by MATTHEW HAYS

Montreal filmmaker Eric Scott makes no apologies for getting emotional as he sits down to discuss his latest film project. He is, he explains, a committed Zionist, someone who feels very strongly about the state of Israel, a place he has lived in and visited ever since he was 17. But he can't get over what's happening there, what's being done in the name of the Jewish state, and that's what's driving him.

"This is very emotional stuff, for sure," he says, pausing before his next thought. With the movie, whose full title (Checkpoint: The Battle for Israel's Soul) will undoubtedly raise some eyebrows on its own, Scott is working to turn his camera on the issue he sees as emblematic of the entire Israeli- Palestinian conflict.

A long-standing tradition in Israel, the string of checkpoints that line the border between Israel and the Occupied Territories, are a sore point of contention between the two sides. The Israeli government argues the checkpoints are a necessary way to stop suicide bombers before they get into Israel; Palestinians argue the checkpoints are demeaning and add insult to injury, keeping innocent Palestinians away from desperately needed jobs within Israel proper, as well as keeping people from schools and hospitals - even in dire emergencies.

Improper conduct

Then, of course, there are the charges of basic civil-rights abuses, widespread criticism that the force employed at the checkpoints by Israeli police and military officers is improperly implemented and out of control. The divisive issue came up again earlier this week; the latest roadblock in the latest road map to peace has to do with four towns that the Israelis are supposed to hand over to the Palestinians. The point of contention? Israel wants to maintain control of the checkpoints.

"This film comes from a deep attachment to Israel," insists Scott, who's currently securing funding for the project, which he hopes to have ready for the festival circuit next year. "I had watched from the sidelines for so many years. I wanted to do something about a situation I found so distressing - I wanted to make a film about it all."

When surfing one day, Scott says he found what he knew was an amazing set of Canadian eyes to see the Middle East turmoil through. Ronnee Jaeger is a Jewish-Canadian woman who divides her time between Toronto and Israel. There, she and two other Israeli women founded Machsom Watch, or Checkpoint Watch, as they felt a personal need to witness precisely what was happening at Israeli military checkpoints. Since their founding in January of 2001, Machsom Watch has expanded to over 150 members, all of whom go to checkpoints and, if needed, ask police and military officers what they're up to and why. It's proven a potent form of intervention, one that has led to a serious challenge to Israeli military authority and what Scott calls "a questioning of the justice of the Occupation." Too often, he points out, Israel is represented in the media by right-wing supporters of Occupation policies - the Sharons and Netanyahus - while the "other Israel" is silenced. "My hope is that Checkpoint can give a platform to these other voices, these other perspectives," he says.

An inspiring interviewee

"Ronnee is truly inspiring," Scott says of the sexagenarian, "and she's very charismatic and articulate. She's a perfect person to examine the conflict through." Still without a major source of funding, Scott took what he had and headed to Israel in April with a cameraman to do some preliminary filming. For her part, Jaeger supplies a heart-wrenching testimony: "I am sad, tremendously sad," she tells Scott's camera. "I am afraid that after having the opportunity after 2,000 years to have a state, I am frightened that we are going to lose it and that we are going to lose it by our own making… People have been killed by soldiers, beaten to death at checkpoints… We know that there have been many severe beatings at checkpoints."

Jaeger and her colleagues have relied on the very fact that they are older Jewish women to their own benefit, with soldiers deferring to them more often than not. "I think when they see me with their white hair - and they often call me "Doda" or "Auntie" - because I look like an auntie to them. I look like the quintessential Jewish, Ashkenazi woman, I mean you can't get more Jewish looking than me! I think they try not to do what they wouldn't want their aunt or their grandmother to see."

Defenders of the checkpoints will counter that with escalating suicide bombings, a method of searching Palestinians is a basic necessity. But Scott worries that the behaviour exhibited by Israeli officials at each site is pushing more Palestinians into radical positions, and ensuring long-term, insurmountable hatred on the part of the disenfranchised. He also says that many in the West, and many Israelis, simply don't want to know how farreaching the checkpoints are in the lives of average Palestinians. There are major checkpoints on the roads between Jerusalem to the cities of Bethlehem and Ramallah; there are also checkpoints at the entrances to all major Palestinian cities, including Nablus, Hebron, Jenin and Tulkarm. But there are also checkpoints within cities, as well as rotating checkpoints, which Israeli police and military set up wherever they want, whenever they want.

Along with members of Machsom Watch, Scott has also conducted interviews with Palestinians who've been shot and beaten by Israeli officials at checkpoints, something he wants to incorporate into Checkpoint.

Questioning nationalism

Scott says he knows he's trodding onto highly controversial turf. It hasn't stopped him before; last year, Scott did the film-festival circuit with Je me souviens, his profile and examination of the work of academic Esther Delisle. The film, which analyzed Quebec's history of anti- Semitism, drew loud and hostile protest from some Quebec nationalists, who argued Scott was again trying to dismiss the sovereigntist movement as innately racist.

"In a sense, these films do have a connection," Scott says. "On the one hand I was looking at Quebec francophone nationalists, pointing fingers at Quebeckers. What about something I know about more personally? Which is a much more challenging thing. You're looking at things that upset you within your own community, or group, or nation, or religion. It's a much harder thing to come to terms with."

Scott is braced for the arguments against his film: that he's simply naïve and that Israel needs a strong defence in such a hostile part of the world. "I'm all for Israel having a strong army. We need one, it's a rough neighbourhood. I'm as concerned for young Israelis as I am for Palestinians - this is about young people from both sides of the conflict. What are we making our kids do to defend Israel? I don't actually know the Palestinians, and to say so would be false and misleading. But I do know Israel. And I feel the Occupation is damaging Israel's soul. Some have said, ‘What right do you have to say this? You don't live there.' But Israel is supposedly the Jewish state, and if they're speaking in my name then I damn well have a right to because I consider myself part of that.

"This might-is-right mentality has entered into the Israeli vocabulary, where a kind of lockstep nationalism is prevailing. Judaism has always been a religion and a people who've welcomed and encouraged dissent. All opinions are honoured. The Jews overseas have picked up on this lockstep nationalism, where anything critical of Israel is frowned upon. I don't think it's healthy."

With his film, Scott hopes to counter the despair felt in the current political climate. Though there is some hope surrounding Bush's road map to peace, most are weary and cynical about (yet) another round of peace proposals. A start, opines Scott, would be the dismantling of walls and the checkpoints that line them.

"Walls won't solve anything. We can't fence things off and pretend they don't exist. Israel is part of the Middle East. We can't choose Danish social democrats to be our neighbours. This is the reality. Sharon himself has admitted it's an Occupation - he's called it that himself.

"I don't think our security will come with building a wall. Security comes from peace with your neighbours."

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