documentary

• By Lilly Roser
  For the Diamondback

  A University of Maryland professor’s 2007 reporting revealed widespread surveillance of Israeli soldiers and occasional retaliation against soldiers by the Israeli military. The reporting was used for a documentary, The Soldier’s Opinion, which was screened at this university on Nov. 9.

Jewish studies professor Shay Hazkani was a journalist in Israel in 2007. When he investigated the Israel Defense Forces, he realized data would often reference a classified report titled, “The Soldier’s Opinion.” This led Hazkani to a decade-long journey of uncovering, researching and revealing the findings in both a book and more recently, a documentary.

While it was public information that the Israeli military would examine soldiers’ letters to minimize potential leaks of military secrets, Hazkani’s research revealed the military also read and copied these letters to analyze the lives, thoughts and minds of soldiers, hence the military report’s name, “The Soldier’s Opinion.”

“There was a long legal struggle to get a lot of these materials declassified,” Hazkani said.

When Hazkani first viewed the report, he came across copies of letters that told personal stories of war experiences. Every letter an Israeli soldier sent from 1948 to 1998 was copied and categorized by the military, then rerouted to the intended recipient.

Hazkani said the letters in the report revealed themes that were never perceived by the public.

“[Soldiers doubted] some of the underlying nationalist story that was very pervasive in Israel then and is very pervasive, perhaps even more, in Israel today,” Hazkani said. “I was obviously attracted to the dissenting voices.”

In infrequent cases, soldiers’ letters would be unknowingly held against them. If a letter expressed homosexuality or dissenting political views, letters could be flagged and reported to the soldier’s unit.

By the end of the research, it was concluded that this collection was ultimately an invasion of privacy as a mechanism for social control.

Assaf Banitt, a filmmaker and eventual director of The Soldier’s Opinion, read Hazkani’s reporting and contacted him about using it for a documentary.

“That was literally a once in a lifetime opportunity for me to put my research out there for ordinary people to engage with,” Hazkani said.

Banitt was a soldier who wrote personal letters during his time in the military. He was inspired to make a documentary about the secret surveillance because of the hurt and betrayal he felt after the extent of the surveillance was exposed.

“I knew [the letters] were being read and censored but I had no idea that it was not for the security of Israel, but intelligence, resources and analysis,” Banitt said. “So, when I read [Hazkani’s] article … I was furious and I was fascinated and that’s a good mixture to start making a film.”

Hazkani wanted to use the documentary to make his research accessible to more people.

“I was very, very fortunate that [Banitt] fell in love with the source the way I did and was very eager, and very capable, and very, very talented to make these letters … into an engaging work of art.”

Hazkani’s goal for his research to reach a wider audience was realized with the screening of the documentary.

“This is a wonderful opportunity to see academic research in a very accessible medium,” said Eric Zakim, event moderator and Jewish studies professor. “The transformation of research into film is a wonderful collaboration that really extends the research to different sorts of audiences.”

By Jessica Weiss ’05

Words of longing to distant lovers. Complaints about rotten food and ill health. Admissions of doubt about the motivations for war.

For soldiers fighting on the front lines across the world, letters have long been a way to share personal reflections with those back home.

But for five decades in Israel, it wasn’t just friends and loved ones who pored over soldiers’ most private writings. From 1948 to 1998, the top-secret Postal Censorship Bureau intercepted and copied soldiers’ outgoing personal letters and compiled the findings in biweekly briefings for the country’s military leadership.

That bureau’s work is the subject of a new documentary co-created by University of Maryland Associate Professor of History and Jewish Studies Shay Hazkani. The 55-minute film, “The Soldier’s Opinion,” features both the letter writers and the former censors discussing the impact of the bureau’s intrusion—sometimes even face-to-face with each other. Directed by award-winning Israeli film director Assaf Banitt, the film will be screened at UMD tomorrow.

“This unit was a control mechanism, part of a ‘Big Brother’ apparatus,” Hazkani said. “And as you can see when you watch the film, it can be difficult for people to grapple with the fact that this existed.”

In 2007, Hazkani was a TV journalist conducting research in the archives of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) when he noticed a reference to the views of rank-and-file soldiers included in an ongoing report called The Soldier’s Opinion. After learning the archived reports were classified, he embarked on what he describes as a “small crusade” to get access. A year—and extensive litigation—later, he received copies of several hundred letters. It would take six more years to get access to more of the trove, during which time he decided to pursue academia in the United States.

For 15 years, Hazkani has been endlessly fascinated by the tens of thousands of letters in the collection and the stories and voices they capture. The censorship unit, staffed mostly by female soldiers, flagged topics of interest to army commanders, like Israeli politics, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, homosexuality in the ranks and drug use. In the 1950s, more than 100,000 letters went through the IDF each month, all of which were first sent to censorship bases.

“I remember that first moment, how truly exciting it was to read not what a leader was saying in a very tailored speech, but rather, ordinary people with raw emotion,” Hazkani said. “Reading these letters I felt that dissenting voices were kind of kept from us—in the education system, in the history books—and so my larger goal has been to bring those voices forward.”

In 2013, after Hazkani wrote a story for Haaretz newspaper based on letters sent from soldiers during the Yom Kippur War 40 years earlier, Banitt approached him with interest in turning his academic research into a documentary. Throughout the nearly decade-long collaboration that followed, Hazkani and Banitt worked to transform the written letters into a visual story that could appeal to broad audiences. (Hazkani’s 2021 book “Dear Palestine” also used the letters to capture a range of previously untold Israeli and Arab perspectives of the 1948 War.)

In a review, the Israeli news website Walla lauded the film’s interviews and the way the filmmakers “manage to bring forward a few of the unit's veterans...[who] speak in a truthful and candid manner, aware of what they did and with a sense of self-criticism." The film, it said, “does not have a single boring moment.”

In one scene, Sinai Peter, who served in the army between 1971–74, cries as he reads one of his letters from the time contemplating the dehumanizing ways he saw Israeli soldiers treat Arabs they encountered. He admits in the letter that he’d considered fleeing, or worse—ending his own life.

In the next scene, Peter sits across from the former officer who read those words decades earlier, Adi Tal. She tells him how his letter was shared with leadership as an example of waning soldier morale.

“I was very curious to meet you,” he tells her, “since you rummaged through my innards.”

“I could never do a job like that,” he adds, creating an uncomfortable moment.

Tal admits her youth and naivete at the time, and how she now views the work as “invasive.” Ultimately, the two both express exasperation toward the government’s approach.

Hazkani, who came to UMD in 2016 after receiving his Ph.D. at NYU, said “The Soldier’s Opinion,” aside from being artistically compelling, invites new perspectives and nuance into modern Israeli history, including as it relates to ongoing war and conflict. And it underscores the persistent disconnect between the country’s leaders and its people. Except for a few minor examples, none of the letters ever changed policy.

“We learned this was not the purpose,” Hazkani said. “The idea of the bureau wasn’t to make society better or to solve anything. It was there just to make sure the pot doesn’t overflow. It can simmer, simmer, simmer—but it can’t overflow.” 

-----------------------------------------------

"The Soldier's Opinion” will screen tomorrow at 5 p.m. at UMD in H.J. Patterson Hall followed by a panel discussion with the filmmakers. It will also be shown at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at the JCC in Washington, D.C.

By Liam Farrell 

Three University of Maryland faculty helped illuminate the stories behind two 19th-century state icons for a new pair of documentaries premiering on PBS this month.

“Harriet Tubman: Visions of Freedom” debuts at 10 tonight, and “Becoming Frederick Douglass” follows at 10 p.m. Oct. 11. The films, directed by Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Stanley Nelson, include interviews about Tubman with Cheryl LaRoche, associate research professor in the School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and the author of “Free Black Communities and the Underground Railroad: The Geography of Resistance;” about Douglass with Christopher Bonner, associate history professor and author of “Remaking the Republic: Black Politics and the Creation of American Citizenship;” and about Douglass with Robert Levine, whose most recent book is “The Failed Promise: Reconstruction, Frederick Douglass, and the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson.”

“There are no two people more important to our country’s history than Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman. Their remarkable lives and contributions were a critical part of the 19th century, and their legacies help us understand who we are as a nation,” Nelson said. “We are honored to share their stories with a country that continues to grapple with the impact of slavery and debate notions of citizenship, democracy and freedom.”

La Roche said Tubman is a fascinating figure because of the leadership she was able to show despite being a diminutive figure barely 5 feet tall who didn’t know how to read or write.

“She doesn’t have the impressive credentials we really associate with (being a leader),” she said. “And yet she is leading men, women, children—sometimes whole families—out of slavery.”

Tubman developed a strong sense of herself from an upbringing on the Eastern Shore with an intact nuclear family, La Roche said, and her religious faith gave her the confidence and strength to help liberate slaves on the Underground Railroad.

“She did not allow herself to be defined by what the 19th century thought of Black women,” she said. “She transcended all of that.”

Bonner teaches a course on Douglass, who was born into and escaped from slavery in Talbot County, Md., before launching a career as an abolitionist, orator and writer; a statue of him now stands on the UMD campus. He said Douglass’ life can be a lens onto how America has wrestled with its stated ideals and how it failed to live up to them even after slavery was ended.

“We can see the work that had to be done to make freedom real … and the insufficiencies of freedom,” he said. “He points to a history of people seeking opportunities in the United States and confronting its limitations.”

While both Tubman and Douglass are known as historic icons, Bonner said he hopes the documentary also shows the bravery and contributions of the people who supported and worked alongside them. In order to achieve remarkable things, he said, “the extraordinary needs other extraordinary.”

“Individuals can change the world but that happens when people work together,” he said. “Their histories are histories of solidarity.”

The films are co-productions of Firelight Films and Maryland Public Television, with additional support from the state of Maryland, Bowie State University, DirecTV and Pfizer.