THE STORY – After Liat Beinin Atzili is kidnapped on October 7th, her Israeli-American family faces their own conflicting perspectives to fight for her release and the future of the places they call home.
THE CAST – Liat Beinin Atzili, Yehuda Beinin, Chaya Beinin, Tal Beinin, Netta Atzili & Joel Beinin
THE TEAM – Brandon Kramer (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 97 Minutes
On October 7th, 2023, Liat and Aviv Atzili were among 70 residents of Kibbutz Nir Oz taken hostage and held in Gaza as part of a violent attack against Israel led by Hamas. Two weeks later, filmmakers related to Liat began capturing her family’s experience as they tried to make sense of what happened while becoming uneasy public figures in the fight to bring her back. What director Brandon Kramer likely wasn’t prepared for was just how much Liat’s father, Yehuda Beinin, deviated from the “typical” Israeli response to the October 7th attacks.
While conventional wisdom said Israelis were rising up as one against Hamas, Yehuda saw things differently. As he rages against religious extremists that have taken control of the government on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides, Yehuda finds himself going back to America, the country of his birth, in the hopes that Liat’s American citizenship will help the US government to get her released before Israel. What unfolds is a disarmingly nuanced portrait of Israeli-Palestinian relations told through the lens of a family longing for the safe return of one of their own.
While it’s impossible not to be moved by “Holding Liat,” Kramer also challenges his audience to consider the situation in Gaza carefully and really question what is best for the region going forward. Yehuda is an ideal audience surrogate, constantly struggling to reconcile his inner feelings and political beliefs with his desire to bring his daughter back home. Yehuda and his wife Chaya were part of the generation that came to Israel in the 1970s to participate in the “socialist revolution” of the Kibbutz lifestyle, only to arrive and realize that the Kibbutz was built on the ruins of Palestinian villages. To many, this may have been a symbol of Israel’s triumph over the forces that have sought to remove the Jewish people from the planet, but to others, like Yehuda, it served as evidence of something much darker and more hypocritical.
Now, Yehuda believes that he sees things clearly, that the Israeli government has been co-opted by religious extremists and by PM Netanyahu, who doesn’t care about the hostages as long as he can play on public sympathy over them to keep the war going and keep himself out of prison. It’s a view shared by many, Israeli or otherwise, but a view that hasn’t gotten nearly as much airtime as pro-Zionist views.
Watching Yehuda wrestle with his beliefs while having to keep his mouth shut during meetings with US lawmakers like Joe Manchin and Mitch McConnell for fear of alienating them and losing his chance to get Liat back is all the more heartrending when compared to the response of his grandson Netta. Netta embodies the anger felt by most Jews in the wake of October 7th, an all-consuming fire that wants to raze all Palestinian settlements to the ground. The more he has to speak about his parents and the devastation of his community, though, the less enraged he becomes. Vengeance is exhausting, especially when everyone else is holding all the cards, and over five weeks in the States, both Netta and Yehuda’s fervor gets replaced with resignation that nothing they say is going to make any difference.
Back home in Israel, all the family can do is wait and hope that the next call they get from their military liaison will be the one that says Liat is finally coming home. Kramer does his best to paint as full a picture of the situation as possible, spending time with Liat and Aviv’s other son, Ofri, as he struggles to find purpose in the wake of the attacks that left the kibbutz his family called home in tatters. The displaced community has a temporary shelter in a hotel that Ofri says feels “like a funeral.” In order to feel useful, he travels with others to Nir Oz to tend to their crops, seemingly the only part of the kibbutz not in need of serious repair. Chaya and Yehuda attend events with Aviv’s parents, still struggling with what to say to those telling them that Israel will win this war and bring the hostages back.
When Liat is finally released (spoiler alert for a news story less than two years old), Kramer narrows his focus to stay entirely on her. Given her experience and reaction to it, it’s the smartest decision he could have made. Liat’s reunion with her family will put a lump in any viewer’s throat, but what she says after will cause many to raise their eyebrows. Liat talks openly about the connection she made with the people who guarded her during her time as a hostage, the family of the man who took her from her home. She discusses how these religious fundamentalists didn’t even understand the connection the Jews had to the land of Israel and how she didn’t understand the full extent of how the Palestinians view Israeli society.
She didn’t emerge from her experience radicalized, but she criticizes both sides, saying of the popular suggestion to block humanitarian aid from Gaza: “I don’t care if it allows Hamas to keep fighting. People shouldn’t starve to death, no matter who they are. By the same token, it’s not okay to break into people’s houses and take them hostage, either.” While she admits that she meets the definition of a victim in this situation, she doesn’t want to be seen that way, by herself or by others.
The film’s pointed ending at Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Center, where Liat continues to work as a guide, drives home the film’s point in no uncertain terms. As Liat describes the division between the Warsaw ghetto and the rest of Poland, how the Polish people could see the smoke from the burning buildings but did nothing, the parallel to the present day is unmistakable. Liat herself laments living so close to Gaza without ever really thinking about the people there and what kind of lives they must lead. Now, she thinks about it a lot. If more Israelis did, perhaps public opinion would shift enough that Netanyahu wouldn’t be able to continue his war. That won’t come without a lot of work, and “Holding Liat,” with its unflinchingly observant, analytical yet emotional eye, is an important part of that work.
