20/09/2009 Israeli director Samuel Maoz's "Lebanon" has being given an angry reception by critics and bloggers in Lebanon, the scene of Israeli invasions, massacres, wars and occupation.
"This film shows the Israeli point of view," wrote the Venice correspondent of the Lebanese daily An-Nahar.
"It depicts an operation of self-defence where the 'Other' does not exist, where the enemy is hidden, absent, treated as 'terrorist'," the correspondent wrote.
Maoz's film relives the director's own experience as a young Israeli soldier in Lebanon in 1982 through the viewpoint of the tank's gunner.
In the film, Israeli soldiers confined to their tank do not see the horrors and massacres they leave in their wake: a woman on the verge of insanity after the death of her child, an elderly man consumed by hate, the agony of a gutted donkey, and more.
And while the director has claimed his film was not political, many
Lebanese journalists who saw the film during the Venice festival earlier this month are not convinced.
The daily Al-Mustaqbal said the film was an attempt to erase 40 years of "Israeli aggression."
"The public here in Italy mourned the four soldiers who suffered -- and not the victims of war," it said.
"The film serves only to show the supposed humanity of the Zionist state, which wages war 'against its will' and 'in pain'."
The daily Al-Akhbar also lambasted the film.
"Many thought it was an anti-war film that criticized the wars waged by the Israeli state and its military, but in reality it is nowhere near critical," it said.
"(Maoz) merely tells of the psychological crisis experienced by four soldiers inside a tank," the daily said.
"The film falls, as expected, into the logic that transforms the executioner into a victim or a quasi-victim," An-Nahar wrote.
"Twenty-seven years after killing someone for the first time in his life, Maoz replaces the tank with a camera. The first is used to kill, the second to convince ... but the truth is lost."
Local critics have also drawn parallels with Israeli director Ari Folman's 2008 animation "Waltz with Bashir," which won a Golden Globe and earned an Oscar nomination.
"Maoz benefited from the wave started by Ari Folman at Cannes, and the Israeli trend of examining the tortured conscience continues with success," wrote Al-Akhbar, which ran the headline "Waltz with Samuel Maoz!"
Also a former Israeli soldier who took part in the invasion of Lebanon in 1982, Folman's hero, Ari, is haunted by the memories of the massacres in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila and sets off on a quest for a past he cannot remember.
Lebanese entries on blogs and Twitter are also filled with angry reaction to "Lebanon."
The blog "Angry Arab News Service" describes Maoz's film as "an Israeli war movie that paid tribute to killers and butchers of the Israeli army who specialize in killing women in children.
"So this Zionist clown dedicates this movie (I will review it once I get my unpurchased copy) to the warriors and not to the victims of the terrorist Israeli warriors," the blogger said.
"Great, another Israeli film about Lebanon that only humanizes Israeli soldiers and not Lebanese/Palestinians victims," said a tweet from Lebanon.
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