The Gatekeepers

The Gatekeepers  is a documentary style film directed by Israeli director Dror Moreh. The film's primary focus is interviews with the six living former heads of the Shin Bet, Israel's internal security agency. From the beginning, Moreh's intentions are obvious. In one of the interviews, one former head notes the biases, saying that “when you leave this job, you become a bit of a leftist.” Furthermore, Moreh seems to select the parts of the interviews he agrees with and use them, ask questions like when he, after reading an anti-occupation passage and asked what they thought. Of course they would say that occupation in general is bad, however, Moreh portrays it as a major mistake and ethical fault of Israel. If we are to take these interviews as testimony we cannot allow for “leading the witnesses” as Moreh does again and again. He uses computer animation to exagerate Israel's supposed immoral actions. We see self-critical and self-serving former  Israeli officials telling the world the terrible things they had to do to keep Israel safe and how guilty it made them feel and how necessary it is to “talk” with the Palestinians. The interviewees are more than willing to condemn others but blame all they done on circumstances. The filmmaker took advantage of the egos of his subjects to promote a pro-peace process film. The film additionally ignores the other side, the immoralities of palestinians, the horrors of the intifadas, and the Israeli parents weeping for their children, instead comparing the 18 year old soldiers to those of Germany under Hitler.