San Francisco Jewish Film Festival 2013

[Chris Knipp]

THE LAB SHOWS WEAPON THAT SHOOTS AROUND CORNERS

Yotam Feldman: The Lab

Gaza and the West Bank are used as testing grounds for new weaponry by arms manufacturers, dealers, and exporters, and if you don't believe that, you need to watch this documentary. This is one of those films where people proudly talk about activities they may be unaware the viewers will find horrific and disgusting. Like the makers of recent films about Israeli judges ( Ra'anan Alexandrowicz,'s The Law in These Parts, SFIFF 2012) and Israeli security/intelligence (Dror Moreh's The Gatekeepers, NYFF 2012), Yotam Feldman provides an exposé of truths about Israel in which, beginning as an investigative reporter, he has gained unusual access to the powerful people he studies, and with detachment and sometimes humor or irony presents a deeply revealing picture.

By the way, Israel is the fourth largest weapons manufacturer and exporter in the world, so that makes this a doubly important study. Feldman's message is that the Israeli economy (public and private) has become highly dependent on the country's massive and flourishing "security" market. Reps of other governments are hypocritical, some Israeli spokesmen point out, when they knowingly purchase Israeli arms tested out in use against Palestinians, and yet go on to criticize Israeli violence.

One thing that is especially chilling is that foreign visiting potential purchasers are most interested in the testing of the Israeli weapons, including new ones like a gun that shoots around corners, which are used, often, on Palestinians, or on their land; above all, for urban warfare. And the industry directly feeds off the Israeli military. Retired officers become arms dealers; the minister of defense becomes the minister of industry. Feldman says everyone remarks on the Israeli economic miracle, "growth and prosperity despite military confrontations. But maybe it's not despite them, it's because of them." Israeli arms dealers, military men, and "defense consultants" point out the hypocrisy of people in other countries who criticize the Israelis for their brutality in assaults like Operation Cast Lead, the battering of Gaza in which 11 Israelis died and 1,200 Palestinians -- a lab for Israeli weaponry -- but then come to Israel to profit from the experience and the "testing."

Since the world's military get orientation and arms arms from Israel, Israeli influence will lead and is leading to reproducing similar Palestines in many other countries, Feldman suggests. He accompanies the big, jovial, magnanimous and grandfatherly (and military man) Leo Gleser on a business trip to Brazil, one of the Israel defense industry's biggest clients, and finds that the inhabitants of the drug-dealer-dominated Rio favelas are indeed the Brazilians' Palestinians. In recent years the Brazilian police took over the Rio slums, using Israeli-style military methods and Israeli weapons. They even nicknamed one Rio slum district they took over from the drug dealers "the Gaza strip."

Like The Law in These Parts and The Gatekeepers, The Lab also is essential viewing for the information it provides about Israel.

Length: 57 mins. Original title: Hamaabada . Israel/Franch/Belgium production, in Hebrew. Debuted 24 April 2013 at the Visions du Réel Film Festival. Released in Israel, reportedly destined for release in other countries. Screened for this review as part of the 2013 San Francisco Jewish Film Festival.