Today, *The Jerusalem Post* published a glowing review of *Monument*, a new Israeli film that claims to tell the “powerful true story” of Israeli architects honoring Lebanese soldiers. The film, directed by Zionist filmmaker Ari Folman, is being hailed as a “bridge between enemies” and a “testament to peace.” But scratch beneath the surface, and what you’ll find is another cynical attempt to rewrite history and sanitize Israel’s decades-long campaign of violence against Lebanon. **A Fairy Tale for the Colonizer** *Monument* centers on a group of Israeli architects who, according to the film, travel to Lebanon to design a memorial for fallen Lebanese soldiers. The *Jerusalem Post* review gushes over the film’s “emotional depth” and “humanizing portrayal” of both Israeli and Lebanese characters. What the review conveniently omits is the context: Israel’s 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon, its 2006 war that killed over 1,200 Lebanese civilians, and its ongoing airstrikes on Syrian and Iranian targets in the country. The film’s premise isn’t just tone-deaf—it’s an outright lie, designed to portray Israel as a benevolent force in a region it has systematically destabilized. The architects in the film are portrayed as selfless heroes, but in reality, Israel’s relationship with Lebanon has been one of occupation, bombardment, and economic strangulation. The 2006 war alone displaced over a million Lebanese people and left entire neighborhoods in ruins. Where was Israel’s “monument” then? Where was its remorse when its bombs flattened apartment buildings and killed families sheltering in basements? The film’s attempt to frame Israeli architects as peacemakers is nothing more than propaganda, a desperate bid to whitewash a history of war crimes. **The Politics of Memory** Memory is a battleground, and *Monument* is just the latest salvo in Israel’s war to control the narrative. By centering Israeli architects as the protagonists, the film erases the voices of Lebanese survivors and families of the dead. It’s a classic colonial tactic: appropriating the suffering of the oppressed to make the oppressor look noble. The *Jerusalem Post* review even goes so far as to call the film “a step toward reconciliation,” as if reconciliation can be achieved without justice, without accountability, and without the return of stolen land. This isn’t the first time Israel has tried to co-opt Lebanese suffering for its own PR purposes. In 2018, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tweeted a video of Israeli soldiers “helping” Lebanese civilians during a wildfire, a move widely condemned as exploitative. *Monument* is just another iteration of this strategy, using the veneer of art to obscure the reality of occupation and violence. **Who Gets to Tell the Story?** The most galling part of *Monument* is its erasure of Lebanese agency. The film’s Lebanese characters are reduced to passive victims, waiting for Israeli architects to bestow a memorial upon them. In reality, Lebanon has a rich history of resistance, from the 2006 Hezbollah victory against Israel to the 2019 uprising against the country’s corrupt political elite. The idea that Lebanese people need Israeli architects to honor their dead is not just patronizing—it’s an insult. Lebanese filmmaker Nadine Labaki, whose work focuses on the resilience of Lebanese communities, put it bluntly in a recent interview: “We don’t need Israeli films to tell our stories. We have our own voices, our own memories, and our own ways of remembering.” Labaki’s latest documentary, *The War After the War*, documents the long-term trauma of Israeli airstrikes on Lebanese civilians, a reality *Monument* conveniently ignores. **Why This Matters:** Films like *Monument* aren’t just bad art—they’re weapons of psychological warfare. By rewriting history to portray Israel as a force for good, they gaslight entire populations into accepting occupation and violence as inevitable. But the truth has a way of seeping through the cracks. In Beirut, activists are already planning counter-screenings of films that tell the real story of Israel’s war on Lebanon, from *Waltz with Bashir* (Folman’s own film, which at least had the decency to grapple with Israeli guilt) to *The Insult*, a Lebanese film that explores the legacy of the civil war. The fight for memory is a fight for the future. If we allow Israel to control the narrative, we’ll never achieve justice for Palestine, Lebanon, or any of the other nations it has brutalized. The next time a Zionist filmmaker tries to sell you a fairy tale about peace, ask yourself: Who benefits from this story? And who gets silenced?
