Waltz With Bashir Has Echoes of Gaza

Israel’s Gaza assault is slipping from US front pages, yet ironically, Waltz With Bashir, an Israeli animated film about the 1982 Israel-Lebanon war, is taking America by storm, earning mountains of critical praise and a Golden Globe. The parallels between that atrocity and the current conflict are striking, Gary Kamiya writes for Salon.

Then as now, Israel attempted to crush a nationalist movement by force, on a flimsy pretext, with America’s blessing. At the time Israelis cheered, but later came to see the Sabra and Shatilla massacre as a national shame. Someday, Gaza fervor, too, will fade. “Israelis will realize that their leaders sent them to kill hundreds of innocent people for nothing,” Kamiya writes. “Perhaps in 2036, some haunted filmmaker will release Waltz With Hamas.” (More Gaza stories.)