This first appeared on The Dissolve.
_______
Spy narratives as a genre usually involve über-competent assassins performing death-defying feats in exotic locales with advanced weaponry and smoldering sex appeal. Even supposedly realistic takes like John le Carré’s novel The Spy Who Came In From The Cold present spies as grimly competent soldiers occupying a moral universe that’s glamorous in its grayness. Spies, popular culture insists with almost one voice, are cool.
The spies in Bethlehem aren’t cool, they’re a combination of bureaucrats and thugs. Razi (Tsahi Halevi), an Israeli intelligence officer dealing with Palestinian terrorist threats, doesn’t have neat gadgets or exciting missions like James Bond. He just has a list of contacts he pumps for information, using a combination of bribery and bullying. One of those contacts is a teenager named Sanfur (Shadi Mar’i), whom Razi recruited by threatening his father when the boy was 15. Razi doesn’t have cleverness or martial-arts skills. Instead, he has a shameless, amoral willingness to take advantage of those with less power. In fact, to the extent that Razi attempts to protect Sanfur and treat him as a human child rather than as a thing, he ceases to be good at his job.
Sanfur, for his part, is effectively a spy as well. He passes information to Razi, and he also secretly works to funnel money from Hamas to his brother, resistance fighter Abu Ibrahim (Tarek Copti). Though in some sense he’s Razi’s double agent, that doesn’t indicate any particular competence on his part—just confusion and divided loyalties. He’s a kid who loves his brother and wants his dad and friends to admire him, but he’s also an undercover agent. The contradictions are insupportable; everything starts to fall apart when Sanfur is injured after daring a friend to shoot him while he’s wearing a bulletproof vest. He’s living a life of incredible risk, danger, and deception, but he needs to prove his manliness through idiotic swagger.
He isn’t alone, either. The Palestinian resistance is presented less as an organized battle against the oppressor, and more as a fragmented, endless pissing match—in one emblematic scene, two rival factions almost shoot each other over which of them gets to bury a martyr. In another sequence, rebel leader Badawi (Hitham Omari) challenges a rival to run up several flights of stairs in boyish horseplay, then, when the guy is exhausted, cold-bloodedly pushes him over a railing. There’s no heroism here, just petty betrayal and banal violence. That goes for the Israelis as well. The one big blow-out fight scene occurs in some poor Palestinian family’s home, after Ibrahim flees there. Razi saves the day not with derring-do, but by discovering that the wife has cancer, and using that to blackmail her for the floor plan.
“There’s nothing I hate more than dishonesty,” Razi’s spymaster boss Levy (Yossi Eini) tells him. The irony is that it’s Razi’s job to lie; that’s what spies do. But the further irony is that the boss is right; dishonesty is unforgivable. But in a police state like Palestine, it’s also inescapable, corroding everything it touches: relationships between brother and brother, between neighbors, between friends. In a spy story, Bethlehem insists, there are no good guys or bad guys, and no victor—just day-in, day-out deceit and betrayal, the weary work of hate.
Which conveniently excuses the creators and the audience from taking a side.
No, I don’t think so. It’s pretty firmly against the Israeli occupation, I think. (which is the correct stance, imo.)
Not necessarily. It just means you can’t take a stance based on the supposed moral superiority of one side. You are forced to take a stance based on the morality/lack thereof of the actual actions of the characters, not which one is better as a moral entity. That seems like a very honest, clear-eyed, sober way to portray any situation, let alone an issue as complex and fraught as the Israeli occupation.
As if the “morality/lack thereof of the actual actions of the characters” can be separated from the conflict in which they take place.
Of course they can’t. My point is you have to talk about systems and consequences, rather than the moral characteristics of individuals. Those are different things. The former is, “This person/these people have done something bad” and the latter is, “These people, etc, ARE bad.” One is an observation and a judgment, the other is an existential condemnation, and one that is actively counterproductive in basically any context, to boot.
That’s a distinction without a difference. I can dispossess, hurt, or kill somebody just as easily because they’ve “done something bad” as because I’ve “existential[ly] condemn[ed] them.” (Donald Trump: “We have no choice.”)
And whether or not somebody’s actions are bad, again, can’t be separated from the conflict in which they take place.
The difference is that existentially condemning someone gives you no option for reform. If somebody IS a bad person, then even if you make the allowance that they could reform, it leaves you very limited options for dealing with them. It all but precludes anything other than excising them from society. Whereas if you simply say they have done bad things, the potential for reform is built in to your assumptions, you don’t have to contort your logic and make special caveats/allowances to say, “maybe we shouldn’t just throw these people in a hole.” Not to mention, saying somebody is bad or good is inherently dehumanizing because it ascribes a moral dimension to somebody without understanding the pressures on them to act the way they do, or the context they were raised in.
There’s always an option for reform, because the human capacity for hypocrisy is infinite. When Nazi Germany allied with the Japanese, the Japanese became honorary Aryans.
I consider myself a pretty cynical person but, wow, that blew me away.
Godwin’s Law aside, human’s are loss-averse opportunists who respond to a staggering variety of stimuli, including unpredictable emotional and ideological factors. This is not some philosophical musing, this is an empirical observation backed up by lots of evidence. Humans have a staggering variety of pressures and influences on their behavior. Once you call somebody a “good” or “bad” person, you either say absolutely nothing meaningful, or you contradict this basic observation of human behavior, because calling somebody a “bad” person presupposes they will do bad things no matter the pressures and stimuli effecting their decisions. And if you don’t presuppose they do bad things by calling them bad, then you stigmatize them while making no meaningful observation of their behavior. Simply put, this is not a useful paradigm for analyzing and understanding human behavior, and it motivates a lot of toxic shit, from America’s horrible punitive moral/justice system, to rape culture, to etc, etc, etc.
It’s only “not a useful paradigm for analyzing and understanding human behavior” if you think “pressures and stimuli effecting their decisions” entirely determine human behavior, which is of course stupid.
It’s also useful in more immediately practical ways. I know Clinton is a bad person because of what she’s done so far, therefore I know she’ll do bad things when she’s president.
For the record, I don’t think anything I’ve written here can be accurately described as cynical.
Clinton is a great example of someone whose decisions as a politician are determined primarily by pressures and stimuli. That’s why she went from supporting the Defense of Marriage act to supporting gay marriage, and it’s why she started talking about wealth inequality. If she were to come under considerable pressure to do good things as president, she would.
Do you think FDR implemented the New Deal because he was a swell guy?
You’re wrong, but if you were right, somebody who is literally unprincipled is a pretty good example of a bad person.
Yeah, I think the take on Clinton is lacking. You know Clinton will do bad things when she’s president because the leader of an imperial power does bad things. Sanders would do bad things if he were president too, I”m pretty sure.
Also, they’ve both said they’d keep up the drone program, right? so they’ve both basically said, “we plan to continue to kill children.” The whole parsing of whether Clinton is a bad person in that context seems largely beside the point.
I do think Clinton would kill more children than Sanders. But less than the republicans.
If you’re doing an accounting of who should go to hell, all presidents should.
Jack’s points about Clinton and FDR are exactly right. And if you think something other than pressures and stimuli effect human behavior, then I assume you mean genetics. That may be true, but then you veer dangerously close to making the eugenicist argument that some people have immoral behavior literally in their blood. I think it’s far more likely that genetics are responsible for determining the exact way that individuals respond to and process stimuli. Basically, I imagine, genetics sets up the machine for processing input, and the inputs themselves are those outside pressures and stimuli. There is, pretty much by definition, nothing else that can influence human behavior, unless you believe in a supernatural component to human decision-making, in which case, I don’t really know if we’re having the same discussion.
Also, for clarification, I don’t think human behavior is deterministically produced by stimuli. That violates most of what we know about physics, biology, and chemistry. But now we are talking about the fundamentals of neurochemistry, not morality. connecting the two is a field of study, and its called eugenics.
And if you don’t think you are cynical…fine, whatever.
FDR was of course not a swell guy. As we all know, we today (those of us with the correct politics) are the first swell people ever, and everybody before us was some combination of malicious and regrettably less enlightened than we, possibly excepting those who belonged to a sufficient number of oppressed groups.
He was, however, a more swell guy than Herbert Hoover, Al Smith, Clement Attlee, Leon Blum, or Harry Truman. Who knows, maybe even relatively swell enough that if that assassin’s bullet had hit the right target, history would have been a bit different.
I think FDR was pretty swell, all things considered. Certainly a more admirable man than many who have held the office, or many who will.
He’s still in hell by any reasonable estimation though.
@Noah
“As we all know, we today (those of us with the correct politics) are the first swell people ever, and everybody before us was some combination of malicious and regrettably less enlightened than we, possibly excepting those who belonged to a sufficient number of oppressed groups.”
I honestly cannot tell whether this is sarcasm, to any extent, or not. Is this a joke?
It’s 100% sarcasm.
“Which as a moral judgment is equivalent to saying none of them should.”
It’s tough. What do you say about people who kill children and bomb civilians? I think those things are wrong; people who do them are bad, if bad means anything.
Sanders would do those things if he were president. I like him adn think he’s a good person, for the most part. But the presidency of an imperial power is by its nature an evil position.
You project the weirdest opinions onto others, Graham. FDR may have been a billion times more enlightened than me, but he wouldn’t have and couldn’t have implemented the New Deal without a tremendous amount of political pressure on him to do so. When you get to that level of power, inner swellness (or maliciousness, in Nixon’s case) is not the major factor in determining policy.
@Jack You leave out half the equation. Having been made able by circumstances to implement the New Deal, he could not have. For a recent example, see Obama and banks.
The claim that circumstances are everything and individuals are nothing is an excuse for not doing anything to change the circumstances.
@Noah Maybe, but if so, then the word “evil” apparently doesn’t mean much, because you still pay your taxes.
I finally found a link to the review which critizised the film:
http://goo.gl/I9A2zd
I have not seen the movie, but my gut feeling is that I’m kinda in sync with the reviewer.
“The claim that circumstances are everything and individuals are nothing is an excuse for not doing anything to change the circumstances.”
But the claim that individuals are everything leads you to a place where you can’t actually enact change because you’re unable to think about or work with institutions. It also can lead to corrosive distrust and despair, since people, no matter how good, often aren’t able to accomplish what you want them to.
You may well say, “I didn’t say individuals are everything.” But I’m pretty sure nobody said institutions are everything either.
“then the word “evil” apparently doesn’t mean much, because you still pay your taxes.”
Possibly I think taxes go to things I support too, and I’m balancing greater and lesser evils. Probably I”m also afraid of going to jail. “Evil doesn’t exist since you don’t have what it takes to be a martyr” I don’t really see the logic there.
I’m on record as being in favor of judging things without having seen them, so I support your stance, Kasper.
Graham, what was that swipe at Léon Blum about? One of the greatest statesmen of the 20th century.
@Noah
Jack and Petar did say institutions – or rather, circumstances – are everything. (“When you get to that level of power, inner swellness (or maliciousness, in Nixon’s case) is not the major factor in determining policy.”)
@Baldanders
Take your pick between letting Germany reoccupy the Rhineland, promising not to devalue the franc when even Paul Reynaud knew it was necessary and said so, and general dithering.
@Noah
In my personal experience, ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ is mostly bullocks.
I’m pushing forty and have been watching movies for decades. A film I have not watched is not really such a strange new enigma – If I have a solid gut feel about a movie, I’m typically right.
But I did google Bethlehem, and what I found fitted my gut feeling. “There is no black and white in this film, only painful shades of gray – like the reality we all live in here.” sez the director. I heard the same buzzwords repeated ad nausium in the reviews for Elite Squad and Zero Dark Thirty.
Placing the point of view at one part of a conflict will, of course, give them the viewers sympathy. As expected, despite everyone insisting that there is no heroes, painful shades of grey, yada yada, Bethehem just happen to follow the security agent. Likewise, the movie Elite Squad follows Batalhão de Operações Policiais Especiais (BOPE) and Zero Dark Thirty follows the CIA torturer.
Also expected were the ever-so-gritty ‘reality’ stuff: Bethlehem is inspired by actual events at the time of filming. Elite Squad is semi-fictional. Zero Dark Thirty use actual torture prisons as edgy locations.
Bethlehem opens with a suicide bombing. This framing marks the Palestinians as the aggressors of the story. Likewise, Zero Dark Thirty opens with the WTC attack, which of course give an impression of “they started it”. (plenty of American aggression before and after 9/11).
This except is kinda the main point of Gideon Levy’s review: “Adler’s refusal to make a “political movie” is deceit and sleight of hand. It is in itself a political statement unlike any other. Adler did not make a film about the Sicilian Mafia, but rather a film about the intifada, which has a political context that he deliberately ignores. This blurring is the movie’s powerful, outrageous statement.
What is the film about? [Warning: Spoilers] Violent, power-hungry intifada fighters, motivated by greed, and in conflict with one another; cynical, corrupt, lying Palestinian Authority figures; and European donation money going to terror, of course. There is not a single word about what they’re fighting against, what they are dying for. There’s no occupation, no oppression, only a Mafia, which this time speaks Arabic.”
I finally managed to actually, you know, watch Bethlehem last night, and that last paragraph in Kasper’s post sounds like a pretty fitting description of the film. Despite the film showing how Razi manipulates Sanfur, which made me appropriately queazy, the film also takes care to represent Razi as a humanized agent doing a dehumanizing job. His manipulation is seen as something he does despite not wanting to, and he is the only person shown genuinely caring about Sanfur’s well-being. Every other Palestinian character is in turns hostile, callous, domineering, and unfeelingly manipulative towards Sanfur. Only the Israeli secret agent who used him to assassinate his own brother REALLY cares about him. I walked away from the movie with the feeling Noah describes in his review…but I don’t think that’s what the movie was trying to project. I portrays Razi as the only caring father figure in Sanfur’s life. His actual father and brother both treat him like shit for most of the movie.
That all being said, the “moral shades of gray” argument is often used to justify oppressive violence on the grounds that the Other is existentially evil. The torture in Zero Dark Thirty is justified on the grounds that the evil Muslim Other has to be stopped. In that context, people are binned into “good” and “evil” categories, which serve as existential descriptors, and then anything the “good guys” do to stop the “bad guys” is justified because they are fighting evil. Doing bad things is justified by the nebulous, redeeming, existential goodness of the protagonists juxtaposed against the nebulous, damning, existential badness of the antagonists.
Now imagine that binning didn’t happen. If the protagonists weren’t existentially good and the antagonists weren’t existentially bad, because they couldn’t be, then suddenly nothing bad the good guys do to beat the bad guys is redeemable by their existential goodness.
This is just a really roundabout way to reiterate that the paradigm of existential good and evil is used to justify evil action. Doesn’t matter who is good and who is bad, doing evil shit means you are doing evil shit.
But then sometimes the Other really does have to be stopped – let’s say, the German one (“Godwin’s law!” – well? Nazi Germany happened. And I’m also talking about World War I here.), or the Confederate one, or, from the American Indian point of view, us, except they weren’t able to stop us and nobody who could wanted to – doesn’t even have to be “existentially evil” for that to be the case – and sometimes hurting and killing people is necessary in order to accomplish that – never mind whether than makes it “justified,” whatever that means – and then, nevertheless, people engaged in that nevertheless often hurt and kill people they didn’t have to (e.g. Dresden).
So you’re saying that the bombing of Dresden, Sherman’s March, and the nuking of Japan, which all disproportionately effected the poor and middle class who were being jerked around in wars fought on behalf of economic and political elites, were justified, because Hitler and slavery…
I have a hard time accepting that.
I recall Noah writing multiple pieces about how violence and oppression are used almost universally to justify more violence and oppression.
I wasn’t trying to argue that no one is responsible for anything because we’re all the victims of circumstance; I was just trying to spread politicians’ responsibility around to others who helped to create the circumstances they acted within. For example, I think it’s a mistake to blame the Bush administration’s actions on Bush being a smug alcoholic entitled fratboy monster. He was enabled by the millions who voted for him, Florida’s crappy voting system, the media hyping of Iraqi WMDs, the Democrats who voted for the wars and the Patriot Act, the Hollywood glamorization of torture, etc.
Graham, “not the major factor” is not the same as “everything”.
“it’s too late to try to say it more slickly.”
This is silly. You’re in a comments thread, not at an inquisition. People misspeak, people maybe change their minds. That isn’t a big deal.
Kasper, it’s been a while since I’ve seen the film now. My memory of it,though, is that, while the Palestinian fighters are presented often as ugly,the Israeli intelligence officer comes off quite, quite badly overall. He got this kid to turn his brother in,and in a lot of ways ruined his life. He does care about him, but he manipulates his own caring as a way to make the kid betray his people, his family, and himself. The guy gets shot in the gut by the kid he deceived, and the film (imo) strongly suggests he deserves it.
Also the Bush faction in the republican party which helped elect someone who was mostly uninterested in actually doing the job, and so let thuggish monsters like Dick Cheney have free reigh.
@Noah
That is true. He does get pretty badly brutalized at the end, and Sanfur is portrayed unambiguously as the victim of manipulation, mostly by Razi. I also think it is fair to show how the victims of war and occupation aren’t necessarily angelic saints, and often do shitty things. That said, Kasper’s point about not showing the real, brutal context of the Isaeli occupation that the Palestinians are fighting against was a mistake, artistically and politically, even if the movie’s main victim and sympathetic character is a Palestinian teen victimized by the occupation.
@Petar
To repeat what I already said, who cares if Sherman’s march was “justified”? Either you do it and you stop slavery, or you don’t and you don’t stop slavery. Make your choice. As for Dresden, I precisely said that’s an example of killing that wasn’t even necessary to achieve the supposed objective of defeating Germany.
Speaking of which, a more current example: The case against torture in the last 15 years has been not just that we shouldn’t do it even if it works, but also that it doesn’t work anyway.
@Noah
Same reply as the last time you said this: As a good critic, you know better. Your profession basically consists of catching artists when they mis-speak, in order to discover what they’re really saying.
If you’ve changed your mind since yesterday afternoon, say so.
“To repeat what I already said, who cares if Sherman’s march was “justified”? Either you do it and you stop slavery, or you don’t and you don’t stop slavery.”
I am almost certain that Sherman’s March was not necessary for stopping slavery. It was brutal, and cruel, and likely destroyed worsened the situation for black people in the South, since now Southern whites who had their property destroyed would now associate black liberation via the civil war with brutal terrorism in wartime. Great job, Sherman. As for torture and Dresden being “unnecessary”…that’s the whole point. But we did them anyway because we didn’t care whether they really worked or not. The Other was evil, and needed to be stopped, so it didn’t really matter whether the tactics worked or not. If we really gave a damn if they worked or not, we probably wouldn’t have done either. We didn’t, so we did, because we were fighting evil. Same with the bombs on Japan.
@Petar Duric
– Roland Osterweis called, he wants his fallacy back. (Just kidding, the more you copy it, the happier he is.)
– You’re evading a basic question. Do you fight a war to stop slavery, the Nazis, etc, or do you not fight a war and not stop slavery, the Nazis, etc?
– re: Sherman, read this: https://pando.com/2014/11/20/the-war-nerd-why-sherman-was-right-to-burn-atlanta/
Jesus Christ, I mean William A. Dunning. Ugh.
Graham, context kind of matters. Yes, critics look at where writers mispeak. but I think you should (or at least I do) give people a little more leeway in comments threads.
Honestly, I’ve totally lost the thread of the conversation. I don’t even know what I’m being accused of! But if you restate I can tell you whether I’ve changed my mind I guess…
Well, that last thing you quoted was from the conversation under the privilege article. I think the thread there is pretty easy to follow, but if not, let me know.
I’m not as familiar with civil war historiography, but dropping the bomb on Japan seems like it was pretty clearly unnecessary, as was Dresden. and of course the U.S. didn’t fight the war with the intention of stopping the HOlocaust in any meaningful sense. It’s also not entirely clear to me that the U.S. changed the outcome of the war. I think Hitler was screwed by the time we entered. Though of course Europe would have looked very different if U.S. hadn’t entered, and possibly worse.
War is always horrible almost beyond description, which is why you shouldn’t go to war except in the most extreme circumstances, if at all. Civil War and WW II are ones where I guess I overall feel goign to war was the right thing to do, though (inevitably, because that’s how war works) the “good guys” committed lots of war crimes, and were anything but virtuous.
@Graham
You fight a war to stop the Nazis because they were hell bent on conquest, and were openly aggressive to virtually all of their neighbors. You fight the war to defend yourself from the conqueror. Duh. You fight the war to end the secession of the Confederacy because they threaten the Union by undermining the legitimacy of the Constitution and emboldening local elites to thwart the Union and take control in their regions. As for “etc”, you fight wars for survival, you don’t fight them for moral reasons. Once you start fighting for moral reasons, you have committed yourself to doing evil. It would have been vastly preferable to end slavery via the political process rather than warfare, but the secession of the Confederacy forced a confrontation over slavery. Warfare is an ultimate evil. Nothing other than absolute survival necessity justifies it. There is no moral reasoning that justifies warfare. End of story.
As for Dunning’s fallacy, maybe I am wrong on my analysis of the war (I probably am), as I don’t have a great knowledge base for that part of history. It doesn’t change the second part of that paragraph.
@Noah
Without American economic and material support to Britain and the Soviet Union, Germany would have won, period.
America’s contribution to the actual fighting meant, at least, from the point of view of the Allied country that did most of the actual fighting, that a few Germans got killed while killing Americans instead of while killing even more Soviets.
@Petar
We weren’t the Nazis’ neighbors.
Of course we had material reasons for fighting the Civil War and World War II, as well as moral ones. So did the Nazis, the crusaders, and the neoconservatives have material reasons for what they did, as well as moral ones – or whatever exponents of “fighting for moral reasons” you’re afraid of.
It seems that what you really have a problem with here is morality, period, not necessarily anything to do with fighting.
@Noah
Actually, upon immediate reflection, I may have just underrated the importance of American and British soldiers in World War II. At least, it’s a fact that until after D Day, the eastern front was basically back to where it had been from 1914-1917.
No I have a problem with war. My family comes from a recent US warzone, and most of my family still lives there. The region is broken, impoverished, and traumatized, and drained of any semblance of an economy, and the war was justified on moral grounds. If you could please, for the love of God, cut it out with the stupid, childish personal attacks, it would be much appreciated.
Justified on moral grounds and fought for material reasons (okay, maybe some of the people in the relevant positions of power were dumb enough to actually believe their own press about a moral case for the Kosovo war – which is what I assume you’re referring to – but who cares?).
What, you think the war would have been better if Clinton had said “We’re doing this because we pathologically hate Russia, and as a side benefit it gives us an excuse to bend EU accession rules for Romania and Bulgaria, and we’re also sure it’ll make Muslims everywhere love us”?
I guess you’ll just have to go on not appreciating me.
I would have preferred they didn’t do it. The moral justification was the way they sold it to an American public that was primed for it with an absolutist moral sense of their own inherent goodness as Americans. And no, I am referring to the Yugoslav Civil War of the 90s. The justification doesn’t effect how “good” the war is, but it allows the public that supported it to save themselves from ever having to consider the actual consequences of the war they are fighting. Americans bombed Yugoslavia, and then forgot about it because it was one of those splendid little wars where they came in, and saved the day because they were just so darn good.
That paradigm is evil. In the end, it really doesn’t matter who you cast in the role of good and bad guys, the good and evil paradigm is poisonous, and it motivates evil shit, almost exclusively. And I will continue to not appreciate you as long as you assume that you have a monopoly on truth and morality. It is arrogant and insulting.
Well, there arguably was a moral case for intervention in that war, and now I’m thinking your issue is that the case was better than you want to admit.
We all assume we have a monopoly on truth and morality. That’s also known as thinking you’re right. Which everybody does, because people only ever think of themselves as being wrong in past tense, if at all.
“Well, there arguably was a moral case for intervention in that war, and now I’m thinking your issue is that the case was better than you want to admit.”
I am just going to leave the quote here. Next time you’re family members get bombed by NATO and kidnapped by Western-backed paramilitary groups, lemme know how it feels. Oh, and fuck you.
My family members already got bombed by the Allies. And you hypocrite, like your family’s side, whatever that was, didn’t get its own share of blood on its hands in that war. Love you too.
Good lord, Graham. I wish you could have a conversation without being quite such a self-righteous prick.
Anyway, I’m closing this thread, which I should have closed before, but wasn’t paying attention. I apologize for that.