By DAVID IRAZU
“Israelism” is a 2023 documentary film produced by two American Jews, Erin Axelman and Sam Eilertsen. The film opens with a packed event hall for Birthright Israel, an organization that provides free trips to Jewish youth in the United States to Occupied Palestine. With lasers and smoke machines, a massive movie screen set behind singers in Israeli military uniforms flashes images of tanks, attack helicopters, and other weapons of war—exulting the joy of becoming an active participant in colonial occupation. It is reminiscent of the viral videos of megachurches that circulate the internet. Of course, this Zionist event does not portray it as propaganda for colonialism, but as an exciting adventure for young people to be a part of.
As the movie progresses, interviews with Zionists in the U.S. demonstrate that they feel a deep, emotional connection with the Israeli state. Some even claim they find themselves incapable of separating their Judaism from the modern colonial state (even if Judaism is 5000 years old and “Israel” is only 75). The audience gets to witness how many facets of traditional Jewish upbringing in the United States are influenced by Israeli money, by funded youth trips like Birthright Israel, education meant to enthrall the young mind with the idea of a Promised Land, and a desire to become a colonial soldier to “protect” the said land from “terrorists.”
The whole point of organizations like Birthright Israel is to get American Jewish kids to go to Israel, fully or partially subsidized, in order that the experience can shape them into full-throated Zionists. The film lays it all out: the money, the personalities, the colonial adventure. “Israelism” is written and produced in an engaging and eye-opening manner, and never feels dull or preachy; it paints a colorful picture of a systematic campaign of indoctrination.
The purpose of the film is to expose the ways that these Israel-backed institutions systematically create and maintain a Zionist ideology within the American Jewish community, with the purpose of shoring up support for Israel within the United States and enticing Jews to become soldiers in the Israeli military. By providing a “fun” indoctrination experience, organizations like Birthright Israel attempt to persuade Jews to move to Occupied Palestine and to become active participants in the genocide of Palestinians.
The film has a series of interviews with participants in these programs who later turned their back on the Zionist project, as well as with politicians, capitalists, and promoters of Zionist institutions, in order to present a full picture of how an ideological and financial web is cast on Jewish Americans to convert them into faithful accomplices of genocide. A central tool that is exposed in “Israelism” is the manipulation of feeling. Multiple interviewees explain how their indoctrinators played into their emotions, making them feel in their hearts the need to defend “Israel” against any enemy, even if they themselves did not know what they were defending.
Multiple interviewees are Jews who broke out of their indoctrination, and they talk about their experiences of being colonial foot soldiers in the West Bank as being a integral to that. The daily violence they had to inflict on people, and the lack of a coherent moral reason as to why, broke the years of Zionist propaganda. Avner Gvaryahu, one of the interviewees, says that he had never even been within a Palestinian home before he found himself kicking in doors and making the occupation felt by the inhabitants.
In a similar manner to how the U.S. military targets youth for its recruitment, Birthright Israel attempts to rope impressionable young people into a genocidal project that they do not yet understand, hopefully inoculating them against the reality of the nature of Israel. It goes without saying that the primary victims of the Zionist project are Palestinians, whose land was and continues to be stolen from them, and who now live in concentration camps and under constant violence by the Israeli military.
But it is worth remembering the words of Dionisio Inca Yupanqui, later quoted by Karl Marx, that a people that oppresses another cannot itself be free. Sweeping away the ideological justifications for bringing in Jews to Palestine—such as a religious decree from God or the need of Jews for a state of their own—the real, material purpose of bringing in Jews is to strengthen the military and to increase the Jewish population and thus make it harder for Palestinians to remain a majority on their land.
Of course, the United States also has a horse in this race—or better said, a dog—since the Israeli state is the rottweiler for U.S. interests in the Middle East, ensuring that the Arab masses of the region never get the idea that they can create their own destiny, free from imperialism, Zionism, and their local ruling cliques. The film showcases AIPAC events with prominent politicians from both sides of the aisle competing to satisfy Zionist demands, from Obama to Trump to Biden. But the film does not delve much into how the Zionist state fits within U.S. imperial hegemony in the Middle East.
Censorship campaign
The film is such a powerful exposé of U.S.-Israeli institutions that there has been a rabid campaign to get it censored. On multiple occasions Zionists have campaigned to prevent the showing of “Israelism“ on college campuses throughout the United States such as in Hunter College and University of Pennsylvania, after the launch of the Al-Aqsa Flood on Oct. 7. Formulaic emails sent to theaters and schools screening the film accused it of antisemitism, despite the fact that the film had been screened and had even won awards at Jewish film festivals. University administrators’ hamfisted decisions to cancel screenings rightfully drew condemnation from student and faculty organizations as well as civil liberties groups, and showings have since been rescheduled.
While the focus of the film is not to provide a comprehensive analysis of Israel’s oppression of Palestinians or propose any particular path forward for Palestinian liberation, “Israelism” is a useful tool in exposing the Israeli strategy of indoctrination of Jewish youth in the United States, as well as the tactics that the Israeli establishment utilizes to convert Jews into Zionists and, in particular, to incorporate them into the Israeli military. I recommend that pro-Palestinian activists add it to their tool-belt for educationals in their workplaces, campuses, and communities.
“Israelism” can be rented online for private viewing, or requested from the filmmakers for public screening.
Photo: A scene from “Israelism.” (The Jewish Film Institute)