My Israeli flag, love it or not

October 19, 2009 - 8:55 AM by David · 2 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Movies, coexistence

The blue and white of the Israeli flag has never been more closely analyzed and inspected than in the documentary film My Flag by Toronto filmmaker Igal Hecht.

The 30-year-old, Israeli-born Hecht has made about 40 documentaries over the last decade, with most of them in recent years focusing on Israel, which he calls his “obsession.”

My Flag , which is having its Israeli debut on Thursday night at the Sixth Jewish Eye Film Festival in Ashkelon, finds Hecht traveling around the country during its 60th birthday year and asking those he encounters one question – ‘what does the Israeli flag mean to you?’

http://myspacetv.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=36087766

The answers range from humorous to biting to reflective, accurately mirroring the fractures of Israeli society and the attempts by its citizens to understand the nature of their country amid their first identity crisis.

Hecht traveled to Sderot where a man whose wife was seriously injured in a Kassam attack angrily says, “This flag is nothing to me – if you weren’t here, I would burn it like the Arabs do.”

In Mea She’arim, he walked around with flag wrapped around him, like a more thoughtful Bruno, evoking residents to respond, “It’s a rag, I wouldn’t even wash the floors with it.”

“We don’t need a flag, we have Hashem,” another says.

But for every negative connotation, there’s patriotic responses, from singer Saraleh Sharon who says, “The flag of Israel is our home.” Or from a Druze Israeli in the North who says “I am proud to be a son of this nation.”

In a process similar to that in the US, where in recent years, the symbol of the flag has been coopted by a decidedly right-wing, nationalist viewpoint, the Israeli flag has also inadvertently become a symbol of the Right. My Flag is an attempt to return the flag, representing both the achievements and blemishes of an imperfect country, to the Center.

“I learned that there’s frustration in Israel,” Hecht told me. “I end the film with a speech Ezer Weizman gave in 1996 in Germany. He talked about the country standing at a crossroad and unsure of where it was going. Unfortunately, that’s the thesis of the film ultimately. There’s a lot of uncertainty and lack of vision for many Israelis. That can be still translated into love and appreciation of the flag, but it also provokes hesitancy and grasping at trying to understand what’s going on in the country. Is it Zionism, or post-Zionism? What is the new Israel?”

That’s the question we’re all trying to grapple with.

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