Film Review: 'The Valley of the Wolves: Palestine'

My attention was recently brought to a 2011 Turkish film directed by Zübeyr Şaşmaz called 'The Valley of the Wolves: Palestine' which is a cinematic dramatisation of a fictional Turkish response to the Israeli attack on the 'Gaza Freedom Flotilla' of the 31st May 2010. The film follows the exploits of its hero Polat Alemdar in his attempt to seek justice against the fictional character Moshe ben Eliezer; who was behind the systematic massacre of members of the 'Gaza Freedom Flotilla' in the Gaza strip and Israel.

The action itself (and remember this is an action film) is rather one dimensional and in the vein of James Bond for me: as Alemdar and his friends manage to avoid being hurt (most of the time) by massively superior Israeli regular and paramilitary forces. Alemdar and company even manage to infiltrate and destroy a high security Israeli command and control centre plus take over an entire military prison with less men than I have fingers on my hand.

All that said: the real interest in the film is not actually the action, which is - as I have said nothing particularly wonderful although refreshing in that the jews are actually the 'bad guys' they truly are for once (and suffer accordingly) - but rather the historical and political motifs and dialogue that the film uses. One particularly apt example is a scene where Moshe ben Eliezer is with the ultra-nationalist Zionist prison governor - it is also implied that he is a senior figure in the Shin Bet - at his mansion in a settler town in Gaza and is discussing the production and use of banned incendiary ammunition for sale around the world.

Moshe ben Eliezer is challenged by his ultra-nationalist Zionist friends and associates to prove the ammunition is genuine and actually works. So Ben Eliezer then simply loads a sniper rifle with the banned ammunition and puts a bullet in a Palestinian man who happens to be driving by as carefree as you like. Ben Eliezer then promptly covers it up by claiming that the man was a terrorist and his military associates promptly stage the scene to make the theory into 'reality'.

This theme obviously jives with the reality of jewish settlers repeatedly wounding and killing Palestinians - who they regard as Amalek (and therefore are commanded to exterminate) - and then claiming they were 'terrorists'. The most famous incidents of this kind - of course - tend to be ones where jewish settlers - who also really do tend to be fanatical Revisionist Zionists (i.e., ultra-nationalists) - shoot at Palestinian youths who have thrown some stones at them.

This - of course - from the settler point of view is an unpardonable sin as it an act of blatant insubordination against the Chosen of Yahweh who were gifted the land by the omnipotent, omniscient god Yahweh. Therefore by extension they are justified in their own minds about doing what they wilt to the goyim who have pretensions of not being proverbial beasts of burden for all eternity. The fact that settler propagandists, the Israeli government and Israel various and nefarious lobbies in Europe and North America then proceed to cover up these actions just like 'The Valley of the Wolves: Palestine' suggests is rather damning.

The Israeli government does this by referring to aggressive acts of violence by jewish settlers as 'isolated incidents' (when they happen on a regular basis), claiming the Palestinians had 'assaulted or attacked Israelis' (is throwing stones the same as hitting someone with an iron bar) and/or claiming those involved are 'terrorists' involved with say Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, Fatah or even Al Qaeda (without even a shred of evidence they are thus labelled 'Islamists' and chalked up as another turbaned lunatic who has gone to see his imaginary houris).

Another theme on the suffering of the Palestinians at the hands of the Israelis is the random killing of Arabs: women, children and general civilian foot traffic by jewish soldiers with and without orders from Ben Eliezer. Israeli soldiers break doors down and start shooting or haul the inhabitants off for 'questioning' packing them into specially-designed prison buses. They are then shoved into filthy prison cells with brackish water on the floor and in time tortured/executed by Israeli security service personnel for any information they can give them on the oft-imputed (wrongly as it happens) inquisitional logic of: you wouldn't have been arrested if you didn't know something or had not done something wrong.

The prison scenes actually also disprove the idea that the film is in any way anti-Semitic as some German - and nearly all American and Israeli - critics have claimed. As one of the central characters is Simone Levi - an American jewess tour guide - who is obviously an anti-Zionist and in sympathy with the Palestinian cause by the end of the film. Levi is treated very positively throughout the film and is shown to be an alleged 'noble jewess' struggling with her people's own unique heritage and history to forge an alleged 'better multi-faith future'.

Levi is one of those caught up in the raids by Ben Eliezer's troops and is dragged to the high security prison run by an Israeli ultra-nationalist Zionist who promptly accords her special treatment because she is jewish and particularly because she is a Levi. So in the words of the ultra-nationalist Zionist: has 'holy blood' running through her veins.

This might seem 'anti-Semitic' to someone not acquainted with Judaism but it is in fact fundamental to it before the mid-to-late 19th century and to most forms of the religion there-after. The idea of 'holy blood' is rooted in the designation of biological castes in Judaism whereby one's descent from a specific jewish tribe gives rise to a superior or inferior status dependent on the situation.

So if one is a Levi - as Simone Levi presumably is - then one is a superior biological caste to a normal Israelite who is not descended from the Kohanim or the Levities (the two priestly classes). The fact that Simone Levi is described as having 'holy blood' in the film is not at all problematic as the idea is common in both Zionist thought (as Zionism takes as its fundamental assumption that jewry is a unique and inviolate biological group) and in most forms of historical and current Judaism. It also shows that Zübeyr Şaşmaz is not actually attacking jews per se -- as Simone Levi is a heroine in the film - but rather Zionist ideology - and possibly Judaism - with his script.

After all how can one be being 'anti-Semitic' if one includes a positive central jewish character who never rejects her jewishness but rather rejects Zionism and to an extent Judaism?

The fact that the ultra-nationalist Zionist who runs the prisoner orders Levi executed as part of a 'false flag' Islamic killing (although she is later rescued in typical one dimensional style by Polat Alemdar) is hardly surprising and also evidences this lack of anti-Semitism as if Şaşmaz wished to be 'anti-Semitic' he merely needed to show Levi believing what ultra-nationalist Zionist prison governor tries to get her believe is the correct jewish ideological position - based on the jews being a biological group chosen by Yahweh to rule the world - rather than rejecting it for 'multi-faith peace and tolerance'. The message here is obvious to those without a considerable pro-Israel axe to grind: that Zionism is a barrier to 'multi-faith peace and tolerance' in Palestine. A sentiment that I might add is near universal in mainstream anti-Zionist literature.

Indeed perhaps the most controversial of all the sentiments expressed in 'The Valley of the Wolves: Palestine' is in the exchange between the ultra-nationalist Zionist prison governor and Simone Levi: when the governor asks 'has she [Levi] forgotten the Shoah?' He then proceeds to inform the viewer that Levi's grandfather was a well-known 'Holocaust survivor' (possibly a reference to Primo Levi) who wrote a well-known book about his experiences (which he then produces on cue) and that fact alone should remind her of why the jews have to have Israel (which is a direct reference to the myth and canard laden claims of popular jewish history and Israeli hagiography).

This is obviously meant to shame Levi into becoming a 'good jew' and realising that she is part of the Yahweh-ordained master race whose duty it is to civilise the nasty goyim who are impudent enough to not like being massacred, exploited and then blamed for their own deaths and exploitation in the typical fits of Israeli intellectual chutzpah.

Why is this exchange so controversial?

Well it dramatizes the arguments put forward by Norman Finkelstein in his well-known book 'The Holocaust Industry', which argues at length that the 'Holocaust' has become both a self-perpetuating industry for the organisations that seek to 'educate non-jews' about the alleged 'killings' and as an intellectual shield used to defend against and deflect any and all criticism from Israel. While not doubting the alleged atrocities: the film therefore asserts by implication - with Finkelstein - that Zionists and Israelis have abused the 'legacy' of the 'Holocaust' for their own gains, which ipso facto leads to the position of what organisations such as the Simon Wiesenthal Centre have been pleased to call 'Holocaust minimization' (which often takes the form of claims of someone being a closet 'Holocaust denier').

If you strip away the slight academic jargon a moment what this charge basically amounts to is doubting the 'official story' of the gas chambers, mass gassing and the 'uniqueness' of the so-called 'Shoah'. In this case what we are dealing with is a 'denial' of the 'uniqueness' of the ‘Holocaust’, which jewish historians worldwide have as of late become increasing desperate to protect by literally inventing reasons (unrelated to the actual event) why the 'Holocaust' is ever so much worse than atrocities committed on a far wider scale, with far more casualties and with actual records (as opposed to unjustified assumptions) that didn't supposedly singly target jews.

You can see that the film tries to dampen the effect of the dialogue on the 'Holocaust' slightly via the introduction of Simone Levi's demand that the 'Holocaust' be a learning experience for the jews so that they can 'lead the world' in creating 'multi-faith peace and tolerance'. However the controversial meaning behind the exchange still jump out at the diligent viewer.

That said even this subtle attack on the sacred shibboleths of jewry is not in any way 'anti-Semitic' as it is clearly clarified that the jewish obsession with the 'Holocaust' and their own suffering is the problem: not the fact that they are themselves - by their very nature - are the problem as anti-Semitism inherently argues. Thus the film is only actually guilty - for lack of a better term - of anti-Zionist and not anti-Semitic sentiment.

All in all the film is worth watching, but it is really let down by its one dimensional and utterly implausible action scenes as well as the occasion canned one-liner - such as Polat Alemdar's assertion that they are 'in Palestine not Israel' early on - which makes cringe-worthy watching at times. However that said it is certainly a good example of anti-Zionist cinema as well as the commercial potential it has in both the West and the Arab world (it was commercially very successful) which suggests that with enough patience, plenty of gumption and the right backers an anti-Israeli alternative to the jew-addled Hollywood could be created.