There is a new documentary, called “Israelism”, making the rounds in
the US
<
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/1/29/israelism-the-promised-land-needs-a-new-narrative>,
which covers some of these sorts of points.
The film has been touring US campuses, where its release during
the ongoing genocidal assault on Gaza has led to numerous calls
for censorship and cancellations of scheduled screenings by campus
authorities. In the midst of a highly censored public debate
around the Israeli occupation, the efforts to censor the film is a
reflection of the times – even the Jewish voices for peace being
targeted by the machine which has for so long sought to silence
Palestinian calls for liberation.
Not since the Vietnam War, I think, has any position perceived as
being in any way critical of a conflict been seen by so many as so
objectionable, and downright traitorous.
It took a long and painful history to get to this point:
Rubin paints a poignant picture of Jewish history, replete with
the horrors of anti-Semitic European persecution through the
centuries, exile, and a deep longing and hope for a place of
safety and security. Political Zionism does not emerge out of a
vacuum, he explains, but from the inability of European states to
guarantee the safety and security of the Jewish people. With the
pogroms and eventually, the culmination of European racialised
violence in the form of the Holocaust in the mid-20th century, the
toxic intersection of colonialism and Zionism sets the stage for
our current crisis.
To sum up:
Today, as the Israeli founder and executive director of
Idealist.org, Ami Dar, writes, “If everyone, everywhere, truly
accepted that seven million Jews and seven million Palestinians
are not going anywhere, and that any possible future has to
include and encompass both, the whole energy around this conflict
would shift.”