Sometimes I can't sleep
thinking about tomorrow.
If I could never sleep,
it would be perfect for me.
I'm always in sleep deficit.
I'm so full of energy
when I go to bed.
Just thinking about tomorrow
makes it hard to fall asleep.
I don't make a
living from my work
in the Palestinian territories.
Money is not what drives me.
In one day of commercial
work I make more than
in two months
in the territories.
I don't need these risks
to make a living.
I often cancel commercial
jobs not to miss the action.
I want to be there.
Do you know when
this obsession started?
When I realized...
that there are
fewer and fewer
consumers for the
materials that I shoot.
In most cases people
don't really want to know.
They...
They'd rather know less.
They don't want to know what
happens in the territories.
They don't really
want to know about
the people's hardships
if we talk about the conflict,
but also in our country
people don't want to see
the ugly face of poverty
or what a car accident with
young people torn to pieces
really looks like.
People just don't
want to know.
I can easily prove to you
that in the last decade
all the news magazines
have been in decline,
and all the lifestyle and economy
magazines have been rising.
And it's exactly these two
things, lifestyle and economy
that motivate the individual.
Ziv works very hard.
Ziv is addicted to his work.
He doesn't admit it,
but he's addicted.
In a way...
I started to enjoy his work...
the moment I stopped
competing with it.
I got married at 25
because my dream was
to have a husband and children.
So I have a husband,
and I have a daughter.
Shira, are you ready?
We have to go now.
I remember a few years ago
Ziv would tell me that
they really like journalists
over there because the
Palestinians really
like to be photographed,
and they like
to be interviewed.
I remember just
shortly after our wedding
my mother was
listening to the radio.
Suddenly she
called to tell me,
"A news photographer was shot."
It's one of those situations where
you never know how you'll react.
Suddenly, I was sure it was him,
and I totally lost it.
Kesem Junction please.
Daddy, but how will
you get back from there?
Until I finally
got hold of him...
Please stop at the
kindergarten.
He said, "Galit, I'm OK. They hit
the photographer next to me."
As if...
he thought it could
still never happen to him.
Although the bullet was
only inches away from him.
And now we've learned
that even journalists
are not immune
in the territories anymore.
The difference between
photojournalism and other
types of photography
is that photojournalism
is a way of life, not just a job.
If I compare it for example
to fashion photography,
a fashion photographer knows
a week or two in advance
what he'll shoot.
With news, I never know when
my day begins or where it ends.
The uncertainty
changes every aspect of life.
For example, I carry my camera
bag 24 hours a day with me
because I have to react fast.
If something happens,
I need to be the first to know
and the first to
arrive at the scene.
Which is why I always
have my bag, batteries,
film, memory cards, lenses,
cameras, flash, etc.
cigarettes and my
passport with me.
The work in the territories is
fundamentally different.
I can divide it into before and
after the current Intifada.
It was never like
a walk in the park.
Now it's even
more dangerous.
I obviously don't have
anything in Hebrew on me.
As few electronic
devices as possible.
Usually I take
off my sunglasses.
From their standpoint,
if you wear sunglasses
and have a shaved head,
you are Israeli Intelligence.
This is Bethlehem in
the beginning of the Intifada.
I'm at Rachel's tomb, and I'm
walking towards three soldiers
standing there on the street.
When I'm just 4 or 5 meters away,
a shot is fired,
and a soldier catches
a bullet in the neck from
a sniper and falls to the ground.
A sniper battle ensues.
We don't even know
where it's coming from.
I lie on the ground
with my hands over my head
and my cameras strewn
across the pavement.
I get a message on my beeper:
The soldier died
on the way to hospital.
I drive from Bethlehem to
the center of Jerusalem.
It's maybe 3 or 4
minutes, not more.
I get to Hillel St., and the
bizarre thing here is that people
are sitting around the coffee
shops, it's Friday afternoon,
they're drinking espresso,
reading the newspaper.
It's insane;
it's not like I landed from Africa.
I came from 3 kilometers away,
I was in the middle of a war zone;
people died before my eyes.
It's such a mad contrast.
It's insane.
You can't then go home,
put down the briefcase,
and life returns to normal.
There are scars, traumas,
smells, sounds and sights
that are engraved
in your memory,
and you carry them
for the rest of your life.
Are you awake?
Can we talk?
Yes.
The army just killed
[Hamas' leader] Ahmed Yassin.
Yes, I heard.
J.P., OK listen,
it's still early in the morning.
There's a complete closure
on the West-Bank and Gaza.
If anything happens,
I'll definitely let you know.
A total closure has been
placed on the West-Bank and Gaza.
All checkpoints are
closed to Palestinians.
The Israeli Police are on high alert,
following Yassin's liquidation.
Government spokesmen
say, "This is just the beginning,"
and they'll continue the
liquidation operations
in anticipation of the Gaza pullout,
to push Hamas to the wall,
and put them on the defensive,
so that during the pullout,
the Hamas won't be able
to claim it as their victory.
It's going to take years
to find out if and how much
of a mistake it was to kill him.
A senior government official told
us, "We killed our own Bin-Laden.
President Bush wouldn't
dare go against it,
certainly not during
his election week."
Do you see a red
bandana back there?
Yes.
It's for you.
OK.
Because it's very likely
we'll get a lot of tear gas today.
So I brought you
a bandana for your face.
We are getting the
first information from
Israel and from Gaza about
Yassin's assassination,
and we will bring you the
reactions from both sides.
Galit, can you hear me?
The army killed
Hamas' leader Sheikh Yassin.
I know you don't have
plans to go to a coffeehouse,
but if you do, cancel them.
Yehezkeli, where are you?
Fine. I'll meet you in 15 minutes
at the Bethlehem Checkpoint.
Yehezkeli is the chief of the
Arab desk for Channel 10 News.
Since we met we've become
very good friends,
and we work and go to
the territories together a lot.
You know, if there's
chaos in the Old City
it'll be even worse
than Bethlehem.
There are already
riots in Jerusalem,
you should check
it out later.
I will.
OK, let's get in my car.
This is for you, sir.
God bless you.
The Arab man is happy
they got rid of Yassin.
I bet the end of the funeral
will signal the start
of "Heavy Duty Trouble".
No, it's already begun.
My bulletproof car
will be here soon,
but let's go talk to the soldiers.
You need a clearance first.
No. Check again,
we already have that.
"There are demonstrations in the
villages near the separation fence."
Are we going to get
through the checkpoint?
You don't have a clearance.
Please move back.
Can you check again?
The Army PR told me
that the clearance
will be waiting for me here.
Did you check?
Drive, don't be scared.
Ziv goes to the
heart of the inferno,
or goes with Tsvi to interview
the heads of terror groups...
I mean...
He goes there voluntarily.
I don't tell her everything.
Not because I don't want
to involve her, but because
I want to spare her the
things I encounter every day.
When I go out to the territories,
I tell her after, not before.
Most of the time she does
not even know I've been there.
When I leave Jenin, I'll say,
'I was in Jenin, I've left.
I'm OK and I'm
on my way home.'
It's not normal to
make news in this country.
I can understand
Americans or Europeans
who always photograph
someone else's war.
Ziv photographs
his own country's wars.
I'm in constant
search of a frame.
There's something
very Sisyphean about it.
And sometimes
it's very frustrating.
You run, drive,
search, leave and return.
And many times you
return without a frame.
I have a social and
political agenda
that guides me
through my work.
I'm trying to
convey messages.
I'm talking about something
very close to my heart.
It's important to
me to convey the messages.
It's very hard today
to find a genuine frame.
You know, I don't
shoot for propaganda.
I don't belong to anybody.
I don't go out
and shoot to satisfy
this or that paper's
particular interests.
I'm not a photographer
for the Israeli army,
or for the PLO, or for anyone.
I shoot for the truth
because there is a
truth that I want to tell,
and that's why
I go out to the field.
Good morning, kids.
How are you?
The Muassi are
a Palestinian Bedouin tribe
that sits in an
enclave within Gush Qatif.
The Gush Qatif Jewish
settlements surround their land.
The Muassi were never hostile
to the state of Israel,
and relations have always
been good and neighborly.
They make their living from
agriculture and fishing.
Then the Shirat Hayam
settlement was established,
and that closed off most
of the Muassi tribe's shore.
They were not allowed
to go out to sea with boats,
but they were allowed
to fish from the shore,
which obviously reduced
their catch to almost zero.
Until November 2000, all
of the shore in effect was theirs.
Then in that month there was
the "Children's Bus Bombing"
in which two Israeli
civilians were killed,
and the Cohen family's
three children were wounded.
All three
children lost their legs.
In response to this terror attack,
the settlement of Shirat Hayam
was established.
After every major
bombing in Gush Qatif,
the settlers responded by
establishing a new settlement.
Shirat Hayam
is a pretty surreal place.
They are sitting
on the seashore,
originally just 16 families,
who have to be
guarded by soldiers,
watch towers, fences,
barricades and patrols...
for only 16 families
that sit on the shore,
all surrounded by
a Palestinian community.
Understand, this is how the
children are brought to school.
Shirat Hayam is an enclave
in a Palestinian population,
which is an enclave in
the Gush Qatif settlement,
which again is an enclave
within the Gaza strip.
That's to say there's
a sequence of enclaves here
of Jews surrounded
by Palestinians
surrounded by Jews
surrounded by Palestinians.
I think the Shirat Hayam
Muassi relationship is a kind of
representative model of Israel
inside her Arab surroundings.
This was the commander of the
Al-Aqsa Martyrs in Nablus.
He's dead now.
Two weeks after
the suicide attack
in Tel Aviv's
Old Central Bus Station
with two simultaneous
suicide bombings,
we were sitting with him
and his fighters.
And they told us, they had
sent out their people
to carry out the suicide attacks.
I admit I froze
when I heard that.
Suddenly it was very concrete.
These were the people
who take responsibility
for tens, maybe hundreds of
deaths in the past few years.
And there I was
just two weeks later
sitting with the man that had
sent out the suicide bombers.
He looked them in the eyes,
put the explosive belts on them,
kissed them on the forehead
and said, "Go in peace,"
or perhaps...
"Go in war."
There are advantages
and disadvantages
to working as an Israeli.
The clear advantages
on the Israeli side are
that I speak the language
and understand
how things work.
It's my backyard.
I feel I'm creating
a mosaic out of fragments.
Building a vessel from
shards that eventually
could be used as
an archaeological record.
I usually come back
from a day of shooting
with three, four or
five hundred photos,
but that doesn't necessarily
mean I have a frame.
I'm happy if
I manage to produce
four or five
frames a year
that are good enough
for my portfolio.
It's too bad, apropos perfect.
In a perfect world or Photoshop,
Abu Mazen would
have played with his mustache,
and then it would
have been fantastic.
Here I expected Bibi to make the
same hand motion, but he didn't.
But suddenly he lifted his hand,
and it looks like Jabotinsky
is looking down
at him in disbelief.
To shoot just soldiers
is boring; we've seen it already.
But to bring both
together creates a dialogue
between the soldiers
and the kid with the rifle.
Recently, I shot a full day on a
nuclear submarine for this article.
I'm sitting on the bridge, and
suddenly I notice this dolphin
jumping in the
wake of the submarine,
and the submarine's name was
Dolphin. That was great.
In every good news photograph
there must be
an element of luck.
It doesn't happen very often.
And here, by the time the
Pope had sat down again,
this photo was already
on its way via the internet
to TIME Magazine.
In photography it's
"Access, Access, Access."
To get to the right
place and to be able
to get the frame
from the angle you want.
Sharon once visited a Picasso
exhibit at the Tel Aviv Museum.
He walked around,
got tired and sat down.
For a moment suddenly,
Sharon was alone.
It's a rare moment to catch
a Prime Minister alone.
It's almost impossible.
And Sharon sitting
among Picassos
also says something,
but we won't go into that.
There's a difference
between a news photo
in tomorrow morning's
paper and a frame with lasting
historical significance.
Rabin is an excellent example.
I shot him receiving an honorary
doctorate at Bar-Ilan University.
It was in '93 I think.
And...
It wasn't published
in the next day's paper.
But 2 years later,
after Rabin's assassination,
suddenly the paradox that Rabin
received an honorary degree
from the same university
that bred his killer
gave this photo
new significance.
You see Rabin speaking
at a podium labeled
'Bar-Ilan University'.
This photograph was later
published all over the world.
Shira knows her
father is a photographer,
and her mother
is being photographed.
Does she know what
he does? No way.
But I'm sure she'll
be exactly like him.
She's so similar to him
and admires him so much.
She already holds the
camera and snaps photos.
She rides on the back of his
motorcycle to kindergarten,
and she calls him "My man".
My daughter has
very strong opinions.
Today it's what she
wants to eat or wear;
tomorrow it'll be what
she wants to do in life.
If she wants to be
a photographer,
I doubt I'll be able
to convince her otherwise.
But she can be
a fashion photographer.
This is mom, and this is you
and this is me.
What's that on my head?
A crown.
Ah! A crown. For a second
I thought it might be hair.
I think she's known what
news is since the age of 2.
She recognizes the music.
The news is part of our home.
We watch the
news at 5, at 6, at 7
and at 9 the evening news.
When Ziv's home,
we only watch news.
He got me
hooked on news as well.
Jonathan and I have
been friends for 15 years.
We were both military
photographers in the army.
Since then, our
paths separated,
and Jonathan
moved to New York.
Every time I come to Israel we
meet. Today, for example,
I'm joining Ziv
in the territories.
There are Palestinian
demonstrations here;
they're protesting against
the security wall.
They might just stand there
waving a flag, shouting
"Soldiers go home,"
or it could turn violent.
It's so unpredictable
you cannot imagine.
Everything that has to do
with entering the territories
and covering the
Palestinian side...
As much as I want to
show a balanced picture,
on the Palestinian side I shoot
what I can, not what I want.
I have a kind of fetish
for religion.
Visually, religious rituals
are the most beautiful thing
to photograph.
Ziv loves life, he loves living.
Whether it's his motorcycle
adventures or family,
he loves to live.
The truth is I'm much more
afraid than I appear to be.
In the territories,
I've often been frozen with fear.
I get this feeling in my stomach,
and I find myself asking:
"What am I doing here?
Why do I need this?"
It really gets to you.
In many cases,
it's very intimidating.
It's the kind of thing
where if you succeed,
you're a big hero, and
if you fail, you're a big idiot.
I don't think any frame
is worth dying for.
I am not as
optimistic as he is.
In my view, it's fine
until the first one dies.
The only question is:
Will it happen to my family
or to someone else's?
Zakaria Zbeida is the commander
of the Al Aqsa brigade in Jenin.
We went several times
to meet him there.
One of the most
dramatic moments occurred
after the Israeli Army
surrounded the city.
Zakaria was marching
with his fighters,
a display of his capabilities
equally impressive
and frightening.
Look at how many
weapons they've got!
You really made
a stock of prints of him!
There's no terrorist
with a persona like his.
Look, he's holding
his own 'Wanted' card.
He is very authentic
and accessible.
He's charismatic,
he even speaks Hebrew.
Just here on this
road of Wadi Ara,
more than 100 Israelis were
killed in the current Intifada.
Yes, I passed the first. I'm on my
way to the next checkpoint.
It's never been so easy
to get into Jenin. I'm shocked!
How come it was so easy?
The soldiers usually
feed you stories.
"The permit hasn't come
through, the fax didn't arrive,
they ate it, they drank it." We're
usually stuck here for hours.
Is someone
waiting for us inside?
Yes, at the corner.
The army tried to kill
Zakaria about 20 times.
He was wounded, went
underground, but now he's back.
Hi, Galit. How are you?
Great. But I'm in
the middle of work now.
I'll call you back later, OK?
Ziv tries hard not
to bring work home.
He makes a special effort
not to talk about what he sees.
But you can't avoid it.
All day long with his beeper.
Every time it beeps, you
know someone's dead.
We're in the middle of
the refugee camp, aren't we?
Yes.
It's not the most relaxed
situation, you know...
We're here chilling,
but we're in the middle
of Jenin refugee camp.
We can't seem to find Zbeida.
The contact with him is spotty.
He says there's a spy plane in the
air, so he's not coming out.
Any moment anything
could happen. You never know.
It hits you when
you least expect it.
Even in this quiet,
you have to be very alert.
This is Mahmoud,
Zbeida's number two.
He's the Operations
Commander of the brigades.
Zbeida is shooting blindly
over the funeral crowd.
With no logical explanation,
the Israeli Army has killed
all of his aides,
and he is still alive,
raising a new
generation of fighters.
My brother Mahmoud
was killed yesterday,
and my brother Majdi
was killed yesterday.
And my mother
was also killed.
I have nothing to lose,
I promise war on Israel!
There will never be
a ceasefire! Never!
We're leaving Jenin; Zbeida is
even threatening reporters.
The interview is over.
I tell you Tsvi, this time
you came from Israel,
next time you better not.
This is just unbelievable.
That's life.
I can't believe this shit.
I was looking for you.
How are you, my friend?
Great. How are you?
I've known Atta
for almost ten years,
ever since the
'Tunnel Riots' in 1996.
After Israel opened the
Tunnel under the Western Wall,
the Intifada broke out.
We got stuck in a lot
of incidents where
live fire was exchanged
for the first time.
Our lives were really at stake,
and sometimes we had
to shield ourselves
literally with our own bodies.
After Ariel Sharon visited the
Temple Mount, riots broke out...
When you are together
with another person
in such a hard situation,
naturally you
form a strong bond.
One of Atta's biggest problems
is that the Israelis
see him as a Palestinian,
and the Palestinians
see him as an Israeli.
The fact that he photographs
for an Israeli newspaper
on the one hand, and is a
Palestinian on the other,
creates an inner
conflict in his work.
"Atta Awisat, photographer
for an Israeli newspaper,
was beaten by
the border police
while covering a protest
against the separation fence.
They hit him with the
butt of a rifle in the eye.
It's very serious
that they beat him,
even more serious that
they continue to kick him,
even after he
lost consciousness.
And here it's not because they
didn't want him to photograph.
It was something personal.
Worst of all, even after
the ambulance arrived,
they didn't let it evacuate Atta.
Which is just beyond belief.
The only one who came
to my rescue was Ziv.
He came and got involved
and got me out of there.
I called the whole
world to try to get them
to release the ambulance
to take him to a
hospital in Jerusalem.
When I'm in Jerusalem I often
visit Atta in his nearby village.
I sit with him and his
wife and children.
We have a relationship
that is really like family.
All the events that happened
to me through the years
I didn't want my kids
to know about them.
When the kids are awake,
we don't talk about it at all.
But my son asks me:
"Why are you wounded?"
"What's that from?"
So I tell him I fell.
But people tell him about it,
strangers outside the house.
And then the boy, surprised,
comes and asks me.
I remember in the last incident,
he didn't know anything about it.
He went out shopping
with his mother a day later,
and he saw my picture
in the newspaper
where soldiers
are choking me,
and he got scared,
and told his mother,
"Look mommy, that's dad!"
So you can't hide it.
Once, I remember, he told me,
"Listen, you are not a man."
I asked him, "Why do you
think that I am not a man?"
He said, "They beat you,
and you can't respond?"
Good evening.
After four months of calm,
terror returned
to Tel Aviv yesterday.
Our correspondent
meets a photographer;
though he's a veteran,
at moments like this
his hands still shake.
In a terror attack the first
5 to 10 minutes are critical.
After that, the scene is
sterile, sealed off and closed.
Even before I get to the scene,
I photograph everything
I see on the way.
So in seconds
you're all business again?
My mission is purely
to record things as they are.
I serve the public.
The world has a right to know.
That's what goes through
my mind when I'm working.
It's important to show.
It's inconceivable that dozens
of people are blown to pieces,
and we publish a sterile picture
so as not to ruin
people's breakfasts.
People went out to dance, and
were blasted to a thousand hells.
We can't carry on as if
it was business as usual.
23:15 on the Tel Aviv Boardwalk,
a suicide bomber approaches
a crowd waiting
to enter the "Stage" club,
and blows himself up.
In the current Intifada, five
or six attacks occurred within
a kilometer of my house. The
first thing that comes to mind is,
where are my
wife and daughter?
And then I think of how
to get there and shoot...
And when I get to the scene,
there's this little thought,
please don't let me
see someone I know!
A familiar face
zipped up in a bag.
At least two or three times I heard
the explosions from my office,
which is in walking distance
from where Galit shops.
There was the suicide attack in
"My Coffee Shop"
where Kineret was wounded.
At first there were
reports that it was just
down the street
from our apartment.
Under our apartment
is the photo lab.
I said, "Wait a second!
Ziv is there."
It was Saturday night. I was in
the photo lab. I heard a blast.
I realized at once
it was an attack nearby.
Just some 300 or 400
meters away.
I rushed there.
The place was still on fire.
I arrived before
the ambulances did.
Civilians evacuated the
wounded from the coffee shop.
When he arrived, the
place was still burning.
As far as I know, as long
as the place was on fire,
I was still inside.
A police officer arrived.
Instead of throwing me out,
he told me, "Stand behind
the tree because the place
could explode
any second now."
After they put out the fire,
I ran toward the coffee shop,
and I took the picture
of Kineret's evacuation.
I don't remember what
happened. Nothing. It's erased.
All I know is from stories.
And Ziv's pictures helped me to
complete what was missing.
And though I don't
want to remember it,
it was very important
for me to know
what happened and to
see it with my own eyes.
This is the picture I took of you a
few months later for the doctors.
Yes, to Dr. Feldman.
Where is this doctor?
Dr. Feldman is in Boston.
Amazing, huh?
Yeah, quite a job
he did on my face.
Amazing.
Sure it's difficult.
There is a price for everything.
First of all, a human price
of working with
and seeing such material.
The human material
you work with takes its toll.
On the personal
and professional level,
you have to make many
concessions to do this job.
I received many phone calls
on the day of this attack.
My friends and family
know that I go there.
Somehow you get
used to it, and you hope
that when you open
the newspaper,
it's not someone
you know. That's all.
Human nature
is very adaptive.
We get used to situations.
The situation gets
worse and we get used to it.
You know...
If you take a pot of boiling
water and throw a frog in,
the frog jumps for all
it's worth to escape death.
But if you put a frog
in lukewarm water
and slowly raise
the temperature,
the frog will
slowly cook to death.
And that's exactly
what's happening
to our society nowadays.
Because the process is long
and the escalation is gradual,
I ask myself, how many steps
are there in
this escalation?
It's a kind of
'Stairway to Heaven.'
He documents reality.
A twisted reality.
But he documents it,
he doesn't create it.
That people lack the strength
and can't stomach it anymore?
It's obvious.
How much can people take?
I don't know what he's made of.
I don't know why a person
would want to touch
that part of life.
I myself can't deal with it.
Especially now
that I'm a mother.
I know that there are areas
of Tel Aviv that he avoids passing.
One day he couldn't
help it. He said,
"When I look at this crosswalk,
I see body parts, not people."
The first suicide bombing
I photographed
was the attack on the number
5 bus in October 1994,
and even today I try
to avoid the place.
The bombing
took place at 8:53,
and I was at
the scene by 8:59.
Without doubt,
it was the most traumatic
event I've
ever experienced.
The element of the unknown
was hardest of all
because you don't know
what you're about to see.
Two ambulances stood
near the bus that exploded.
I stopped the motorcycle.
I ran towards the bus.
I looked right and saw the bus
gaping with all the bodies inside.
A policeman comes by
with a woman in his arms.
You can see it's
shot from below because
I didn't get to lift
my camera to eye level.
From chest level, I snapped
two shots and kept running.
I found myself
between two buses.
It was...
the closest thing
to hell I can describe.
The bodies were still in flames.
Smoke rose from the bodies.
I was choking.
After that, I saw nothing.
I switched to autopilot. I knew
that in the next few minutes
I had to take as many photos
as possible, before it ended.
My friend Paz, next
to me shot on video.
He held the
camera and zoomed in,
and when he got to
the bus's guts, he fainted.
I really wanted
to get out of there.
I begged the paper to let
me go back to the office.
When I finally got
back to the office,
I sat there like a zombie.
I couldn't do anything.
I didn't know
half of what I shot
because they were
shot from the hip.
Every person who was present
got psychological therapy.
The police, the rescue team went
through all these sessions.
The only people they ignored
were the photographers.
I know of photographers who
went to therapy privately.
It's now 10 years later,
I still feel it distinctly.
I remember exactly where
I stood, what I did, what I saw.
It was important for
me to return now
at the exact minute
it happened ten years ago.
Perhaps to close
a circle in my life.
I was in shock.
I didn't know how to
define it in medical terms,
but for weeks every time
I blinked I saw corpses.
When I saw a sleeping bag
in our building's stairwell,
I thought it was a dead body,
I mean... everything.
It haunted me
for a very long time.
Paradoxically,
the most traumatic
day of my life
is also the day I became
known internationally.
It's not so easy, you know.
It's true that newspapers
profit from people's tragedies;
but when you are the one to
benefit, it's hard to deal with.
It was undoubtedly
the boldest step in the
history of the Israeli press.
It was the first and
I think the last time that
a picture of an exposed dead
Israeli was published in Israel.
It was so horrifying people
simply couldn't deal with.
We've seen pictures of dead
bodies from Africa or Serbia
or other recent wars,
but we hadn't seen
a dead Israeli before.
My whole career prepared
me for moments like that.
I couldn't stop and say,
"Hold on!
I'm not trained for this."
So I climbed onto the roof
to take that shot from above.
There is a very important
photographer's festival
in Perpignon, France.
Last year, I had
an exhibition there,
and Ziv had a very important
projection of his work
in an old amphitheatre.
2000 of the most
important people in the
photography scene were there.
Photo editors, photographers
and magazine editors.
Jonathan and I were
together in Perpignon, France.
We separated in the morning.
I returned to Israel
and he returned to New York,
and the following
morning was September 11th.
The amazing thing is
that all the photo editors
of Newsweek for example
got stuck in France for two weeks
and could not get
back to the States.
Jonathan was lucky to get back
to the States the night before.
Although it was 9 AM in the
States, it was afternoon in Israel.
And just as the first plane hit the
building, there were some reports.
I saw it live, and I immediately
called Jonathan.
I was standing here by my kitchen
window on September 11th
at a quarter to nine. By then the
first tower was already on fire.
Ten minutes later, I saw the
second plane hit the second tower.
I was so shocked I started
shaking. I remember running
to get my camera to photograph
it, thinking I have to shoot
on high speed because
I can't hold the camera steady.
And when I reached
the window, I saw 'Boom!'
Then I immediately
ran down to shoot.
And this photograph is
from the following day,
at first light,
opposite the World Trade Center,
Number 1 Liberty Plaza.
When I went into these offices,
I was really surprised to see
all the damage that had also been
done to the buildings opposite.
Ziv called me
when it happened,
then he tried to call me
several times afterwards,
but all the lines were dead...
It was impossible.
When the towers collapsed,
I was worried as hell.
I had many friends there,
running around taking pictures,
so when the buildings collapsed,
I was scared to death.
When the second building
collapsed, I was very close,
in the Winter Garden.
I photographed two pictures
when it began to crumble,
and for the first time in my life
I thought I was going to die.
I got a rush of adrenaline. Me
and all the officers and firemen.
We just ran for our lives.
As I was walking on the debris
I found a postcard.
I picked it up and it read,
"TOP OF THE
WORLD TRADE CENTER".
I am sure it was a souvenir
from the viewing platform
on top of the Towers.
But on the back
of the card it says,
"In 1993, there was a terrorist
attack on the WTC.
But the WTC continues to
dominate the skyline of NYC."
And that's when I see it laying
there in the ruins of the towers.
I've found it very frustrating
to see the firefighters,
without means,
unable to do anything.
A day before Arafat's funeral,
I was in Ramalla.
Armed men from the
Al Aqsa brigades arrived
and handed out leaflets saying
they would attack
and kidnap any Israeli
journalist
covering Arafat's funeral.
Still I was determined to go.
But two things made
me change my mind.
First, the danger was more real
then, than it'd ever been before.
And second was the thought
that if all the good
photographers are in Ramalla,
I could get a scoop in Jerusalem.
So I decided not to
go to Ramalla that day.
In retrospect, I see that
it was a huge mistake,
perhaps the
biggest of my career.
I returned without a
single frame from maybe one
of the most important events in
the history of this conflict.
You think, 'A pregnant wife,
a five year old daughter...'
I don't know.
I decided not to go.
Looking back, it seems silly.
Lots of Israeli
photographers went.
And not a hair on
their heads was touched.
I made a serious
journalistic mistake.
I should have been there,
and I wasn't.
A mistake, par excellence.
Often I go out there
and nothing happens.
This time something big was
happening, and I wasn't there.
That's the difference.
The Palestinian soldiers
were crying, the helicopters
were landing, and all the
madness that was there...
Listen, there were some
extraordinary frames.
And I have none.
I don't really know
many photographers
who work like him and
travel around the world,
who have a wife
and children at home.
It's no wonder
that most of the photojournalists
or war photographers
who travel around the world
are either single or divorced.
If you are married or have a
girlfriend, they are not willing
to accept that work is number
one, and they are number two.
And I think that's one of the
main reasons why I'm divorced.
So now I'm single again. Can
you display my phone number?
Let's say, I'm not
number 1 in his life;
I understood this
a long time ago.
Because how can dinner
be more important than
immortalizing history?
How can some kind
of 'down' of mine
be more important
than all the things he sees?
How could basic things like...
wanting my
husband to be home
because I'm pregnant
and things are difficult
be more important than...
people losing their legs?
I know he thought about
the wounded for a long time
because of all
the wounded he sees.
He said to me,
"People don't understand...
when we hear 20 dead
and we pity the families,
the number of wounded
becomes a statistic.
The lightly wounded, the
moderately wounded."
He said, "The lightly wounded
person's life may be totally ruined.
His family's life
may be destroyed."
I think from this...
the will to do
such a project arose.
And Louai today for us
is not just a book
or a prize, or
international exhibitions.
Louai is family.
He's part of our lives
until the end of our lives.
Ziv is one of us.
He's part of our family.
In rehabilitation, I tell you
he helped me a lot.
He was with me the whole
time, and he still is now.
He's my soul brother.
Louai's brother was on the
radio, and I heard him say,
"We sent the army a soldier
who was 1.9 meters tall.
He came back 1 meter tall."
That was it, I knew
I had to find this guy.
And he found Louai.
It was a gift from heaven
just to meet
this amazing family.
The strength of
this project is the intimacy
and friendship Ziv
developed with Louai.
In photography,
there is luck sometimes.
You can call it luck. There are
all sorts of added values here.
He has a twin brother.
There are amazing pictures
where Louai lies in bed,
and next to him the
same person is standing.
In news you have
to rely on of luck.
You come to a location, and
you don't know to expect.
It's an equation
of many variables.
You don't know
how things will turn out
and what you'll
be able to shoot.
When you're working on a long
project, you adjust to a situation
in which the frames can ripen.
And the more time you
spend with the subject
the more likely you are to get to
the intimate and true moments
that I want to convey
on a documentary level.
At this stage, the subject hardly
notices the camera anymore.
And I think the story
of Louai is a kind of zenith
where I managed to capture
a genuine moment.
It really hit me when
I heard that all together
over 7000 people
have been wounded.
We've become so numb.
When we hear that five people
were wounded in an attack,
we don't even stop
eating our sandwich,
or worse, we're relieved. "Oh,
only five wounded, that's lucky!"
It's five wounded people who
may take years to recover.
And we say, "Such luck
only five wounded."
We don't even turn up the volume
on the radio to hear the details.
Such luck, just five wounded.
So I felt the need to
provoke a public discussion.
It was published in STERN and
in the Sunday Times in London.
You know, if an editor of
STERN magazine in Germany
decided to publish the story
in an 8-page double spread,
apparently Ziv managed
to get his message across.
Ziv always thinks
he's getting prizes...
But it's actually our daughter
Shira and I who get the awards.
You know, for years
I've been joking and saying,
"I'm a single mother.
I'm a single mother."
And when I stopped
joking about it,
I understood that I really am
kind of a single mother.
I'm alone a lot. I'm really alone.
And...
it's been like that
for many years.
So today we're in NY on vacation
having lunch with my friends.
Ziv starts talking
about the conflict,
who they took down,
how many bodies...
not realizing that this
is his main course every day.
Ziv's Louai project is nominated
for the PDN awards
that chooses the most important
documentary projects of the year.
We're on our way to the event.
I'm sure everyone
will praise Ziv,
but they don't
understand that again
I'm the one getting
the award tonight.
You understand why?
I deserve a price
for my tolerance, don't I?
It's six o'clock in the morning, and
we're on our way to Gush Qatif.
In six weeks, the Gush Qatif
settlement will be evacuated.
We want to get there early,
when people are just waking up.
I'm going to record
the routine of the place
because in six weeks
it will all be over.
Israel has finally understood what
the Palestinians knew long ago -
that the real war
is for "World Opinion"
and not the
war on the ground.
Is Israel correcting
its own mistakes?
Morag Jewish settlement
is one of the most dangerous
places on the planet.
It sits between two Palestinian
towns. You cannot imagine
a more dangerous place in
the world for a Jew to be in.
Demonstration against the
Gaza pullout / Rabin Square - Tel Aviv
By definition, the pullout from
Gaza is the biggest project
Israel has undertaken
since it was founded.
And the media coverage
is unprecedented.
We're talking about thousands
of journalists who'll be in
and around the
settlements covering it.
I cancelled all my assignments,
and there is stress at home
because I won't
be there for a month.
I don't even know whether or not
I'll come back for a weekend.
As far as I'm concerned, I'm gone
for a month. I'm not coming home.
I have to take a certain risk.
There are lots of advantages
but also many disadvantages
to being embedded
with the army.
It's a calculated risk.
I have to get something
that others don't get.
I'd rather bring a picture
that's less good but exclusive
than an excellent frame
that everyone has.
During the preparations
for the pullout,
I had accompanied
an elite unit that trained
for what is called
"Extreme Situations"
in which they might have
to face radical Jewish settlers.
One advantage of this unit
is that they are trained
to seize and control
but not to kill.
So I think that they are the right
people to evacuate the extremists.
In the training camp,
the soldiers were taught
all kinds of techniques to
get the evacuees under control
and out of the settlements.
Everything was planned
down to the last detail.
But 80% of the training
was psychological.
Another tool we're developing
now is your mental preparation,
the professional and the physical
preparations for the task.
Of course it won't be easy.
An evacuee you feel will...
This is how it's going
to be carried out.
The military imposed
restrictions on the media.
The area is being declared
as a "closed military zone".
And as of August
15th, 2005,
anyone still living here
will be an illegal resident.
You often think episodes you
document are historic moments,
but they turn out not to be.
And sometimes when
it is an historic moment,
you don't recognize it because
it only becomes historic
in retrospect.
But here, it was clear that this
really was a historic moment.
The truth is I don't feel
comfortable working today.
It wasn't supposed to be today.
It was rescheduled.
I'd prefer to sit in front of the TV
now and see what's happening.
It's a little like the day
Rabin was assassinated.
One day people will ask me,
"Where were you on the
day of the pullout?"
And I'll say, "I was making
a promo for my TV show."
It doesn't sound good, does it?
But here we keep working
and keep living and...
And to know there's just one
chance, so don't miss it...
It was tough
on both sides,
on the evacuator's
and on the evacuee's.
If there were five or six
thousand people,
there were five or six thousand
heartbreaking human stories.
For example, a mother
tells her 3 year old son,
"Say good-bye to the house
we're not coming back.
These are the soldiers that
accompanied us for many years."
And the boy goes and gives
cookies to the soldiers.
Let's say there were
more than a few times
I was happy to
be behind the camera,
so they wouldn't
see me crying.
I think the human story here
is much stronger
than the military one.
But for personal reasons
I couldn't cover it,
because I had
a newborn daughter.
I couldn't commit myself to
spending so much time there.
If I weren't married, I would
have done it for sure.
Citizens of Israel.
The day has arrived...
It's an incredible feeling looking
out over these settlements
for the last time.
I used to visit these places
when people used to live here,
and now it's all been razed.
It's unbelievable.
We've been
together 8 years now.
The Galit of today is a
product of Galit and Ziv.
There's a reason I'm with him.
There's love.
That's for sure.
The rest, you know...
we're working on it all the time.
There are lots of things in his
career I'm willing to tolerate.
But if you tell me he'll be home
even less... No. He won't be.
I once heard
a lecture by Alex Webb,
who said, "The hardest thing
is to create in
your own neighborhood."
That makes sense.
You become very dull to what
happens around your home
because you see it every day.
It becomes trivial.
When you come to a place
you've never been before,
everything's new,
all the nerves are exposed.
Everything puts
a crazy drive into you.
In Tokyo, I was on a
'shooting frenzy.'
When I arrived in Japan,
I felt like an
ambassador for Israel.
I didn't spare them
my troubling photographs;
I knew it would shock them.
I think he likes me.
What amazing colors!
The wonders of nature.
So... what's
the plan for today?
My exhibition
opens in three days.
So I have three days to shoot in
this amazing location.
Such perfect light, everything
moves really fast, it's insane.
It's a photographer's paradise.
It's a real trip.
I was surprised that some people
at the Israeli embassy here
don't think my exhibition
serves Israel's image well.
My exhibition
opens in one hour,
and in another twelve we'll be at
the airport on the way back home.
Hey, Shira.
I'll be home tomorrow morning, in
time to take you to kindergarten.
It's hard for me to define
my role in the big picture.
I know my photographs
can't move mountains.
But I worry about how the
conflict will affect our children,
and how it affects
our society today.
How we're more
irritable and impatient.
It affects how we drive,
how we treat each other.
It affects who we are.
It affects everything.
But I think my pictures do
succeed in communicating
and, somehow,
in convening the message.
Or at least...
I hope they do.
Ziv, where are you?
Subtitle ripped and processed by
Contaminator
Published 25/01/2014