The Big Picture: How Israel Won the West examines how Israel came to occupy such a privileged and protected place in the Western world. It traces the journey of the Jewish people from the biblical stories of origin through centuries of persecution and the advent of Zionism, to the creation of Israel and its subsequent occupation of Palestinian territory. Along the way, what is revealed is a process of transformation, of how Jews went from being despised by early Christians as “Christ-killers” – sowing a vile anti-Judaism that would mutate into anti-Semitism – to be considered part of the white group. Western world, sharing a common Judeo-Christian heritage.
The film lays bare Zionism’s alignment with “Western civilization”, deliberately pitting it against the peoples of the East – Arabs, Muslims. This would lay the foundation for an Israel in which Arab Jews were marginalized and European Ashkenazi Jews dominated and became the bedrock of support for right-wing governments and far-right nationalists.
What is becoming evident is the century-old policy, first described by Ze’ev Jabotinsky, that only force could impose Zionism and force Palestinians to accept the reality of colonization.
Maintaining the imposition of this colonial reality would require a “special relationship” between Israel and the United States. This would not only be favored by American geostrategic interests in the Middle East, but also facilitated by the “whitening” of Jews in the American and Western imagination, integrating them into an opportunistic Judeo-Christian identity that would exclude Arabs. This deliberate positioning of “us” and “them” served to legitimize Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory and the massacre of the Palestinian people, all under the auspices and support of the Western world order. .
The horror of Israel’s war against Gaza is evident to the entire world. More than 40,000 people died, mostly women and children, killed in the name of “self-defense” by Israeli forces on a mission to “destroy” Hamas after the attacks of October 7, 2023. in plain sight , a genocide in progress. And yet, Israel continues its war. Its mission extends to Lebanon, where more civilians are being killed as Israel targets Hezbollah. All this is happening with the full support of the West while Israel claims to fight in the name of Western civilization and against “human animals” in a battle between the Judeo-Christian world and the “barbarians” – an artificial narrative in gestation for a long time. .
Understand :
Shaul Magid – Visiting Professor of Modern Jewish Studies, Harvard University Divinity School
David Freidenreich – professor of Jewish studies, Colby College
Omer Bartov – professor of Holocaust and genocide studies, Brown University
Raz Segal – author, Genocide in the Carpathians
Michelle Mart – Associate Professor, Pennsylvania State University
Arie M Dubnov – associate professor, George Washington University
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