“Any comparison is grossly untrue. It makes me angry,” says a female lawyer interviewed during “Diogenes: Ansar 3,” one of the edgiest films in this year’s Jewish Film Festival.
The film, one of two co-presentations with Cinemayaat: The Arab Film Festival, seems to mark a new level in critical self-analysis even for the notoriously introspective San Francisco Jewish Film Festival.
The 50-minute video, in Arabic and Hebrew with English subtitles, was produced by a team of Dutch and Israeli filmmakers in 1998. This showing is its U.S. premiere.
Recalling the way she signed warrants to detain Palestinians in prison camps in the late 1980s, the unnamed female lawyer shakes her head. “No one has done anything that could legally be called a war crime,” she says.
Note the word “legally.
Of course, abuses were committed. But, like anything else that reflects badly on Israel’s past, evidence has often been swept under the carpet.
Jews who watch “Diogenes: Ansar 3,” might find themselves squirming uncomfortably as the carpet is lifted and evidence presented.
There’s the ex-detainee who recalls being told by Israeli police, “If you don’t admit you threw stones, we’ll kill you,” before being hauled off to prison.
There’s the Palestinian musician who says that he wasn’t accused of any political or military activities, but was detained “for singing freedom songs.”
Both were taken to Ansar 3, a large prison camp in the Negev desert, where conditions were anything but humane. Prisoners were often told to stand in the sun for hours, were given insufficient clothing and weren’t allowed to write to their families.
Many were arrested and sentenced without due process. “It’s not what they taught us in law school,” admits the female lawyer.
After arriving in Ansar, detainees were often beaten or publicly humiliated. Boys as young as 14 were given two 6-month prison terms back-to-back.
“I admit that excesses occurred there,” says the camp’s ex-commander, an Israeli man named Tsemach.
Discussing Ansar 3 on film after 10 years of silence, other members of the prison administration are notably frank about their impressions.
Many ex-guards admit confusion as to how Jews barely one generation removed from the Holocaust could treat Palestinians so roughly.
“At night, we wore coats, long johns and boots, and we lit fires,” recalls one. “I was freezing in my coat. The prisoners wore only a sweater, pants and clogs.”
But the film isn’t all guilt and doom. Not quite.
A happy moment — of sorts — takes place when a former guard goes to visit a former prisoner in the Palestinian autonomous region. The prisoner, a political scientist, recalls how he used to cite the Geneva Convention to guards in the camp, and the two laugh.
An Israeli ex-guard and a Palestinian ex-prisoner laughing over the time they spent together? Perhaps there’s hope after all.
Still, the ex-guards interviewed here are mostly embarrassed about the conditions at Ansar 3. “Without doubt, it was awful for the detainees,” admits one.
A more hopeful vision is put forth in “Return to Oudja,” the other film presented in collaboration with Cinemayaat. The 60-minute film, produced in 1987, is in French and Arabic with English subtitles.
Here, we see a group of elderly Jews returning to the Moroccan city of Oudja, where they lived before World War II.
As they stroll Oudja’s streets, visit Jewish cemeteries and reunite with ex-neighbors, the returnees recall a time when they lived peacefully among Muslims.
It’s a nice, feel-good concept. Unfortunately, “Return to Oudja” isn’t a good film.
To call it “plodding” would be a compliment. It actually moves at a glacial pace, further hampered by uninspired editing and flat interviews.
Although it’s an unsettling trip, Ansar 3 is a better place to visit than Oudja at this year’s festival.