Movie Review : ‘Tsahal’ Studies Israel’s Struggle to Survive

The Nuart booked Claude Lanzmann’s two-part, five-hour “Tsahal” long before the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, but there’s no question his death gives an edge and added meaning to this survey of the Israeli defense forces, which in Hebrew are called Tsava Haganah LeIsrael , hence, the acronym Tsahal .

Lanzmann, a veteran French journalist, has said this film grew out of “Shoah,” his great, monumental documentary about the Holocaust, in that he was astonished to realize “that, between the mass deportation of the Jews of Warsaw to Treblinka in the summer of 1942 and the Six-Day War, hardly 25 years had elapsed.” Consequently, “Tsahal” is essentially a celebration of a people discovering an identity, of a people who learned how to fight to establish and defend Israel through six major wars and to maintain a state of constant military preparedness.

Although this grueling documentary is largely in English, it is as parochial as “Shoah” is universal. Whereas in his 1985 film Lanzmann brought a chilling clarity to the operation of the Nazi extermination camps in Poland and illuminated their profound implications, he here assumes viewers’ familiarity with all of Israel’s wars and their circumstances. It doesn’t seem too much to ask that in a 300-minute film at least a brief recap of those six conflicts be included.

The majority of the documentary is taken up with lengthy interviews with Israeli military leaders and men in the ranks. Everyone stresses the need for vigilance and dedication, and the veterans relate war stories that, in the absence of context, sound like the reminiscences of soldiers from any other country. Much of what they have to say is repetitive and is recited as the camera endlessly pans desert vistas.

If “Tsahal” is decidedly tedious, it nevertheless makes clear how a nation that has had to be prepared to fight simply to survive will inevitably possess a segment that, armed with religious belief, recoils from the pursuit of peace if it involves compromise. As vague as “Tsahal” is, it makes one realize the enormity of the challenge facing Rabin and the equal amount of courage he displayed. The film’s most pertinent remarks are made by Lt. Gen. Ehud Barak, Tsahal chief of staff, who observes that his country’s history is “a struggle between extremism and pragmatism . . . we should find the middle ground.”

“Tsahal” comes to life vividly only in the last half of its second part, when Lanzmann tackles the moral and strategic dilemmas created by policing the Gaza Strip and the West Bank and interviews Palestinians and Israelis who sympathize with their plight. For a climax, Lanzmann engages in a friendly but persistent debate with a young Israeli settling in a housing tract on the West Bank. He says he ultimately has no fear of standing his ground, should government policy dictate his leaving sometime in the future, because “a Jew will never shoot another Jew.”

* Unrated. Times guidelines: The film includes little battle footage, but its sheer length and seriousness are too much for children. ‘Tsahal’

A New Yorker Films release of a co-production of Les Productions Dussart, Les Films Aleph, France 2 Cinema and Bavaria Films (Germany). Director Claude Lanzmann. Executive producer Bertrand Dussart. Cinematographers Domenique Chapuis, Pierre-Laurent Chenieux, Jean-Michel Humeau. Editor Sabine Mamou. In English, French and Hebrew, with English subtitles. Running time: 5 hours.

* Exclusively at the Nuart, 11272 Santa Monica Blvd., West Los Angeles, today-Wednesday. (310) 478-6379.