Introduction

Israelism is a lurid example of an increasingly popular genre of filmmaking that purports to be a documentary exposing human rights abuses but is really disguised political propaganda. Directed by Americans Erin Axelman and Sam Eilertsen, Israelism alleges Israel systematically mistreats Palestinians and faults American Jewish leaders for indoctrinating young Jews to unconditionally support the Jewish state. The film’s selective omissions and the platform it offers to partisan political activists, without providing counterbalance, undermine the film’s credibility.

The film frames Israel's actions toward Palestinians as rooted in a system of displacement, oppression, and “apartheid” and characterizes American Jewish leaders as complicit in its perpetuation. The directors employ tricks of political theatre, showing graphic scenes of apparent Palestinian devastation and despair without providing sufficient context to understand how it came about. Related to this issue of missing context, the film evinces a consistent disregard for Israel’s legitimate security requirements.

False Narratives Lay Blame on the Jewish State

The film’s central premise is that Israel, as a Jewish state, has adopted an inherently nationalist and exclusionary ideology that perpetuates violence and discrimination against Palestinians. The flaw in this premise is the failure to address the causal origin of the violence. There is no informed discussion of the longstanding hatred directed at Jews and the Jewish state and the intransigence of the Palestinians and most of the Muslim world toward any peaceful accommodation with the world’s sole Jewish state.

Israelism offers unverified, lived experiences of young American Jews in Israel and Palestinian activists who claim Israel and the American Jewish establishment are guided by ideological extremism and makes no attempt to explore the diverse political, religious, and cultural beliefs of either Israeli or Palestinian society. Instead, viewers receive a simplistic, one-sided narrative that disregards key historical events and contemporary realities. The charges of Israeli extremism are textbook example of inversion. It is the Palestinians who cling to an extreme and uncompromising ideology that obstructs any solution short of destruction of the Jewish state.

The film presents a one-sided whitewash of Palestinian hatred, violence, and rejectionism. Even in the instance where it does depict Palestinian terrorism – the bombed-out shell of a Jerusalem Sbarro pizzeria, where a suicide bomber, in August 2001, killed 16 people, including seven children and a pregnant woman, and wounded over 130 – the identity of the perpetrator remains ambiguous because, immediately before the pizzeria is shown, scenes of an Israeli tank and security officers clashing with Palestinians make it seem the attack was somehow Israel’s doing.

The film features Avner Gvaryahu, Executive Director of Breaking the Silence, a left-wing Israeli group repudiated by the vast majority of Israelis that amplifies the voices of a tiny fraction of Israeli army veterans who resent their military service. Confronted with the result of the Sbarro attack, Gvaryahu is silent about who is responsible for this atrocity – Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group that seeks Israel’s destruction.

Attempting to Undermine Support for Zionism Among American Jews

Israelism offers a reductive portrayal of Zionism and Israel’s founding principles. It conflates Zionism with militarism and racism, without providing an informed discussion of the Zionist movement's goals — the establishment of a safe haven for Jews, particularly in the aftermath of centuries of persecution and the restoration of a Jewish national home in the historic Jewish homeland.

The film is framed by Simone Zimmerman, a 20-something Jewish day school graduate, whose mission is to undermine the connection between young Jews and Zionism. This framing is an intentional emotional ploy central to the film. Zimmerman attempts to impeach the veracity and motives of Jewish educators and leaders. “We’re always taught that the whole land is ours. I mean, you know, that is sort of what they teach you,” she says flippantly while displaying maps of Israel she drew in grade school. In reality, Israelis and American Jews are not generally taught that, and it is the Palestinians who have insisted on all or nothing.

Zimmerman insists a revolution is underway in young American Jews’ attitudes toward Israel. “There have always been Jews who’ve spoken up for Palestinian rights, and more and more people are willing to take off their blinders, look at this reality, and say it is intolerable,” she says. Zimmerman believes that the “dehumanization” of Palestinians among American Jews makes it difficult for American Jews to understand Palestinians’ “legitimate rights and claims to the land.” The film neglects to address what those “legitimate rights and claims” would mean to the Jews and their nation.

In 2020, Zimmerman was dismissed as Jewish community liaison for U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders’ U.S. Presidential campaign when a profanity-laced Facebook post she made about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu emerged. She later co-founded If Not Now (INN), a far-left radical, American Jewish organization that says it aims to “end the American Jewish community’s support for the occupation.” However, INN holds views far different from those of mainstream American Jews. INN repeatedly justifies terrorism against Israel and condemns Israeli counterterrorism. In posts on X (formerly Twitter), INN has blamed Hamas’s attack on Israel on Israel’s “system of apartheid and siege on Gaza” and said calls to eradicate Hamas amount to “collective punishment” and “genocidal rhetoric.” When U.S. National Security Council Spokesman John Kirby correctly blamed Hamas for Palestinian suffering in Gaza, INN said Israel, not Hamas, was responsible. INN has labeled Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza “vengeance,” outright dismissing Israel’s stated purpose of eliminating Hamas, and called Israel’s actions a “massacre, “slaughter,” and other slanderous lies, constantly refusing to recognize Israel’s reaction to Hamas as justified.

Palestinian Activists Paint Israel the Villain

Other cast members are mainly Israel-bashers who offer only decontextualized information and false accusations. Sami Awad is a Palestinian Christian living in Bethlehem and founder and director of the Holy Land Trust, a Palestinian non-profit that bills itself as an advocate for “respect, justice, equality, and peace.” Yet, Awad’s record of anti-Israel activism speaks otherwise. He’s written that non-violent demonstrations are “not a substitute for the armed struggle” and, in 2014, joined the “Ads Against Apartheid” campaign, which created anti-Israel billboards displayed across America alleging Israeli abuse of Palestinians. In Israelism, Awad falsely tells a group of young American tourists, “Even [water wells] are being attacked by the settlers. They throw stones in them, they throw chemicals in them, or they throw dead animals in the wells.” In truth, Israel is a net provider of clean water to the Palestinians.

Awad dismisses Israel’s legitimate security needs as a “manipulation” of the fear of another Holocaust and portrays Jews as having an irrational obsession with security. He talks about “inherited trauma” among Jews where the feeling is, “‘We’re always attacked, we’ve always been attacked, we’ll always be attacked, and therefore the way to maintain ourselves is to create this very suppressive security mechanism that would prevent this from happening again.’” Awad ignores decades of horrific Palestinian violence and terrorism on Israelis and the Jewish diaspora. The October 7, 2023 Hamas-led Palestinian attack from Gaza showed that Jews’ feelings of insecurity are well-founded and exposes Awad’s statements as nonsense.

Baha Hilo, another cast member and activist, is a Palestinian tour guide. Hilo travels abroad speaking about the “subhuman” conditions Palestinians face, assuring audiences, “the state of Israel will fail like other savages have failed in the land of Palestine. The only way to end Israeli criminal behavior is by sanctioning that rogue and savage state.” Again, projection and inversion are evident. Hamas, whose perpetrators videotaped and celebrated their atrocities, reflects the pent-up savagery of many Palestinians, who in public opinion surveys consistently express approval of Hamas, even after the atrocities it committed.

Like Awad, Hilo is no peacenik. “We owe it to ourselves as Palestinians to express rejection to Israeli brutality by any means necessary based on what each and every individual has at their disposal,” he said in 2024.

Hilo speaks of the “ethnic cleansing” of Palestine, as we are shown tent cities and maps falsely implying Jewish encroachment on Palestinian land. In fact, the Palestinian population has grown at least eightfold since Israel’s establishment, according to the Palestinian Census Bureau, due to the modernization and improvement of Palestinian conditions owing to their access to Israeli healthcare. If ethnic cleansing were Israel’s intent, it has utterly failed.

Awad says his parents told him not to play in the street because of the Israeli soldiers and settlers. Hilo relates a similar assertion: “Your first experience with a soldier is terrorizing because they invade your house at night.” To bolster such claims, we are shown, without context, footage of Israeli soldiers questioning, escorting, and arresting a Palestinian boy. There is no reflection on why the Israeli soldiers are there --no mention of the suicide bombings, roadside shooting ambushes, and other forms of Palestinian violence that necessitate Israeli security actions.

Hilo resents Americans “who moved [to Israel] to play cowboys and Indians. Someone from New York or Chicago claiming this land is theirs. Why would a foreigner think they have superior rights to the indigenous population? Because somebody told them it’s home.”  Israelism presents Jewish claims of indigeneity as trivial, despite Jews having had a continuous presence in the land for several millennia, far longer than the Arabs. The fact that over the centuries, Jews were driven from the land or perished due to invasion does not negate their indigeneity. In fact, it could be argued that it bolsters it as a form of long delayed restorative justice.

Israelism briefly features one character who conveys opinions at odds with its narrative. In just 45 seconds of dialogue, Yishai Fleischer, identified as spokesman for Hebron “settlement,” defiantly declares, “There are elements, what I would call the jihadist elements, that don’t accept our presence here but they’ll, it’s just tough for them,” he says, “Nothing is going to stop us.” His aggressive tone is exactly how the film wishes we perceive Jewish “settlers.” Far from an alien settlement, Hebron, in the southern West Bank, is home to Judaism’s second holiest site, the Cave of Machpelah, which according to the Bible, Abraham purchased some 3,700 years ago and in which he and the patriarchs and matriarchs of the Jewish people are buried.

Israelism’s monotonic message is that Israel is subjugating Palestinians. Hilo assures us, “From the day you are born, you live day in day out without experiencing a day of freedom,” as we are shown video of men grasping metal bars at a border checkpoint. Ironically, these men likely are awaiting access into Israel, where they have jobs to help support their families despite the security risk they present. Palestinians [are] forced to “live in cages,” Hilo says, misrepresenting the scene as imprisonment rather than a measure to guard against terrorism.

The film employs willing, anti-Israel Jews to accuse Israel of apartheid. Lara Friedman, President of the Foundation for Middle East Peace – which blames only Israel for the conflict’s perpetuation despite repeated Palestinian rejection of Israeli peace offers – introduces the audience to this inflammatory charge: “When people say this is an apartheid system, it’s not just throwing out a word. Palestinians live under a different legal system,” as viewers watch Palestinians being hoarded through a checkpoint.

In fact, 20% of Israel’s citizens are Arabs who enjoy full legal rights and serve in every manner of society including the judiciary. That is not apartheid. Palestinians, however, are not citizens of Israel, reject Israel’s legitimacy, and do not have the same rights as citizens. This arrangement is no different than any number of countries that have foreign workers.

Conclusion

As a political film rather than a true documentary, Israelism fails to enlighten the audience on the Israel-Palestinian conflict or present key historical events that shape the current situation. It does not mention the 1947-48 Arab rejection of the UN Partition Plan and the subsequent invasion of Israel by neighboring Arab states – crucial elements in understanding the roots of the ongoing conflict. Neither does it engage with the complex and multifaceted nature of Palestinian leadership and the internal divisions within Palestinian society, depriving the audience of an understanding of the role of Palestinian militant groups, like Hamas, in perpetuating violence, or the challenges of negotiating peace with such actors.

Israelism views the Israel-Palestinian conflict through a distorted lens that only sees Israeli culpability. It perpetuates misinformation and exacerbates the divisive and, at times, violent climate in America, especially on college campuses, concerning the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Educators and parents would be better off seeking a more balanced and objective treatment of the conflict.