The top story on Al Jazeera this morning was titled, “Gaza deaths dog Israeli Military”. It is a sad, but not surprising, commentary on the Gaza action which lay so heavily on our minds and hearts from Boxing Day on until finally it more or less stopped. It is easy to forget. Signs of spring appear, you play with your grandchildren, you go to artists’ talks, you cook dinners for family and friends, you spend time choosing which of all the possible things you’ll write your next blog post about, and you forget, if you are not careful to remember, that terrible things happened to innocent people in Gaza. This story is an important reminder.
The verb in the story’s headline is an appropriate one, suggesting as it does some kind of pursuit, not the annoying persistence of a puppy tugging at a pant leg, but the relentless running of a pack of dogs after something, in this case, some truths about what happened. It reminded me immediately of Waltz with Bashir (see the trailer here), which we saw Monday night, a profoundly moving exploration of what can happen when young men carry guns for their country and meditation on what using that gun does to the one who holds it as well as to those unfortunate enough to be on the other end of the barrel. It is a film to be seen in its entirety, and not just for the powerful opening sequence of dogs running through streets to stop outside the window of a veteran of the Israeli incursion into Lebanon in 1982.
It is hard to know who will provide the dogged persistence needed to uncover the wrongs that were inflicted on civilians in Gaza earlier this year. I for one am grateful to newspapers like Haaretz and news sources like Al Jazeera for reminding me not only of what happened in Gaza but what continues to happen, and to Ari Folman for a film that explores difficult things with thoughtful compassion for everyone damaged by the making of war. It is too easy to forget.
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