A Palestinian terrorist attack in Tel Aviv on June 8, 2016 was a unique event, having been the only one inside Israel recorded in real time by security cameras. Its grainy footage forms the core of Tal Inbar’s unsettling documentary, Closed Circuit, which is now available on the ChaiFlicks streaming platform. The 52-minute film, an amalgam of horrific images and bleak testimonies of survivors, is chilling.

The incident took place in the Sarona Market, Israel’s largest enclosed culinary mall, which my wife and I visited in the spring of 2019. The site of a former German Templer colony, it lies across the street from Israeli army headquarters.

We were impressed by its elegant food stores, cafes and restaurants. We could hardly believe that four people had been killed here while enjoying a cup of coffee or a pastry.

The attack, which unfolded at one of its cafes, was like a bolt out of the blue. It occurred more than a decade after the second Palestinian uprising had petered out and terrorism seemed to be on the ebb.

It was carried out by two 21-year-old cousins from the West Bank village of Yata, near the city of Hebron. Since Khaled and Muhammad Makhamra had no criminal records, they were not on Israel’s radar. After they were apprehended, they told Israeli interrogators that they had been inspired by Islamic State, a radical Islamic organization that created a short-lived caliphate in Iraq and Syria.

Formally dressed in black suits, wearing ties and carrying bags, the pair entered Israel illegally through a gap in the security fence along Israel’s border with the West Bank.

Inbar neglects to mention this aspect of the story. Nor does she tell us that the flourishing Templer colony, founded in 1871 by pious Germans from southern Germany, stood on the leafy grounds of the Sarona complex until its mostly pro-Nazi settlers were deported from British Mandate Palestine in 1941 and exiled to Australia, never to return.

When the two terrorists walked into the Sarona Market, they paused at Max Brenner cafe and ordered cookies and cold beverages. Then they got down to the dirty business of killing Israelis. Brandishing Carl Gustav-style submachine guns, they shot whoever happened to be in their line of fire. Security cameras caught their rampage in all its suddenness and gore.

When the first shots rang out, people began rushing out and screaming. Employees ducked under counters.

The survivors recount their ordeals, though most cannot remember the granular details.

“I was almost sure I would die,” says a young man.

Another man directs his rage at the terrorists. “I wanted to slaughter them.”

Still another man lunged at one of the terrorists and was shot.

A woman managed to squeeze herself into a large garbage bin. Another woman kneeled over her dead husband. A third woman, having lost her father during the attack, expresses regret that he will not neither attend her wedding nor play with her children.

An Israeli Arab family took shelter in a storeroom. An Israeli Arab employee who witnessed the carnage believes that it will tar the Arab citizens of Israel as terrorists.

In one of the most graphic moments, a terrorist abruptly flees, leaving two corpses on the floor. And in an eerie reenactment, an Israeli policeman recalls the terrorist who entered a nearby apartment flat while trying to escape.

Due to circumstances beyond her control, Inbar was unable to interview the terrorists, who are serving four life sentences.

While Closed Circuit is doubtless interesting, it is far from suspenseful, much less heart-pounding. Inbar had invaluable footage at her disposal, but she was unable to take full advantage of that opportunity and turn it into a first-class film.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)