He could have been as big as Ben-Gurion. A documentary trying to figure out what went wrong

In 2003, the acclaimed American documentary filmmaker Errol Morris directed the Oscar-winning film “Fog of War.” It was a long, fascinating and eye-opening interview with Robert S. McNamara, who served as U.S. Secretary of Defense during the turbulent years of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Cold War, the Canadian assassination and the Vietnam War. However, the film, more than an autobiography of an influential political figure who stood at several significant intersections in modern U.S. history Of 11 lessons from which one thing could be deduced. History tends to repeat itself, and people, especially politicians, learn nothing from it. A conclusion that was sub-validated mainly in light of the US military involvement in Iraq at the time.

It’s hard not to remember this film in view of watching Ran Tal’s film, “What Would Have Happened If? Ehud Barak on War and Peace,” which premiered at the Jerusalem Virtual Film Festival and is now touring cinemas, subject to Corona restrictions (Rainbow 12 will air later). The title of the film places it in a hypothetical-philosophical field. History, after all, is the sum of all that has happened, the product of actions that have taken place in one order or another; Reflecting on her alternative course is nothing more than a fantasy, which sometimes has popular elements (a.k.a. “disrespectful bastards”), and sometimes a research value that helps to understand what actually happened from an examination of the alternatives. Of Yasser Arafat, a plan that Ehud Barak worked on in the 1970s, would indeed be implemented.

The most interesting choice of the film, perhaps even surprising, is in Ehud Barak. While it is easy to understand what drew Morris to McNamara, Ehud Barak is considered a significant part of the Israeli public as a miss and a failure. After all, this is the man who was shamefully removed from the post of prime minister only two years after standing late at night in Rabin Square in Tel Aviv and announcing to a cheering crowd of tens of thousands: “This is the dawn of a new day.”

But this seems, after all, to be the central theme of this beautiful and sad film: the tragic story of an Israeli leader, perhaps the last we had at the time of writing. A leader who seeks to change reality, who feels it is his duty to act, make decisions, learn the lessons of the past and apply them to the future. “What would have happened if?” It is a film about leadership, but it is also a film about a miss that affects the entire Israeli society, in the present.

Tal’s documentaries – including “Children of the Sun” (2007) on the collapse of the collective vision, “Paradise” (2012) on the sting and “The Museum” (2017) on the Israel Museum – seek to define the elusive concept called Israeliness. Ehud Barak, it seems, represents for him this concept, for his arrogance and defeat. Ehud Barak is a clear expression of Israeliness not only in terms of his sabra biography (a kibbutz member, a military man, a politician), he is also its symbol as someone who was cast out of the war and asked – as far as possible – to bring peace. After all, war and peace is not only the name of Tolstoy’s epic novel, but also the essence of the being from which Israeliness is cast. From his analytical and cold analysis – by the way, the only thing close to Barak’s emotion is a thin and rare smile – he examines Israel’s military and political history, as someone who was an active part of it, but also as someone who looks at it critically and comes to one conclusion: we failed.

Barak’s insights, surprisingly, are not innovative. The fact that the State of Israel did not properly understand the reasons for its victory in the Six Day War, and sank into the complacency that led to the trauma of Yom Kippur, should not cause its listeners to open their mouths in amazement. Even being a witness, as a child, in a kibbutz, to the Nakba and to Holocaust survivors, to the repressed of the Israeli-Zionist consciousness, does not provide any extraordinary ideological perspective. Barak in his memoirs, in his historical analysis, is almost asked to say, insists on the obvious. The film itself does not seek to confront it. Tal, on the other side of the camera, is content with guiding, general questions, not laying baits. This is not a bitter argument, nor is it a poignant mental account. The film also does not seek to be.

Do the film and Barak himself manage to decipher the reason for the failure? It does not refer to the failure of Camp David talks (the place is defined by Barak, a man with a dry sense of humor, as “the crown jewel of the US prison system”), but the collapse of who might have been the most important Israeli leader after, and perhaps by, David Ben-Gurion: The answer, in any case, is no. Tal does not seek to decipher history, and Barak does not seem to be equipped with self-criticism. At times it seems that everyone, including history itself, which has not subordinated itself to the size of the prime minister, is responsible for the failure. I watched the film twice, and I do not remember a real moment of self-reflection on the part of Barak.

A leader, says Barak, needs to act in a complex reality. Do not feel paralyzed. His duty to change – and the film accordingly (similar to Morris’ above film) is divided into six episodes and an epilogue, each of which deals with the decisions in which Barak was a partner. History, on the other hand, consists of countless people acting on momentary considerations, and the public – oh, the public is Those who are willing to stone those who seek to bring about change.

Although the film was signed in Barak’s defeat to Ariel Sharon, Ran Tal chooses to end it by running the picture backwards. As if we see selected scenes from it, from the end to the beginning. Documentary film, in contrast to reality, can run history backwards, and in the process, with its generosity, like letting Barak re-experience the moment when, according to the film, it all started and ended: what would have happened if that plan to eliminate Arafat had actually materialized. Historical speculations are the domain of historians and documenters. Leaders, on the other hand, perpetuate history or become its victims.