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Approaching ‘The Gatekeepers’

This week in Jewcy, our partner site

by
The Editors
December 21, 2012

Each Friday we bring you a look at what’s going on over at Jewcy.com, our partner site. This week, a young Jewish writer watches The Gatekeepers, a controversial Israeli documentary–and likely an Oscar contender–about the Shin Bet, Israel’s famous intelligence bureau:

Watching The Gatekeepers, Israeli filmmaker Dror Moreh’s spare but devastating documentary about six former heads of Israel’s intelligence bureau, the Shin Bet, I felt again that same sinking, reflexive loyalty to the Jewish state. Moreh’s film features a series of fairly candid conversations (they appear as monologues, but Moreh’s often heated interjections remind us that he is guiding their reflections,) with roughly 20 years’ worth of intelligence leaders. Each faces the camera openly and, nearly immediately, begins to tell of the moral ambiguity that characterized his time in the service. They all talk about their doubts, their regrets, and, perhaps most potently, their fears for the future. Their Israel lines up well with Dershowitz’s—a country in which triumphs are never unequivocally good, and tragedies foreshadow a darker tomorrow.

Read the rest here.

From the editors of Tablet Magazine.