An Example of Israeli Self-Disintegration

Ideological self-disintegration, that is.

Here's the interview by Deborah Solomon with Ari Folman, director of "Waltzing With Bashir":-

The film can be described as the Israeli “Slaughterhouse-Five.”
Yes, more than anything else, I see it as an antiwar movie.

One tends to think of Israel as a country where survivalist imperatives do not allow for much antiwar sentiment.
Israelis are divided, definitely, but I think you hear too much of the louder voices that always justify any kind of act of aggression. But there is a very big crowd of people who are fed up with war. I can’t understand the word “war” anyhow.

What can’t you understand?
I can’t understand people killing each other for a piece of land. Can you understand that?

...Israel’s founding generation didn’t seem to harbor ambivalence about war.
They were survival wars. They were about the existence of the country, and they were influenced tremendously by the Holocaust. But the Lebanon War had nothing to do with survival.

It was a military exception?
It was not an exception. It was a turning point in the relationship between the Israeli leadership and the people, who realized for the first time that war can be declared just for political reasons.

Of course, the wars forced upon Israel (1947 after UN Partition; 1949-56 by the fedayeen; 1967 by Egyptian and later Syrian aggression; 1968-70 by Egypt provocations; 1973 by Egyptian & Syrian invasions) were not about territory but Israel's existence. And Lebanon was a continuation in that the PLO was establishing itself in Southern Lebanon just like Hezbollah did 2000-2005.

How come 'smart' and 'clever' people who are creative enough to make good cinema, even if I don't agree with their politics, are so dumb in international relations and the reality of Arab hostility to Israel and Zionism?

Self-disintegration.