The film presents fascist ideologies since the beginning of the 20th Century. The actor/presenter of Maurice Barrés argues against foreign labor on the Tel Aviv beach. Mussolini in a gym. Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera in a bookshop. Carl Schmitt at court. Abba Ahimeir and Itamar Ben-Avi in a public library. Gudrun Streiter recalls her love affair with an SA Stormtrooper with Hitler and Himmler on a bench in a park. Three Rabbis from the Yitzhar Settlement on the West Bank: Shapira, Ginzburg and Elitzur have recently ruled that “there is a reason to kill a child if it is clear that it will grow to harm us” (Torat Hamelekh, 2009, pg. 207). They too appear and discuss their interpretation of Divine commands on a park bench.
This Israeli-made film is set along the battle-torn West Bank. Military governor Makram Khouri tries to flush out some fugitive PLO activists by hanging the rotting, stinking carcass of a dead donkey in a village square. Israeli doctor Rami Danon forgets his animosity towards the PLO and, out of compassion, cuts the carcass down. For disobeying Khouri's orders, Danon becomes as much a fugitive as the Palestinians. While in hiding, Danon befriends Arab hermit Tuncel Kurtiz, whose adopted son is a member of the PLO.
Israeli attorney Hanna Kaufman has her beliefs challenged when she is appointed to the defense of Selim Bakri. Kaufman, who was born in the United States to survivors of the Holocaust, has always accepted Israel's right to exist. But she bears witness to some of the costs of its sovereignty when she meets Bakri, a dispossessed Palestinian man facing serious criminal charges who wants the same thing as his supposed enemies: to reclaim his family home.
