The film Israelism was completed before the present war in Gaza, with its horrific death toll, had begun. Nevertheless it’s an important film. It’s being shown at the student encampments across the United States and the world, many of which are being led by people with similar life stories to the ones in this film.
Very specifically the film is about young Jews in America and their journey from unthinking Zionists, to passionate anti-Zionists. It describes a revolutionary moment, when people are changing their perspective, when they’re changing sides. I read someone’s definition of revolution once: it’s when the army changes sides, when the guns turn around and are pointing in the other direction. Another definition might be: it’s when the youth changes sides, when the future turns the other way. That’s where we are right now.
The story also applies to the many British Jews who are joining in with the solidarity protests that are taking place, almost on a weekly basis, throughout the United Kingdom. Pro-Palestinian Jewish groups in the UK include Jews for Justice for Palestinians, Na’amod (“We Will Stand” in Hebrew) and Jewdas, amongst many others. In the United States they include Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow. Such groups stand in solidarity not only with Palestinians, but with all groups, of all faiths and identities, who oppose the ongoing destruction Palestinian life, in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank.
More broadly the film reflects the idea of a shift in consciousness, away from the propaganda tropes of the dominant war-profiteering culture, and toward a more compassionate, inclusive culture of love and cooperation. This is also something that we are going through right now. It’s make or break time for the human race. Either we end war and the culture that promotes it, or we end our time upon this planet.
The title of the film refers to the almost unconscious attachment that many Jews throughout the world feel towards the state of Israel. Most of them aren’t hard-core Zionists. Many are also not particularly religious. Belief in the state of Israel, as a place that gives them safety in the world, has replaced religion as the central tenet in their lives. They’re brought up to believe that, without the state of Israel, Jews are in mortal danger.
What this film shows is the shift from that dominant historic view, to one that sees that Palestinian rights and Palestinian safety also matter. That the suffering of a Palestinian child is of as much consequence as the suffering of a Jewish child. This is a shift in morality, away from the narrow tribalism of the past and towards the universal injunction that lies at the heart of all moral systems all over the world, that an injury to one, is an injury to all.
As Simone Zimmerman, one of the participants in the film, says in an interview she gave after a showing of the film: “You cannot have safety for the Jewish people at the expense of the Palestinian people. We’re not safe under apartheid. Apartheid is a security risk for Jews as much as it is, of course, for Palestinians.”
Or, to put it another way, the phrase, “never again,” when applied to the Holocaust, means never again for anyone, not just for Jews.
The film took seven years to make. The directors, Erin Axelman and Sam Eileretson, are young Jews who fit the demographic that the film’s describing. When asked why they wanted to make it they said: “Our stories were part of the much larger generational shift happening as many American Jews realised that they had not gotten the full story…” They said their aim was, “building a Jewish identity that cannot just be centred around Israel but actively in solidarity with Palestinians, and in solidarity with all people in the world who are oppressed.”
As an illustration of how the majority of the Jewish community view Israel we’re introduced to a number of young Jews, members of Hillel, an organization for Jewish students on campuses around the United States. We see them sitting at a table in what appears to be a seminar, deferring to a slightly older man named Tom Barkan, who’s described as “Israel Fellow, Uconn Hillel.” Uconn is the University of Connecticut.
Barkan describes his role: “My job is doing Israeli program on campus, relating to Jewish events, cultural and political...” At this point he has to correct himself. “Sorry, Israeli events, cultural and political,” he adds. What this shows is that, in the minds of these organizers for the state of Israel, the terms “Jewish” and “Israeli” are almost interchangeable.
“I would say, name a University in America,” he continues, “and we probably have a person there. I like to talk about the army a lot. That’s an experience I lived through. A lot of personal stories. There are a couple of students who say, ‘yeah, I’m thinking about joining the IDF one day.’ My first thing is saying, are you sure? Because it’s not an easy decision. That being said, it would probably end up being the most meaningful experience you ever go through. You’re going to tell your kids stories about it.”
Imagine this of any other community in the United States: agents of a foreign government recruiting young people to join their army. Russian-Americans, say, or Chinese-Americans. There would be an outcry. In the case of Israel it’s taken for granted, not only that it’s allowed, but that it should be encouraged. What this shows is that there’s a high degree of continuity between the policies of the government of the United States and the government of Israel: that Israel is effectively an agent of American policy in the Middle East. This is why, as Barack Obama puts it in the film, “The bond between the United States and Israel is unbreakable today, unbreakable tomorrow, unbreakable forever.” It is why so many American tax dollars and the leaders of both mainstream political parties are in support of the slaughter.
The film focuses on the life story of two Jews: Simone Zimmerman—for a short time Bernie Sanders’ outreach coordinator—and “Eitan” (the rest of his name isn’t given) who’s described as a veteran of the Israeli Defence Force (IDF).
Eitan describes some of his experiences in the IDF, including his first encounter with Palestinians: “Even though Israel was a central part of everything we did in school, we never really discussed the Palestinians. It was presented to us that Israel was basically an empty wasteland when the Jews arrived. There were some Arabs there, they said, but there was no organised people. They treated the land poorly. Yeah, there were Palestinians and they just want to kill us all.”
It took a number of experiences before he began to question this. There’s one in particular he highlights, when he was sent to pick up a Palestinian who was under arrest. The young man was blindfolded, with his hands tied behind his back with cable ties. Eitan and his patrol delivered the prisoner to a detention centre where, to his shock, the man was thrown to the ground and repeatedly kicked by the officers in charge. Standing by a senior officer was smoking a cigarette. He looked on indifferently, allowing the beating to continue for some minutes, before throwing his cigarette away, picking the young man up off the ground and taking him indoors. Eitan says that he’d felt personally responsible for the man, having delivered him into detention, but, as his commanding officer said nothing, felt unable to speak up. This was one of a number of experiences that shifted his perspective: that made him begin to see himself, not as a victim of oppression, but as a perpetrator.
In the course of the film we meet Sami Awad, the Executive Director of the Holy Land Trust. This is a Palestinian organization dedicated to fostering peace, justice and understanding in the Holy Land. He says that it was on a visit to Auschwitz that he discovered what he thought of as one of the main reasons why the conflict continues. It’s inherited trauma, he says. “The feeling is that as Jews we’re always attacked, always been attacked, will always be attacked and therefore the only way to maintain ourselves is to create this very suppressive security mechanism that would prevent that from ever happening again.”
This perspective is underlined by Abe Foxman, Director Emeritus of the Anti-Defamation League. “Israel is the insurance policy,” he says. “It’s so today a Jew doesn’t have to worry. Where is he gonna go, God forbid? Even here,” he adds pointing at the ground. He means, “here in America” with the implication that, even in the United States Jews are not safe. “No holocaust survivor will say to you it could never happen again.”
You begin to notice that there are distinct echoes in the history of the two peoples. Sami Awad mentions the Nakba, the catastrophe, when close to three quarters of a million Palestinians were driven from their homes in the creation of Israel. He describes it as “the biggest mass exodus of a people from their land in modern history,” saying that it began in 1948 and continues to this day. The use of the word “exodus” has interesting implications. In the case of the Book of Exodus, one of the foundational myths of Jewish identity, it refers to a people who were enslaved, fleeing captivity and searching for the promised land. In the case of the Palestinians, it refers to a previously settled people being driven into exile.
Simone Zimmerman’s story is slightly different to Eitan’s. She never joined the IDF. Nevertheless, like many young Jews brought up to identify with the state of Israel, she found herself confronted by a series of contradictions. When she first went to college there was a student meeting about the conflict. She was given a set of notes on how to respond, but they were vague and inadequate. She’s never heard of the Nakba, or the occupation, so was unable to counter the arguments from the other side. This set her on a course of wanting to discover the truth. To do this she went to Israel where, as she puts it, she “crossed the line.” She went into the Palestinian territories.
She was afraid. “I don’t think I had any conception about what it means to be Palestinian besides that it means you’re a person that kills Jews, that wants to kill Jews.” What she discovered both shocked and surprised her.
“I don’t think I realised the extent to which what I would come to see on the ground would really shock me and horrify me. I’m listening to Palestinian students talking about what it was like being beaten at a checkpoint. Sitting down with a Palestinian family and hearing their story about being displaced by Israeli settlers… Something is deeply wrong here and it’s breaking my heart. What we’ve been told is that the only way Jews can be safe is if Palestinians are not safe and I guess the more I learned about that, the more I came to see that as a lie.”
We see her in Bethlehem with Sami Awad. “As someone who came to see Jerusalem or Tel Aviv as places I should imagine as home, I remember coming to the West Bank for the first time and actually seeing this place as someone else’s home. This is a normal place where people are just trying to live their lives.”
Awad describes his life as a Palestinian in the West Bank. “For me to get to Jerusalem I have to think, of first of all having the permit, getting to the checkpoint, waiting in lines for the checkpoint, getting to the soldiers at the checkpoint. The soldier might do anything to me at that point, including sending me back. And then crossing the checkpoint, and then having to take public transportation. It’s just the fact I cannot drive. As a Palestinian, I cannot drive in Jerusalem, or anywhere in Israel. And if I’m not home by 10 pm and I get caught on the other side, then I can be detained, I could lose my permit for good, I could be put in prison, I could be beaten up by soldiers, who knows what will happen to me?”
Seeing the film now, in light of what’s happened since October 7th, this level of daily oppression is almost quaint. The number of deaths in Gaza has reached horrifying proportions. The Lancet estimates that it could reach as high as 186,000: 7.9 percent of the population. This is not to speak of the number of wounded, of people with limbs missing, amputated without anesthetic. There are almost daily reports of atrocities, of massacres, of rape and torture, of children being targetted by snipers. We see film of Israeli soldiers cheering as they blow up schools and hospitals, laughing as they destroy family homes, rifling through people’s drawers in their private apartments, smashing children’s toys. There’s almost no food or clean water in the enclave. The water system has broken down and raw sewage floods the streets. IDF soldiers stationed in Gaza are being vaccinated against polio after a high concentration of the virus was found in sewage. If the people aren’t being killed by bombs in the places they were told were safe, they are dying of preventable diseases. Almost everything has been blown to rubble: hospitals, mosques, churches, salinisation plants, sewage plants, power plants, office blocks, apartment blocks, shops, schools, universities, bakeries. Up to 61% of Gaza’s buildings have been damaged or destroyed. The health system has broken down and famine stalks the land. The smell of death is in the air. Human beings are forced to eat animal food while stray cats and dogs eat the corpses.
And this is only what we see. Who knows what other horrors will emerge once the conflict is over: what vile acts have been perpetuated under the shadow of war, what human monsters have emerged—as they did in Nazi Germany—when the cloak of civilization has been ripped from the human soul and the psychopaths are allowed to do what they like? It will come out. In the end, we’ll discover all that has happened, and the guilty parties, both those who committed the acts, and those who were complicit, will be punished.
Simone Zimmerman says: “There have always been Jews who have spoken out for Palestinian rights. More and more people are willing to take off their blindfolds, looking at this reality and saying it’s intolerable… I continue to meet more and more young people like me who’ve had similar experiences, and it made me realise that I was part of a bigger story of something that was happening, not just to me, but to young people around the country. We decided to bring the crisis of support for Israel to the doorsteps of Jewish institutions.”
I’ll leave the final words to Rabbi Miriam Grossman, who appears in the film. This is what she said, in an interview about a month after the attacks on Gaza had begun: “Grief is sacred. Life is sacred. So to grieve and to act is to grieve and to act to prevent more grief. If we can accept and know that tragedy, that trauma, is limitless in this world, then why not accept the reality that compassion and empathy, and from that, solidarity, can also be limitless in this world?”
—You can find out how to view the film here: https://www.israelismfilm.com/
