LA CITY BEAT
http://www.lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=5210&IssueNum=198

Withdrawal from Gaza

Directors Joel Blasberg and Oreet Rees’s angry documentary about the 2005 Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip is undeniably a work of pro-Israel propaganda, but it’s also undeniably effective, the often one-sided perspective notwithstanding. The film depicts the forced removal of Jewish settlers from the tiny community of Gush Katif, nestled along the sea between two larger Palestinian communities. In the film, Gush Katif resembles nothing so much as a pleasant beachside suburban community, populated by the same sort of folks you might see in Bel-Air or Miami, albeit armed with massive machine guns. The forced removal of the Jewish settlers was shockingly controversial – and not just because it was the first time Jewish citizens were pitted against Jewish soldiers, many of whom sympathized with the settlers they were being forced to boot off their land. The film contains interviews with many settlers just prior to being ejected from their spotlessly tidy and landscaped homes, as they disparage the government for giving in to the enemy.

The documentary offers little information from any opposing point of view, and the contrast between the two sides is often extreme to the point of ridiculous: All the Jewish settlers are portrayed as kind and good, while the only Arabs in sight, mostly glimpsed in file news footage, are depicted as frothing-mouthed murderous barbarians. Yet, by any standard, the images of weeping soldiers dragging bewhiskered rabbis out of their temples by their Torahs are remarkably powerful. On the other hand, settlers’ frequent and heartfelt commentary that the land was given to them by God is far less moving than is the fact that the land giveback has proven to be a totally ineffective gesture. (Paul Birchall) (Laemmle’s Town Center 5)