Although the story takes place in 1977, her words ring out over the decades into a world where Israel is both as strong as it has ever been and consumed by fears of weakness.
When Eli makes this statement near the end of the film, she is being comforted by Anka, a German volunteer at the eponymous kibbutz where she and her Israeli friends are spending a summer that is simultaneously lazy and tense.
A few scenes earlier, the notoriously uptight Eli has finally slept with one of the young men at Kissufim who is fixated on her.
We then witness how residents of the kibbutz set aside the tasks they are normally assigned—such as working in the kitchen and turning the irrigation system on and off—to repair the barbed-wire fence that marks the border between regular Israel and the Gaza Strip.
Not only does the audience comprehend the symbolic importance of this wall-mending activity, so do the characters themselves.
Eli’s friends remark that she seems different. Then, as if to prove their point, she crosses into Gaza, dancing wildly through the brush on the other side of the fence, ignoring the threat of landmines.
Then a mine goes off nearby, triggered by a clod of dirt Eli had kicked up. Although she makes it back to the group safely, the look of terror on her face reveals the limits of her bravado.
This incident amplifies earlier scenes in Kissufim, such as a flashback in which we see the character of Yoav trembling as a small group of Palestinians approach his platoon’s position during a patrol in Gaza and a stand-off in which the normally “hippie” Udi threatens his sometime girlfriend Michaela and her new lover Eidar with a rifle.
Even though the Israeli characters we come to know are friends, their interactions are shadowed by conflict. Indeed, they get along better with the German women who come to visit the kibbutz, such as Anka, than they do with each other.
The Kissufim kibbutz functions as a synecdoche for Israel as a whole, a society bound together by an overwhelming sense of precarity.
That’s what makes the historical context for Nechmad’s film so compelling.
At the beginning of the film, we see kibbutz members scoffing at rumours that Egypt’s then-President Anwar Sadat wants peace.
Over the course of the film, however, we first see characters reacting to radio reports of Sadat’s impending visit to the Knesset, then archival footage of his eventual trip to Israel.
Although Kissufim’s Israeli characters celebrate this surprising news, it is apparent that their longtime enemy’s transformation into a possible friend destabilises them. When their cortisol levels drop, they turn on each other.
This is where Gaza comes in.
The film reminds us that Israelis could still travel through that narrow strip of land along the Mediterranean in 1977.
Its main characters, Eli, Michaela, Noav, Ron, and Udi, take Anka on a trip to the beach in Gaza, keen on showing her its charms despite the fact that they perceive danger lurking around every corner.
After Eli takes Anka into town to eat what is supposedly the best falafel in the area, the German woman temporarily goes missing.
Convinced that a Palestinian man has harmed Anka, Ron throws him to the ground and threatens him, his automatic weapon bobbing menacingly at his side.
In this case, the Israeli’s fears are misplaced. It turns out the man simply directed Anka to a public toilet.
However, as a harrowing sequence near the end of the film demonstrates, Ron’s hypervigilance was justified. Even as the Israelis enjoy playing the tourist in Gaza, they understand full well that its Palestinian inhabitants hate what their presence represents.
Despite the cultural similarities between Israelis and Palestinians, they are destined to be forever at odds.
Indeed, Kissufim takes pains to point out that Anwar Sadat had framed his resistance to Israel in terms of the Palestinian plight.
The film was shot on location at the actual Kissufim kibbutz, which does, in fact, border Gaza and was attacked by Hamas forces on the 7th of October of last year.
Because the production wrapped up before that horrible day and Israel’s subsequent invasion of Gaza, its emphasis on the dangers Gaza posed for Israelis in 1977 now feels like a warning about a future that has sadly come to pass.
Nobody who watches Kissufim now will be able to ignore this historical context since the film’s opening titles pay tribute to the kibbutz’s victims from 7 October. But we must hope that Nechmad’s small film doesn’t get reduced to this function.
What makes Kissufim insightful is not its depiction of the threat Palestinians pose to Israelis but what it reveals about the threat Israelis pose to themselves.
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Screenshot courtesy of Movie Fire. All rights reserved.
