Israel is off the rails, says brain-fry documentary
Photo: Planet Israel, film website, https://planetisrael.co.uk/
Daniel Nelson
‘This film will fry your brain’, proclaims a new documentary, Planet Israel.
That’s overselling it, apart, perhaps for ardent Zionists and extreme nationalist Israelis.
It’s a polemic in which British Jewish filmmaker Gillian Mosely expresses shock at the support of so many Jewish Israelis for their country’s massive retaliation for the 7 October Hamas attack:
“What makes people turn a blind eye to widespread atrocities committed in their name?” she wonders, before asking “how a nation that had the world’s sympathy lost its moral compass”, and how could some overseas Jews believe that loyalty to Israel should take precedence over Judaism, which had been politicised?
She uses newsreels, animation and an impressive line-up of talking heads, as well her own opinions to make her points.
But while ultra-nationalists “seem to be winning” the argument, “around the world Jews like me reject the idea that Zionism is more important than Judaism or that the two are the same thing.” Perhaps she’s all the fiercer because she was once a Zionist herself.
To make matters worse, the crime being committed in Gaza “that will come to haunt us all for generations to come … a perfect blend of cruelty and greed is harming Jews everywhere.”
She attempts to explain the shift in public opinion by a five-step "handbook for authoritarian rulers": making use of unaddressed trauma, encouraging militarisation by distorting history, pushing extreme views into the mainstream, taking over the media while also attacking opponents, and twisting religious beliefs into support for ultranationalism.
And she doesn’t let Western governments off the hook: “Why have so many of our governments done so little to stop these atrocities?
“Where is our shared humanity and global leadership for a better, more sustainable world - or are we doomed to endless destructive wars?”
These are big questions, and Mosely makes her charges at full tilt.