Danel Elpeleg: My grandfather, the Israeli military governor
When Israeli filmmaker Danel Elpeleg’s grandfather died ten years ago, she discovered that his wife, her grandmother Naomi, had had an affair and that there was a cache of love letters. The letters, written by Naomi’s lover Israel, detail a passionate relationship. But that’s not what interested Elpeleg the most. The letters revealed that her grandfather Zvi had initiated the relationship by asking Israel to spend time with his wife while he was away at work in the Israeli army.
“I’m not sure that he exactly meant that they would have an affair. I’m pretty sure he didn’t, but he was away,” says Elpeleg. “He wanted to keep an eye, he wanted to be in control where he wasn’t present. So that perspective was very obvious to me reading the letters. And it immediately was connected to what I knew his military history was.”
Elpeleg’s film about her grandfather, The Governor, which will be screened this weekend at the Jewish Film Festival, is a study in the consequences of that desire for control – its impact on a population and a family.
After the creation of the state of Israel, Zvi Epeleg became military governor of three Palestinian towns in central Israel. The majority of Palestinians fled or were forced out in 1948, but those who remained lived under military administration, a minority in the new Jewish state. The film reveals how every aspect of their lives came under control. Palestinians had to seek permission to travel anywhere, to work, to move goods and even to visit the dentist. There are chilling stories in the film from Palestinians who were not allowed to leave their houses during the nightly curfew, including a woman who went into labour at 17 years old and thought she was going to die when she was unable to get to hospital.
Elpeleg filmed an interview with her grandfather when she was 18. She was serving in the Israeli army and working as a military reporter, but the army censored the interview. Elpeleg, now 36, suspects that they took the decision because it was a controversial topic. The interview runs through the film and offers a fascinating insight into the rationale for domination over the Palestinian population. “We realised right away that we were facing a problem,” Zvi Elpeleg tells his granddaughter. “What do you do with a population living under occupation after you won and the battle is over? What do you do with people who aren’t part of your population? It was only a few days ago that they fought against you and now you give them ID cards and they become citizens.” There is a memorable and chilling exchange between granddaughter and grandfather when Zvi explains that the army imposed total control over the Palestinians to make them entirely dependent on the military administration and defuse their hostility.
Danel: “But it doesn’t solve the hostility.”
Zvi: “The hostility exists.”
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Danel: “Can’t it be resolved?”
Zvi: “It takes hundreds of years.”
Danel: “But is this necessarily the right way?”
Zvi: “There is no other way.”
Elpeleg reflects her grandfather’s cold-blooded control in his family life too. No one really seems to have a warm word to say about him – not his children nor his friends. One family friend remarks: “He liked imposing his authority on others.” However, his wife’s lover, Israel, despite his passionate letters, turns out to have been equally ruthless: he was also a military governor who oversaw the expulsion of Palestinians from the village Iqrit.
The film reveals how the military government enabled expropriation of Palestinian land within Israel, which continued even after the foundation of the state in 1948. There is a telling moment of silence in the film as Danel looks at a document which reveals that her own grandfather was leasing land to Palestinians that was rightfully theirs.
The military administration lasted until 1966. It’s not a subject that is taught in Israeli schools. “You only study about the 1948 war and that Israel won and the country was established,” says Danel. “The next history lesson that you get is 1967 [the Six-Day War]. You really don’t learn anything in between. It’s not by accident.” Elpeleg’s film shows the lasting impact of the administration on Palestinian Israelis today – the historian Leena Dallasheh tells Elpeleg that her own grandfather fears for her future because of her research on Palestinian history: “The military government instilled in us the uncertainty and insecurity that is part of our lives.”
The film details how the military administration in Israel was actually a blueprint for the occupation after the Six-Day War. The same personnel who ruled over the Palestinians in Israel were later running the occupied territories. Zvi Elpeleg became military governor of Nablus and Gaza. Yet despite a long career in the military administration – he went on to be governor in Egypt and Lebanon too – he is also critical of Israel’s occupation in his interview with his granddaughter. When Elpeleg asks if there can ever be peace, he answers: “We will make peace for lack of any other option whether we like it or not, sooner or later, standing upright or on our knees.”
Elpeleg acknowledges that her grandfather was a man of contradictions. “I don’t think that I can explain everything that he did or thought, but for me, I must say it doesn’t really matter because I feel like there are two parts of the story in this film,” she tells me. “One is the historical part, and I think that’s important. And the second thing is that I think the film really talks about power and what power does to you, what it does within your family. And I think about Israel now, about all the IDF [Israel Defence Forces] soldiers [who are reservists] and they’re civilians, they go back to wives, children or they go back to society. And how are we expecting them to behave as if nothing has happened? They had so much power. I’m talking about the power, the feeling that you own this, that what you’re doing has legitimacy from your own government and then going back to society, to wherever it is you’re placed. What effect does that have?”
Her film won the the Diamond Award for Best Documentary at the Jerusalem Film Festival last year. It’s recognition that comes in a political climate that is growing increasingly hostile to films that explore Palestinian stories: in September, the culture minister, Miki Zohar, threatened to cut funding to Israel’s main film awards after a feature about a Palestinian boy, The Sea, won the best feature film prize. Elpeleg is one of a number of young Israeli filmmakers who are interrogating their country’s history through the story of their families in a reckoning with the past. “If you think about it, the people who are part of the establishment of this country, we are their grandchildren, and we are now at the age of making these films,” she says. “With the direction that this country is going, I hope that these films will still get funding. I’m not sure that that will happen.”
[Further reading: Pussy Riot’s Masha Alyokhina: “Putin will fuck you up”]
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