‘They were merely massacred, but I was left with psychological trauma!’

As the protagonist of this animated documentary, the director of “Waltz with Bashir” has sincerely reflected on his artistic imagination and aesthetic choices. Will today’s Israeli soldiers, who have fought with bloodlust in Gaza while casually filming their “creative works,” experience similar nightmares in the future?

An Israeli soldier named Frank stands in the middle of the street with his MAC, shouting as he fires wildly at his enemies. A poster of Bashi (the militia commander who led the Lebanese Forces) hangs overhead. His footsteps, gunshots, and bullets all seem to be waltzing with Bashir. Bashir has been assassinated not long before, and his Christian Kataeb followers are executing a revenge massacre just 200 meters away.

In the 2009 Golden Globe-winning Best Foreign Language Film, the Israeli animated documentary “Waltz with Bashir,” veteran director Ari Folman tries to recover memories of the refugee camp massacre that he has selectively forgotten. By visiting psychologists, journalists, and many fellow veterans, Folman uses brutal yet stunning rhetoric, fluid and dreamlike animation, and Chopin’s “Waltz in C-sharp minor” to depict waltz-like battles. If this “waltz” segment were shown in isolation today, he would inevitably be condemned by numerous justice-driven netizens, accusing him of romanticizing his comrades’ acts of killing. How is this any different from the bloodthirsty Israeli Defense Force (IDF) soldiers who have been ravaging Gaza over the past two years? Glorifying the “beauty” of violence, they have been eagerly uploading videos of their killings on a massive scale, with no qualms about facing any repercussions for the crimes against humanity they have committed.

Of course, the situation is different: in Beirut in 1982, Folman’s comrade Frank was indeed engaged in self-defense and counterattacks against a fierce onslaught, possibly from Shia Muslim militants. Having experienced the final phase of the 1982 Lebanon War, the director chose animation and made himself the main character on this journey of memory retrieval to recount the hazy impressions of the Sabra and Shatila massacre.

This journey to recover lost memories began when a friend of the same age told Folman about a recent nightmare: he was chased through the streets by 26 rabid dogs. In reality, this friend and his unit were deployed to a Lebanese village at the start of the 1982 Lebanon War to hunt down wanted Palestinian militants. The village was almost deserted, with only wild dogs remaining. The commander ordered a young soldier, new to combat and reluctant to kill, to shoot all 26 stray dogs. This confessional moment between the two friends inspired Folman, who had also been through the war but had never experienced nightmares, to try to reclaim some of his own war memories.

Folman consulted trauma expert Professor Zahava Soloman. The professor explained that some people who’d been through horrific events feel as if they were mere spectators to the events. “I once interviewed an amateur war photographer and asked him how he managed to survive the brutality of 1982,” she said.

The photographer replied, “It wasn’t difficult at all. I just treated it like a safe adventure, telling myself, ‘Wow, what a spectacle—flying bullets, explosions, dismembered bodies, and realistic screams.’”

“He watched it all as if he was enjoying a 3D war blockbuster. Your self-protective mechanism is manifested as selective amnesia. But the nightmares will come back for you years later,” Prof Soloman explained further.

From his hometown Haifa to as far as Utrecht in the Netherlands, Folman visited numerous old comrades, wartime journalists, and the commander who led them into Beirut. More than twenty years after the war, some of these people had indeed been haunted by nightmares. One dreamed of being cradled by a gigantic siren in the open sea as the assault boat he was on was blown apart; another constantly relived the memory of his squad being wiped out while he barely escaped; while another’s visions of dead horses in the ruins of a racecourse during the war grew into even more terrifying images in his dreams. Folman also recalled his first day on the battlefield, sitting inside a tank moving through farmland and firing aimlessly, as an older comrade said, “I don’t know what I’m even shooting at. I’m just praying while pulling the trigger.” Folman also remembered the disco and punk music popular during that era, which he incorporated heavily into his animated documentary.

At the end of 2019, I traveled to Lebanon. Following a suggestion from a friend who’s a military enthusiast and has never been abroad, I took a taxi one evening to the entrance of the Ministry of Defense building. There, I saw a massive art installation—a civil war memorial titled “Hope for Peace” by Armenian-French artist Arman Fernandez. Composed of 5,000 tons of concrete and 78 armored vehicles, including M50 Sherman tanks, the monument was overwhelmingly spectacular. Art doesn’t always have to convey beauty; like “Waltz with Bashir,” the brutality of war can also be expressed through installation art.

Perhaps suspicious that I was from Mossad (Israel’s national intelligence agency), a young soldier escorted me to his office for questioning, where his superior also insisted I delete the photos I’d taken earlier. I protested, “Photos of this installation are all over the internet, so why should I delete mine?” They explained politely that the site was only open to the public during the day, then had me call an Uber to leave. As I got into the car, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark’s 1980 hit “Enola Gay” was playing on the sound system—a song Folman also used in “Waltz with Bashir,” playing over the scene where soldiers landed on the beach. Perhaps, in his own psychological defense, Folman transformed a young 19-year-old soldier’s first experience of war into something like attending a disco party.

In 1982, using the pretext of eliminating the Palestine Liberation Organization and expelling Syrian troops, Israel launched a massive invasion of Lebanon, attempting to establish a pro-Israel government. This invasion was simply a clear case of external intervention in Lebanon’s civil war, which raged from 1975 to 1990. One day, I traveled north of Beirut to Byblos, a city known in the Bible as Gebal, possibly the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, with a history that dates back 7,000 years to the first fishing settlements. With an umbrella in hand, I wandered through the ruins of Phoenician, Ancient Egyptian, Ancient Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Crusader, Mamluk, and Ottoman history in the rain-soaked wilderness, reflecting on the land that I was on, which has seen power struggles and bloodshed for over 7,000 years. In comparison, what does this modern-day civil war amount to? As the Golden Lion-winning North Macedonian film “Before the Rain” states, “Peace is an exception, not a rule.”

On New Year’s Eve, I visited Martyrs’ Square in downtown Beirut. Most protesters, who organized large-scale anti-government demonstrations due to the economic crisis, had already gone home for the holiday. In the largest makeshift tent, only a few unemployed people from the Bekaa Valley remained. A woman from Quebec beside me explained, “They’ve been holding out here for almost 80 days.” Lebanon’s diaspora far exceeds its local population, so many people joined the protests under the guise of returning home for family visits or traveling for leisure.

At the end of 2019, Beirut still had a significant number of Syrian refugees, many of whom resided in the Shatila refugee camp, the same site where the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre depicted in “Waltz with Bashir” took place. This politically motivated massacre, carried out from September 16 to 18 by the Lebanese Christian Kataeb Party with the support of the IDF surrounding the city, left between 1,300 and 3,500 Palestinians and Lebanese Shia Muslims dead.

That night, after returning to my accommodation from Martyrs’ Square, I chose “Waltz with Bashir” as my New Year’s movie and penned a “travel review.” Traveling through this ancient land filled with historical ruins, I came to understand that during the civil war, religious and political factions continuously formed alliances and betrayed one another. It felt much like a football league, where teams must complete head-to-head battles both home and away.

In the face of a long and absurd civil war, I believe my comparison is fitting. But as for Folman, who witnessed crimes against humanity firsthand, his use of artistic imagination and rhetoric is unwarranted. In the film, he describes the IDF’s flares, fired to aid the Kataeb Party in its massacre, as “brilliant as fireworks.” When he tries to reflect on and criticize the military leadership’s inaction, a friend counters, “And what were you doing at the time? Were you in the mood to admire fireworks? Watching the massacre was almost no different from taking part in it. You witnessed it all, leaving the 19-year-old you with a traumatized youth and feeling like you’d committed atrocities comparable to the Nazis’.”

Indeed, as the protagonist of this animated documentary, Folan has sincerely reflected on his artistic imagination and aesthetic choices. Perhaps his sentiment approaches that of philosopher Theodor W. Adorno’s famous quote: “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.”

In contrast, will today’s Israeli soldiers, who have fought with bloodlust in Gaza while casually filming their “creative works,” experience similar nightmares and reflect on themselves in the future? With the considerable advances in military technology and tactics, Israel’s psychological support systems have undoubtedly improved as well. But a surge in suicides within the ranks reveals that this system of support isn’t infallible and sometimes falls short of serving its intended purpose. These Gaza executioners likely view themselves as “the chosen ones”—property agents wielding the Bible as a deed of ownership. If they ever do experience nightmares, perhaps they could make their own animated documentary, complaining: “They were merely victims of a massacre, but I was left with psychological trauma!”