When two young American Jews raised to support Israel unconditionally witness the way Israel treats Palestinians, it changes their lives. They join a movement of young American Jews campaigning to redefine Judaism’s relationship with Israel and reveal a deepening generational divide over modern Jewish identity. Israelism sparked huge debate on American campuses even before the events of October 7, 2023.
It follows Simone Zimmerman, who visited Israel as a teenager, and Eitan who joined the Israeli army after graduating from high school as they discover the reality for Palestinians and radically revise their views. It includes interviews with academics and political activists, including Noam Chomsky, Cornel West, Lara Friedman and a former director of the Anti-Defamation League, Abe Foxman.
Contributors suggest the narrative that young American Jews are fed almost entirely erases the existence of the Palestinians through education and advocacy, sometimes involving groups that organise free trips to Israel partially funded by the Israeli government.
This film describes how influential this narrative is in shaping attitudes to Israel, not just in the United States but across the world.
This is an excellent documentary, documenting the influence that zionism has had in deforming the perception of reality. It is very much the same phenomenon at work in the really dishonest and clearly ideological IHRA "definition" of antisemitism which, adopted officially and legally by a large number of countries under the influence of Israeli and zionist lobbying, has distorted the law to protect, not Jews, but one country out of the entire world of countries, Israel. Other than dictatorships and monarchies that protect their own governments and the governments of their close allies to protect them from not just criticism but the very facts and truth of what they do, there is no other instance I know of where countries deputed to be democracies have done that - the United States is certain to adopt the IHRA's iron smoke screen for Israel, probably as soon as next year. The fact is that that smoke screen is already up on a defacto basis. In addition to the phrase "apartheid democracy" we need to start talking about moral blackmail in which the moral aspiration to something worthwhile, the suppression of hatred of Jews, is used to extort unquestioning support for just another and not a particularly moral state, Israel. The documentary points out that the American right, which includes probably the greatest number of zionists - THE LARGE MAJORITY OF THEM JEW-HATING "CHRISTIANS" - making common cause with fascists and neo-Nazis to distort American politics on behalf of that other country.
The kind of revelation among former zionists - I guess I'd be considered one before the late 1980s - once they learn the truth about Israel present and past and zionism before Israel, is one of the few optimistic signs of the times.
Despite the lie that Israel is singled out for criticism over its laws and policies, treated unfairly on that basis, the opposite is true in the United States and by Western countries, in general. That is done on the basis of moral blackmail when it's not done on the basis of enticing the highly corruptible, generally in right-wing parties. I want Israel to be treated as any other country with its apartheid legal basis, its Lebensraum policy of stealing land and property owned by Palestinians, its genocidal policy and war on Gaza and its outsized influence in getting the United States into some of the worst choices ever made by our government, like any other country would be. I want Israel to be considered just another country, as liable to do evil as any other because it is certainly not "the most moral" country with "the most moral army" in the world. That is a really, really big lie.
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