row of prejudices. The over-subscribed, fictionous characters, presumly thought as to be accents of the message ‘war is horrible and makes us into something not-human’ are transformed into evidences for german/european anti-semitic policies.

Where is the distinguished analysis in an argument, which is not less than a simple conversening the idiocy of the truly anti-semitic or fundametalistic propaganda of a worldwide jewish conspiracy?! Mr.Rosenthal try to show, that europe countries, especially Germany (in his mind apparently automatic the same as anti-semitic) have heavy interests, to blame Isreal/’the Jews’ to be in the same way inhuman, as their own achestors in youngest history, tending to obtain moral and emotional relief.

It is right, that there is a dangerous tendency of careless comparing the nazi-outrage with other war-crimes. I believe, that most of us (author included) are in deficit in knowing all the worlds issues and the whole own role/responsibility. And, if they try to correct this deficits, they can’t be successful in the end, because the world and history are much to complex, to ‘understand’ everything. This may lead into partially irrational beliefs, which in consequence are often the fertile soil to radicalistic/fundamendalist views of the world.

But those deficits are NOT an apology, to construct intentionally a picture of a common thread by ‘the europeans’ in all. That peoples of western europe made other and themselve suffering in an unbelievable way and quantity is the main reason, why the following generations, eg in Germany, as a part of constant reflexion, takes many efforts to talk about injustice and inhumanity in the world or try to motivate and support others, to do the same. To describe those efforts as selfish, malicious actions of ignorance and the result of deep anti-semitic cultures/politics is homespun demagogic ranting.

If we would follow the argumentation of Mr.Rosenthal to the end, no-one would be allowed to articulate or helping to articulate positions against inhuman actions like war, no matter if we are speaking about Isreal, USA or Germany and so on. And no matter if those are issues of history or present time, the ever-difficult now and here. But not to speak, to discuss, to start a discourse, all those crimes will go on and on and on. WwB is one of many small steps on the way to discuss and solve one of our (and i say this as german) irrational caused problems. Trying to silence or to devalue those efforts is simply wrong and kind of narrow-minded.

WwB in my eyes is not a real documentary, not a academic format to clear up a historical event. This label only made it possible to denunciate it as a subtle attempt of anti-semitic powers, which were located in europe (sic)…

But it is a strong and absolutely misunderstandable statement of a group of persons, who are agaist war for best reasons. It’s a memento, which may cause collective memorization (in Isreal). If there is exeggaration (and for this reason historical incorrect elements), it to emphasize the message, but not to brainwash the viewers.

At all, i will watch the movie again and will keep the opinion of Mr.Rosenthal in my mind. But even there are references to his arguments, i possible stay at my position, that he in the end definitly shot over the mark.

with best regards
Iseutz

PS: i have to excuse myself for my poor english grammar and vocabulary. in german i’m much more eloquent. and i’m absolutly aware, that writing comments in the internet is to 99,99~ percent a pure waste of time. but i don’t care. just using the internet as long it stays free. ;)

Feb 24, 2009 - 12:04 pm 10. Iseutz:

adjustment note:
i wrote “absolutely missunderstable” which is absolutely ^^ wrong. i meant “absolutly NOT misunderstandable”, which makes much more sense in my context.

(thx@moderation, if you allow this supplement)

Feb 24, 2009 - 12:40 pm 11. Herb Sunshine:

What good sense the anti-semites have in not electing this cartoon for the Oscar

Mar 9, 2009 - 9:43 am

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