LiterNet agenda / Iulia Vucmanovici: Reminder of children’s rights

Eyal Sivan is a fictional documentary filmmaker (A specialist, portrait of a modern criminal / A specialist1999) or realistically (Izkor, 1991). He considers the documentary a territory of the essay and prefers it to the work of imagination materialized through film.

Izkor is, in Israel, what it would be – only in part, however – Eternal remembrance for the spectators from Bucharest. It is a call to remembrance and remembrance – and even more than that: it is a real cult.

It is about a religious and secular worship, the hymn of remembrance being spoken both in synagogues and in secular spaces, on the occasion of the commemoration of the ancestors, on the day specially dedicated to the martyrs and heroes of the homeland. It is the hymn dedicated to the memory of Jews who are no longer alive, from everywhere and from all times: those who crossed Egypt, those who perished in the Holocaust, those who or sacrificed, as soldiers, for the state of Israel.

Izkor it is a mantra of memory, but it instrumentalizes memory IN A nationalist sense, which, as the theologian Yeshayahu Meibowitz puts it in the filmed interview, is the sure way of directing humanity to bestiality. The instrumentalization of memory for tribalist purposes, of Zionist nationalism, leads to the transformation of the state of Israel, from a secular state, One a theological construct that will ultimately collapse. Israel was not conceived as a religious construct, although its legitimacy is increasingly sought in the Shoah.

The film was made 33 years ago, in the era immediately following the war in Lebanon, when Israeli society was marked, among other things, by the effects of the Sabra and Shatila massacres. Since then, from the year the documentary was made (1991), the nationalist phenomenon has wreaked havoc in the Balkans as well, destroying the former Yugoslavia and endorsing the notion of ethnic cleansing, still used today for what is happening in Gaza. Nor is Romania, today, a stranger to the nationalist cult, nor to religious education and the induction, through secular institutions, of traditionalist ideas. The idea of ​​a theocratic state also appeals to some of the Romanian politicians and/or theologians. The commemoration of heroes – including war criminals – is a current sovereign exercise in Romania as well. No one could imagine the extent that the nationalist phenomenon would acquire, in the meantime.

However, one cannot draw a perfect parallel with the situation of the state of Israel, past and present, just as the Israeli example of nationalistic confinement is not worthy of being fully embraced without a shadow of critical thinking.

One World Romania is an international festival of documentary film and human rights. However, it is totally against the rights of the child, with a universal primordial interest, to be interviewed about state policy. I saw, in this documentary, 12- and 14-year-old children asked about the legitimacy of the state of Israel, Ruling against him. I have seen little girls of about 6 years old who to tried to wring suitable answers from the subtitle of the documentary: slaves of memory. Fortunately, the little girls were too innocent and, in their sincerity, did not unwittingly contribute to a political theme.

Agree with secular theologian Leobowitz’s views on the Holocaust that it should be more a concern of the perpetrators than the victims, agree that nothing is learned from the Shoah, except that nothing can be learned from such a catastrophe, which is of all humanity, agree with the wrong nationalization of genocide, any, which can lead to the commission of others, circumscribed to other nationalities, agree with the harmful character of collectivist totalitarianism, imposed through festivities and ceremonies, agree even with the subtext of the documentary: memory institutes slavery, it leads to the past.

How to reached the cult of the past, starting from the openness to the future of the pioneers who founded the state of Israel, who acted in a progressive sense, are not subjects for children, even if the education carried out in the name of the past and the ravages of festivist authoritarianism (harmful as anyone else). Children cannot be held hostage in this endeavor by honest, responsible adults gifted enough to find other eloquent examples.