What did you think of Israelism, the film?

Propaganda mostly.

Israel has a right to its self defense against aggression towards them by terrorist groups in Palestine and elsewhere.

Israel doesn’t target innocent civilians (like the Islamic, Muslim terrorist group Hamas does) but Israel does get very tough against those who seek to do harm (such as kill innocent people, rape and torture innocent people, take hostages etc).

War is crazy. Bad things happen on both sides of this current conflict (that Israel did not start).

@gondwanalon Did you watch the film? It’s about Jewish activists and takes place before the current war started.

^Many years of terrorists attacks occurred before the current war.

Israel doesn’t target innocent civilians

??

The 40,000+ Gazans killed by Israel (so far) were not 40,000 combatants.

Proportionality is a measure of “justifiable” or “legitimate” war. By any reasonable measure Israel is engaging in a massacre of civilians at the least.

Reasonable people, including millions of Jews inside and outside Israel, are rightly disgusted, ashamed and horrified at the Israeli government’s slaughter. It is indefensible.

Let’s keep the conversation about the film. The film doesn’t mention the war in Gaza.

It was fine. I’m generally not a fan of this type of format, and it was a rather sanitized look at an issue where most of the people watching it are quite indoctrinated. So, I wonder who the intended audience is, and whether something like this could make a difference. The things I have heard people say here on Fluther don’t give me much hope. These people should already know IfNotNow, JVP, SJP, the recent history and ongoing ethnic cleansing, and the violent oppression and inhumane apartheid. They should already be immune to cynical attempts to paint divest movements as “antisemitic”.

I could be wrong – I understand that I am not the intended audience. Maybe it’s good to have a tiny drop of some truth and a different point of view in an ocean of misinformation and propaganda. Maybe the Zionists here might be able to provide some feedback on the video. Are these people/groups they already know about? Do they know that Harris and Trump are calling the Jewish human rights activists in this video “antisemitic” as they are regularly arrested for protesting our role in this atrocity? Will it give them pause to conflate Judaism with a violent settler colonial project?

Just started watching it. So far, I can tell you when I was growing up, Israel was barely mentioned in my childhood, which is completely different than the Jewish people in the beginning of the movie. The only country we talked about with any regularity was the United States of America. The Germans and Germany came up too since we were Jewish, which now we would distinguish Nazis from Germans, but back then we used it more interchangeably, but we never used it regarding prejudging someone who was German-American.

I’ll watch the rest, just interjecting how different my upbringing was compared to the young people featured in the film.

@JLeslie Did you attend public school? were you active in Temple activities as a child?

Still watching. I never went to temple. Only temple I went to was my cousin’s wedding when I was 17 or 18. A couple more weddings in the last 30 years, and a few times where I live to perform with my folk dancing group. So maybe ten times in my life I’ve been in a temple.

I attended public school.

Edit: just remembered I went to a synagogue once in Tennessee to buy something from the gift shop.

@JLeslie I only have several Jewish friends, some have families in Israel, some don’t. Some their kids had visited Israel a few times and there’s one who is adamant about never sending her grandson even for a few day visit.

None of them to the best of my knowledge support Netanyahu and instead of AIPAC they support…J Street?

I might send them the link to this video and ask them what they think. After I finish watching.

I think the documentary is cherry picking, but I don’t doubt that what was said and shown does happen. I really doubt every Israeli has those same experiences. I’m completely against harassing people with no just cause, I don’t know why those soldiers came into the Palestinian people’s home, that’s terrible on its face, unless there is some detail left out.

I know for sure the majority of American Jews don’t have the American experience portrayed. Only 12% of Jews in the US attend synagogue weekly. 50% never go.

The checkpoints are terrible and I feel badly Palestinians in the West Bank can’t easily go into Israel and visit the sights there, I wish there was more freedom of movement.

That one Palestinian man who spent time in the US had on a shirt that said INTIFADA on the back! That is not helpful.

I didn’t hear or know the word zionist until my 20’s. My parents never used it and they still don’t. My mom has said more than once she is not Israeli. My dad thinks Netanyahu is terrible.

I grew up in extremely diverse cities, we never thought twice about being friends with people from everywhere and anywhere including Arabs, Persians, everyone in the US to us were just like us, immigrants or children of immigrants.

They didn’t show Palestinians in shopping malls, universities, working with Israelis, Palestinians who have citizenship, etc. That all exists.

The only way for the military occupation to end is for aggressions against the Israelis to stop.

It’s just a big horrible snowball.

When lines were drawn by the UN, you have to consider the spirit of what was happening. Just like when a law is examined, we need to consider the spirit of the law at the time it was created. It doesn’t matter how many Jewish people were in Palestine. Israel was not created for the Jewish people in Palestine, it was created for the Jewish people.

The documentary doesn’t touch on should there be an Israel at all, but I guess it is an implied no there shouldn’t be.

@JLeslie Thanks for sharing your perspective. What did you make of the Birthright stuff in the film with the free trip to Israel financed by billionaires?

@JLeslie “The documentary doesn’t touch on should there be an Israel at all, but I guess it is an implied no there shouldn’t be.”

I didn’t get that sense. I think it was more focused on portraying the various perspectives within the Jewish community and how they align with the broader geopolitical landscape. I do think the film was making a point about the AIPACC/ADL lobby aligning with the extreme right wing (and explicitly white nationalist neo-Nazis) forces in American politics as well as MAGA and the risks that puts on the Jewish community in the US, but IMO that didn’t mean the only conclusion was that Israel shouldn’t exist. I think some in the film may advocate for a return to the ‘67 borders, or even the ‘48 borders, others may want a 1-state solution, but the film didn’t really go into that conversation.

Just wanted to edit one thing. Cherry picked is the wrong term, because I think it happens more than just a little, but it is not the only experience in Israel and the Palestinian territories. It doesn’t give the full picture.

@gorillapaws I think the film showed the extremes in the US Jewish community and not the majority of Jews who are somewhere in the middle in their experience as Jewish people in general, and their experience in relation to Israel.

I do know several Jewish Americans who went to Israel as teenagers and for some of them the experience was profound. Most Jewish people I know didn’t go to Israel when they were young, and plenty have never been there.

I think the movie pushes the idea that most Jewish people around the world are brainwashed at a young age to support Israel blindly, and a few Jewish people have bravely peeled away from the majority. That is not an accurate representation of Jewish people at large in my opinion. It might be accurate in specific sub-communities.

I think more accurately; Jewish people are born and raised paranoid that there are people in the world who hate us and will kill us. Think about it like being LGBT in America, I think it’s similar.

I just googled out of curiosity, and it said 45% of US Jews have been to Israel sometime in their life. A lot of that is probably Jewish people well into adulthood, even as senior citizens.

@JLeslie “I think the movie pushes the idea that most Jewish people around the world are brainwashed at a young age to support Israel blindly, and a few Jewish people have bravely peeled away from the majority. That is not an accurate representation of Jewish people at large in my opinion. It might be accurate in specific sub-communities.”

I was wondering this myself. Having only attended Temple to celebrate Bar/Bat Mitzvahs and weddings, I don’t have any knowledge about “Jewish youth group” and how it differs from the Protestant youth group I participated in for a brief time. Some of those scenes gave me Jesus Camp vibes

@gorillapaws That Jesus camp is scary. There are some similarities, except Jews don’t try to convert the world. The Jesus camp and Christianity are going after very young children there, and the numbers are huge, while of course there are very few Jews in the world, most Jewish people are secular, most Jews don’t engage in anything that is structured, they don’t go to temple or any sort of Jewish classes. There are about 6.5 million Jews in the US. About the same in Israel. The other 3 or 4 million scattered around the world. Most US Jewish young people are teens when they go to Israel if they go at all. I realize you are also talking about schools and camps in the US, but just saying the numbers are extremely small amongst Jews who are raised this way.

I have Christian friends who put their kids in Jewish day schools and schools there is no indoctrination about Israel. Depends on the specific community and school.

Some links with stats:
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/05/11/jewish-americans-in-2020/pf_05-11-21_jewish-americans-00-7-png/

https://news.gallup.com/poll/642548/church-attendance-declined-religious-groups.aspx

Many Jewish kids go to camp, but very few go to this type of Jewish camp mentioned in your film. I went to day camp when I was little and sleep away performing arts camp when I was a teen. Neither were Jewish or political. I only mention it in case you hear Jewish people talking about camp, they might have been at any type of camp don’t assume.

Like any group, the extremists are scary. It’s true of Judaism just like Muslims and Christians.

@JLeslie What I meant by the comparison to Jesus Camp, was mostly that this is a small subset that’s extreme and not representative of the greater landscape of Christians out there.

In Israelism, one of the things that shocked me most was the drawing Simone did as a little girl of Israel and how there was no West Bank or Gaza. Also how there seemed to be a pipeline designed to funnel young jews into joining the IDF. these are younger kids, curious about their identity and trying to make sense of their future, given a free trip and then encouraged to become soldiers in a foreign army. It’s like a perverse timeshare trip.

^^Some of them might be Israeli and American.

The drawings bothered me too.

A fraction of Christian is still a very large number. A fraction of Jews it very small.