Jewish Current Issues: The Gaza Withdrawal Filmed

March 23, 2007

The Gaza Withdrawal Filmed

“Withdrawal from Gaza,” produced and directed by Joel Blasberg, is an extraordinary documentary film that should not be missed.

It opens today (through next Thursday) at the Laemmle Encino Town Center Theater and will be part of the Beverly Hills Film Festival April 11-15, after which it moves to the Santa Cruz Film Festival April 20-28 and the Lenore Marwin Jewish Film Festival in Detroit April 29-May 10. There are a couple two-minute clips from the film here.

The film chronicles the August 2005 withdrawal of 8,500 Israelis from 21 Jewish settlements (known collectively as Gush Katif) in the Gaza Strip. In the words of the filmmakers, it is “less a political film than a chronicle of the last days of a world, a community, and a way of life that was destined to vanish, and disappear into the desert from which it sprang.”

The film captures the beauty of Gush Katif and its people, documents the sensitivity with which conflicted soldiers (some wearing kipas and long beards) carried out their duties, and presents various points of view about the withdrawal without resorting to either polemics or theatrics. It is all the more powerful because the event is portrayed in an understated way.

Blasberg has written and produced television and film for most of the major studios and television networks over a 30-year career. He lives in Los Angeles and is the son of Holocaust survivors. Before coming to Hollywood, he lived in Israel for six years and served in the Israeli Army. Here is a brief JCI interview with the producer/director:

JCI: Joel could you tell me how you came about making this remarkable film?

Blasberg: Well, I hadn’t made a documentary before, but months before the scheduled withdrawal I thought that it was important to record what I thought would be a very historical and very emotional and very traumatic event in the history of the Jewish people. So I went over months earlier and I visited all the settlements, and decided that it was worthwhile, and I came back about two months before the withdrawal and moved into Gush Katif and hired a group.

JCI: And what is the principal lesson you think people should draw from the film?

Blasberg: It wasn’t so much -- I didn’t make the film so much for or against the withdrawal. I made the film because I thought that this was something that Israel and the Jewish people had decided to do, to seek peace with no guarantees that peace would come. I think the lesson to be drawn afterwards is almost clear. Israel removed the soldiers; there are no soldiers left in Gaza; there are no settlers left in Gaza; and there are still rockets being fired into Israel.”