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First-ever Interviews with the Military Professionals Who Created the Legal Framework for Occupation Reveal Contradictions Between Security and the Rule of Law
“Compelling and provocative . . . a brilliantly complex film.”
—Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times
Watch The Law in These Parts – Trailer on PBS. See more from POV.
The Law in These Parts is an unprecedented exploration of the evolving and little-known legal framework that Israel has employed to administer its 40-year military occupation of the West Bank and, until 2005, the Gaza Strip. Celebrated Israeli filmmaker Ra’anan Alexandrowicz (The Inner Tour) elicits this story from the very military judges, prosecutors and legal advisors who helped create the system and who agreed to take the cinematic witness chair to explain their choices. Weaving together these interviews with archival footage, often in the same frame, Alexandrowicz has crafted a comprehensive and evocative portrait of a key facet of one of the world’s most stubborn and enduring conflicts. In doing so, The Law in These Parts reveals not only the legal architecture of military occupation, but also its human impact on both Palestinians and Israelis. The film asks a question as troubling as it is unavoidable: Can a modern democracy impose a prolonged military occupation on another people while retaining its core democratic values?
The Law in These Parts has its national broadcast premiere on Monday, Aug. 19, 2013, at 10 p.m. (check local listings), as part of the 26th season of the award-winning PBS series POV (Point of View). American television’s longest-running independent documentary series, POV is the winner of a 2013 MacArthur Foundation Award for Creative and Effective Institutions.
Since Israel took control of the territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the 1967 Six Day War, its military has issued thousand of orders and laws on resident Palestinians. Early on in the film, Alexandrowicz explains his motives when he calls this ad hoc system of Israeli military rule “a unique system [which] very few people understand in depth.” The men, retired now, who sat down with the filmmaker to provide that depth, were judges, prosecutors and other legal professionals. They were also high-ranking military officers. In the film, they are exceptionally candid about their actions, and acknowledge inconsistencies and contradictions in the system they built.
Former judge and brigadier general Amnon Strashnov, for one, acknowledges “a limitation in the system, where security comes before human rights.” Retired colonel and military judge Oded Pesensson, when pressed on the reliability of the information from the security services on which he based his judgments, recalls “the heavy feeling that I’m not being told the truth” but also the suspicion that a detainee’s testimony cannot be trusted because “he has his interests.” Ultimately, he says, “My obligation is to make a ruling. And if I make a different ruling, I know that someone might die.” Other interviewees include justice Meir Shamgar (Brig. General, Ret.), legal advisor Dov Shefi (Brig. General, Ret.), prosecutor Abraham Pachter (Lt. Col., Ret.), legal advisor Alexander Ramati (Lt. Col., Ret.), prosecutor and judge Jair Rabinovich (Major, Ret.), judge Jonathan Livny (Lt. Col., Ret.) and judge Ilan Katz (Colonel, Ret.).
Alexandrowicz is an aggressive interviewer who wants his subjects to confront what he sees as the contradictions–and the moral implications that flow from them–in their system. “I come from the free world,” says Pesensson. “A world where, if I want to ask someone a question, I ask, and if he doesn’t want to answer, he doesn’t. . . . And you arrive in a world whose purpose is to protect you from possibilities that tomorrow, those people might come and kill you . . . the grey world in which there are people whose job . . . is to protect your life. So you can sit across [from] me now and go to a movie this evening, and you won’t be blown up or killed or shot at in the street. The question is, how do you conduct yourself? How does this affect your decisions?”
Livny gives a frank account of the legal dilemmas stemming from the occupation: “I think that a civilian judge represents justice, and society in general. As a military judge you represent the authorities of the occupation, vis-à-vis a population that sees you as the enemy. You’re conducting a trial against your enemy. . . . As long as it’s only temporary, fine. But when it goes on for 40 years? How can the system function?”
So Alexandrowicz tilts at a dizzying number of issues that have arisen, some foreseen, some not, in 40-plus years of military occupation. Among the thousands of orders and laws issued by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in that time, the filmmaker zeroes in on what he sees as the inequity of military courts for Palestinians and civilian courts for Israeli settlers; the controls imposed on Palestinians by the identity card system; Israel’s refusal to grant Palestinian guerrilla fighters prisoner-of-war status; the alleged use of torture by the IDF; and an expansive concept of security that has allowed land seizures, wall building and military posts. Alexander Ramati, for instance, describes how he used a 19th-century Ottoman land law as legal justification for Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories. Alexandrowicz asks, “In retrospect, do you think it was the right move?” Ramati replies, “I don’t think anyone can answer that.”
“Translating my research into a film was the most complicated cinematic challenge I have faced,” says director Ra’anan Alexandrowicz. “I had to deal with the ethical and aesthetic questions posed by the material and to find a way to engage the audience in this journey into the heart of what is in my view one of Israel’s toughest moral quandaries.”
The Law in These Parts is a production of Noga Communications, the Rabinowitz Film Fund, the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program, the World Cinema Fund and the Foundation for Jewish Culture’s Lynn and Jules Kroll Fund for Jewish Documentary Film.
POV invites viewers to celebrate the series’ 26th season with a “POV Premiere Party.” Invite as many people as you like to watch the PBS national broadcast premieres of POV’s Season 26 films on your television or laptop… and tell us about your experience. Then enter for a chance to win a bundle of POV DVDs, plus popcorn, chocolate, coffee and more. Enter at www.pov.org/premiereparty.
About the Filmmakers:
Ra’anan Alexandrowicz, Writer/Director
Ra’anan Alexandrowicz established his name as the writer and director of award?winning films such as the full?length feature James’ Journey to Jerusalem (Cannes Directors’ Fortnight 2003, Toronto International Film Festival 2003) and the documentaries The Inner Tour (Berlinale 2001, Sundance Film Festival 2002) and Martin (Berlinale 2000, New Directors/New Films 2000, MoMA permanent collection), which have been released theatrically and broadcast worldwide. Alexandrowicz studied at the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School in Jerusalem, where he teaches film today. He was a directing advisor at the Sundance Institute Doc Edit Labs in 2005 and 2007 and a Lab Fellow in 2010.
Liran Atzmor, Producer
Liran Atzmor is the former managing director and senior producer at Belfilms, Israel. He has produced programs for all major Israeli broadcasters, as well as broadcasters and distributors in North America and Europe, including the BBC, ZDF/Arte, the History Channel and many others. Credits include the Yad Vashem films, The Inner Tour and My Stills. Atzmor also served as senior commissioning editor for Israel’s documentary channel (Channel 8).
Credits:
Director: Ra’anan Alexandrowicz
Producer: Liran Atzmor
Co-Producer: B.Z. Goldberg
Cinematographer: Shark De Mayo
Editor: Neta Dvorkis
Original Music: Karni Postel
Running Time: 86:46
POV Series Credits:
Executive Producer: Simon Kilmurry
Co-Executive Producer: Cynthia López
Vice President, Programming and Production: Chris White
Coordinating Producer: Andrew Catauro
- Awards and Festivals:
- Winner, World Cinema Jury Prize: Documentary, Sundance Film Festival, 2012
- Winner, Special Jury Award, Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, 2012
- Winner, Best Film, Best Research, Best Editing, Best Music, Israeli Documentary Filmmakers Forum Awards, 2012
- Winner, Special Jury Prize, International Feature, Hot Docs, 2012
- Winner, Best Israeli Documentary, Jerusalem Film Festival, 2011
Produced by American Documentary, Inc. and beginning its 26th season on PBS in 2013, the award-winning POV is the longest-running showcase on American television to feature the work of today’s best independent documentary filmmakers. POV has brought more than 365 acclaimed documentaries to millions nationwide. POV films have won every major film and broadcasting award, including 32 Emmys, 15 George Foster Peabody Awards, 10 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards, three Academy Awards® and the Prix Italia. Since 1988, POV has pioneered the art of presentation and outreach using independent nonfiction media to build new communities in conversation about today’s most pressing social issues. Visit www.pbs.org/pov.
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