In his 1916 novel, The Possessed, Fyodor Dostoyevsky warns of the possibility of considering oneself an honorable person while committing “undeniable villainy.” Like Dostoyevsky explains, noble intentions to support human rights and uplift oppressed voices has morphed into an identity politics battle that welcomes scapegoating to justify any narrative. Indeed, antagonizing the “other” with distortions describes the seedlings of antisemitism: a millennia-old epidemic that is burgeoning today.
The severe degree of antisemitism may be shocking but its presence is not surprising. Productions like Israelism place ammunition directly into the hands of unsuspecting, and even well-intentioned, students – as well as blatant antisemites.
Israelism, directed by Tikkun Olam Productions’s Eric Axelman and Sam Eilersten, follows the two young American Jews, Simone Zimmerman and Eitan (last name not mentioned), raised to see Israel as a “Jewish Disneyland,” blindsided from its mistreatment of Palestinians.
Formerly an AIPAC policy conference attendee, Zimmerman became the co-founder of IfNotNow; Eitan is an American veteran of the Israel Defense Forces. Tikkun Olam Productions affiliates include Congressman Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), Prof. Noam Chomsky, and movements including Sunrise and IfNotNow – all under the anti-Israel banner.
We write this having attended the screening of Israelism at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs, hosted by the Institute of Middle East Studies. We hoped the film would provide insight into pro- and anti-Israel movements, and the opportunity to engage in dialogue and reduce campus tensions. But we were disappointed: Israelism’s distorted and inflammatory messaging only adds more fuel to the fire.
Simone and Eitan elevate themselves from mainstream American Jewry, carving out a generational divide through new organizations critical of Israel. The film particularly emphasizes the “ethnic cleansing” and “apartheid” of the Palestinian people in the shadow of their privileged Israeli neighbors.
Vilification of Israel is nothing new
ISRAEL HAS long been cast as the ultimate villain in various academic arenas on campuses laced with magnetic rhetoric and distorted facts. At George Washington, professors such as Dr. Amr Madkour write op-eds denying the October 7 attacks, considering “beheaded babies and mass rape” as “unsubstantiated” following irrefutable evidence viewed by global media organizations and world heads of government.
Organizations like Students for Justice in Palestine instruct their students to use “framework over facts” in toolkits released online. Israelism incentivizes their intimidatory tactics.
While amplifying Israel’s “ethnic cleansing” and racism to exorbitant levels, Israelism ignores Soviet and Islamic antisemitism that draws from the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion. In fact, it invites the Nazi, Soviet, and Islamic antisemitism trifecta, reflecting the convergence between those three radical ideologies throughout history. It even fails to mention the terrorist organization, Hamas, whose charter reveals a clear intent to eradicate Israel and the Jewish people.
Israelism’s lens and language steer viewers away from reality and toward radicalism. It leads viewers away from finding pathways to peace, not unlike antisemitic indoctrination that occurs in Palestinian society.
Dor Shachar, a Gazan citizen who fled to Israel and converted to Judaism, said that “education in Gaza was focused on martyrdom, not life skills.” As generation upon generation of Palestinians are brainwashed to believe that annihilating the Jewish state is the avenue to liberation, Israelism’s message to the West and naive youth will continue to deprive the Palestinian people of a better future.
Rather than promoting Palestinian welfare alongside security for Israelis, Israelism omits facts that reflect performative and detrimental tactics. Amid the Israel-Hamas war, Gazans are crying out, “All this is because of the dogs of Hamas.” Israelism strips Palestinians of their voice.
Presenting the coercive Jewish “settler-colonialism of Palestine,” the film fails to address Arab and Palestinian rejectionism. A scene featuring maps from 1946 and 1948 ignores the pivotal year of 1947, when Arabs rejected the UN Partition plan.
This presentation neglects the reality of Arab leadership’s opposition to Jewish presence in Palestine amid Zionist efforts to compromise. Such a portrayal risks ill-understanding of Israeli-Arab tensions and hinders formulations of viable coexistence.
The disparagement of the Israel Defense Forces in the film uses strategically cut videos and images to castigate Israeli soldiers. It shows IDF soldiers aggressively disciplining Palestinians with no context of an imminent stabbing or shooting, and selectively focuses on the experiences of a few IDF veterans.
These experiences are generalized to fit Israelism’s narrative instead of analyzing the IDF through its policies and practices. The Spirit of the IDF states: “The soldier will not use their weapon or power to harm uninvolved civilians and prisoners, and will do everything in their power to prevent harm to their lives, bodies, dignity, and property,” with accountability measures if violated.
Further, Israelism leaves out IDF efforts to protect civilians, from precision technologies to text messages, calls, and leaflets rained over Palestinian cities before defensive military operations. In the wake of Hamas’s recent attack, the IDF warned Gazan residents to evacuate to protect them prior to intervention, and has created a red alert system to inform civilians of imminent strikes. No army is perfect, but the Jewish value of pikuach nefesh (saving a life) underscores IDF ethics prizing humanity above all.
Israelism reduces American Jewish life to a false binary
JUST AS values like pikuach nefesh align with IDF values, so too do they align with those underpinning Jewish-American life. Our diverse Jewish educational experiences were not merely defined by admiration of Israel, but by the life-guiding virtues of the Torah; just a few are hessed (kindness), tzedaka (charity) and shalom (peace).
Our Jewish educators pushed for active engagement with other faiths and ethnic groups, contradicting the film’s depiction of the Jewish-American education system that raises children with a blind eye, or to antagonize another people.
Israelism strategically conflates the American pro-Israel Jewish community with right-wing politics and racism, employing terms like resistance, imperialism, and settler-colonialism in the context of whiteness and right-wing ideologies.
Featuring pro-Israel protesters outside Trump Tower in its opening scene depicts American-Jewish Zionists as mere pawns of the Trump administration. The false dichotomy paints Zionists as brainwashed and distasteful, aligning them with the alt-right “other” while positioning anti-Zionists as the enlightened, progressive class.
The fundamental sin of Israelism is its illustration of the American Jewish community as two diametrically opposed camps: the flawed majority unconditionally supporting Israel, and the awakened minority adopting a critical perspective. This binary is false.
A poll taken in April 2023 indicated that Democrats expressed more sympathy for Palestinians than they did for Israelis, with 49% saying they sympathized more with Palestinians, compared to 38% who sympathized with Israel. Following October 7, a Harvard-Caps poll indicated that 48% of young people would favor Hamas over Israel. Attitudes will continue to shift as history takes its course.
Waves of protests against the Netanyahu-led coalition and their judicial reforms have shown Jews’ cross-denominational criticism of the Israeli government in the Diaspora. The protests that consistently made US headlines, yet warranted no recognition in the film, perverts the nuanced landscape of American-Jewish life.
After October 7, anti-Zionism and antisemitism can't be distinguished
BEFORE OCTOBER 7, there may have been a blurred line between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. It has now dissolved. Israelism, and like material bubbling in our institutions, have spawned a global anti-Zionist movement that can blast genocidal chants against Jews under a veneer of respectability on a moral high ground.
Acts of vandalism and harassment of Jewish students on campus are then acceptable, and undergo a reversal of cause-and-effect whereby Zionists are to blame.
The loud anti-Zionist fringe is not alone. Curriculum often simplifies the world into oppressors and oppressed. Partnerships forming under banners like black, queer, and feminist Palestine student organizations have inadvertently pulled the woke brigade into an antisemitic camp.
The directors of Israelism were not wrong when they claimed that college campuses are one of the dimensions of the Middle East battlefield. However, they are wrong in depicting the Jewish community as the aggressors.
Look no further than the distinction between violent and destructive anti-Israel rallies around the world and the American March for Israel on November 14 in Washington that witnessed expressions of love, hope, and peace through the moving melodies of “Hatikvah” and “Ose Shalom.”
The surface intent of Israelism appears noble. For someone who has little contextual knowledge of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, the film seems a brilliant exposé. But, as facts are omitted and substituted, piled with repackaged ideological rhetoric, we Jewish students who have studied its history and are experiencing its consequences conclude that intentions of the production are obvious.
Like Israel’s enemies, those of our generation can become truly dangerous through masterful productions that captivate our youth. The dissemination of propaganda as an educational source fosters an academic environment where indoctrination can substitute true learning, setting the precedent for a culture that violates educational integrity.
Just as many have revealed antisemitic feathers in the wake of October 7, so too has the production in question. Now is not the time to further embolden the enemies of the Jewish community. Israelism serves no purpose but to divide, disrupt, and demonize at a time when the politics of truth and compassion are merely a distant thought.
The writers are undergraduate students at George Washington University in Washington, DC.