In 2010, Shireen was stopped at a checkpoint in Jerusalem and asked for her ID."I gave the Israeli soldier my ID. He said that I couldn't pass and have to take a detour. I asked for directions. He screamed suddenly and told me I was under arrest for three hours. They put me inside a small room near the checkpoint with large windows. Later a jeep came and they transferred me to a Jabal al-Mukaber police station. Someone identified himself as an officer. He didn't mention his name. No charges were mentioned. Only that I'll be transferred to Talpiot police station.In Talpiot they interrogated me and accused me of owning a knife, which I didn't. I was under arrest for 24 hours and would be transferred to Maskobiyeh Detention Center. They handcuffed and blindfolded me. Later on, I realised I was in an interrogation room. They removed the blindfold. An interrogator said: 'Welcome, we've been expecting you for a long time.' They confined me in a cell. Soldiers came later and told me I'm going to court which was comforting. I knew if I meet a judge I will be released. I did nothing wrong. They took me blindfolded through long corridors. I heard Palestinian detainees calling upon me to remain strong. I was confused. What do they mean? Was I not leaving?I was alone in the cell, which I believe was underground. I had to go down a very long staircase to reach it. It was very small to fit a person. It had a pit-toilet and a sleeping mat. The smell was horrible. The walls were grey and made out of pointed stones. I hurt myself several times trying to support my back or head. The orange lights were kept lit all day. The AC was mostly on with full power. I felt like I was in a fridge. My whole body turned blue from the excess chill. The iron door had a small slot they used to talk to me. They switched me between two cells. I knew that because the door location changed. Sometimes they'd get me to a new cell with the lights off. I couldn't even see my own hand there. So, when I approached the door or the pit-toilet, I end up hitting the wall. Only then did I know they switched the cell. They made my meetings with the lawyer difficult. They'd make him wait for hours falsely claiming I'm being interrogated. Other times they claimed I refused to meet him without informing me. They left me alone while the lawyer was waiting elsewhere. They'd intentionally sit very close to me. They almost stick their mouth to my ear and shout loud. One day the interrogator unchained me and approached. His face was almost glued to mine. I asked him to give me my space. But he told me: 'We're the ones who decide here. You have no personal space. Who do you think you are?'I pushed him away. Other interrogators rushed in and started shouting. They hit me, tied my hands and legs and blindfolded me, repeatedly dragging me on the floor and slamming me against the wall. They chained me with a leash and said: 'I dealt with the likes of you before. You're rubbish. You're worthless.'During interrogation I asked for a Quran, a book, a pen. Anything to feel alive. I said I'm on strike until I get my demands. When I finally got the chance to buy a pen, I was so happy. I felt like a kid on New Year. I started to write down everything I experienced. I wrote about finally buying a shampoo to use in my cell. I described to my mum the scarce smell of hygiene. Being a girl in the interrogation, they know honour and reputation is something we highly value. So, they use it against us. They threatened to rape me. A colonel once came to me in the later stages and called me nasty names. He gave details on sexual positions, and that he'd bring his dog to do those things to me. As if to say we are worthless, not human. That we're worthy of dogs.The detention with all its horrors had a positive side. It allowed me to experience things that detainees may hide. If I go back to being a lawyer or working with children, the cases won't be rumours I merely hear about. I lived through it."

This documentary consists of a series of interviews with former heads of Shin Bet, the Israeli Secret Service. They outline their work in protecting the country's interests, especially since the Six Day War of 1967, while reflecting on the morality of their actions. The film illustrates some of their maneuvers with the help of archive footage and reconstructions. What makes THE GATEKEEPERS so intriguing is its contradictory viewpoints; on the one hand many of those interviewed believe that it is their duty to protect Israeli interests at all costs, even if it means incurring collateral damage. If they targeted a particular Palestinian suspect, they accepted as a matter of course that innocent people would get killed, however much they tried to pinpoint their campaign. While accepting to an extent the Palestinian claims to their own separate state, the interviewees nonetheless have a jaundiced view of the methods their rivals employ: why should Palestinians believe they have achieved their revenge simply by making the Israelis suffer? Yet perhaps what is most interesting is the way in which the interviewees criticize their own government for perpetually pursuing militarist policies, and refusing to meet the Palestinians round the negotiating-table in a sustained way. The Oslo accords of the mid- Nineties represented a step in the right direction, but they collapsed within seven years. Since then, most Israeli Prime Ministers have been preoccupied with pursuing aggressive policies against the Palestinians. The interviewees understand that they, the Israelis, are the colonists, adopting modes of behavior which they themselves experienced in the past at the hands of the British. Perhaps greater care needs to be taken in the future about pursuing a more liberal policy; but the interviewees seem fairly pessimistic about this actually happening. THE GATEKEEPERS might not be a particularly dramatic film, but it is an invaluable text that helps to unravel the complexities underlying the Israel-Palestine conflict.

"These are philosophical questions, not practical ones," Yaakov Peri If the Arab-Israeli conflict interests you, then take a close look at The Gatekeepers, a first-rate documentary about Shin Bet, the Israeli security agency primarily responsible for Israel's complicated relationship with Palestine, for both good and bad.Director Dror Moreh has the six former heads of the agency speak as candidly as is possible for men were cautious in the extreme about safety and negotiation, causing death, destruction, and reconstruction to people who just can't seem to settle their differences.As a one-time head avers in the quote above, for the leaders of the agency, founded in 1949 immediately after Israel declared its independence, the decisions of Shin Bet most often depended on the tactic rather than the strategy. Such a mode led to the Bus 300 affair in 1984 with Israeli operatives beating two Arab bus hijackers to death upon orders from Avaraham Shalom, head of the agency at that time. The decision, according to him, was a matter of not having to deal with the terrorists in arrest. And you thought drones were cold.Ruthless and efficient as Shin Bet is, it couldn't stop Israeli Prime Minister Yitzah Rabin's assassination in 1995, even when it knew the identity of the assassin beforehand. Yet the documentary's thrust, ruled as it is by seasoned intelligence officers who lack self-recrimination, is that the agency did what it had to do and was on the whole successful protecting Israel.As the film moves toward its end and the elderly leaders ruminate, one states he has moved toward the left in his old age, suggesting that decisions to accept collateral damage to civilians were necessary but regrettable. As I watch in fascination, I could only think how nice to be able to live with oneself and shift on the political spectrum with barely a scratch.The Gatekeepers, deservedly nominated for a 2012 Oscar, does what a good doc should do—lets the subjects talk for themselves and thereby cleanly exalt and exonerate themselves without directorial intrusion (except in the editing room, of course).Closer to the truth of the occupation's collateral damage, Shalom evaluates himself and his fellow leaders: "We have become cruel to ourselves but mainly to the occupation."

. . . than it is probably a useful exercise to watch this Oscar-nominated feature documentary which stitches together the philosophy of six Israeli Dick Cheneys who ran that Middle Eastern country's intelligence service from about 1980 to 2011. These guys control a warehouse of files that puts the one at the end of INDIANA JONES AND THE RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK to shame. Apparently, there is a paper file on every resident of both Israel and the Occupied Territories. Further, the bank of video screens is more extensive than the Federation used to monitor the entire Universe, as each block of the Holy Land is under continuous high-resolution satellite surveillance. Finally, the self-proclaimed "Jewish State" apparently is the main testing ground for the United States military's "Hellfire" weaponized aerial drone program, in which video gamers blow up Palestinian pedestrians, vehicles, homes, and businesses right and left. All of this could be coming to an America near you soon, so get ready!