Film review by Michael Fox, Special To The Dayton Jewish Observer

Depending on your perspective and politics, Moriah Films’ adaptation of The Prime Ministers is a pride-inducing tour of the first three decades of Israel’s existence or a stunningly blinkered view of ancient events That’s the nature of oral history: It’s resolutely subjective.

The Prime Ministers: The Pioneers, a nearly two-hour illustrated interview with Amb. Yehuda Avner that draws on his bestselling memoir, screens with the JCC Film Festival on May 12.

The British-born Avner originally moved to Palestine in 1947, but it wasn’t until the mid-‘50s that he settled permanently in Israel and found himself drawn into the inner circles of power as a press aide and speechwriter.

An enthusiastic raconteur, he recalls detailed anecdotes like the one about Levi Eshkol and Lyndon Johnson bonding over a newborn calf at the president’s Texas ranch, and the resulting agreement to sell Phantom jet fighters to Israel.

Avner provides 90 percent of the dialogue in the film, augmented by speeches, texts and conversations delivered by actors. In a misguided strategy of employing name talent, director Richard Trank miscast Leonard Nimoy as the voice of Levi Eshkol, Sandra Bullock as Golda Meir, Michael Douglas as Yitzhak Rabin and Christoph Waltz as Menachem Begin.

Trank has produced and/or directed numerous feature-length documentaries for Moriah (the film division of the L.A.-based Simon Weisenthal Center), including the beautifully crafted Academy Award-winner The Long Way Home (1997).

Moriah’s extensive body of work, which includes It Is No Dream: The Life of Theodor Herzl (2012), amounts to an impassioned, multi-pronged argument for Zionism. While one may concur that the basis for a Jewish state needs to be reiterated when Israel’s unpopularity and antisemitism (which are not the same thing) are rising, one must also be sensitive to advocacy taking precedence over a broader view of history.

The Six-Day War, for example, naturally takes up a chunk of the film. Avner emphasizes that Yitzhak Rabin, then chief of staff for the Israel Defense Forces, argued forcefully for taking east Jerusalem from Jordanian soldiers, and the Temple Mount happily came under Jewish control for the first time in centuries.

The war also put thousands of Palestinians under Israeli military rule, a situation that continues to this day. Avner never mentions them, except for a reference or two to terrorists. Neighboring countries, meanwhile, are enemies whose relevance on the geopolitical scene is as pawns of the Soviets or purveyors of oil.

Understandably, Avner evinces a subtle “you’re with us or you’re against us” attitude throughout the film. Richard Nixon is revered for airlifting tanks, planes and materiel to Israel in the middle of the Yom Kippur War (even as the Watergate scandal was eroding his hold on the presidency).

The segment on that war reveals Avner’s tacit position that Israel is incapable of mistakes. In fact, the nation was not merely surprised by the holy day attack but militarily unprepared. Golda Meir was subsequently forced to resign, thanks in part to a push from Rabin that Avner considers disrespectful or worse.

He tells a story of Golda speaking to a group of reservists on the Golan Heights during the war, ostensibly to suggest she was a much better human being than politician. In fact, one comes away from The Prime Ministers: The Pioneers with the feeling that Israel’s first and greatest leaders were anything but Machavellians or ideologues.

The great attraction of oral history is access to the inner dealings of powerful or talented people. At the end of the day, Avner provides that in abundance, with the sense of intimacy — and history — enhanced by a trove of marvelous archival footage and still photographs.

Moriah is in production on a sequel, The Prime Ministers: Soldiers and Peacemakers, that picks up after 1974 and is slated to be released later this year.

The JCC Film Festival presents The Prime Ministers: The Pioneers on Monday, May 12 at 7:15 p.m. at the Neon Movies, 130 E. 5th St., Dayton. Tickets are available at the door, at jewishdayton.org, at the Boonshoft CJCE, 525 Versailles Dr., Centerville or by calling Karen Steiger at 610-1555. 

To read the complete May 2014 Dayton Jewish Observer, click here.