Questioning how Diaspora Jews are formed on Palestine/Israel
Post by Fr David Neuhaus SJ | 9 February 2026
Israelism is a must-watch 2023 documentary, describing how Jews in the United States are formed about what is going on in Palestine/Israel. Watching it, I recalled much of how I was educated about Palestine/Israel, growing up in the Jewish community in Johannesburg in the 1960s and 1970s.*
The film includes fascinating interviews with educators, academics and activists in the United States, Israel and Palestine. It is excellently crafted as it follows the formation process of two Jewish young adults as they begin to learn about history and society in Palestine/Israel in the midst of the ongoing conflict. They slowly become aware that what they are being taught is not the whole truth but rather part of an attempt to brainwash them.
A young Jewish woman pronounces a leading trope at the beginning of the movie: “Israeli soldiers, they are hot, they are awesome, they are strong, they are everything we could all want to be”. A little later, Simone Zimmerman, one of the two young people at the center of the film, reminisces that during her schooling in Los Angeles, “Israel was treated as a core part of being a Jew: you did prayers and you did Israel”. A Jewish educator tearfully declares, “Can you separate Judaism and Israel? To me you can’t!”
Eitan, the other young person, went straight into the Israeli army after completing his high-school in the United States. He chillingly describes his military service in Palestine, witnessing the brutality of occupation at first hand. He recalls that when he was in school, “even though Israel was a central part of everything we did in school, we never really discussed the Palestinians. It was presented to us that Israel was basically an empty wasteland when the Jews arrived”.
* There was, however, an element of great incongruity in the Jewish South African context: we were made aware by many of our teachers that apartheid in South Africa was wrong, but we were never informed about conquest, discrimination and occupation in Israel.