"Waltz With Bashir": In Search of the Soldier in His Past...

Ari Folman, the filmaker of "Waltz With Bashir" .... by Ethan Bronner, in the NYTImes, here (reminder: the Lebanese Forces have gone through a period of self loathing and have been rehauled into a truly kinder & politically more tolerant movement. NOT!)

"....His journey of self-recognition, from suppression to acceptance of his role in a despised war and traumatic massacre, may or may not echo a similar process in Israeli society at large. But it has struck a chord. Israelis are seeing the film in large numbers and praising its frank portrayal of life in uniform in a country that has tended to dismiss the psychic damage that can result from being a soldier in war.

The film is both the psychologically compelling story of Mr. Folman’s search for his own past — his younger self — based on videotaped interviews he conducted and a scrupulous recounting of the massacre of hundreds (some say thousands) of Palestinians by Lebanese Christian Forces inadvertently facilitated by the Israeli Army ....The massacre was a scene of unspeakable terror in which the Lebanese forces, also known as the Phalange, entered the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps and killed randomly for some 72 hours to exact revenge for the assassination of their leader, Lebanon’s president-elect, Bashir Gemayel ..."