Checkpoint
Over three million Palestinians live in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which has been under Israeli military authority since 1967. Israeli director Yoav Shamir documents the impact of the enforced boundaries known as “checkpoints” on the Israeli border guards drafted to monitor them and the Palestinian citizens who must pass through them daily.
Shot in a cinema verite style, a style of documentary filmmaking that stresses unbiased realism, the film shows these anonymous, one-time encounters between both sides and the lasting political, social and cultural effects. Checkpoint gives a chilling look at the destructive impact on both societies.
This movie is riveting. I can only call the treatment of the Palestinians trying to get through the checkpoint humiliating (and shocking). The woman are harassed and the men are abused. The border guards fair no better in system that places these young men in situations beyond their training or capacity for judgement.
It is a real-time tragedy unfolding on the screen, full of hapless players, endless conflict, and implied ripples for generations. When the old Palestinian heads for the border line saying “Shoot me” you wonder how far it will go. If you love freedom, this movie is painful. (Excerpt from amazon.com)
Watch the full documentary now
July 6th, 2009 at 01:26
Inhuman
August 16th, 2009 at 19:13
As I watched I could feel the oppression.
The remark by the soldier at 50:50 says it all. We are human. They are animals. Its seems the IDF has dehumanized Arabs in the same way the Nazi soldiers did with Jews in the 40s. No one should have to live with this kind of oppression. Things like the soldier hitting on young girls, not allowing a mother to go through with her young children, and making the man stand in the cold and rain when they could have let him stand in the dry. Today Israel sows the wind and someday they shall reap the whirlwind.
October 26th, 2009 at 22:05
Harrowing documentary, but it needs to be watched.
Why wasn’t Judaism/Zionism given the Rhineland, Boveria etc as opposed to Palestine, for what the Germans supposedly did?
How could a race that was subjected to such horrors become as bad if not worse than the Nazi’s?
Why do her good, honest people permit such things in their name?
Is this the reason Hitler managed to rally so many people against Zionism?
Israel’s friends continue to dwindle and enemies just increase daily. If any good honest Israeli’s are waiting for the right time to stand up, that time is already overdue. And for the rest, shame on you.
October 27th, 2009 at 00:09
Hi Realist,
I agree, it’s a harrowing doc. I’ve been to Israel, have stayed in Gaza for a couple of weeks, went to the West Bank… The Palestinians are really being treated like animals by the Israelis. I was appalled by what I saw, although I spent just a short period of time there. These guys are seriously a paranoid nation, I myself almost got a heart attack when I was taken aside at the airport in Tel Aviv (as a suspect of some sort?) and my whole luggage searched only to find out that the havoc was due to a f…ing 2 euro flash light I had in there – they examined it for half an hour – and I was close to shitting myself. I threw it away immediately after. Some years prior to that, my husband, who has worked his whole life for the International Red Cross, was put in a padded room, at the same airport, with his briefcase waiting in the middle of it & was ordered through a loudspeaker to open it (perhaps because he’s Irish)! Of course, there was nothing dangerous in there.
But, I beg of you, not to put into question the death of millions of innocent Jews in the Nazi Germany. The Nazis did not “supposedly” kill them, they actually killed them. There is no, and there never will be, a higher cause which could justify what has been done, or may be done, to any people.
Greetings.
October 27th, 2009 at 22:13
Hey WTC7, thanx for the reply, but could you clarify “There is no, and there never will be, a higher cause which could justify what has been done, or may be done, to any people.”
Are you saying that, there is no justification……. but IF there ever was one, then the holocaust was it??? (I hope i’m mistaken)
Being from Ireland, I geuss that would entitle us to half the planet for what the Brit’s have done to us during the past 400yrs? How about Egypt, or I hear Jamaica is nice. I’m sure with the help of the UN we could kick the shit out of the natives and create an Irish homeland in a land in which we have no justifiable claim to (all unsigned possible works of fiction from 2000yrs ago not with standing).
Its wrong, boycott Israel.
October 27th, 2009 at 23:20
Hi Realist,
I fear that you misunderstood about what I said about the Holocaust (intentionally, I may say, ’cause I was very clear in what I said).
You stated ” Why wasn’t Judaism/Zionism given the Rhineland, Boveria etc as opposed to Palestine, for what the Germans supposedly did?”.
I underlined in my response your “supposedly”. But now, since you pursue the issue, what do you mean by “supposedly” in this context? Do you mean that the Nazis actually didn’t commit the Holocaust?
I really don’t know what further clarification my following statement needs: “I beg of you, not to put into question the death of millions of innocent Jews in the Nazi Germany. The Nazis did not “supposedly” kill them, they actually killed them. There is no, and there never will be, a higher cause which could justify what has been done, or may be done, to any people” (in the context of what the Nazis did to Jews).
The “IF” that you implant into my words is malicious, btw I’m Jewish, although not a practicing one (and I’m not Irish, though my husband is).
Greetings.
February 3rd, 2010 at 17:18
I knew there were going to be anti semitic comments here! Study the subject,pick up a freakin book then make an informed opinion. I’m sure most of you have only seen this documentary and that’s it. How easy I find, that most people are so eager to blame and hate the Jews. Pathetic! Sick of the pro anyone and anything as long as Israel is the culprit.