Let’s talk about ‘Israelism’

The very timely documentary about Zionism losing favor with young Jews is certainly flawed- but there’s no justification for banning it from college campuses.

Ever since the war between Israel and Hamas began in October, a long-simmering trend has jumped to the forefront of discussion of the conflict in the U.S.: A lot of younger Jewish Americans are turning against Israel and Zionism. 

When protests take place on college campuses and in major cities, calling for a ceasefire or “Free Palestine,” there’s a good chance a lot of the participants are Jewish. Some such protests have even taken on a specifically Jewish character.  

So now we have a documentary, produced and completed before the current conflict, which touches on these of-the-moment issues. And the primary thing the film is known for is having showings of it protested and canceled at several different college campuses. 

The film is called Israelism, and it’s directed by Erin Axelman and Sam Eilertsen; it’s currently available to rent from the film’s official website. Israelism tells the story of a pair of young Jews, Simone, and Eitan, who were raised in American Jewish communities where they were taught the traditional line about Zionism. But as they got older, they began to question what they had been taught, in some cases by witnessing the treatment of Palestinians first-hand.  

The film touches on the Taglit Birthright program, in which young Jews are granted a free trip to Israel, and it’s implied — and sometimes more than implied — that another purpose of the program is for Jews to meet, schtup, marry, and therefore help to solve Judaism’s “continuity crisis.” Broad City once riffed brilliantly on this tendency:

The film also goes into AIPAC and the power it holds, while also interviewing some dissenting voices, including former ADL head Abraham Foxman and West Bank settler spokesman Yishai Fleischer, although Foxman has since disavowed his participation in the film. 

Other tropes familiar to those from this world include the idea that Zionism is a righteous cause because Israeli soldiers (male and female) tend to be hot, and that part of the fun of going to Israel is meeting those soldiers and getting their picture taken while holding their guns.

I wouldn’t call Israelism particularly outstanding as a documentary, and it’s far from the best nonfiction film I’ve seen about Zionism or the conflict. It’s simultaneously all over the place, and lacking in concrete solutions. It also soft-pedals the problem of antisemitism on the American left.  Yes, I’m more worried, as an American Jew, about Nazis and racists, but recent months have made clear that antisemitism on the left does exist.

I should be clear that I don’t hold the same political views as the people in this film (nor, I presume, the people who made it.) My views on the matter are somewhat nuanced — read my Munich piece from last fall for more on that – but despite my palpable distaste for Israel’s current leaders and their actions, I haven’t abandoned the Zionist cause, I believe Israel deserves to continue to exist, and that there is much about Israel that is worth celebrating and preserving.

 But I would recommend Israelism nonetheless, especially to those on the opposite ideological side, because it’s about a worthy subject and they might learn something from it. And there’s no reason for this film, which espouses nothing extreme or radical, to be suppressed or banned from any campus. 

The story told in the film, as most people who follow these things know by now, is a very familiar one. A lot of younger American Jews are indeed rejecting Zionism. This is a thing that is happening and had been happening for a long time before the current war began. It has escalated since October, and the reasons why are worth exploring. This is something that has led to a great deal of heartache, and inter-generational conflict, within the Jewish community, especially since the current war started.

I’ve heard a lot of explanations, from my friends, my family members, and Bill Maher, about why this is, and most of them trend towards the “kids today are just the worst” genre. You’ve heard them all, I’m sure. “They’re all stupid,” “They’re self-hating Jews,” “They’re just rebelling against their parents,” “They’re indoctrinated by their professors” and “They’re all brainwashed by TikTok.”  

I might have something to do with my natural allergy to “kids today” arguments, but I don’t think any of those explanations hold much water. I think this tendency has more to do with Israel's support becoming more right-wing-coded in the last 25 years or so, along with Israel having hard-right governments, who have acted in sometimes indefensible ways, for the majority of that time.

I grew up at the time of Yitzhak Rabin and the Oslo Accords, President Bill Clinton eulogizing Rabin and stating later that he loved him more than he’s ever loved another man. The younger cohort has seen little of Israel but the long premiership of a corrupt demagogue who has not only quite a lot in common with the worst of America’s right-wing politicians but has formed deep alliances with them.

And beyond that, none of those Maher-style arguments are going to make a case to those people to reconsider their views or restore intergenerational harmony, if either of those is the goal. 

Israelism, after a run on the film festival circuit — although mostly not, with a couple of exceptions, the Jewish film festival circuit — made the rounds of college campuses throughout 2023, which led to huge controversies, both before and after October 7. 

According to a mid-December report in The Forward, there had been at least four instances throughout the fall in which screenings and Q&As of Israelism were scheduled at colleges, universities, or in cities only to get canceled at the last minute. However, in some instances, the screenings took place later, and sometimes in a different venue.

This has often come from pressure from the sort of university alumni who take time out of their high-powered careers to concern themselves with what’s happening on their old campus (Doesn’t Bill Ackman have a hedge fund to run, with billions under management? How does he have time for extremely online culture war nonsense every day?) 

This has happened at Hunter College, the University of Pennsylvania, Yale, and at a planned showing in Hamilton, Ontario, and these controversies have led to much more media coverage than any other aspect of the film itself. At Penn, per a subsequent HuffPost report, a student group was warned that they could lose funding, or face disciplinary action, just for exhibiting the film, as if it were Birth of a Nation or something. 

Per The Forward: 

Groups of people often with little or no connection to the universities have organized coordinated campaigns against the film, flooding campus administrators and presidents with tens of thousands of emails accusing the film of antisemitism, charges that the filmmakers, who are both Jewish, adamantly deny.

 For alumni and activists to call for the suppression of a film that they almost certainly have not seen is always ridiculous and indefensible, but it’s especially wrong here. The film is not, by any meaningful definition of the film, antisemitic. Its filmmakers and subjects are Jewish, and it concerns itself almost entirely with matters of importance, and frequent discussion and argument, within the Jewish community. If you’re Jewish, you’ve almost certainly been party to the types of conversations that are held within the film. 

Contrary to a recent Jerusalem Post op-ed arguing against the film — by three undergraduate authors who, to their credit, have seen it — there’s nothing raised here that’s especially extremist or beyond the pale. No one in Israelism endorses violence or terrorism or genocide. Unless you’re using the Elise Stefanik definition in which all expressions of support for the Palestinians amount to open calls for genocide, but I choose not to. Fleischer, the settler spokesman who I saw speak in a panel a few months ago, is much more of an extremist than any of the anti-Zionists heard from in the film. 

It’s yet another example, especially in a certain cohort of the center-right, in which there is a “crisis of free speech on campus,” amid rampant censorship and cancel culture, but all of those concerns immediately go out the window for this issue and this issue only. 

I understand this is a controversial film, and I am aware that I risk losing subscribers by broaching this, the most contentious subject on planet Earth. But even beyond the issues of the conflict, the people agitating to suppress the exhibition of a film are seldom on the right side.