Unlearning Israeli Propaganda Through Documentaries, Part I

A review of “With God on our Side” ...

If you talk to an ordinary American, or, in my experience, if you talk to an average Israeli, for that matter, they don’t know anything about who the Palestinians are. They don’t know where they come from, they don’t know how they live, what they believe, and they don’t want to. Right? Because that just complicates things…

-       Historian Sam Biagetti

*Introducing a new series*

In his prophetic book Amusing Ourselves to Death, the late cultural critic Neil Postman observed the shoddiness and the shallowness of the “opinions” expressed by average Americans on important topics. “It is probably more accurate to call them emotions rather than opinions, which would account for the fact that they change from week to week, as the pollsters tell us.” [emphasis mine] Fingering the rise of television as the culprit, Postman claimed that TV was “altering the meaning of ‘being informed’ by creating a species of information that might properly be called disinformation,” [emphasis Postman’s] which he characterized as “misleading information – misplaced, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information – information that creates the illusion of knowing something but which in fact leads one away from knowing.” He asserted that this outcome was “the inevitable result” of “news…packaged as entertainment,” and that Americans were accordingly “losing our ability to know what it means to be well informed.”¹

I’ve always found these to be especially poignant observations, particularly the bit about Americans having emotions rather than opinions. This phenomenon is especially evident (to me at least) when matters of foreign policy blow up in the news. I’ve had the excruciating privilege to listen to people bloviate about the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, or the Russian invasion of Ukraine (to take two recent prominent examples), despite the fact that most of them probably couldn’t find either country on a map if I put a gun to their head, much less demonstrate insight into their histories. Like Postman, I would assign television a large share of the blame for this – if you watched closely, you could observe cable news quickly adopting a “line” about both events, then see ordinary people start confidently repeating that line shortly thereafter, as if it were their own original thought.

But no other recent geopolitical event has elicited such a great outpouring of emotions concealed behind the label “opinions” than Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. Indeed, whenever Israel takes criticism for actions that the IDF sometimes refer to as “mowing the grass,” its defenders dust off well-worn talking points: “Israel has a right to defend itself,” “Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East,” “Israel is surrounded by people that hate it,” et. al. I remember that when I was young, I found some of these compelling. Then I reached what George Carlin called “the age of reason,” read a few books, and saw them for what they were.

Alas, even as the Palestinian body count soars past 22,000, plenty of people are still invoking these and other stale cliches, which serve no purpose other than to obscure the nature of the military policies of a racist apartheid state. While here, too, television must take a share of the blame, we must not forget the role of propaganda, carefully instilled through a variety of means. A handful of documentaries explore the sources of pro-Israel propaganda masterfully. In a new limited series here at Cut the Cord, I’ll be taking a look at some of the most compelling examples. In this post I look at With God on Our Side, a Christian film from 2010 examining the ideology of “Christian Zionism,” which holds that God commands Christians to support the state of Israel because the Jews are His chosen people. This ideology has tremendous influence in the United States, especially in Republican circles. Christian Zionism is inculcated in American Evangelical youth from a young age, and has formed a cynical alliance with the state of Israel, to the delight of both nations’ leaders.

Subsequent installments will review documentaries including Israelism (2023), which details the less well-known but just as significant pro-Israel indoctrination undergone by younger Jewish Americans at various levels of schooling, and American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein (2009), a gripping portrait of perhaps the most tireless critic of Israeli propaganda alive, and his very public efforts at engaging with critics. I may add a few more films to the list as this thing goes on, so be on the lookout for that. For now, I turn my gaze to With God on Our Side.

While reporting for his 2008 book The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion at the Twilight of the American Empire, Matt Taibbi infiltrated a Texas megachurch in order to understand this side of American culture. It was the church of the notorious pastor John Hagee, head of Christians United for Israel (CUFI) and perhaps the foremost Christian Zionist in the country. In sermons Taibbi attended, Hagee spent a great deal of time not-so-subtly implying that then-Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was literally the biblical Antichrist. Hagee raved to his congregation that Ahmadinejad “is planning a nuclear holocaust,” called him “a new Hitler,” and insisted that “Iran MUST BE STOPPED!!!”

Taibbi quickly became wise to the game. Despite being impressed with Hagee’s considerable public speaking talent (“when it talks, this beach ball has tremendous oratorical range”), he nonetheless calls him “a con man” whose “job is to deliver Middle American Christians in support of pro-Israeli policies.” Hagee is merely “a run-of-the-mill kuntry preecher [sic] who found a Washington inside-baseball niche (delivering the Christian vote for Israel) and ran with it all the way to” insider access to the halls of power – indeed, Hagee has long been close to powerful Republican leaders, most recently Donald Trump. Taibbi plausibly speculates that Hagee’s ultimate aim is to turn CUFI into a Christian version of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the notorious “Israel lobby,” which would be “a fairly strange and ambitious goal for a preacher whose congregation has probably never heard of AIPAC.”²

Hagee is a prominent character in With God on Our Side, a fascinating look at the ideology of Christian Zionism “from the inside” – that is, from the perspective of evangelicals themselves, who debate the nature and biblical justification of American support for Israel throughout the film. The central dilemma this documentary explores is summed up early on by New Testament scholar and Presbyterian minister Gary Burge: “What has happened is that we as evangelicals have endorsed an Israeli domestic policy that has placed over three million people under military occupation, and has created the largest refugee population in the entire world.”

The film mostly follows a young man named Christopher, the son of an evangelical pastor, who like millions of people was raised within the tradition of Christian Zionism, but who comes to question it after learning about the Israeli occupation as well as talking with non-Zionist Christians, including a Christian Palestinian citizen of Israel. Christopher spends a considerable amount of time in the film staying with Palestinian families and listening to their stories, something the film takes care to note that few visitors to Israel ever do. Indeed, the film describes an Israeli government-sponsored Christian tourism industry in Jerusalem which consciously steers visitors away from any meaningful interactions with Palestinians, even the Palestinian Christian Churches.

Hagee and members of his organization appear throughout the film, offering their insane commentary on the geopolitics of the situation. Hagee calls people who argue that Palestinians might have at least some claim to the land “geopolitically ignorant.” He goes so far as to imply that there was no one in Palestine when Jewish settlers began to arrive in the early 20^th century, by claiming, “people [Palestinians] who today say it is their land lived before 1967 in Syria and other Arab countries.” A Reverend George Morrison of CUFI says of Israel, “It is the only country in the world where God actually outlined its borders and parameters, and gave it that land.” Morrison interprets the Bible to mean that the borders of Israel, as dictated by God, should rightfully extend all the way to Damascus in the North, Egypt in the South, and parts of Jordan in the East. The alarming geopolitical implications of this should be obvious.

In between extensive interviews with numerous Christian Zionists (who are given ample time to argue their lunatic case; this film is surprisingly fair) is one of the better efforts I’ve seen at explaining the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict concisely, without sacrificing too much nuance. Indeed, viewers without a clear understanding of how the conflict has actually transpired could do worse than to start with this documentary. Israeli historian Illan Pappe is brought in to provide details on what he and others call “the ethnic cleansing of Palestine” in 1948 during the Nakba, which involved the forced expulsion of three quarters of a million Palestinians from their homes. Norman Finkelstein as well as journalists and several non-Zionist Christian ministers provide further context on subsequent developments such as the creation of 200,000-400,000 additional Palestinian refugees in the wake of Israel’s conquests during the 1967 War, the failure of the Oslo accords, and the (il)legality of Israeli settlements. After learning about all this, Christopher asks the key question: “Why was I never told about this episode of Israel’s history while growing up in the Church?” It would be interesting to see Christian Zionists attempt to provide an answer.

With God on Our Side was released four years after former president Jimmy Carter rankled American audiences by publishing a book that explicitly accused Israel of practicing a form of apartheid. Despite mild reservations about using the word, Risa Zoll of the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem nonetheless agrees that the occupation is comparable to apartheid since there are two systems of law for everything in the West Bank – civilian law for the Israelis, military law and restrictions of every kind for the Palestinians. A powerful moment comes when a white South African pastor refers to the Israeli occupation as “apartheid on steroids,” since even in apartheid South Africa there weren’t massive walls separating whites and blacks, as there are all over the West Bank.³ The film explores the nature of this infamous separation barrier, “a network of fences and high concrete walls that cut through the West Bank for hundreds of miles.” The barrier is less about security and more about acquiring the best land for more illegal settlements, as well as confining the Palestinians to what essentially have become urban ghettoes.

Continuing his journey through the West Bank, Christopher is appalled at the behavior he witnesses from the settlers. Apparently, each year a group of them traditionally converges on the Arab section of Old Jerusalem to celebrate Israel’s capture of East Jerusalem in 1967. He observes the festivities, which prominently feature a massive crowd of settlers, wrapped in Israeli flags, shouting “death to Arabs” over and over in Hebrew as they dance through the streets. A large group identify an Arab journalist, surround him, begin chanting at him and flipping him off, to the point where the police have to be called. This too is captured on camera. Christopher describes witnessing other groups singling out Arabs hiding in alleys, surrounding them, chanting at them, and otherwise trying to intimidate them. He is visibly shocked at what he sees, glumly remarking, “I felt ashamed to be there.”

B’Tselem’s Zoll adds that even many IDF soldiers are afraid of these West Bank settlers, which suggests how much more afraid of them the Palestinians must be. Residents of the West Bank tell Christopher that Palestinian homes situated physically below the expanding settlements are subject to bricks, rocks, garbage, and even bleach being thrown at/dumped on their roofs by the settlers, forcing them to erect awnings to deflect the projectiles. The behavior captured by the film crew and described by the Palestinian residents is of a piece with what journalists like Abby Martin and Max Blumenthal have documented as a deeply sick yet unfortunately prominent element within Israeli culture:

The good reverend Hagee, responding to the factual assertion that West Bank settlements are illegal under international law (specifically the Geneva Convention, which states that occupying powers cannot transfer their populations to occupied areas), dismisses this as irrelevant because of the belief that God promised Abraham and his descendants this land forever. Accordingly, “the Palestinians have absolutely no claim to it, not ever,” and the idea that they do “is the greatest historical fraud in the history of humanity.” It is this use of the Bible to dismiss secular, international legal standards which the Reverend Stephen Sizer, author of Zion’s Christian Soldiers, identifies as particularly dangerous about this warped theology. In Christian Zionist circles, Sizer notes, the United Nations and other international groups are demonized, for reasons that are apparent.

Pondering the realities of the Israeli occupation, Christopher asks, “does supporting Israel mean that we fully support every one of those policies?” After listening to the views of madmen like Hagee, witnessing the nature of life in the West Bank (particularly the actions of settlers), and learning a bit of history, he gradually abandons his commitment to Christian Zionism. His father, a pastor, also claims to have backed off his ardent support of Israel on the grounds that Israeli policies violate other biblical principles.

As the film nears its end, it devolves somewhat into a theological debate, specifically over how to interpret Genesis chapter 12, the verse most often cited as supposedly commanding Christians to support the Israeli state. Numerous evangelical interviewees provide their two cents on this issue. If you’re a religious person captivated by disputes of this sort, With God on Our Side will be that much more appealing to you. If not, it might feel a little off-putting.⁴ That said, the focus on theology, and on the particular plight of Palestinian Christians, has its strengths. Many Americans probably aren’t aware that there has always been a Christian minority in Palestine, so to the extent that the film gets this point across, it’s a good thing. After all – let’s just face the facts on this one – many Americans are sadly more likely to be sympathetic to the suffering of Christians than Muslims. On the other hand, this emphasis sometimes creates the impression that, were there no Christians in Palestine, Americans, especially American Christians, wouldn’t care as much about the situation. This is why Enlightenment notions of universalism – that all people regardless of creed or any other differences should be treated the same – are so important.

Then again, I may be reading too much into the film’s choice of focus. At the very least, it’s clear that the people in the film who move away from Christian Zionism are motivated by humane principles as much as they are by granular details of exegesis. With God on Our Side is a powerful and informative movie, one that comes highly recommended given the bleak realities of the current situation in the region. There’s never been a better time for Americans – whose government is more complicit than any other in allowing the contemporary nightmare in Gaza to unfold – to appreciate just what the situation is all about, and why some people seem pre-programed to react in a certain way. That the full film is available for free on YouTube is also a plus. If you’ve ever wondered why so many evangelical Republican types are so fanatically committed to the Israeli state, or even just wanted a little clarity on what the history of the conflict has been, this documentary will help answer your questions.

1. Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, pp. 107-108

2. Taibbi, The Great Derangement, pp. 134-138

3. Of note, South Africa has recently filed a case at the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of genocide.

4. As an atheist, observing evangelicals debating whether a proper interpretation of Genesis does or does not demand geopolitical support of a Middle Eastern government is a bit like watching math students debate whether two plus two equals five hundred or one thousand.