Leeds Palestinian Film Festival in Review: Israelism

Now in its 10th year, the Leeds Palestinian Film Festival included a number of Palestinian films ranging from documentaries to SciFi and animation. Their 2024 programme, ‘Ten Years, One Vision: Culture as Resistance’, seeks to pay “homage to Palestinian cultural expression, and its role in sustaining the enduring identity of the Palestinians despite 75 years of expulsion, occupation, and destruction”

It could not be more timely.

I watched their showing of ‘Israelism’ (2023), a documentary by Erin Axelman and Sam Eilertsen. It follows Simone Zimmerman and a man named only as ‘Eitan’, both American-Jews whose views surrounding Israel and the occupation were turned upside down after their experiences in Palestine. Simone fondly recounts her childhood at Hebrew school and the Jewish Youth Group where she took part in exchanges in Israel. She looks through paintings and drawings she did as a child depicting Israel (and only Israel, Palestine is not mentioned) and an Israel Jubilee contest she won in 1988. Eitan, recounts his experience in the Israeli army, remembering how proud his friends and family were of him for joining and how much he initially enjoyed it. Their accounts are interjected by video clips from the Birthright ‘mega events’ in Jerusalem, dystopian in their similarities to talent shows like X-Factor: IDF soldiers march across the stage singing with Israeli flags waving, and thousands of Americans in the crowd cheering for them.

Simone now sees something horrific in her childhood memories. She recounts ‘games’ they would play at youth groups which she now realises replicated military drills, but as a child these games were fun and exciting. She explains that it was only when she visited Palestine as an adult, that she came to realise the treatment of Palestinians under Israeli occupation. She feels deceived by her childhood and has now made a career from ‘IfNotNow’, a community organisation for American Jews to end America’s support for Israel’s apartheid system (@ifnotnoworg on Instagram). Also included in the documentary are interviews with university students who think like Simone used to, and it is interesting to see their narratives juxtaposed.

Eitan’s story is perhaps the more harrowing of the two. As a member of the Israeli army he recounts first-hand experiences of the horrific violence and humiliation imposed upon Palestinians in the West Bank by the IDF. He recounts how they were told to always make their presence known– they were there to intimidate. As a viewer it’s difficult to sympathise with Eitan as he joined the IDF by choice, but as he breaks down recounting what he witnessed during his time in the army you do feel for him.

‘Israelism’ was an informative watch as it showed the system in America which establishes Israeli nationalism amongst young American Zionists, yet at times I felt it was too sympathetic towards the systems that perpetuate America’s ties to Israel. I have other documentaries about the conflict which I found more educational and would recommend Eyal Sivan’s ‘Jaffa, the Orange’s Clockwork’ and ‘IZKOR, Slaves of Memory’, which show the many intersecting ways in which the West views the Israel/Palestine conflict as it does, and well as documenting the indoctrination of Israeli children by the state.

Words by Flora Campbell

Cover Image Credit: Jude Abbott via https://leedspff.org.uk/