Mr. Rosenthal simply can’t bring himself to believe that Israel can ever do anything right, even if the movie is predicated upon true stories of war veterans. In discrediting them, Mr. Rosenthal is insulting Israel and is being himself anti-semitic.

I also find it hypocritical, nay disingenuous, that this scumbag of a writer dared to LIE about the Nazi parallel. The movie DID NOT suggest that the IDF were Nazis (although there is a lot of evidence elsewhere, involving settlers in particular in other massacres that proves otherwise). Rather, the word was mentioned only twice, coming up in two separate conversations…the movie therefore didn’t assert the parallel in any way. Even if the author’s twisted mind saw it this way, he AGAIN missed the point.

As the Kahan commission pointed out, the IDF enabled the Phalange terrorists to commit this Nazi-like atrocity against unarmed civilians…the parallel was again based on the image of Phalange trucks hoarding away scores of civilians, like the trains to Auschwitz, to “camps”, and then coming back empty. The parallel is inescapable. In no way does Folman assert in the documentary that 6 Palestinians were gassed.

Also, the movie was NOT funded by Europe until after Chanel 8 ran out of funds to give to Folman who saw that his groundbreaking idea to have a feature length animated film would cost a shitload more than the 120 grand he was initially given.

So Mr. Rosenthal, shame on you for your preverications and lies…you’re a no-body in the film critic world, seeing as though your “review” is in none of the major aggregates such as Metacritic (where Waltz with Bashir got 91%, Universal Acclaim) and Rotten Tomatoes (97%).

War can be a horror. There are other horrible things too.

“For us who grew up in those kinds of families, are we more ready to listen to those kinds of stories? On the contrary, I think it is harder. The Holocaust was like a one-time experience in the history of humankind for us. We are not ready for anything else.”

But Folman is adamant in insisting that there are no easy comparisons to be made between the Nazi murder of the Jews and the massacre at Sabra and Shatilla. “There is no comparison, there can be no comparison. But mass murder is mass murder, and it is something that the imagination cannot believe or accept, even while it is happening.”

War is horror beyond human comprehension: This is the theme of “Waltz With Bashir.”

“This film,” insisted Folman, “could have been made by an ex-American soldier in Vietnam, a Russian in Afghanistan, an American today in Iraq. … It could have been made by anyone who wakes up one morning and finds himself hundreds of kilometers away from home, in a remote city that has nothing to do with him or his life, nothing whatsoever. He doesn’t know what he’s doing there, he is terrified, and he has no clue.”
from: http://www.alternet.org/movies/116016/%27waltz_with_bashir%27_makes_war_look_stupid/?page=2

I found the film very moving and the “comic strip” style is brilliantly executed. It is generally anti-war in scope not anti-Israel. Israel is an open and self-critical society, in stark contrast to Palestinian society – criticism of Palestinian authorities by Palestinians is dangerous to their health! Lebanon is not much better and it has always struck me as an oxymoron – associating the Phalangists with the name of Jesus Christ.

The porn scene is the one part of the film that I felt jarred; but are we to assume that Israeli soldiers have never ransacked the cities they have taken or been vulnerable to porn? Actually the scene is quite sad; the soldier’s reaction is evidence of an unbalanced mind. I am currently reading Ron Leshem’s (an Israeli) novel “Beaufort” (won Israel’s top literary award for 2006) which deals with the same war and the teenage male soldiers’ language is crude and their chief preoccupation is sex. The military actions they are involved in are pointless and futile. The blurb says the novel has been hailed by the soldiers who served in the Lebanon war as “the true voice of that sobering period”.

All nations have to question their country’s actions in war and not let wrongdoing go unpunished e.g. Australia imprisoned “enemy aliens” during World War II and they were not all POWs; some were locals of German, Italian and Japanese origin.