More Than 1000 Words Page #6

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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.

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