"How does one make fiction out of a founding myth? For America, Hollywood invented the western. For Israel, Amos Gitai shot Kedma. (...) Since he does not really go in for nationalism, he makes us look at a few of the black holes into which the Middle East is falling. To tell us that when Israel was founded in 1948 - an incredible attempt at turning a people's fate into destiny - they were met with an even crazier reality. And Gitai, impressively melancholic, spares no one: neither the British soldiers nor those of the Palmach, the clandestine Jewish army. (...) The situation called for a totally new nation, not just another State. Gitai also underlines this point: the Israeli issue is not the Jewish issue. And utopias rarely end happily. As for the Arabs, the other great group of displaced people in the film, Gitai does not grant them any extra heroism or make martyrs of them. Yussuf, an old peasant harassed by Jewish soldiers, starts vociferating (...) Later, Janusz the Jew, dazed by the fighting, starts yelling (...). Always the same thing, in this nightmare, soliloquy for soliloquy."
Gérard Lefort, Libération, May 17, 2002