Censored Voices

This Israeli doc is built around recordings – previously suppressed – of young Israeli soldiers talking about their experiences just weeks after the Six Day War in 1967. Their recollections of military incursions into Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Palestine offer a raw first draft of history, and director Mor Loushy links these combatants’ recollections to today by playing the tapes in front of the men, silent and attentive, more than four decades on.

The film offers a distinctly human, ground-level view of conflict, some of it no doubt coloured by shell shock as young men talk of the horrors and regrets of battle. It would have been illuminating to hear more from these men today – for that, we have to wait to the very end. Loushy’s project can feel repetitive, a bit too in awe of his admittedly significant sources. Perhaps most striking are their prophecies that this was only the beginning of an intractable conflict that could only get worse, not better.