Toronto documentary filmmaker Igal Hecht recently embarked on a journey across Israel to discover what its flag means to Israelis today, 60 years after its independence.
Igal Hecht gazes out over the Mediterranean. [Oded Zur photo]
One would imagine the result, My Flag, would be the most gushing, touchy-feely documentary the director of such provoking films as Disengaging Democracy and Not in My Name has ever produced
But for the most part, Israeli-born Hecht, 30, finds that like everything else in Israel, the flag only divides Israelis.
My Flag is possibly the filmmaker’s most personal film yet. It is about his own journey of discovery and he appears everywhere in the film, walking the length of Israel wrapped in the blue and white flag, confronting and, at times, provoking people for their opinion.
A street performer in Tel Aviv says the flag would make a nice skirt or headgear, while another says he cannot connect with the “Zionist symbols on it.”
“To many people,” artist Aharan Shevo tells Hecht, “the flag is something to step on like a rag. But to me it is something holy.”
In Sderot, a man whose wife was seriously injured in a Qassam attack is noticeably angry. “This flag is nothing to me – if you weren’t here, I would burn it like the Arabs do.”
But it is in the religious neighbourhood of Mea Shearim in Jerusalem where a man was attacked for carrying an Israeli flag on Independence Day, probably by a member of Neturei Karta (a sect of religious Jews against Zionism) that Hecht loses any objectivity and gets emotionally involved in his story.
He bravely walks through the narrow streets of the religious neighbourhood with the flag wrapped around him like a shroud.
“It’s a rag,” one man tells him. “I wouldn’t even wash the floors with it.”
“We don’t need a flag, we have HaShem,” another says.
Hecht is obviously not welcome here. “Are you trying to provoke us?” one man angrily confronts him. “Go walk somewhere else.”
Hecht is visibly shaken as he walks away, commenting on a sign high up on an apartment building that equates Zionism with the Holocaust.
But it’s not all negative, and occasionally he is able to find some people with positive things to say, such as iconic folksinger Saraleh Sharon who says that the meaning of the flag gets stronger every day. “The flag of Israel is our home.”
Another person caught in the revelry of a street party on Independence Day in Jerusalem says, “It means that all the people here are my brothers.”
An Israeli Druze says the flag of Israel symbolizes the flag of his nation. “I am proud to be a son of this nation.”
Other people have their own rather unique interpretation of it. A woman in Metulla says, “In the two triangles that make up the Magen David, you can see the equality between man and woman.”
In the end, as Hecht looks out over the Mediterranean, we can sense his disappointment. His journey seems to be unsatisfying. The flag is not the unifying symbol to Israelis that those of us in the Diaspora seem to think it is.
“There is no significance to the flag anymore,” a young man tells him. “It’s just a star.”
My Flag airs on television on the CTS Network on Nov. 16 at 9 pm. You can catch a slightly longer version at a sneak peak at Hava Nagila Banquet Hall, 1118 Centre St. Thornhill, Ont. on Nov. 13 at 8 p.m. Call 416-275-1076 or 905-731-3406 for more information.
