Award-winning French-Irish documentarian, journalist and writer Miriam François: Israelism is a controversial new film about the relationship between Israel and Jewish identity, telling a story we all need to hear.
If you want to change the world, you need to change your story," said Michael Margolis, CEO and founder of Storied, a strategic consulting firm specializing in storytelling.
As a filmmaker, this quote makes a lot of sense to me. Stories provide us with emotional sustenance that can inspire, inspire, and sustain humanity through its most complex and daunting challenges. But unlike mere thoughts or arguments, stories speak to the heart, a space that transcends deep-seated misconceptions that can hinder our ability to connect and connect with our shared humanity.
In a new, controversial documentary called "Israelism," two young American Jews who have loved Israel unconditionally since childhood, experience a profound and life-changing awakening as they witness the brutality of Israel's occupation of Palestine. As they join a growing movement of young American Jews fighting the old school and redefining Judaism's relationship with Israel, the protagonists take us into a battle for the soul of modern Jewish identity.
The film, which has been touring on American campuses, was released during the ongoing genocidal assault in Gaza, sparking numerous calls for censorship and causing campus authorities to cancel scheduled screenings. In the highly censored public debate surrounding the Israeli occupation, efforts to censor the film reflect the times, and even Jewish voices for peace have become the target of a machine that has long sought to silence Palestinian calls for liberation.
Israelism tells a story that we all need to hear, especially since today the United States is the only force capable of curbing extremism in Israel. It provides a small window into how America's powerful special interests have groomed young Jews to blindly support Israel, and how some, like its protagonists, have managed to escape.
But for non-Jews like me, the most striking element of the film is its candid portrayal of the emotional bond that most Jews form with Israel, as well as the difficulties they experience as they try to get out of the powerful unifying power. The narrative that maintains this connection.
Although many critics, including myself, view Israel as a nationalist, racial supremacist rogue state that violates international law and practices apartheid, Jews have been taught from an early age that the modern Israeli state is the embodiment of the Jews, self-actualization, and freedom.
This is not a small story that needs to be dismantled, because in a way, it is true. After years of ** and exile, the Jews finally had a home. It's just not their home. This is the Palestinians. In order to fulfill the Zionist myth of "uninhabited land for landed peoples", the Palestinians were forced to leave their land, which is as repugnant as the historical ** and exile of Jews.
While the protagonists of "Israelism" come to realize that their dreams of Israel are based on lies, what is missing from the film is another story.
Scholar Barnett R. Rubin, in his essay entitled The False Messiah, poetically describes the Jewish narrative of modern Israel: "This grand narrative, from slavery to freedom, from exile to redemption, recurs in every age, is a constant backdrop**, though sometimes barely audible. "The Jewish understanding of their encounter with history. ”
Rubin paints a poignant picture of Jewish history, filled with centuries of European anti-Semitism**, the horrors of exile, and a deep desire and hope for a safe and secure place. He explained that political Zionism did not emerge in a vacuum, but stemmed from the inability of European countries to guarantee the security of the Jewish people. With the culmination of ethnic violence in Europe in the form of the Great ** and, eventually, the Mid-20th Century, the toxic intersection of colonialism and Zionism laid the foundations for our current crisis.
Israeli Jews are sedentary colonialists with historical memories of indigenous origins," Rubin wrote. "They have developed an ideology and a 'return' movement that is political rather than purely religious. But their historical memories are not shared by the inhabitants of this land. The historical memory of the Jewish people did not give them the right or ability to confiscate or occupy one dunum of land against the will of the landowners. The historical memory of one people, no matter how tenacious, has no right to rule over another. ”
This narrative of dispossession, **, and triumph is an endorsement of the Israeli status quo. While a growing number of critics are demolishing this, the next generation of haunted residents of this disputed land desperately need a new story of hope to replace it.
Today, as idealistAmi Dar, the Israel founder and executive director of The ORG, wrote, "If everyone everywhere truly accepts that seven million Jews and seven million Palestinians are not going anywhere, and that any possible future must include and include both, the entire energy surrounding this conflict will change." ”
In order to make this shift happen, we need new stories. The story acknowledges and respects claims to the land, which, while presented as competition, are not so in essence. After all, Aboriginal philosophies may have led us to believe that the land did not belong to anyone, and in fact, the Abrahamic stewards of the land had a shared mission to preserve and protect its divine nature and respect all its inhabitants.
Rubin seems to argue that a "decolonized" Zionism, one detached from the supremacy of corruption and therefore more of a cultural desire for a place than a political or territorial claim to it, should be distinguished from the violent settler ideology currently unleashed. : The Palestine that they (the Jews) desire is the embodiment of their hopes, not the few provinces of the Ottoman Empire with Arab-Muslim and **religious populations. So perhaps it is precisely because of these hopes, coupled with the Palestinians' desire to return to their land, their autonomy over their lives, and their desire for peace, that the next story may be weaved. While it can be said that it is these fundamental dreams that make the current power struggle so apocalyptic, they also present a very compelling story that pays homage to them.
While the focus of Israelism is on the need for Jews to dismantle Israel's violent occupation of Frankenstein, what is missing is a narrative of hope.
More and more Jews are joining the anti-Zionist bandwagon, and the massive ** campaign of Jewish Voice for Peace and Jewish Elders has proven to form a powerful counter-to the consensus in support of the current Israeli state. But counter-narratives require more than simple opposition to last.
The story is profound, moving, and engaging, and is sold to young Jews around the world. This means that any struggle to liberate Jews from the Israeli state's misportrayal as the self-fulfilling embodiment of Jewish salvation necessarily requires an equally or even more convincing counternarrative. It honors the legitimate Jewish fear of history repeating itself, offers community and communication with a shared dream with a cosmic dimension, but also promises the liberation of Palestinians.
As Rubin also points out: "Colonialism is not repugnant about the migration or settlement of populations of different racial or ethnic origins, or in some sense of non-indigenous peoples, but the domination of one group over another." History cannot be rewound and repeated. But a future that ensures equal rights for Palestinians and Israelis is possible and indeed necessary. ”
As Israelis become increasingly disillusioned with Netanyahu, Jewish voices inside and outside Israel need to confront the influence of militaristic ideology on their culture, politics, and identity. The Israel Democracy Institute's survey, which measures Israel's sentiment toward current events on a monthly basis, found that optimism about the country's future security and democratic character is declining. If the nihilistic act of mocking disabled Palestinian children is not a wake-up call, the telegram swarm of thousands of people revulding on snuff movies of Palestinian civilians being tortured and killed should be. Any denigration of the humanity of others is bound to weaken our own humanity. This cycle of inhumane violence should no longer be obscured by propaganda stories.
While commemorating the legacy of suffering and exile, anti-apartheid nations must also make way for the promise of a new dream. Nelson Mandela's freedom movement was led not just to oppose white supremacy, but was guided by dreams of coexistence for all, equality and justice. Contrary to the Palestinian narrative to the contrary, the Palestinian leadership has consistently and generously created space for the Jewish presence on its land. Now, a new generation of Jews needs to reimagine their history in a way that respects all of God's children equally—and in this new story lies the true Promised Land.