Work on the documentary ISRAELISM started in late 2015 and was completed at the end of 2022. The film was released in February 2023 and offers a challenging interpretation of the contemporary meaning of Jewish identity in the United States against the background of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

Axelman and Eilertsen, first-time Jewish filmmakers, provide a cogent and objective analysis of the forces shaping the modern Jewish-American identity and the growing discrepancy between the definition offered by the politics of Israel and her American followers and the more traditional understanding of what it means to be Jewish without linking it to the existence of Israel. In this discussion the directors and the principal protagonists Zimmerman and Eitan explore some obvious current issues such as the links between Judaism and Israel, Zionism, settlements in the areas occupied by Israel, and the rise of antisemitism. What also transpires through the comments by Zimmerman and Eitan are their insights about being raised in US Jewish families and school settings ; the bonding with their faith and the strong link with Israel as well as their experience in  Israel and eventual conversion to a critical perspective.

As revealed in the documentary, these insights include the settler movement on the West Bank now exceeding more than half a million, compared to the more than 2.7 million Palestinians living there, perspectives which are also new for most Israelis who rarely have direct contact with the Palestinians living on the West Bank. In that context it should be noted that even before Irael-Hamas Gaza war prompted by the Hamas invasion and killings, a survey revealed that 25% of the US Jewish population considered Israel an “apartheid state” and 22% held the view of Israel was committing Genocide (The New Republic, April 2024, p. 37). As Abraham Foxman points out in Israelism, we failed to educate them “When we talk about ‘We are loosing the kids’...we lost them”.

ISRAELISM clarifies the growing generation specific gap in Jewish communities and congregations in the perspectives about Israel. Younger Jews in the US are more likely to be sympathetic of Palestinians and critical of Israel. Given the ready access to information they tend to be better informed about the Gaza war and West Bank developments than young people living in Israel whose access to current and past information about the history of their country is censored. Ironically, similar attempts to control information about Israel can be observed in Germany* where any criticism of Israel is identified as anti-Semitic, also common in the United States. Both countries are probably the only firm remaining friends of Israel and face a strange situation. They try to ameliorate the food and famine crisis in the Gaza strip while its residents, including Hamas and affiliated groups, continue to be killed by weapons both countries provide. The latest estimates for the Gaza strip death toll as of mid-April 2024 are 35,000 dead of which at least two thirds are civilians and overall one third are children and the elderly. Since the Hamas attacks, more than 400 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank area by Israeli forces and settlers. For historic reasons, current German funding amounts to $352 million, 10 times higher than in 2022. Germany is the second biggest exporter of arms to Israel with a 30% of all sales. The US share amounted to an estimated $3.8 billion 2023, not including the value of US arms stockpiled in Israel. Arms export from other countries is minimal.

ISRAELISM pres