Waltz With Bashir

Leon Panetta, Obama's nominee for CIA chief, just disappointed every person with an understanding of human rights and dignity when he fell into the "24" hole: during his confirmation hearings, he said that the United States would continue the practice of rendition, picking terrorism suspects off the street and sending them to a third country for questioning. Although he said the agency would refuse to deliver a suspect into the hands of a country known for torture or other actions "that violate our human values," why else would the US kidnap and deliver a suspect to a third country?

In his second day before the Senate, Panetta retracted his earlier testimony that the Bush administration transferred prisoners for the purpose of torture. Soon he will be doing so, too, it seems.

With this understanding of just how far the United States has slipped in its public commitment to human rights, I say public commitment, because most presidents have engaged in secret, hopefully isolated acts of treachery. However, starting with Bush and Cheney, there were no attempts to cover up the departures from domestic and international law. As a matter of fact, instead, there were legal memoranda written to justify such departures. See Propublica.org's list of the memos produced by the Office of Legal Counsel to justify the "war on terror."

With our own country's abuses in mind, tonight we went to see Waltz with Bashir, an Israeli animated film that certainly won't elicit Disney happy feelings. The film examines memory, specifically the loss of memory of soldiers who participated in the first Lebanon War, when the residents of the Palestinian refugee camps, Sabra and Shatila, were massacred by Phalangist militias, those are Lebanese Christians, after their leader Bashir was assassinated. The camps were under the authority of the Israeli Defense Forces, with Ariel Sharon in command. The Kahan Commission later found Sharon personally responsible and the Israeli Defense Forces complicit in the massacre, and Sharon was forced to resign. However, he later successfully ran for Prime Minister of Israel and remains alive although in a vegetative state after a major stroke in 2006.

The first Lebanese War was Israel's first experience with urban warfare. Civilians were living in the same places where Palestinians were shooting. The Sabra and Shatila massacres, in which anywhere from 328 to 3500 men, women, and children were slaughtered was a step down into a level of depravity for Israel, according to my husband who is a former IDF officer. He left Israel in 1979 because he saw what was coming down the road and didn't want to be a part of it. Later last night while trying to digest the film which shook him deeply, he said: I'm ashamed of the officer class of the IDF, which should have stood up for what was right. I don't know if an officer class of the IDF still exists.

As told in Waltz with Bashir, these soldiers, young men merely nineteen years old in the case of filmmaker Ari Folman, were witnesses to savagery, yet merely saw themselves as "bystanders." They saw what was happening and did nothing. Their guilt has emptied their memories. And Waltz with Bashir insists on reconstituting those memories, as painful and horrific as they might be.

On a day when it was reported that 24 US servicemembers committed suicide in January, that is more than the combined combat fatalities for all of the military this month, Waltz with Bashir is not limited to a distant war in 1982 involving Israel. The impact of war that is examined is the same as US servicemembers are experiencing in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is an important, yet difficult film, made more viewable because of the strange and haunting animation under the direction of Yoni Goodman, and the amazing musical score by Max Richter.

Waltz with Bashir won best foreign language film at the Golden Globes and has been nominated for an Academy Award for best foreign film.

See it so that we won't lose our memories, because of the guilt of remaining bystanders.