Shattered Dreams: Picking Up the Pieces

A documentary chronicle of what Schonfeld sees as the present-day betrayal of Israel's original democratic and cooperative ideals, this traces the contradictions within Zionism back to an unresolved conflict between religious and secular law, and to an ongoing critis of racial and national identity. He emphasises the wide range of responses to the so-called 'Holy War in Galilee' (the invasion of Lebanon), the expropriation of Palestinian land on the West bank, and the racist views of Rabbi Kahane. Contrasting the idealistic newsreels of the late '40s with contemporary footage and interviews, he suggests that such chauvinist notions are not endemic to Zionism but a corruption of it. The film's left-of-centre liberalism isn't always as clearly focused as it might be, but for the most part it eschews partisan rhetoric in favour of opening up new and vital areas of debate.