The Huge Image: How Israel Received the West examines how Israel has come to occupy such a privileged and guarded place within the Western world. It traces the journey of the Jewish folks from biblical tales of origin by means of centuries of persecution and the arrival of Zionism, all the way in which to the creation of Israel and its ensuing occupation of the Palestinian territory. Alongside the way in which, what’s revealed is a technique of transformation, of how Jews went from being despised by early Christians as “Christ killers” – seeding a vile anti-Judaism that will mutate into anti-Semitism – to being thought-about a part of the white Western world, sharing a standard Judeo-Christian heritage.
The movie lays naked the alignment of Zionism with “Western civilisation”, intentionally placing it in opposition to the folks of the east – Arabs, Muslims. This is able to lay the foundations for an Israel the place Arab Jews could be marginalised and European Ashkenazi Jews would dominate and go on to turn out to be the bedrock of assist for right-wing governments and ultra-right nationalists.
What turns into obvious is the century-old coverage, first outlined by Ze’ev Jabotinsky, that solely pressure may impose Zionism and beat Palestinians into accepting the fact of colonisation.
Sustaining the imposition of this settler-colonial actuality would require a “particular relationship” between Israel and america. It might be fostered not simply by US geostrategic pursuits within the Center East but additionally facilitated by the “whitening” of Jews within the American and Western creativeness, folding them into an opportunistic Judeo-Christian identification that excluded Arabs. This deliberate positioning of an “us” and a “them” has served to legitimise Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territory and the bloodbath of Palestinian folks, all beneath the umbrella and assist of the Western world order.
The horror of Israel’s warfare on Gaza is obvious for all of the world to see. Greater than 40,000 individuals are lifeless, the vast majority of them ladies and kids, killed within the identify of “self-defence” by Israeli forces on a mission to “destroy” Hamas after the assaults of October 7, 2023. We’re witnessing, in plain sight, an unfolding genocide. And but Israel continues its warfare. Its mission creeping into Lebanon, the place extra civilians are killed as Israel targets Hezbollah. All that is enjoying out with the total assist of the West as Israel claims to be preventing on behalf of Western civilisation and towards “human animals” in a battle between the Judeo-Christian world and “barbarians” – a contrived narrative lengthy within the making.
That includes:
Shaul Magid – visiting professor of contemporary Jewish research, Harvard College’s Divinity College
David Freidenreich – professor of Jewish research, Colby School
Omer Bartov – professor of Holocaust and genocide research, Brown College
Raz Segal – writer, Genocide within the Carpathians
Michelle Mart – affiliate professor, Pennsylvania State College
Arie M Dubnov – affiliate professor, George Washington College
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