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If you don’t already know the names Norma Percy and Ken Burns, thank me later, after you’ve watched some of their programmes. The two great documentary makers are a byword for excellence. The latter’s The Civil War (the American version, not ours) is as gripping a nine-episode TV programme as any thriller. And his The Vietnam War (across ten episodes) is, I would argue, the greatest documentary ever made.
Norma Percy is in the same class. American born, she has lived here since studying at the LSE. Chances are you have seen one of her programmes, even if you’ve not realised it. She has a distinctive and deceptively simple style: she gets the people who made something happen to talk about it.
That’s especially rewarding when she covers something controversial; in that vein, her various series on the collapse of Yugoslavia and its aftermath have been as important as any written histories, with the likes of Slobodan Milošević and Radovan Karadžić as participants.
Getting the people who made something happen to talk about it is, of course, prone to all kinds of disaster if you’re not in Percy’s class as a film maker. The BBC’s Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone got the son of a Hamas minister to talk…and not only didn’t bother to say who he was, but actively went out of its way to present only that perspective.
Percy’s latest series is Israel and the Palestinians: The Road to 7th October. It doesn’t have the son of a Hamas minister; it has two Hamas leaders, Khaled Mashal and Ismail Haniye – and it has them speaking without interruption. But their contributions to the series expose what was wrong with Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone. It had no context. It was, effectively, Hamas propaganda. Percy’s series, however, places Mashal and Haniye’s contributions in full context, which is the secret to all her films. She doesn’t just get a series of heads to talk. Her great skill is in using their words to offer a framework and a story – and then to leave the viewer to interpret things as he or she sees fit.
Her great skill is in using their words to offer a framework and a story – and then to leave the viewer to interpret things as he or she sees fit
It’s true that across the three hours of Israel and the Palestinians: The Road to 7th October there are assertions that jar – such as a glossing over of the Six Day War as if just happened and led to the “occupation”, without pointing out that Egypt, Syria and Jordan attacked Israel to start a war they thought they would win. But to focus on these is to miss the point: Percy sets out to be not a pedagogue asserting her version of events but an investigator offering evidence, with that evidence being the testimony of those who were, as the phrase has it, in the room. Thus we have, for example, Mahmoud Abbas and Saeb Erekat, as well as Ehud Olmert, describing from their own very different perspectives how in 2008 the latter offered the Palestinians a state – with Olmert theatrically revealing for the first time the actual map detailing the prospective borders which he presented to Abbas, which was rejected by the Palestinians.
There are assertions that jar – such as a glossing over of the Six Day War as if just happened and led to the “occupation”, without pointing out that Egypt, Syria and Jordan attacked Israel to start a war they thought they would win
The cast list is exactly what you would want from such a programme, with a series of Israeli and Palestinian figures and key Americans such as John Kerry and Hillary Clinton. And where vital figures haven’t been interviewed – such as Abbas and Netanyahu – then the programme skilfully weaves in older footage.
John Kerry in Israel and the Palestinians: The road to 7th OctoberBBC/Brook Lapping/Zinc Television London Limited
The decision when to start a series entitled The Road to 7th October will always be arbitrary but Percy goes back to 19 August 2003, when a Palestinian suicide bomber killed 23 Israelis on a bus in Jerusalem. That, and Israel’s military response, stalled the so-called Roadmap for Peace. This is all familiar territory to anyone who has followed the story, but The Road to 7th October is no less valuable for that. Percy’s approach of getting participants to talk is not unique (although few others manage the sheer range and quality she seems able to lure) but she has few peers who seem to want, let alone to achieve, genuine balance in their programmes - especially in a subject such as the Middle East.
Highly recommended – not least as an example of how the BBC is perfectly capable of broadcasting serious, worthwhile programmes about Israel when it decides to do so.
Israel and the Palestinians: The Road to 7th October
★★★★★
English (US) ·