Terror Comes to the Oscars: The Gatekeepers

Perhaps as astonishing as what the intelligence elite have said is their having sat down with a documentary filmmaker. In an interview, Moreh told me he used only 2 percent of some 50 hours of interviews he taped with the former heads of the Shin Bet. He is working on a five-hour series for Israeli TV; a book is in process. He hopes to screen the film on the West Bank, where it hasn’t yet been shown; Arabs who have attended film festivals in Europe and America have told him they were deeply moved by it, he told me, when I sat down with him recently in New York. They know such a film could never have been made in any of their own countries.
Moreh’s question about whether Israel is becoming a “Shin Bet” state has prompted some Israeli extremists to threaten him. “You should see my Facebook page,” he told me. “One blogger said I should get cancer.” But Moreh has few illusions about the Palestinians. His overhead shot of the bombing of bus Number 5 is hard to watch. He would never forget, he told me, seeing a young girl blown to pieces in a suicide bus bombing. “Those horrific images are embedded in my memory,” he said. At the same time, he argues that refusing to criticize Israeli policy is a form of betrayal. “A real friend does not encourage the Titanic’s captain to keep heading straight for the iceberg,” he said. “He doesn’t yell—full steam ahead!”
Judith Miller, Tablet Magazine