2025-05-13

‘Israelism’: The promised land needs a new narrative | Myriam Francois

‘Israelism’: The promised land needs a new narrative | Israel-Palestine conflict | Al Jazeera


Opinions|Israel-Palestine conflict
‘Israelism’: The promised land needs a new narrative

Israelism, a controversial new film on the relationship between Israel and Jewish identity, tells a story which we all need to hear.

Myriam Francois
Award winning Franco-Irish documentary filmmaker, journalist and writer
Published On 29 Jan 202429 Jan 2024


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Activists with Jewish Voice for Peace, gather to protest the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza and chain themselves to the fence outside the White House, Monday, Dec. 11, 2023, in Washington. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)


“If you want to change the world, you need to change your story”, so says Michael Margolis, CEO and founder of Storied, a strategic consultancy that specialises in storytelling for disruption.

As a filmmaker, the quote makes perfect sense to me. Stories provide us with an emotional sustenance which can galvanise, hearten and sustain humanity through its most complex and arduous challenges. But stories, unlike mere ideas, or arguments, speak to the heart, a space beyond hardened misconceptions which can impede our ability to relate and connect to our shared humanity.

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In a new, controversial documentary film called Israelism, two young American Jews raised to unconditionally love Israel, experience a profound and life-changing awakening as they bear witness to the brutality of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. As they join a growing movement of young American Jews battling the old guard to redefine Judaism’s relationship with Israel, the protagonists take us into the battle over the very soul of modern Jewish identity.
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The film has been touring US campuses, where its release during the ongoing genocidal assault on Gaza has led to numerous calls for censorship and cancellations of scheduled screenings by campus authorities. In the midst of a highly censored public debate around the Israeli occupation, the efforts to censor the film is a reflection of the times – even the Jewish voices for peace being targeted by the machine which has for so long sought to silence Palestinian calls for liberation.

Israelism tells a story which we all need to hear, not least because today the United States is the only force that can rein in Israeli extremism. It offers a small window into how powerful special interest groups in the US groom young Jews into blindly supporting Israel, and how some, like its protagonists, manage to escape it.

But to a non-Jew like myself, the most compelling element of the film was its candid depiction of the emotional bond most Jews have been made to develop with Israel, and the difficulties they experience when they attempt to step outside of the powerful, unifying narrative that sustains this bond.

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While its many critics, including myself, view Israel as an ethno-nationalist, racially supremacist rogue state, at odds with international law and operating an apartheid system, Jews are taught from a young age that the modern state of Israel is the embodiment of Jewish self-actualisation and freedom.

That’s no small narrative to dismantle because, in part, it is true. After years of persecution and exile, Jews do finally have a home. Except it is not their home. It’s that of the Palestinians. The displacement of Palestinians from their land to actualise the Zionist myth of a “land without people for a people with a land” is no less objectionable than the persecution and exile imposed on the Jews historically.
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While the main characters in Israelism come to see that their dream of Israel has been built on a lie, what was missing from the film was an alternative story.

Academic Barnett R Rubin poetically describes the Jewish narrative about modern Israel in his article titled “False Messiahs”: “Repeated in every era, this grand narrative – slavery to freedom, exile to redemption – was the constant, if sometimes barely audible, background music of the Jewish people’s understanding of their encounter with history.”

Rubin paints a poignant picture of Jewish history, replete with the horrors of anti-Semitic European persecution through the centuries, exile, and a deep longing and hope for a place of safety and security. Political Zionism does not emerge out of a vacuum, he explains, but from the inability of European states to guarantee the safety and security of the Jewish people. With the pogroms and eventually, the culmination of European racialised violence in the form of the Holocaust in the mid-20th century, the toxic intersection of colonialism and Zionism sets the stage for our current crisis.

“Israeli Jews are settler colonialists with a historical memory of indigenous origin,” writes Rubbin. “They developed an ideology and a political rather than purely religious movement of ‘return’. But their historical memory was not shared by the land’s inhabitants. The historical memory of the Jewish people did not create the right or capacity to confiscate or occupy a single dunam of land against the will of its possessors. The historical memory of one people, however tenacious, creates no right to rule over another.”
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That narrative of dispossession, persecution and triumph is what is buttressing support for the current state of Israel. While a growing movement of critics is dismantling this, the next generation of haunted residents of this contested land, desperately need a new story of hope to replace it.

Today, as the Israeli founder and executive director of Idealist.org, Ami Dar, writes, “If everyone, everywhere, truly accepted that seven million Jews and seven million Palestinians are not going anywhere, and that any possible future has to include and encompass both, the whole energy around this conflict would shift.”

For that shift to happen, we need new stories. Stories which recognise and honour claims to the land which, whilst presented as competing, are not inherently so. After all, Indigenous philosophies might push us to consider that land belongs to no one and that in fact, the Abrahamic stewards of the land have a common mission to preserve and protect its sacred nature and honour all its inhabitants.

Rubbin seems to suggest that a “decolonised” Zionism, one divorced from the corrupting supremacy of colonialism, and therefore more of a cultural longing for a place, than a political or territorial claim to it, should be distinguished from the violent settler ideology currently unleashed: “The Palestine they [the Jews] longed for was the embodiment of their hopes, rather than a few provinces of the Ottoman empire with Arab Muslim and Christian populations.” And so it may be from within those hopes, married to the longing of the Palestinians for a return to their land, for autonomy over their lives, and for peace, that the next story might be weaved. And while it is arguably those same elemental dreams which render the current power struggle so apocalyptic, they also render a story which honours them profoundly compelling.
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While the focus of Israelism is on the need for Jews to dismantle the Frankenstein that is Israel’s violent occupation, what is missing is a narrative of hope.

A growing number of Jews are joining the ranks of anti-Zionism and the mass protests of Jewish Voices for Peace and Jewish elders have proven powerful counters to the otherwise assumed consensus around support for the current Israeli state. But counter-narratives require more than simple opposition to last.

The story being sold to young Jews around the world is profound, moving and utterly compelling. And this means that any struggle to free Jews from this mischaracterisation of the state of Israel as a redemptive embodiment of Jewish self-actualisation will necessarily require an equally, if not more compelling, counter-narrative. One which honours legitimate Jewish fears of history repeating itself, provides the community and communion of a shared dream, of cosmic dimension, but also promises to liberate the Palestinians.

As Rubin also points out: “What is objectionable about colonialism is not the immigration or settlement of a population of a different ethnic or national origin, or of people that are in some sense non-indigenous, but the domination of one group over another. It is impossible to rewind and rerun history. But it is possible, indeed necessary, to assure a future where Palestinians and Israelis have equal rights.”

As Israelis become increasingly disillusioned with Netanyahu, Jewish voices within and outside of Israel need to confront the impact of militaristic ideology on their culture, politics and identity. The Israel Democracy Institute survey, a monthly gauge of Israeli sentiment on current events, found diminishing levels of optimism for the country’s future security and democratic character. If the nihilistic TikTok videos mocking maimed Palestinian children weren’t a wake-up call, the telegram groups in which thousands revel over snuff movies of Palestinian civilians being tortured and killed should be. Any denigration of the humanity of another necessarily diminishes our own. This loop of dehumanising violence should not be varnished by propaganda tales any longer.
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While honouring legacies of suffering and exile, opposition to the apartheid state must also make way for the promise of a new dream. Nelson Mandela’s freedom movement wasn’t led merely by opposition to white supremacy – it was guided by a dream of coexistence, equality and justice for all. Contrary to narratives of Palestinian contrariety, Palestinian leadership has consistently and generously made space for the Jewish presence on their land. It is now up to the new generation of Jews to reimagine their history in a way which honours all God’s children equally – and in that new story lies the true promised land.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
Myriam Francois
Award winning Franco-Irish documentary filmmaker, journalist and writer
===

Myriam François

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Myriam François
François in 2020
Born
Emilie Siobhan Geoghegan François

December 1982 (age 42)[1]
Camden, London, England[2]
Education
Occupation(s)Journalist, filmmaker, writer
Websitemyriamfrancois.com

Emilie Siobhan Geoghegan François (born December 1982),[1] known as Myriam François and formerly as Myriam François-Cerrah, is a British journalist, filmmaker and writer. Her work has appeared on the BBC, Channel 4 and Al Jazeera. She is the founder and CEO of production company MPWR Productions, which specialises in documentary films centred on minority voices.[3]

Early life, early career and education

[edit]

François was born in Camden, London, to an Irish mother and a French father.[4] She attended a French school in London and is bilingual. She was born Emilie François, but has used Myriam instead of her given name since she became Muslim in 2003.[5]

François was a child actress, whose performance as Margaret Dashwood in the Oscar-winning film Sense and Sensibility (1995) earned her critical acclaim.[6] She went on to appear in Paws (1997), alongside Billy Connolly and Nathan Cavaleri, and in New Year's Day (2001).[7][8]

François holds an MA from Georgetown University (United States) and a BA from the University of Cambridge (UK). She completed her PhD (DPhil) at Oxford University, focusing on Islamic movements in Morocco in 2017.

Career

[edit]

François was an assistant editor and features writer at Emel magazine (2008–2009) and worked at the Islam Channel in London. She translated Asma Lamrabet's book, Women in the Qur’an: An Emancipatory Reading[9] which won the English Pen Award.[10]

François began her career in documentary filmmaking as a presenter and producer at the BBC. Her first documentary on BBC One, A Deadly Warning: Srebrenica Revisited (2015), was nominated for the Sandford St Martin Religious Programming Award in 2016.[11] In 2016, she presented her second documentary, The Muslim Pound (2016), which explores the growing consumer goods market for Muslims in the UK.[12] She was also a programme researcher and presenter at the BBC and a regular guest on its flagship channel's The Big Questions from 2008 to 2011[13] and on Sunday Morning Live also in 2015.[14][15] François then worked as a programme producer on Al Jazeera English's Head to Head.[16]

In 2017, François presented The Truth About Muslim Marriage (Channel 4, 2017), which was nominated for Best Investigative Documentary at the Asian Media Awards in 2018.[17][18] François then joined TRT World as Europe correspondent, covering European breaking news. Between 2017 and 2018, she also developed, produced and presented Compass, a monthly arts and culture documentary for the channel.[19]

In 2019, François left TRT World and began working with BBC World Service, where she produced and presented a series of short documentaries, including Tariq Ramadan: #MeToo in the Muslim World (2018), and Is Brexit-Voting Llanelli Changing Its Mind? (2019) which looks at the impact of Brexit in Llanelli, a Leave-voting town in Wales.[20][21] In 2019, her documentary City of Refuge, which examined the plight of Syrian refugees in Lebanon, aired on BBC Radio 4 in April and on BBC World service in May.[22] In 2022, she presented the BBC World Service audio documentary When Rape Becomes a Crime, which focuses on rape laws in Senegal.[23] François also began hosting and producing The Big Picture: France in Focus, a four-part series for Al Jazeera English focused on the fault lines within French society.[24]

Writing

[edit]

François was a correspondent for the Huffington Post (2014–2015), where she broke a headline story on an exclusive 36-page document written by alleged al-Qaeda kingpin Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.[25] She has appeared on Newsnight (2009), 4thought.tv (2011),[26] BBC News (2010),[27] Crosstalk (2010), BBC Radio (2012), Sky News[28] and documentaries including Divine Women, presented by Bettany Hughes.[29]

A former columnist at the New Statesman, François's writing has featured in the British press, including The Guardian, TIME, Foreign Policy, The Telegraph, CNN online and Middle East Eye.[30][31][32][33][34][35]

François is a former senior fellow at the Center for Global Policy (CGP), a think tank where, between 2019 and 2020, she produced an in-depth report looking at the plight of European children of ISIS fighters in camps in Northern Syria, as well as an accompanying piece for Foreign Policy. She has been an outspoken critic of Islamophobia.[36] She is a former research associate at School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London (SOAS), in the Department of the Languages and Cultures of the Near and Middle East, where she researched issues related to British Muslims, integration, and racism.

Her articles also appeared in The Huffington Post,[37] New Statesman,[38] Your Middle East,[39] The London Paper, Jadaliyya,[40] the Australian Broadcasting Corporation,[41] The Daily Telegraph,[42] Salon,[43] Index on Censorship,[44] The F-Word,[45] and the magazine Emel.[46]

Other work

[edit]
François in 2015

François gave guest lectures at Harvard University (2014), the University of Birmingham (2014), and Luther College (2015) in Decorah, Iowa, and presented an annual guest lecture at Kingston University, in England, in 2012–2014. She spoke at the 2015 HowTheLightsGetsIn at the Hay-on-Wye Festival.[47] She has been a regular presenter at high-profile events, including the Mayor of London's Eid Festival 2019[48] and the London Modest Fashion Festival 2018.[49]

She was a judge for the 2019 Baillie Gifford Prize for non-fiction books.[50]

Personal life

[edit]

In 2003, at the age of 21, François became a Muslim after graduating from Cambridge. At the time, she was a sceptical Roman Catholic. She rejects the use of the words "convert" and "revert" as "exclusionary", describing herself as "just Muslim".[51]

François chose to stop wearing a hijab in the late 2010s. She said that the subsequent lack of Islamophobia due to her being a white woman in Western attire made her feel enmeshed in white privilege. Nevertheless, she did not decide to return to the hijab.[2]

As of 2015, François was married to a Turkish man.[52] By early 2022, they had divorced.[53]

Filmography

[edit]
  • A Deadly Warning: Srebrenica Revisited, BBC One, 2015 (presenter)
  • The Muslim Pound, BBC One, 2016 (presenter)
  • The Truth About Muslim Marriage, Channel 4, 2017 (presenter)
  • Compass series, TRT World, 2018–19 (presenter/producer)
    • Witnesses of Stone
    • Crafting an Identity - 'Britishness' After Brexit
    • Art Against All Odds
  • France in Focus series, Al Jazeera English, 2022 (presenter/producer)
    • The Big Picture
    • Flirting with the Far Right
    • The Legacy of Colonialism in France
  • Finding Aicha, BBC's Our World/BBC Arabic/CBC, 2023 (director/producer)

References

[edit]
  1. ^ Jump up to:a b "Emilie Siobhan Geoghegan FRANCOIS". Companies House. Retrieved 26 May 2019.
  2. ^ Jump up to:a b François, Myriam. "Muslim, 'white' & seeking new forms of solidarity: Myriam François" (Interview). Interviewed by The Demented Goddess. The Demented Goddess. Archived from the original on 30 September 2020. Retrieved 13 November 2020.
  3. ^ "MPWR Productions". MPWR Productions. Retrieved 12 January 2023.
  4. ^ Miriam O'Reilly (8 September 2011). "Heart and Soul: Muslim White Female". BBC Sounds (Podcast). BBC World Service. Event occurs at 03:21. Myriam François-Cerrah, daughter of a French father and an Irish mother...
  5. ^ Ian (14 October 2023). "Myriam François Bio, Age, Husband, Hijab, Net Worth, Channel 4". BiographyScoop. Retrieved 11 January 2024.
  6. ^ Lee, Ang (26 January 1996), Sense and Sensibility (Drama, Romance), Columbia Pictures, Mirage Enterprises, retrieved 12 January 2023
  7. ^ Zwicky, Karl (25 September 1997), Paws (Adventure, Family, Fantasy), Australian Film Finance Corporation (AFFC), Latent Image Productions Pty. Ltd., New South Wales Film & Television Office, retrieved 12 January 2023
  8. ^ Krishnamma, Suri (2 November 2001), New Year's Day (Drama), Flashpoint (I), Alchymie, Liberator Productions, retrieved 12 January 2023
  9. ^ "Women in the Qur'an: An Emancipatory Reading". Kube Publishing. Archived from the original on 1 April 2019. Retrieved 12 October 2017.
  10. ^ "Speakers and panellists". Cardiff University. Retrieved 11 January 2024.
  11. ^ "BBC One - A Deadly Warning: Srebrenica Revisited". BBC. Retrieved 12 January 2023.
  12. ^ "BBC One - The Muslim Pound". BBC. Retrieved 12 January 2023.
  13. ^ "One Programmes – The Big Questions, Series 3, Episode 5". BBC. 31 January 2010. Retrieved 30 September 2011.
  14. ^ "One Programmes – Series 6 Episode 15". BBC. 4 October 2015. Retrieved 12 May 2019.
  15. ^ "One Programmes – Series 6 Episode 15". BBC. 5 July 2015. Retrieved 12 May 2019.
  16. ^ "Ebor Lecture: Myriam Francois-Cerrah". higheryork. Archived from the original on 15 February 2019. Retrieved 15 February 2019.
  17. ^ "The Truth About Muslim Marriage". True Vision TV. Retrieved 12 January 2023.
  18. ^ "Myriam Francois's Channel 4 documentary nominated for Asian Media Award". Northbank Talent Management. 4 October 2018. Retrieved 15 February 2019.
  19. ^ "Compass - TRT World". Compass - TRT World. Retrieved 12 January 2023.
  20. ^ "The rock star scholar and the rape claims". BBC News. Retrieved 12 January 2023.
  21. ^ "Is Brexit-voting Llanelli changing its mind?". BBC News. Retrieved 12 January 2023.
  22. ^ "BBC Radio 4 - City of Refuge". BBC. Retrieved 12 January 2023.
  23. ^ "BBC World Service - The Documentary Podcast, When rape becomes a crime". BBC. 26 May 2022. Retrieved 12 January 2023.
  24. ^ "France in Focus". Al Jazeera. Retrieved 12 January 2023.
  25. ^ François-Cerrah, Myriam (14 January 2014). "Mastermind Of The Sept. 11 Attacks Wants To Convert His Captors". The Huffington Post.
  26. ^ "Myriam Francois Cerrah (2011) [Should Muslims adapt to Britain or should Britain adapt to Muslims?]". British Film Institute. Archived from the original on 22 December 2021. Retrieved 30 September 2011. Alternative titles... 4thought.tv[17/03/2011]
  27. ^ "Impact Asia – A veiled threat or an attack on faith?". BBC News. 13 July 2010. Retrieved 30 September 2011.
  28. ^ "Myriam Francois". New Lines Institute.
  29. ^ Divine Women on BBC
  30. ^ "Myriam François". The Guardian. Retrieved 12 January 2023.
  31. ^ "Myriam Francois". Time. Retrieved 12 January 2023.
  32. ^ François, Myriam (October 2021). "Myriam François". Foreign Policy. Retrieved 12 January 2023.
  33. ^ "Myriam Francois-Cerrah". The Telegraph. 21 November 2017. Retrieved 12 January 2023.
  34. ^ François, Myriam (7 September 2016). "Forget the burkini ban: France's Muslims have much bigger problems". CNN. Retrieved 12 January 2023.
  35. ^ "Myriam François". Middle East Eye. Retrieved 12 January 2023.
  36. ^ "Myriam François". Foreign Policy. October 2021. Retrieved 12 January 2023.
  37. ^ François-Cerrah, Myriam (26 January 2012). "Why a War With Iran is the Real Threat". The Huffington Post. Retrieved 11 March 2012.
  38. ^ François-Cerrah, Myriam (14 December 2011). "When does it not pay to be Muslim?". The New Statesman. Retrieved 11 March 2012.
  39. ^ François-Cerrah, Myriam (29 April 2013). "Morsi must become a leader for all Egyptians". Your Middle East.
  40. ^ François-Cerrah, Myriam (16 May 2015). "Olivier Roy on Laicite as Ideology, the Myth of 'National Identity' and Racism in the French Republic". Jadaliyya.
  41. ^ François-Cerrah, Myriam (27 April 2015). "Face Veils and Miniskirts: Whose Interests are Served in France's Republic of Men?". ABC (Australia).
  42. ^ François-Cerrah, Myriam (17 July 2014). "Why banning Sharia courts would harm British Muslim women". The Telegraph.
  43. ^ François-Cerrah, Myriam (13 October 2014). "Bill Maher's horrible excuse: Why his defense of Islamophobia just doesn't make any sense". Salon.
  44. ^ François-Cerrah, Myriam (15 January 2011). "Tunisia: France's faux pas". Index on Censorship. Archived from the original on 22 January 2011. Retrieved 30 September 2011.
  45. ^ "Articles by Myriam Francois-Cerrah". The F-Word. 20 July 2009. Retrieved 30 September 2011.
  46. ^ "Sailing Towards The Divine". Emel. 27 June 2011. Retrieved 30 September 2011.
  47. ^ "Progressive politics takes centre stage at HowTheLightGetsIn". 27 April 2015.
  48. ^ "Everything you need to know about Eid Festival in London". Evening Standard. 6 June 2019. Retrieved 10 June 2019.
  49. ^ admin. "We are pleased to announce that Dr Myriam Francois will be hosting Modest Fashion Festival". Modest Fashion Festival. Retrieved 10 June 2019.
  50. ^ "Dr Myriam Francois". The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction. Retrieved 13 January 2019.
  51. ^ François-Cerrah, Myriam (16 August 2014). "Don't call me "convert" nor "revert" for that matter". Muslimvillage.com. Originally published on 15 June 2013 as a WordPress entry of hers titled Don't call me a "convert"/"revert". Her blog no longer exists.
  52. ^ "Ramadhan Routine: Myriam Francois-Cerrah". Hala Gems. 2 July 2015. Retrieved 19 January 2025.
  53. ^ François, Myriam [@MyriamFrancoisC] (7 March 2022). "can someone send me that khutbah on how paying your child support is actually an amanah and the grave sin involved in not providing for your child...? Also worth reminding your homeboys." (Tweet). Retrieved 19 January 2025 – via Twitter.
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