The 50 Year War

            This Documentary from PBS is extremely informative, and represents a very full view of the difficulties between Palestine, Israel, and the Arab world. Much of the information recorded here shows a very thorough pursuit and the interviews are all conducted with expertise and knowledge. It does tend to drag out near the end, as it is 5 hours long, and also, it seems to follow the trend of the subjects it reports on, and the conflict itself becomes very muddled in the early 90’s, as does the documentary.

            In particular, I thought the coverage of the 6 day war was very good, and I learned a great deal about the engagement from all different sides. That’s the real strength of this documentary, is it maintains an extremely neutral position, by reporting on all sides. It was very cool to see interviews with all the main players from the time, including King Hussein, Henry Kissinger, and all the presidents from Jimmy Carter on. All the Arabs involved also came across in a very good light, and overall a historical sense is the foundation for the documentary.

            Another subject which caught my interest was the rejection of the Palestinians by the rest of the Arab world, in the section entitled “Arab vs. Arab” particularly when arab countries were bailed out of PLO dominance by Israel. It’s also somewhat shocking to me how little I knew about this subject considering I’ve been taking history classes forever.

            Even things I knew about, I had no idea of their direct connection to the State of Israel and the Arab world, for instance the situation in the gulf war, and how they had launched missiles on Israel. I just didn’t know that.

            Another really good section was the coverage of the Camp David accords. All in all, I liked about the first 2/3 of this but as I said it dragged out and got a little muddled at the end, and it’s hard to really understand the significance of events, which are still relatively modern. I think only time will tell how big certain events will be.

            I am definitely spurred on in my interest in the history of the state of Israel, and am encouraged by this film, and will retain much of what I have learned here. I would definitely rank this film a 2, provided you have enough time to watch it.