This year SPARK Social Justice is sponsoring one of the films in the Palestinian Film festival. It will be the last film to be shown. The presentation will take place on Saturday December 9th at 2pm.
As well as showing the film itself, the director will be available for a post-film discussion via Zoom. Additionally, there will be various stalls selling goods made by Palestinians.
The film we are showing is called Israelism.
It tells the story of two young American Jews – Simone Zimmerman and Eitan – who are raised to defend the state of Israel at all costs. Eitan joins the Israeli military. Simone supports Israel on ‘the other battlefield:’ America’s college campuses. When they witness Israel’s mistreatment of the Palestinian people with their own eyes, they are horrified and heartbroken – the Jewish institutions that raised them not only lied, but built their Jewish identity around that lie.
They join the movement of young American Jews battling the old guard over Israel’s centrality in American Judaism, and demanding freedom for the Palestinian people. Their stories reveal a generational divide in the American Jewish community as more young Jews question the narratives their synagogues and Hebrew school teachers fed them as children.