Excerpt
THE FIRST 54 YEARS
An Abbreviated Manual for Military Occupation
directed by Avi Moghrabi
110 min. Les Films d’Ici 2021
In his film, “The First 54 Years: An Abbreviated Manual for Military Occupation,” celebrated Israeli filmmaker Avi Mograbi uses an innovative approach to expose the increasingly brutal tactics that Israel has used in its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza since 1967.
“You have occupied the territory, now what?” asks the film’s self-described “Machiavellian occupation expert” as he begins to read from his manual for military occupation.
As the film’s disimpassioned narrator — he sits in an armchair, smoking a cigarette — Mograbi begins, “I will be your guide in this abbreviated manual for military occupation. I will endeavor to discuss some fundamental principles for the maintenance of the military occupation of a territory.”
Following the film’s brief introduction of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territory following the ’67 war — and the UN Security Council Resolution 242 requiring Israel to leave the territory — Mograbi delivers his first “instructions” as if to a company of soldiers.
Let’s be frank. One of the biggest problems you have with the population is that you don’t know it. The total majority of your people in the field don’t even speak its language. You can, however, assume that, as with any other population that is not sympathetic to its ruler, this one is bound by solidarity. They care for and support one another. Your job is to disrupt and annihilate it. The Romans called it “Divide and Rule.” There are 1,001 ways to do it.
What follows manifests the film’s second and third devices. After Mograbi reads as if from the manual — in a conversation with Mondoweiss he described his role in the film as a “Machiavellian occupation expert” — clips of former Israeli soldiers describe some of the “1,001 ways” Israel has used to suppress the Palestinian people. The testimonies of the veterans, all members of Breaking the Silence, are then followed by Breaking the Silence archival footage, displaying the atrocities.
The pattern is repeated throughout the film, deployed in an understated way and to great effect.
Source:
https://mondoweiss.net/2023/08/you-have-occupied-the-territory-now-what/