Revisiting a War That's Seldom Discussed

A scene from "My First War," a film by Israeli reservist Yariv Mozer, who took along his video camera when he was called up for the 2006 war with Hezbollah. (Courtesy Of Yariv Mozer)

But the reality of war turned out to be far different from what he had expected. "I was really naive going into this war," said Mozer, who still looks the part of the soldier, with his muscular build and shaved scalp. "I thought that if the commanders were going to war, they must know what they're doing."

Instead, Mozer and his fellow troops received conflicting orders, inadequate protections and an inscrutable strategy. The goal was to stop the rockets, but Hezbollah's Katyushas continued to streak across the sky throughout the war's 33 days. Soldiers slept in the open in orchards that could turn at a moment's notice into fields of fire. Units were ordered into Lebanon, then hastily pulled back when they encountered the enemy.

While the war was ostensibly launched to save the lives of two Israeli soldiers who had been seized by Hezbollah, the troops that Mozer encountered expressed deep hurt at the lack of care that the military's leadership seemed to show for their lives.

"Somebody sent soldiers to die," a weary Capt. Reuven Saadon tells Mozer from the front seat of an armored Humvee as he drives back from Lebanon. "That is the clearest thing I can say."

The videotaped conversations with the soldiers came easily, Mozer said, because "I was wearing the same uniforms as they were."

In one of the film's most poignant scenes, Capt. Aharon Yechezkel returns to the front after attending the funeral of a cousin "who was unlucky enough to get a bullet in his armpit rather than the bulletproof jacket."

After the war, Mozer catches up with Yechezkel and finds that he has quit his high-tech job, stopped studying for an advanced degree and is afraid of answering the phone.

Instead, Yechezkel spends his time staring off the Tel Aviv coast, watching the waves of the Mediterranean lap Israel's shore.

Now back at work but still recovering, Yechezkel said in an interview that the transition to civilian life was made more difficult by the fact that most people did not want to acknowledge what had happened. "In Tel Aviv, where I worked, nobody registered the fact that the war was a war," he said. "It didn't have any impact."

Judges at the DocAviv festival commended Mozer's film for its "lively and intense" presentation and for capturing "moments that cannot be reconstructed."

Not everyone was a fan, however. Shlomo Sand, a Tel Aviv University historian, said the film is a prime example of the "shooting and crying" mentality that has long been popular in Israel. He described it as, "Yes, we are crying because we are humans, but we continue to shoot because we don't have any other alternative."

The film, he said, does not adequately address the basic question of whether the war was necessary. "Shooting and crying doesn't help achieve peace," he said. "Israel wants to forget this war but is still preparing for the next one."