LONDON PALESTINE FILM FESTIVAL — THE IZKOR: SLAVES OF MEMORY

By Faizah Cyanide • On Reviews ,

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.

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Faizah Cyanide

Faizah works in clin­ic­al research by pro­fes­sion and has been an avid Hip Hop lov­er since the early 90’s, hav­ing cre­ated her own Hip Hop event, ‘Breakin’ Bound­ar­ies’ in the early 2000’s which was pre­dom­in­antly based around the concept of bboy battles, she has worked with sev­er­al inter­na­tion­al events pro­moters and dan­cers to inspire oth­ers through this artform.

About Faizah Cyanide

Faizah works in clinical research by profession and has been an avid Hip Hop lover since the early 90's, having created her own Hip Hop event, 'Breakin' Boundaries' in the early 2000's which was predominantly based around the concept of bboy battles, she has worked with several international events promoters and dancers to inspire others through this artform.