I just saw Waltz with Bashir. I had low expectations, but it managed to even be worse still.

There is in Israeli and American “liberal” culture an obnoxious obnoxious and racist obsession with the so-called anguish of the Israeli terrorist occupations soldier. This logic runs like this: Israeli terrorist occupation soldiers are really nice guys and they do not want to kill children, but they fact that they have to brings them such great anguish. That’s the whole plot of the film, simple. This view is, of course, racist for it places a higher value on the life of the victimizer Israeli terrorist occupation soldier over the victims of their crimes. Instead of your attention being on those who suffering and feeling sympathy for them, Waltz seeks to make us feel sorry for the Israeli terrorists who directly facilitated the massacre of Palestinians at Sabra and Shatila [Allah rarhamhom].

From the first few minuted of the film, its racism is made unmistakable. Besides the Israeli soldiers, the only other characters humanized are dogs and horses. One soldiers speaks with regret about how he killed 26 dogs, but says very little about killing an innocent family in their car. Another soldiers is totally blinded to the killing of innocent people all around him, but wakes up and is shaken into sadness when he sees Arabian horses dying and asks “what they do to deserve such suffering?” He never asks that question about the Arabs dying around. For Israelis, animals are worth more than Arabs. These are the standards of the hateful ideology of Zionism.

Further, the concentration on Sabra and Shatila is meant to obscure for the audience all the crimes Israel committed in its 1982 invasion of Lebanon [and then some with all the Israeli invasions and bombings of Lebanon]. The films presents the Sabra and Shatila massacre and Israeli soldiers regretting that it took place as if this was the only massacre that occurred then and the ever so conscionable Israelis are so saddened. The film presents this massacre - the one Israelis didn’t directly commit - as the only massacre then and the audience is supposed to draw the conclusion that Israelis didn’t commit any crimes in Lebanon and feel bad about the one those fascists Phalange thugs [which Israel funded since the 1950s and armed, and gave them cover for the massacre and provided with light throughout the night to commit the horror. Ariel Sharon dined at the home of Bashir Gemayle]. But Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982 killed over 15,000 Lebanese and Palestinians. Israel engaged in indiscriminated bombings in Lebanon, as it does everywhere. Watching this film, you would never know that. And that is an intention directing choice.

Pure and simple, this film is nothing but racist liberal trash that seeks to humanize the Israel solider and seeks to forgive him for his crimes while ignoring the suffering of the Palestinians and the Lebanese at the direct hand of Israel. The Arabs are never humanized in the film. Not a single Arab is given a line. And the focus, again, is only on Sabra and Shatila so as to ignore the other over 17,000 victims of Israel.

And, finally, even if the filmmaker regrets his service in Lebanon: too late. And if another Israeli soldier 20 years from now wants to make a film seeking to absolve him for what he did in Gaza recently that will also be too late.

The film is a fraud and I am glad it lost the Oscar. But I suggest you watch it and see through its sham message.

Finally, I’ll add this great review of Waltz by a real liberal: Jeff Blankfort:

I finally got to to San Francisco last week and went to see Waltz with Bashir. It was as I expected, designed to make the Israeli soldiers appear as victims and use the massacre at Sabra and Shatila–which we are explicitly told was committed by Chritsians– as a disguise for the far greater crimes that the Israelis , including, I suspect, the soldiers involved in the movie, had committed against Palestinian and Lebanese civilians in the three plus months that elapsed from the June 6,1982 invasion to mid-September when the massacre was committed.

The vast majority who will have seen the film will never know that the Israelis, as in Gaza,broke a cease-fire, that they killed over 17,000 civilians,wounded tens of thousands more using white phosphorous and cluster bombs, besieged Beirut for 76 days, and as in Gaza, attacked ambulances and refused to let Red Cross vehicles bring aid and medical supplies to wounded civilians.

When I was in Israel in 1983,I interviewed a number of Israeli reservists who had become part of Yesh G’vul, the reserve soldiers refusal movement, some of whom had refused to serve from the beginning,and some who went into Lebanon with the 80,000 man invading force and then, outraged at the atrocities they saw their fellow soldiers committing, refused to return. What they told me a year after the invasion was totally different than the message contained in the film, which no doubt explains why the Israeli consulates around the country are promoting it. The former Israeli tank officer with whom I stayed outside of Jerusalem told me that every building on the road to Beirut had been blasted by Israeli tanks, what I thought was an exaggeration until I took a trip on the road myself. Another resister, also a tank commander, told me that they had left nothing more than a meter high in the refugee camp of Ain Helweh outside of Sidon. This was pretty evident from the nature of the rebuilt houses when I visted there in 1983. In relation to the truth of that war,the film is a lie. The director Ari Folman, like Israel, is still in denial.