LONDON PALESTINE FILM FESTIVAL — THE IZKOR: SLAVES OF MEMORY

The Lon­don Palestine Film Fest­iv­al is a chance to view doc­u­ment­ar­ies on the Palestini­an exper­i­ence where polit­ic­al top­ics are explored through the cre­at­ive means of film. These stor­ies are depic­ted in such a way that we can walk in the shoes of the prot­ag­on­ists and feel what they feel lead­ing us to a bet­ter understanding.

Izkor which in Hebrew means “to remem­ber”, is a film from an Israeli per­spect­ive that was pro­duced in 1990, dur­ing the first inti­fada (Palestini­an upris­ing). It is imper­at­ive to watch to under­stand the com­plex multi-layered con­structs of Israeli soci­ety and to under­stand the motiv­a­tion behind cur­rent affairs. It takes a deep­er look at the role of indoc­trin­a­tion in Israeli soci­ety, and the impact this has on the treat­ment of the Palestinians.

The ques­tion I’ve always had is – why do some Israel­is feel no guilt about the cur­rent gen­o­cide in Gaza? This doc­u­ment­ary helped to answer that.

Izkor: Slaves of Memory is a film made by Eyal Sivan in which we fol­low Israeli school chil­dren through sev­er­al Israeli hol­i­days, (Pas­sov­er, Holo­caust Remem­brance Day, Sol­diers’ Memori­al Day, and Israeli Inde­pend­ence Day). Only neg­at­ive events are made into nation­al hol­i­days, there are many oth­er Jew­ish hol­i­days that are not “cel­eb­rated” by the State of Israel as they do not align with their polit­ic­al agenda. It high­lights the role that schools play in giv­ing these dates a deep­er mean­ing and emphas­izes the belief in the prom­ised land by God to the Jews. As these days as com­mem­or­ated, there is mourn­ing for the Holo­caust Day and Memori­al Day in which the chil­dren can be seen deeply emo­tion­al and in tears as if they are the dir­ect vic­tims of these past events.

This film shows us how school chil­dren from a very young age in Israel are taught to be hyper-aware of their his­tory and become con­di­tioned to identi­fy with a vic­tim men­tal­ity. To embody abso­lute “inno­cence”, which then of course by default means that they are fight­ing abso­lute “evil”. To believe any action that they take is in self-defence and not as a per­pet­rat­or.  It depicts how the State of Israel manip­u­lates the pain­ful his­tory of the Jew­ish people to influ­ence Israel­is to feel absolved from any guilt or remorse for the actions they take today.

It high­lights the false belief that if Israel­is do not cre­ate the State of Israel, their people will not be able to fight “future Nazis” without an inde­pend­ent state, and an inde­pend­ent state will nev­er be handed to them, it is some­thing they must fight for and take force­fully. This is their jus­ti­fic­a­tion for gen­o­cide which does not account for any suffering.

The pub­lic edu­ca­tion sys­tem in Israel is a segreg­ated one, which enables pro­pa­ganda to be instilled in the pages of their his­tory books (much like in any oth­er nation). It raises the wider ques­tion of who authors world his­tory.  In this film, we can clearly see how Zion­ism influ­ences young minds. In an inter­est­ing scene, a 17-year-old is asked if he is being brain­washed, to which he answers “No, this is not brain­wash­ing, this is tra­di­tion”. He wants to fight for his nation, for his future chil­dren, the desire has been implanted with­in him. He is not being told to do it; he wants to do it for his coun­try. This is how manip­u­la­tion works. Eyal goes on to dis­cuss he does not believe that col­lect­ive trauma is real but sees it as an excuse to jus­ti­fy per­pet­rat­ors. Those who are “trau­mat­ized”, then claim do not know what they are doing as they are over­come by emo­tions, and there­fore not respons­ible for their actions. How can people who have suffered do the same to oth­ers? The truth is that people today have not suffered dir­ectly from past events, but they have been told to embody the feel­ing of deep suf­fer­ing as though harm was done dir­ectly to them. This is rein­forced by pub­lic hol­i­days; the chil­dren are no longer indi­vidu­als, but they become part of the nation.

The col­lect­ive exper­i­ence of Israel­is who are influ­enced by edu­ca­tion, reli­gious rituals, and mil­it­ary cere­mon­ies, cre­ates a col­lect­ive memory that fuels the func­tion of Israeli soci­ety – to col­on­ize. Israeli soci­ety is more inter­ested in ask­ing if Israel­is are good sol­diers, not if they are good people with good val­ues. There is an offi­cial col­lect­ive memory that has led to the form­a­tion of Israel, heav­ily based on nation­al pride and pro­pa­ganda. Vari­ous sys­tems in soci­ety deal with memory, such as the media, but this doc­u­ment­ary focuses on how edu­ca­tion in Israel is used to indoc­trin­ate young minds into a nation­al­ist­ic state which is a type of slavery of the mind. Excused of review­ing their own actions, Israel­is do not have to take any respons­ib­il­ity for their own thoughts, or actions. There is a lack of crit­ic­al think­ing. This col­lect­ive vic­tim men­tal­ity then absolves any thoughts of guilt or respons­ib­il­ity for their actions.

Fol­low­ing the film screen­ing, Prof. Neve Gor­don held a pan­el dis­cus­sion with Dir­ect­or Eyal Sivan where they dis­cussed how they star­ted ques­tion­ing their upbring­ing in Israel as Jews when they saw and spoke to Palestini­ans in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and saw their per­spect­ive. This does not hap­pen in segreg­ated schools as those shown in this film. It high­lights one aspect of the non-integ­rated soci­et­ies, the apartheid system.

One of the fam­il­ies that appear in the film are Moroc­can Jews, who incid­ent­ally said like was bet­ter in Morocco com­pared to Israel as they received bet­ter treat­ment there. The reas­on to fol­low a non-Ashkenazi Jew was a delib­er­ate one. This raised a strik­ing point “We nev­er hear about Palestini­ans, but you hear about “Arabs”. The Arabs are seen as the “bad guys”. This doesn’t take into con­sid­er­a­tion that Arab Jews exist. There is no con­sid­er­a­tion of the sim­il­ar­it­ies between the suf­fer­ing of Arab Jews (cur­rent gen­o­cide) and European Jews (past gen­o­cide), but rather the poten­tial con­sequences of defeat if this nation is not estab­lished. Israeli polit­ic­al lead­ers exploit this by refer­ring to Palestini­ans as “Arab Nazis” and refer­ring to Hamas as Nazis to link the thoughts in one’s head. The bad things that happened on European soil, were put into the memor­ies of Arab Jews. The whiten­ing of the Arab Jew has caused Arab Jews to become self-hat­ing, feel­ing ashamed of speak­ing Arab­ic at home. We are urged to remem­ber — Zion­ism is a double col­on­iz­a­tion, not just phys­ic­ally of Palestine but also of Juda­ism itself.

Anoth­er import­ant fact is that not only was this film banned in Israel after its release, but ALL future film­ing in schools was also banned. The impact of shar­ing the truth via such doc­u­ment­ar­ies was revealed, and this is thus some­thing being cen­sored as it would only ini­ti­ate glob­al dis­cus­sions that the State of Israel would rather avoid. Izkor is well worth a watch if you want a glimpse into the mind of Israeli society.