The Big Picture: How Israel Won the West examines how Israel came to have such a privileged and protected place in the Western world. It traces the journey of the Jewish people, from their biblical origin story through centuries of persecution and the emergence of Zionism, to the creation of Israel and subsequent occupation of Palestinian land. What emerges, meanwhile, is a process of transformation in which Jews move from being despised by early Christians as “Christ-killers”—sowing the seed of a disgusting anti-Semitism that would develop into anti-Semitism—to being viewed as part of the white race. The Western world shares a common Judeo-Christian heritage.

The film clearly demonstrates the compatibility of Zionism with “Western civilization” and deliberately pits it against eastern peoples (Arabs, Muslims). This would lay the foundations for an Israel in which Arab Jews would be marginalized and European Ashkenazi Jews would dominate and become the linchpin of support for right-wing governments and far-right nationalists.

The age-old policy, first outlined by Ze’ev Jabotinsky, that only force can impose Zionism and push Palestinians to accept the reality of colonization is clearly revealed.

Maintaining the imposition of this settler-colonial reality will require a “special relationship” between Israel and the United States. This will not only be encouraged by US geostrategic interests in the Middle East, but will also be facilitated by the “whitening” of Jews in the American and Western imagination, folding them into an opportunistic Judeo-Christian identity that excludes Arabs. This conscious positioning of “us” and “them” served to legitimize Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands and massacre of the Palestinian people under the umbrella and support of the Western world order.

The horror of Israel’s war on Gaza is clearly visible to the whole world. Following the attacks on October 7, 2023, more than 40,000 people, mostly women and children, died under the name of “self-defense” by Israeli forces on the mission to “destroy” Hamas. A clear vision, a genocide in progress. Israel still continues the war. Its mission is heading towards Lebanon, where more civilians have been killed as Israel targets Hezbollah. While Israel claims to be fighting in the name of Western civilization and against “human animals” in the war between the Judeo-Christian world and the “barbarians”, all this is happening with the full support of the West; This is a fabricated narrative that has been a long time in the making. .

Filmmaker: Sanjiev Johal

Features:

Shaul Magid – adjunct professor of modern Jewish studies at 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 March – associate professor, Pennsylvania State University
Arie M Dubnov – associate professor, George Washington University