It is early May in 1948, a few weeks before the creation of the independent state of Israel. The story follows a boatload of Jewish refugees emigrating from Europe after the Holocaust. Aboard their ship, the Kedma, the men and women exchange harrowing stories of their survival and their families’ deaths. Arriving on the beach, they are met by members of the underground Jewish defence organization the Palmach, who quickly train them for armed struggle against the Arabs in the War for Independence--a conflict they don’t understand, on a stark, hostile terrain that seems anything but the promised land.
Gitai establishes parallels between the Jews’ exodus from Europe and the displacement of the Arabs in Palestine. The powerful and even-handed film, clearly, is less a literal recreation of Israel’s early history than an essay on the origins of contemporary hostilities and, in particular, the loss of faith in Israel’s utopian dream.