I saw Raised To Be Heroes this afternoon, about Israeli reservists who refuse to serve in the Occupied Territories. It focuses on 4 soldiers who have enforced the Occupation and come to question their actions, along with 5 high school students who have refused the draft and been jailed for their convictions.

Matan, an IDF draft resister

It's emotionally rending, all the more so because the students are so likeable, and the soldiers are so emotionally damaged. It's impossible not to think, "What would I do in their place?" The students are high-spirited, still teenagers, full of political outrage about the Occupation. The soldiers are obviously traumatized, to the extent that they witnessed their actions directly: the man who flew a helicopter speaks without emotion, whereas the man who conducted home invasions in the Gaza Strip is intense, and more involved. You get the sense the soldiers have suffered more, because they came to refuse based on their own experiences, not political convictions.

And yet this is one of the contradictions that gets posed: the soldiers suffered more, to the extent they made others suffer. One man, who appears to have post-traumatic stress disorder, describes torturing a 14 year old Palestinian boy to death during the first Intifada. He speaks openly about parallels between the Israeli army and the Nazis, comparing the Gaza Strip to the Warsaw Ghetto. This is a strong claim to make in any context - in Israel, where so many are descended from survivors of the Holocaust, it takes real courage to confront people with their actions in this way.

Just like you or me? - the Special Forces officer who killed Palestinians

I found myself empathizing with him, and then realized I was empathizing with a man who had tortured a child to death. I wonder at a film that allowed me to do that. The context is incredibly important: he's one of the few that even acknowledges the IDF's crimes. He's earned the hatred of his fellow Israelis for doing so. Judging by his demeanour, he's going to suffer a long time for his actions. But will he suffer more than the boy did, or his family does?

And that's what struck me about the film, as a snapshot of Israeli society. The scale of morality is completely different than what's used for the Palestinians. The reservists' refusal to serve is an attempt to equate the two - an admirable attempt, but it still falls short. When Matan, a teenage activist, goes to jail, and they show the concrete walls of the prison, I couldn't help thinking that Israel had imprisoned an entire people. Is the punishment for transgression in Israel simply to live like Palestinians?

Gathering the remnants - branches of olive trees bulldozed by the IDF in Gaza. The trunks are often taken by Israeli settlers and replanted on their land. From ACT

And, given the Palestinians are next door, is there any excuse for not knowing how they live? There's no point denouncing ordinary people as brainwashed; we're all products of our society. But there must be some brainwashing going on, if millions of Israelis can steadfastly justify an Occupation a few miles away. The film itself showed how Israelis live in western-style affluence, while Palestinians exist in slums. Doesn't that affect people?

Is refusing to serve a brave act of solidarity? The leftist in me says, "Good for you for resisting; keep it up." The outraged bleeding-heart in me says, "Your country is slaughtering and starving Palestinians, and all you can do is refuse to fight?" Should I spend time empathizing with their moral struggle, when the struggle to live in the midst of daily terror consumes the lives of millions of Palestinians?

An 'equal' conflict - Israeli F-15s

Revenge of the babas

Finally, the nice Jewish grandmother I sat next to, who told me how tall I was, didn't applaud at the end of the film. I overheard another woman in a wheelchair say afterwards, "Did you see that last [film]? It was horrible! Horrible!" She radiated indignance. I wonder, what makes these women so callous? How can they watch their grandsons accuse Israel of war crimes, and see the horror on their faces as they recount military atrocities, and remain impassive? These women were old enough to remember the Holocaust; they were nearly wiped out through dehumanization. And yet they harbour the same attitudes. I have to believe their coldness stems from the Zionist political myth, reinforced through a powerful political-military state networked into U.S. imperialism. It's ideology, not human nature. Yet that ideology can apparently turn grandmothers into sociopaths.

May 15th is the 58th anniversary of Al-Nakba, or The Disaster - what Palestinians call the founding of the Israeli state. Mark it on your calendars.