A SINGLE STATE SOLUTION
Zionism in the Cinema - Part One: Return to Exodus, by Larry Portis
January 18, 2007
The slogan “never again”, as used in relation to the Nazi genocides during the Second World War, and those which have succeeded, seems empty when we consider the ethnic cleansing carried out in Palestine after the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 and after the Israeli occupation of the remains of historical Palestine beginning in June 1967. How can the “Western democracies” continue to participate in the genocidal punishment of a population while proclaiming the purest of intentions? One of the reasons is the power of Zionist propaganda over those who lack alternative information and the political fear and hypocrisy that it can inspire in those who understand what is happening. Of the modern means of communication and the formation of consciousness, the cinema is pre-eminent and, in the case of the Zionist state of Israel, one film in particular has been remarkably influential.
Produced and directed by Otto Preminger, Exodus was released in 1960, and had enormous success. In evaluating this success, we are helped by the release in 2002 of another film, Kedma, directed by Amos Gitaï, and, to a lesser extent by Elie Chouraki’s film, O Jerusalem, released in Fall, 2006. The first two films treat the same subject—the clandestine arrival of Jewish refugees in Palestine in 1947 in the midst of armed conflict. This was the eve of the partition of Palestine, proposed by the United Nations Organization but rejected by the non-Jewish (or, rather, non-Zionist) population and states of the entire eastern Mediterranean region. Following the British announcement of their withdrawal from the protectorate established in 1920 by the mandate system of the treaty of Versailles, the stage was set for a defining event of the short, brutal twentieth century: the creation of the state of Israel and the population transfers and ethnic conflicts that accompanied it.
Comparison of the two films, both in terms of their genesis as artistic creations and as political statements, elucidates aspects of an interesting process of ideological formation. Seen as depictions of the birth of the Israeli nation, the two films are extremely different. Exodus is a glorification of a certain type of leadership, at a certain level of decision-making. It works only at the level of strategic and tactical Zionist command within Palestine, immediately before, during and after the war, for the creation of the state of Israel. The film is discreet in its treatment of international diplomacy. Although decisions of the British military administration are implicitly criticized in the film, such criticism is not allowed to call into question Britain itself as an actor on the international stage. When either the British or the United-Statesians (and the French and Italians) are referred to, it is always as individuals, not representatives of overall national sentiments.
In Kedma, Amos Gitaï was concerned to present an historical situation by depicting a single incident, the origins of which are not explained directly and, in the course of which, individuals are shown to be subordinate to developments over which they have no real control. The incident in question is the illegal arrival of a ship, “Kedma,” on the coast of Palestine.
There is an important qualification to make before any attempt to compare these films. The problem is that discussing the narrative content of Preminger's film Exodus would not be legitimate without speaking of Exodus the novel, written by Leon Uris. Not only were both film and novel tremendous commercial successes, they were conceived of as the two indispensable axes of a single project.
It was Dore Schary, a top executive at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) who suggested the idea for the book to Leon Uris. As Kathleen Christison explains, (www.counterpunch.org/kchristison0715.ht) the whole project « began with a prominent public-relations consultant who in the early 1950s decided that the United States was too apathetic about Israel's struggle for survival and recognition. » Thanks to Schary, Uris received a contract from Doubleday and went to Israel and Cyprus where he carried out extensive research. The book was published in September, 1958. It was first re-printed in October the following year. By 1964, it had gone through 30 printings. This success was undoubtedly helped by the film's release in 1960, but not entirely, as Uris's novel was a book-of-the-month club selection in September 1959 (which perhaps explains the first re-printing).
The film was to be made by MGM. But when the time came, the studio hesitated. The project was perhaps too political for the big producers. It was then that Otto Preminger bought the screen rights from MGM. He produced and directed the film, featuring an all-star cast including Paul Newman, Eva Marie-Saint, Lee J. Cobb, Sal Mineo, Peter Lawford and other box-office draws of the moment. The film also benefited from a lavish production in “superpanavision 70” after having been filmed on location. The music was composed by Ernest Gold, for which he received an Academy Award for the best music score of 1960. The screenplay was written by Dalton Trumbo. In spite of its length—three and a half hours—the film was a tremendous popular and critical success.
It is noteworthy that the release of Exodus the film in 1960 indicates that its production began upon Exodus the book's publication. It is reasonable, therefore, to suppose a degree of coordination, in keeping with the origins of the project.
In short, it was a major operation that brilliantly succeeded. It has been estimated that in excess of 20 million people have read the novel, and that hundreds of millions have seen the film. Not only was this success a financial bonanza, its political impact has been equally considerable. There can be little doubt that Exodus the film has been one of the most important influences on Western perceptions and understanding of the hostilities between the Israeli state and the Palestinian people. So let us return to the message communicated by this film, in attempting to gage its role in ideological formation.
Exodus is the story of the Exodus 1947, a ship purchased in the United States and used to transport 4,500 Jewish refugees to Palestine. In reality, the novel and film take great liberties with the original story. Intercepted by the British authorities in the port of Haïfa, the real-life refugees were taken to the French port of Sête, where they were held, becoming the object of intense Zionist agitation and propaganda. Eventually they were transported to Germany and held temporarily in transit camps. Although this incident was used by Uris as the point of departure for his novel, the book is a work of fiction. Not only were the characters invented, the events did not correspond to reality except in the most general way.
In Uris' narrative, an intercepted ship (not named “Exodus”) is intercepted on the high sea and taken to Cyprus where the passengers are put in camps. Representatives of the Haganah, the secret Jewish army in Palestine, arrive secretly in Cyprus in order to care for, educate and mobilize the refugees. The agent-in-chief is Ari Ben Canaan, played by Paul Newman. Ben Canaan is the son of Barak Ben Canaan, prominent leader of the Yishuv, the Jewish, Zionist community in Palestine.
Tricking the British with great intelligence and audacity, Ari Ben Canaan arranges for the arrival of a ship purchased in the United States, on which he places 600 Jewish refugee children—orphans from the Nazi extermination camps and elsewhere. Once the children are on the ship, Ben Canaan names the ship the “Exodus”, and runs up the Zionist flag. He then informs the British authorities that, if the ship is not allowed to depart for Palestine, it will be blown up with all aboard.
Before having organized this potential suicide bombing (of himself, the Haganah agents and the 600 children), Ben Canaan has met Kitty Fremont, an American nurse who has become fond of the children and, it must be said, of Ari Ben Canaan. This love interest is carefully intertwined with the major theme: the inexorable need and will of the Jewish people to occupy the soil of Palestine.
As might be expected, the British give in. After some discussion between a clearly anti-Semitic officer and those more troubled by the plight of the refugees, the ship is allowed to depart for Palestine. It arrives just before the vote of the United Nations Organization recommending the partition of Palestine between the Jewish and non-Jewish populations. As the partition is refused by the Palestinians and the neighboring Arab states, war breaks out and the characters all join the ultimately successful effort against what are described as over-whelming odds. Even Kitty and Major Sutherland, the British officer who tipped the balance in favor of releasing the “Exodus,” join the fight.
Sutherland’s participation, representing the defection of a British imperialist to the Zionist cause, is particularly symbolic. Why did Sutherland jeopardize his position and reputation, and then resign from the army? His humanitarianism was forged by the fact that he had seen the Nazi extermination camps when Germany was liberated and, more troubling, his mother was Jewish, although converted to the Church of England. Sutherland has had a belated identity crisis that led him, too, to establish himself in the nascent Israel.
The other major characters in the film similarly represent the “return” of Jewish people to their “promised land.” For example, Karen, the young girl who Kitty would like to adopt and take to the United States, is a German Jew who was saved by placement in a Danish family during the war. Karen will elect to stay with her people, in spite of her affection for Kitty. Karen is also attached to Dov Landau, a fellow refugee, a 17 year-old survivor of the Warsaw ghetto and death camps. Once in Palestine, Dov joins a Zionist terrorist organization (based on the Irgun) and, in the book and film (but not, of course, in reality), places a bomb in the wing of King David Hotel housing the British Command, causing considerable loss of life.
The role of human agency, leadership and the nature of decision-making, are a dimension of Exodus that is particularly revealing of the propagandistic intent of the film. Most noteworthy is the fact that all the major characters are presented as exceptional people, and all are Jewish, with the exception of Kitty. However, it is not as individuals that the protagonists of the film are important, but rather as representatives of the Jewish people.
It is in this respect, in its effort to portray Jewishness as a special human condition distinguishing Jews and Jewish culture from others, that Exodus is at its most didactic. Ari Ben Canaan is clearly a superior being, but he merely represents the Jewish people. They are, collectively, just as strong, resourceful and determined as Ari. This positive image is highlighted by the portrayal of other ethnic groupings present in the film. The British, for example, are seen as, at best, divided and, at their worst, as degenerate products of national decay and imperialistic racism.
The most striking contrast to the collective solidarity, intellectual brilliance, and awesome courage of the Jews is offered by the “Arabs.” In spite of their greater numbers, the culture and character of the Arabs show them to be clearly inferior. Ari, who is a “sabra”—a Jewish person born in Palestine—and, as a consequence, understands the Arab character, knows that they cannot compete with determined Jews. “You turn 400 Arabs loose,” he says, and “they will run in 400 different directions.” This assessment of the emotional and intellectual self-possession of the Arabs was made prior to the spectacular jailbreak at Acre prison. The very indiscipline of the Arabs would cover the escape of the determined Zionists.
The Arab leaders are equally incapable of effective action, as they are essentially self-interested and uncaring about their own people. In the end, it is this lack of tolerance and human sympathy in the non-Jews that most distinguishes Jews and Arabs. In Exodus the novel, Arabs are consistently, explicitly, and exclusively, described as lazy and shiftless, dirty and deceitful. They have become dependant upon the Jews, and hate them for it. In Exodus the film, however, this characterization is not nearly as insisted upon, at least not in the dialogue. Still, the way they are portrayed on the screen inspires fear and distrust.
To be continued tomorrow.
Larry Portis is a professor of American Studies at Montpellier University in France. He an be reached at larry.portis@univ-montp3.fr
January 19, 2007
Zionism in the Cinema - Part Two
By LARRY PORTIS
The War of 1948 as seen in Otto Preminger's Exodus, Amos Gitaï's Kedma and Elie Chouraki’s O Jerusalem!
The contrast between the ethnic stereotyping exhibited in Exodus and the portrayal of characters in Amos Gitaï's Kedma could not be greater. In Kedma, there is no discussion of strategy or tactics, and thusly no invidious reflections upon one ethnic group's capacity in relation to another's. People simply find themselves in situations, and attempt to survive. This is how the survivors of the judeocide perpetrated by the German government describe their experiences during the voyage, before the Kedma arrives. This is how all the characters—European Jews and Palestinians—react once the ship has disembarked its passengers. In Kedma, there are no leaders visible. Their existence can only be supposed. Their plans, strategies and justifications are unexplained. They remain in the background as part of a larger tragedy produced by forces over which “ordinary” people seemingly have little or no control.
Gitaï's film expresses a lack of confidence in leadership and, in this way, Kedma can be understood as a reading (and viewing) of Exodus. There is, in fact, a remarkable parallel development of the two films. What is absent from Preminger's film—the moral misery, the existential despair, the doubts and confusion of the survivors of the Judeocide—is focused upon in Gitaï's film. Conversely, what is absent from Gitaï's film—the expression of Zionist ideals, aspirations and dogma, the glorifications of one ethnic group at the expense of others—is the very point of Preminger's.
This thematic inversion is particularly evident in reference to two aspect of the films: firstly, in the use of names and, secondly, in the dramatic monologues or soliloquies which end both films.
In Exodus, the use of names for symbolic purposes is immediately evident. “Exodus” refers to the biblical return of the Jews from slavery to the Holy Land—their god-given territory, a sacred site. This sacred site is necessary to Jewish religious observance and identity. Only here, it is explained in Exodus, can Jews be safe. Only here, it is asserted, can they throw-off invidious self-perceptions, imposed by anti-Semitism and assimilationist pressures, and become the strong, self-reliant and confident people they really are.
The vision of Jewish identity propagated by Zionism is implicitly challenged in Amos Gitaï’s Kedma. Again, the title of the film is symbolically significant. “Kedma” means the “East” or “Orient”, or “going towards the East.” The people on the Kedma—Jewish refugees from Europe, speaking European languages and Yiddish—were arriving in another cultural world an alien one, in the East. The result would be more existential disorientation and another ethnically conflictual environment.
The difference in perspective manifest in the two films is found also in the names given to the protagonists. In Kedma, an example is given of the abrupt Hebraizing of names as the passengers arrived in the new land, thus highlighting the cultural transformation central to the Zionist project. In Exodus, there is much explicit discussion of this aspect of Zionism, and some of the names given to central characters reveal the heavy-handedness of its message.
It is, of course, a well-established convention to give evocative names to the protagonists of a literary or cinematographic work. Where would be, for example, Jack London's The Iron Hell, without his hero, Ernest Everhard? The answer is that the novel might be more impressive without such readily apparent propagandistic trappings. And the same is true for Exodus. Leon Uris's chief protagonist is Ari Ben Canaan, Hebrew for “Lion, son of Canaan.” This role model for Jewish people everywhere is thusly the direct heir of the ancient Canaanites, precursors of the Jewish community in the land of Palestine. This historical legacy and patrimony established, Paul Newman had only to play the strong fighter—ferocious, hard and wily—with his blond mane cut short, in the military style.
The object of Ari's affections, however ambivalent they may be, is Kitty Fremont, played by Eva Marie Saint. Not only does the pairing of the earnest and ever-hard Ari, the “Lion,” and the compliant but faithful “Kitty” imply a classic gender relationship, but the coupling of this prickly Sabra and the cuddly American symbolizes the special relationship between the United States and nascent state of Israel that has come to be called the “fifty-first state” of the USA.
The other major character, played by the baby-faced Sal Mineo, is “Dov Landau,” the 17-year-old survivor of the Warsaw ghetto and Auschwitz. This name evokes the dove of peace and the infancy indirectly evoked by the term “landau” (baby carriage?). The irony is that the angelic Dov, alights on Palestinian soil with the fury of a maddened bird of prey. He is the consummate terrorist—angry and bloodthirsty. Dov's conversion to Zionism as a collective project, as opposed to a vehicle for his personal vengeance, comes at the end of the story when peace has been (temporarily) achieved through unrelenting combat. Dov then leaves Israel for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he will perfect the engineering skills learned building bombs in Warsaw and in Palestine. Peace means refining the technical capacity for the new nation's defense. In the meantime, the Arabs have cruelly murdered Dov’s fiancée, the soft and sweet Karen.
Exodus and Kedma differ most notably in the latter's avoidance of the kind of crude propaganda that Leon Uris and Otto Preminger so heavily developed. Rather than forcing his viewers to accept a vision of the birth of Israel founded upon caricatures, distortions and omissions from historical reality, Amos Gitaï chose to simply place characters (who we see briefly) in a specific situation, which is the real focus of the film. Whereas Preminger symbolized the destiny of a people in a story of strong characters, Gitaï illustrated the tragedy of an historical conjuncture in which the historical actors were largely incidental. We see this aspect of Gitaï's thematic inversion of Preminger's film in the soliloquies delivered in both films.
At the very end of Exodus, Ari Ben Canaan delivers a speech at Karen's graveside, in which he justifies the Zionist project as the just and prophesized return of a people forced to err in a hostile world for 2000 years. The resistance encountered to this project, he explains, is only the result of evil, self-interested individuals (such as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem) who are afraid of losing their privileges once the Arabs learn that Jewish settlement is in their interest. Ari concludes: “I swear that the day will come when Arab and Jew will live in Peace together.” This said, the film ends with a military convoy receding into the distance, towards a new battle in the just cause.
In Kedma, there are two soliloquies, delivered not by strong and self-composed leaders, but rather by distraught, frightened people, caught in a web woven by the apprentice sorcerers in the background—the real architects of the situations in which destinies are sealed and lives are broken. A middle-aged, Polish Jew makes the first speech. Appalled by the new cycle of suffering he witnessed upon arrival in Palestine, he shouts that suffering, guilt and martyrdom have become essential to the Jewish character. Without it, he cries, the Jewish people “cannot exist.” This is their tragedy.
An aged Palestinian peasant, pushed off his land, fleeing the combat, makes the second expression of despair. Disregarding the danger, he says: “we will stay here in spite of you. Like a wall, and we will fill the streets with demonstrations, generation after generation.”
How to reconcile the fascist judeocide and the Nakba (the Palestinian « disaster » caused by the Zionist ethnic cleansing)? Gitaï's Kedma places the contemporary dilemma within its historical and existential context. Preminger's Exodus did everything not to provide moviegoers with the elements necessary to informed understanding. This is the difference between, on the one hand, demagogy and propaganda and, on the other hand, a call to reason and justice.
January 20/21 2007
Zionism in the Cinema - Part Three
By LARRY PORTIS
The War of 1948 as seen in Otto Preminger's Exodus, Amos Gitaï's Kedma and Elie Chouraki’s O Jerusalem!
Representations of leadership in Exodus were carefully contrived to create support, in the United States and elsewhere for the State of Israel. It is for this reason that the plots and stratagems of world leaders who created the situation are conspicuously absent from the story. In Kedma, on the contrary, the absence of leaders and any characterization of leadership is designed to have an entirely different effect: namely the evocation of the hatred and human suffering caused when people are transformed into instruments in the service of political and ideological projects.
Other depictions of the war between the Zionists and those who fought them have been less successful either as exercises in propaganda or as calls to reason. In the first category would have to be placed the myriad of films that prepared the public for the racist prejudices underlying the Exodus screenplay. We can be grateful to Jack G. Shaheen whose research on anti-Arab stereotypes in the US cinema appears to be conclusive. For over a period of twenty years, Shaheen viewed most of the more than 900 films or television series produced in the United States in which Arabs played a role. Although he found a few in which Arabs were portrayed in a positive way, Shaheen found that on this theme the cinema in the United States has been primarily a vector for the transmission of invidious stereotypes: “I came to discover that Hollywood has projected Arabs as villains in more than 900 feature films. The vast majority of villains are notorious sheikhs, maidens, Egyptians, and Palestinians. The rest are devious dark-complexioned baddies from other Arab countries, such as Algerians, Iraquis, Jordanians, Lebanese, Libyans, Moroccans, Syrians, Tunisians, and Yemeni.” What we do not see in these films is perhaps even more important: “Missing from the vast majority of scenarios are images of ordinary Arab men, women and children; living ordinary lives. Movies fail to project exchanges between friends, social and family events.”
These images are entirely logical given the orientalist heritage of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As Shaheen points out, Orientalism in the arts and letters performed a long-lasting service to those who wished to dominate Arab regions. “European artists and writers,” he says, “helped reduce the region to colony. They presented images of desolate deserts, corrupt palaces and slimy souks inhabited by the cultural ‘other’ – the lazy, bearded heathen Arab Muslim.”
It was, therefore, natural for United-Statesian filmmakers to indulge in such blatantly racist stereotyping. The “orientalist” notions that defined Arabs are part of a generalized conventional wisdom, of a now strongly rooted ideology that flatters “national” pretensions and justifies patterns of domination on all levels of human existence.
In the United States, receptivity to culturist and racist perceptions of “Arabs” has been facilitated by a kind of historical memory concerning the Native Americans. Clearly, an “Arab” was somehow akin to an American Indian, even if the differences could not be entirely ignored. Although the Arabs, it could not be denied, had managed to conquer much of the territory that had been the Roman Empire, they nonetheless had not developed the “rationalistic” culture that would eventually lead the “West” to achieve a higher civilization. Just as the plains Indians became the archetype for American Indians in general, so did the image of the nomadic Bedouin typify the Arab in the popular imagination.
In effect, there are a series of related historical conjunctures that seem to have called contemporary Arabophobia into existence. The “closing” of the “frontier” in the United States, officially announced in 1890, coincided with the virtual end of the military campaigns against the Native American tribes in the West in the 1890s. In was then that motion picture technology was invented and, by the end of the decade, began to be commercialized. Simultaneously, the Zionist movement was conceived and organized by Theodore Herzl during these years.
Another element in this picture is the European preoccupation with establishing, and justifying its presence in North Africa and elsewhere in the Arab countries. If France, where cinema was invented, had a special interest in Algeria, Tunisia and elsewhere in this regard, all the industrialized European countries were obliged to intrigue for influence in the Middle East because of the pressing need for petroleum resources so sorely lacking in Europe during the high tide of industrialization and the run-up to the First World War. Is it surprising, in this context, that Georges Méliès should have, during the first years of the twentieth century, pioneered the standard “orientalist” movies featuring cruel and dishonest Arab men and sexually provocative Arab women?
From the 1890s and throughout the 1920s, at the very time that Zionist propaganda was successfully imposing a new set of terms for referring to the residents of Palestine, the cinema cultivated cultural stereotypes which justified imperial ambitions. A revealing example is that mentioned by Allen Gevinson. Eleanor Roosevelt, the cultivated and (relatively) politically progressive wife of president Franklin D. Roosevelt, was receptive to the Zionist project for the judaicization of Palestine because a nomadic people – the Palestinian “Arabs” – could be displaced without causing them significant hardship.
This is the general historical context in which we must understand the Exodus project and why it was so successful. The success of Otto Preminger’s Exodus can be explained by the cultural predispositions of the (Western) populations that it was intended to inform and entertain and the tremendous financial and technical resources devoted to its production and distribution. Amos Gitaï’s Kedma could never hope to compete on these terms.
Even after the emergence of Israel as the most powerful political and military entity in the Middle East, the idea that the Jewish state is vulnerable because of its neighbors, and not because of the consequences of the ethnic cleansing that is essential to the Zionist project, is seriously accepted by millions of people.
Still, there have been changes in the way the Zionist state has been perceived. The most important event in provoking a reassessment of Israel is probably the “preventive war” launched in June 1967. The “Six-Day War” came as a surprise to people who had come to think of Israel as a small and vulnerable country whose very existence is a miracle given the ruthless leaders and masses of Arabs surrounding it. The events of 1948 and the audacious attack on Suez in 1956 had not modified this image. Exodus as film and novel are in great part responsible.
In the wake of the 1967 war, more critical attention was drawn to the reality to the Zionist state. Logically, this new interest was often expressed as interest in the population of Palestine before and after 1948. For the first time in the popular communications media, the Israeli state was placed on the ideological defensive, especially in that the major consequence of this war conquering and occupation of the rest of historical Palestine, including East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights on Syrian territory. Suddenly, certain questions were asked by increasing numbers of people. Who were the Palestinians? What had happened to them? In 1969, the Israeli prime minister, Golda Meir, aroused controversy by suggesting that the “Palestinians” have never existed. During the same period, the Palestine Liberation Organization gained notoriety by its difficult struggle inside and outside Palestine itself.
For all but the ideologically blind, it was difficult to deny the legitimacy of the Palestinian grievances against the Zionist movement and state. The existence and suffering of Palestinians became a fact to be dealt with, and the only question was how to deal with it. In 1973, the General Assembly of the United Nations Organization voted a resolution proclaiming, “Zionism is racism”.
In 1972, the publication of a book, O Jerusalem!, by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre recounting the battle for Jerusalem in the 1948 war responded to the new situation. The authors were two journalists, one United-Statesian, the other French. In this impressive historical account, based upon interviews of dozens of participants and survivors of the War, we discover the existence of Palestinian people of all social classes and religious confessions. Many prominent leaders, on both sides of the War, granted access to private and public archives, along with large amounts of time, thus enabling the authors’ investigations. The result is an undoubtedly impressive and useful study.
The implicit thesis of their commercially successful, “bestselling” book (excerpted prior to publication in Reader’s Digest and released in English and French) is that both sides had reasons to fight. In particular, the injustice done to Palestinians is clearly described. There is implicit criticism of some factions of the Zionist movement, Most prominently, the actions of the Zionist terrorist organizations Irgun (led by future prime minister Menahim Begin) and the Stern Gang (led by future prime minister Yitzhak Shamir) are shown to be fanatical racists bent on ethnic cleansing. The Deir Yassin massacre is fully discussed, to the point of detailing the summary executions of men and women, the murder of children, the rapes and the theft that it involved. We are not told, however, that hundreds of villages were destroyed throughout Palestine during this war. Still, it is to the book’s credit that even the Palmach and the Haganah are revealed to be unconcerned with the human and proprietary rights of Palestinians.
Overall, the War is presented as a kind of almost inevitable human tragedy that should enlist all of our compassion and understanding. In addition, there is a distinct impression of even-handedness imparted as this book is read.
However, there is more than a suggestion of partisanship in the book. For example, the loss of a part of the territory included on the Palestinian side of the rejected UN Partition Plan is attributed to the weakness and rivalries among the Arab leaders. Although Palestinians are not dehumanized in this book, as they are in Leon Uris’ Exodus, the cumulative effect of reading 600 pages of quotation, narration and analysis gradually reveals to the reader that Jewish or Zionist sources are considerably more present that those of Palestinians or of other “Arab” participants in the War. In addition, there seems to be a consistent underestimation of the Zionist military preparations and advantages, just as there may be over emphasis on cultural or psychological explanations for Arab failures. Most fundamentally, there is one essential premise that the book never challenges: the presumed right of Jewish people to migrate in massive numbers to an already populated territory.
The film French director Elie Chouraki made of O Jerusalem!, released 34 years after the publication of the book, is a melodramatic fictionalization which is only superficially inspired by the erudite history written by Larry Collins and Dominque Lapierre. Chouraki dramatized some real historical characters, and created others, in order to make an appeal for “peace” that carefully omits discussion of any issue except to say that both “peoples” have an historical claim to Palestine.
At times, Chouraki shows that certain revelations made by Collins and Lapierre, such as the terrorist bombing campaign against Arab residential neighborhoods in West Jerusalem, continue to be unacceptable considered from a Zionist perspective. This is because O Jerusalem! is a Zionist film in that it calls for an acceptance of the status quo without calling into question the foundations of the Zionist state.
The fact that self-proclaimed “republicans”, in France, the United States or elsewhere, can continue to support the idea of religious state while pointing with horror to the rise of political confessionalism in general is a remarkable phenomenon. It attests to the continued power of the Zionist idea that Jewish nationalism is both divinely sanctioned and a solution to anti-Semitism everywhere. Both ideas lack real foundation. Chouraki’s film shows that the ideology of Orientalism and of Zionist propaganda as expressed in Exodus, continue to support the occupation of Palestine and the oppression of Palestinians. Fortunately, there are voices, such as that of Amos Gitaï, that doggedly persist in their efforts to be heard.
Published in Counterpunch