Who, or what, makes the news? In relation to the Middle East, this is of course a fundamental question, and in many ways, the driving principle of JNews. The recent circulation on the web of Yariv Horowitz’s 2003 film, Aftershock, raises it in a particularly acute form. We have become accustomed to reading about the refuseniks, or sarvanim, who since an original letter in 1970 to then Prime Minister Golda Meir, have refused to serve in the Occupied Territories. More recently, it is the soldiers of the religious right who have come more prominently into view. These are the soldiers who unfurl banners at their swearing-in ceremonies proclaiming that they will not evacuate settlers, and whose presence and standing in the army is steadily increasing (an estimated 30 per cent of officers, and 50 per cent of officer trainees are now religious). And yet there is a far larger swathe of the army whose stories are rarely told – the loyal Israeli soldiers who would not dream of disobeying an order, and yet who are profoundly disturbed by what they have done in the line of duty.

Aftershock follows the path of three such soldiers (four if you include Yariv himself). Originally commissioned in 1991 by the Military Education Corps as a propaganda film to boost troop morale in Nablus during the first intifada of 1987-1993, it was never publicly screened. Horowitz started making his film in 1991 as a young army photographer, returning to it more than a decade later. It was, he says, the one film `I couldn’t leave’. He made it therefore at the peak of the Second Intifada – the year before, Sharon, in one of the army’s most brutal and internationally condemned operations, sent his tanks back into the West Bank and reoccupied Jenin. For Horowitz, making the film means going against the grain of everything he had been taught to believe. His first childhood memory is of the victory songs of the 1967 war (he would creep out of bed to play the album as a child), and of being told in school that the army had `liberated’ Jerusalem: `Now the Arabs will have a chance to achieve prosperity.’ He was proud when his elder brother enlisted during the 1982 Lebanese war. When it was his turn to enlist, it was the `fulfilment of a dream.’

What makes this film so disturbing and important is that these are the quiet men, who drift away silently after serving in the Territories, carrying with them the memory, the shame and the guilt which mostly remains unspoken. The film centres on Ehud, a former paratrooper, and two of his army friends, Omri and Haim. In a key moment, Ehud is reunited with Omri, who left Israel and now lives in Seattle. `This is a violent place, full of hate,’ he says of Israel, `I no longer wanted to be part of it.’ They had not been in touch for eight years: `We didn’t want to remind ourselves.’ `Paratroopers,’ says Ehud, `are out of their minds.’ `You reach a point where you lose your senses. Emotionally you begin to freak out. You just can’t take it any more, so you let them have it, you take it out on them.’ `He who controls his anger is a true hero,’ he says, `There, my anger controlled me.’ After his discharge, Ehud underwent psychiatric treatment when he found himself, in a strange repetition of his action towards the Palestinians, breaking up his parents’ home. `I saw the eyes of someone I could not recognise,’ he says, `they were my eyes. I saw insane pain.’

In a discussion after a Royal Court performance of the play, My Name is Rachel Corrie - based on the life of the American protestor who was bulldozed by an IDF tank in 2003 when trying to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian home – her father talked of a conversation he had with her before she was killed which had left him in fear. Hoping to reassure him, she had described how the army aimed their bullets low towards the floors and corners of the rooms when shooting inside Palestinian homes. Having served in Vietnam, he knew that the bullets would ricochet and cause maximum damage. This was, he said, an army out of control. Aftershock can be seen as a type of footnote to his poignant insight. The story it tells is of wanton, random violence against the Palestinians, a competition, as Haim puts it, to see who could do the most damage. Encountering an old Palestinian with a load of egg cartons, Ehud broke all the eggs over his head. Together with his fellow soldiers, he plugged live electrodes into a captured protester’s ears. They prided themselves on shooting rubber bullets which they had packed with the pointed metal fragments from the tabs of coca cola cans (today Lieutenant Platoon Commander Haliva of the `notorious’ 202 regiment says that they sharpen them with knives). `Imagine,’ says Ehud, `some one entering your house in the middle of the night, taping your mouth shut and making them sit in a corner all night. Wouldn’t that traumatise you for life?’ Most of this, by their own account, came in response to nothing more than stone-throwing and taunting on the part of the Palestinians, at the most an ambush of bricks and stones: `You go after a demonstrator and beat him to death.’ `We killed men over there. With bare hands’ says Haim, `That’s as bad as it gets.’

The question that will inevitably asked of such a film is how representative are these soldiers, this behaviour, and how sanctioned by the army is their conduct. It is clear from the film that these soldiers are acting under instruction, but also that they are given too much power. `When you’re allowed to improvise in a place full of power and violence,’ says Ehud,`you become very creative.’ Young soldiers straight out of training are taken to Gaza and told to impose order at whatever cost (including breaking arms and legs). `What about personal discretion,’ Yariv asks, `No such thing. You get swept away by the current and follow your commander.’ `It’s brainwashing.’ If you object, Ehud says, you will be called a coward and a traitor. He insists he is not a victim or, if he is, `a shitty victim’: `Give me a break. That’s what they told us to do.’ `They put it right in your face: “Go be the oppressors for your people. Force yourselves upon them.”’ `When I was there,’ he states, `I lost all my faith in the IDF.’

And yet when asked by Yariv if he considers himself a good soldier, Ehud does not hesitate: `A good, strong, courageous soldier, doing his job the best way.’ Ehud and Haim agree that the experience has made them a better person. It is their `destiny.’ Not wholly joking, Ehud greets the birth of his son as the next Israeli Chief of Staff. In one moment, Commander Haliva, when asked by Yariv if it doesn’t feel strange to be walking down the street with a rifle, responds with no apparent sense of irony by singing the praises of Hebron as the one place in the world where a Yeshiva and Palestinian shops face each other across the street (`It’s a beautiful city’). For the three young paratroopers, there is a sense that the film acts as a form of catharsis - you confess but nothing fundamentally has changed (things will be, they agree, the same for the next generation). The film provides no real political or historical education. The Palestinians, never quite real, function simply as a blur on the conscience of the nation. It is the Israelis who suffer the pain (the same criticism has been made of Waltz with Bashir). At one point, referring to Palestinians celebrating a suicide bombing which killed civilians, Haim reminds himself that this is why they were sent there in the first place. This of course is not quite right. Suicide bombings were not a feature of the first Intifada, and the army is there because of the Occupation.

In a final scene Ehud returns to accompany Commander Haliva on a patrol into Hebron where the army is filmed shooting at stone-throwing Palestinians. In civilian dress, unprotected by any of the trappings of war, and now a father of one child with another on the way, Ehud feels scared for the first time. He has lost his bearings in a world he once survived through random, unquestioning brutality. Although the film was never publicly screened, it did result in a reduction of time served in the Occupied Territories. The army does not want its soldiers traumatised, or more cynically, we could say that this is not the story it wants its soldiers to tell. It is the willingness of Ehud, Omri and Haim to tell the story this openly, and Horowitz’s courage in returning to it after so many years, that makes Aftershock such an important film.

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