From Paratroopers

• Published date: 09 December 2009
• Date: 09 December 2009
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/S1059-4337(2009)0000050005
• Pages: 19-64
• Author: Shulamit Almog

FROM PARATROOPERS TO WALTZ

WITH BASHIR – THE ABSENCE OF

LAW FROM ISRAELI WAR FILMS

Shulamit Almog

ABSTRACT

The chapter contends that although Israeli reality is replete with legal

issues, very few films deal directly with the law or with a legal process as a

central theme. Contemporary Israeli films are not very different from the

early Israeli films in their embracement of a national heroic narrative,

which typically leaves very little space for legal issues. The chapter

demonstrates the absence of law from Israeli cinema by looking closely at

war films, which are probably the most popular and influential Israeli

films. War films reflect and in the same time participate in the

construction of the Israeli collective consciousness, wherein the army

experience is central. Tracing the way in which law is presented (or lacks

representation) in them may shed light from a new angle on the role of

law in shaping social and political norms in Israel.

1. INTRODUCTION

Law and film has become an area of academic analysis and research mainly

because law, with its many features, is one of the subjects that have been

Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, Volume 50, 19–64

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ISSN: 1059-4337/doi:10.1108/S1059-4337(2009)0000050005

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given continuous and intensive attention in the cinema since its earliest

days.

1

Two assumptions are linked to the establishment of an interdisciplinary

discourse centered upon law and film. The first assumption is that both law

and film are complex social practices that are able to create meanings

relevant to wide audiences. The second assumption is that there are complex

interrelations between law and film, and both the phenomena influence and

are influenced by each other.

The films that deal with law are usually located within a specific, easily

identifiable location. A film about a murder trial that is conducted before a

jury in the United States, a film that reveals of the incrimination of innocent

people in England, a film that centers upon the exploits of an investigating

judge in France – all such films and their like, even if they are of interest to

the public throughout the world, are created within a certain society, and in

most cases refer to a definite legal system and cultural circumstances that

characterize that society.

2

The issue of the relationship between the local and the universal aspects

of cinematic art is a complex one. I do not wish here to enter into the

complicated matter of defining the borderlines of national culture or

‘‘national films’’ and acknowledge the distinction made by Michel Lagny

regarding the essential connections between a national culture and external

cultural systems it is exposed to (Lagny, 1992, p. 98).

3

For my purposes

here, it is sufficient to assert that awareness of the distinctiveness of the

society in which a film is created and viewed may be in many cases

important for grasping its poetic and cultural significance. In the same time,

the film may advance a richer understanding of the society in which it

was created. Against this background – the extensive concern with law

as represented in films created in various states and societies and the

developing research into the connections between law and film – I attempt to

examine the affinities between Israeli films and law.

4

A preliminary examination suggests that law does not figure prominently

in Israeli films. As I discuss in greater detail later on, various descriptions

and analyses refer to the history and development of Israeli cinematic art,

but all of them omit any significant association to law. Although Israeli

reality is replete with legal issues, very few films deal directly with the law or

with a legal process as their central theme.

5

It is easy to discern that there are

no courtroom dramas in Israeli cinema, but even if we widen the definition,

and regard every film that deals with any kind of significance in questions

concerning justice and its pursuance as a law film,

6

it will be difficult to come

across many Israeli films that correspond to this wider definition.

7

SHULAMIT ALMOG20

In the following section, I review the continuous absence of law

throughout the development of Israeli cinema, while stressing on the

contexts in which it may have been expected to appear. The absence of the

law is of course not without importance. The refraining from dealing with

a certain subject should be examined carefully to reveal its significance, and

I try to do so by focusing on its absence in war films.

War films and war have a special place in Israeli films. Films that place

soldiers and wars at their center have been created throughout the history of

Israeli cinema, and they reflect the developments and changes that Israeli

society has undergone. Beyond the stories of warfare and the warriors’

camaraderie, war films reflect other central themes in the Israeli experience,

such as the Holocaust and the Kibbutz life. But although law features

prominently in Israeli life and that, as we shall see later on, it might have

appeared in many of the war films because of the subjects they deal with, law

remains constantly absent. Section 3 analyzes the place of law as an ‘‘absent

presence’’ in a number of films dealing with the IDF (Israeli Defense Army)

and its exploits. The following sections propose an overall analysis and

suggest various possible reasons for the absence of law in Israeli war films.

2. THE FIRST YEARS

Israeli cinema was born in the 1920s, and its founders regarded it as

a significant instrument for serving the Zionist cause (Ne’eman, 2006a,

p. 133). The main subject of films created in those years was the story of

materializing the Zionist dream in the Land of Israel. Such films were

labeled ‘‘Zionist realism.’’

8

Common themes in these early films were the

distress of European Jewry and arrival of abused Jews to Palestine, and their

struggle for survival in their new, hostile environment (Ibid., p. 34). The

films were mostly funded by the Zionist Movement, and served to advance

settlement in Palestine and to raise contributions.

9

Such films, which

were characterized by an overt propaganda dimension, were a powerful

instrument in presenting the Zionist cause at its best both internally and

externally, and even more so in helping to consolidate a national identity

and potent myths that continued to affect Israeli society for decades.

10

The state of Israel was established in 1948. In the 1950s, private investors

began to finance films. In the same time the state gradually began to support

cinematic productions. However, the main themes remained unchanged.

The films that were created during the first years of Israel still belonged

almost entirely to the genre called ‘‘national-heroic’’ (Ibid., p. 135).

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The Absence of Law from Israeli War Films 21