Feature trailer for the documentary Censored Voices.
In June of 1967, armies from Egypt, Jordan and Syria amassed on Israel’s borders and threatened its destruction. Israel launched a pre-emptive strike, achieving a stunning and decisive victory in only six days, nearly tripling its size with the occupation of the West Bank. As the nation brimmed with relief, joy and pride, a new narrative of manifest destiny emerged. Other voices, those of the soldiers who fought the war who had something very different to say, were drowned out.
At the time, the Israeli Defense Force partially censored the recordings, the transcripts forming Shapira’s 1970 book The Seventh Day: Soldiers’ Talk About the Six-Day War. The recordings, newly available in full, are the core of this probing and ruminative film as the former soldiers, now men in their seventies, listen to their younger selves and relive their experience of war. Juxtaposed with rare newsreel footage and photography of the conflict alongside an evocative sound design, Censored Voices is a stark reminder of how far, after fifty years of occupation, the region remains from the peace once fought for over six days in 1967.