Alex McCarron takes the threats against NAZA directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor as the starting point for a challenge to American war films. Why does soldiers’ remorse so often become a story about their suffering, leaving civilian victims and political responsibility at the edges?
- Guilt in public: McCarron reads NAZA as testimony that demands accountability while the war in Gaza continues.
- The “shoot and cry” tradition: He argues that films such as Waltz with Bashir can turn perpetrators’ distress into a form of self-justification.
- American parallels: Reporting on artillery veterans’ injuries becomes his example of how medical questions can crowd out questions about targets and civilian deaths.
- Artistry and political effect: He admires The Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now while questioning whether their American-centered stories meet their anti-war ambitions.
- Another audience: John Hersey’s Hiroshima, built around six survivors’ experiences, models an account answerable to the people a country has bombed.
McCarron’s argument gives timing and perspective equal weight. Cinema can intervene while decisions remain open, and it can make room for people on the receiving end of military power. His Palestinian examples, Leila and the Wolves and The Time That Remains, extend that international conversation.
His sweeping criticism of trauma medicine needs more caution than his criticism of storytelling. Treating PTSD or brain injury can coexist with moral responsibility. A war story becomes narrower when treatment is allowed to stand in for that reckoning.