Jewish youth reckon with differing narratives about Israel in new documentary ‘Israelism’
The film follows two young people, Simone Zimmerman and Eitan, who doesn’t share his last name. In it, we see how they grew up with a view of Israel that doesn’t fit what they experience when they go there. For this week’s Artscape, Morning Edition host Luis Hernandez spoke with Rhode Island-based filmmaker Sam Eilertsen, who makes his directorial debut with this film.
The Dec. 7 screening of “Israelism” at the Columbus Theatre is sold out, but the film will be available to rent online Friday through Sunday. Go to israelismfilm.com for more details.
The transcript below has been edited for length and clarity. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future.
TRANSCRIPT:
Luis Hernandez: Briefly describe the film for us. What can people expect?
Sam Eilertsen: Thank you for having me on. So our film “Israelism” is about, really digs into American Jewish community’s relationship with Israel through the stories of two young Jewish people who sort of in many ways represent a broader element of of our generation of young Jews who grow up being sort of taught to be really attached to Israel without necessarily learning a lot of details about Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians. And when they actually sort of witness on the ground the way that Palestinians are being treated by the state of Israel, it totally shatters their perceptions and sets them on a journey that sort of leads to activism and ultimately leads to advocating for creating a very different situation in Israel/Palestine, where all people could be free.
Hernandez: You started filming this way before the war between Israel and Hamas, obviously, but when the war started, what were you thinking and feeling considering the message of the film?
Eilertsen: It’s a really hard moment for all of us working on this film. Our filmmaking team is primarily American Jews, but also includes both Palestinian Americans and Israelis as well. … So it was a really, really difficult moment for everyone. We have colleagues with family on the ground in Gaza. And also that we have colleagues who lost family members, friends or family members in Hamas’s attack on October 7th.
We postponed most screenings, pretty much all screenings for the first two weeks after the war broke out just to make sure that we were in the right emotional place to be showing this film, and also that we were understanding how to have these conversations because it is more difficult than ever, but we’ve been kind of going back out on the road with the film and trying to make space to have conversations where people that might have differing opinions can come and have a real dialogue. And I think we’ve, we’ve done a great – I hope we’ve done a good job with that. I think most of our conversations have been actually really like fruitful and productive, and not scary like conversations about this are often portrayed as being, I would say.
Still from the new documentary “Israelism” co-directed by Sam EilertsenHernandez: I just wanted to get a sense briefly, if you could, about what your experience was like when you first went to Israel. Not just your view of Israel and the Jewish people, but also of Palestinians when you first met, you know, Palestinians in Palestine.
Eilertsen: I actually visited both Israel and the West Bank for the first time when we had just started making this film, which was a really interesting experience. So I obviously had read a lot like you alluded to, I had watched a lot of documentaries. Nothing fully prepares you for what it’s actually like to cross the wall, so to speak.
And I really always encourage people – obviously right now is, it would be a difficult time – but I really do encourage people who are asking questions and trying to understand what to think, if they can, to actually go to the West Bank and see what it’s actually like for people living day to day on the ground.
We visited the city of Hebron and the city is divided up by all these checkpoints. And the goal here is to protect these very radical religiously motivated settlers, who are a small community of Jewish settlers who are living in this very large Palestinian city deep in the West Bank and are actively sort of, like, taking over people’s houses and taking them away from them, from people who are just trying to live their lives. And the Israeli army is there to protect them, and specifically not supposed to protect Palestinian civilians from the settlers if the settlers decide to do violence. And so they’ve set up all this like very over the top segregation systems. Like, there are these people who are here and they’re taking someone else’s homes away. And why are they allowed to be there? And it’s very disturbing to see that.
Hernandez: Let me come forward to your time at Brown. You graduated in 2012, correct? Yeah. What was it like, being Jewish on campus then? What was the relationship like with Palestinian students?
Eilertsen: I think right now there’s a lot of sort of moral panic about the atmosphere in college campuses. I think there was maybe less so then. Our freshman year was the year of Israel’s, the first time that there was a major military conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
I remember at one point – first of all, like one of my best friends showed up on campus and he would, had his Israeli army uniform that he often wore, or the shirt that he got from like an Israeli soldier that he often just wore around campus. In our dorm, there was also a Palestinian student who had a poster of Yasser Arafat on his wall. So it was – but everyone would just hang out. So it was very interesting to be around. But I remember during that war in Gaza, two of my good friends, both Jewish, got in an almost physical altercation in the lunchroom. Because, you know, one person thought that what Israel was doing was totally wrong, and one person thought that what Israel was doing was totally necessary and it’s all Hamas’s fault. And that was just what the atmosphere was like.
Still from the new documentary “Israelism” co-directed by Sam EilertsenHernandez: From what you experienced as a student in the early – I mean, again, you graduated 2012, so more than 10 years ago, to what you see now, what do you think about that?
Eilertsen: There’s a lot of really laser focus on college campuses in a way that I think is not productive right now, in the sense that you know, we’ve been doing a tour of many, many college campuses. That was planned starting before October 7th starting on and after October 7th.
We postponed some screenings and then resumed doing them. There started to be a really intense sort of hate campaign to get our screenings canceled, and people who have no actual connection to colleges sending like literally thousands of template emails to college presidents demanding that they cancel our screenings, and claiming that like that the atmosphere is going to be so dangerous and we’re putting students in danger by even showing this film. And the University of Pennsylvania actually threatened progressive Jewish students with discipline for showing our film, which is just just wild.
All that said, like when you actually show up and talk to people, if you show up in the right way I’ve found conversations to be really fruitful and kind and understanding. And I think that, you know, there’s always going to be college students who are very passionate and want to protest for this cause or that cause, and it’s important to be able to speak out about what you believe.
Overall, I would say that students are, like all of us, feeling a lot of anguish about what’s going on, but that doesn’t mean they’re not ready to have a reasonable conversation if you engage them in the right way.
Hernandez: Critics of the film have said that it’s a misrepresentation of the Israel-Palestine conflict. They’ve even said it’s antisemitic and one-sided. How do you respond to that?
Eilertsen: I’ll kind of break that down into two pieces. Obviously, the claims that the film itself is antisemitic or puts Jews in danger is very offensive to us as Jewish filmmakers who made this film. You know, not just myself and my co-director, but most of our producers as well are Jewish. We have Israeli executive producers. So to say that the film itself is antisemitic, it kind of goes to like the larger cultural issue here, which we try to always talk about, is there are very real threats to Jews, and antisemitism and hatred. And then there is also this issue of conflating any criticism of Israel with antisemitism.
And then, in terms of it’s not an accurate representation of the conflict, I mean, we tried to make a film about one particular story, which is a story of a very significant segment of young American Jews. We don’t claim to speak for everyone, absolutely.
One study said that 38% of Jews under 40 consider Israel’s actions to constitute apartheid, which is quite an extraordinary number, given that if you had done that poll like maybe 15 or 20 years ago, I think the percentage probably would have been tiny.
So, I think that to say that we’re not representing a very real segment of the community is not true. In terms of, is it a fair and balanced history of the conflict? That’s not the movie we tried to make. I think that we tried to tell, again, the story of, like, how a certain segment of the community feels that they were educated and what they feel was not correct about that education.
And I always tell people, like, there are a lot of other history books, films, resources that people can read that show the conflict. There’s a book called “Side by Side” that will take you through every single event in the history of Israel and Palestine and give you the Israeli narrative and then the Palestinian narrative on the next page. That wasn’t the movie we set out to make.
Hernandez: What are you hearing from people who’ve seen the film, their thoughts on the film, different communities and their thoughts on the film? And how does that go with what you kind of hope people will take away from the film?
Eilertsen: We’ve had really positive reactions from the vast majority of our audiences. … So we’ve gotten a great deal of support particularly from other younger Jews who often come up to us afterwards and talk about how this story represents theirs. And a lot of Palestinian audiences have really resonated with the film. … Most of the criticisms are either based on people having not actually seen the film and making assumptions, or if they’ve seen the film, their criticisms are often about what we didn’t include or the fact that it’s not like a long comprehensive history of the conflict. In terms of actually engaging with the real substance of what the film says, for people who’ve actually seen the film people might say “I disagree with this and that, but I also think you have a lot of great points,” which, that’s great for me. I really appreciate that.
Hernandez: Sam, it’s been an absolute pleasure. I really appreciate the conversation. Thank you.
Eilertsen: Thank you so much for having me on.
Got a question, comment or suggestion for Artscape? Email us at arts@thepublicsradio.org.
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