Gideon Levy Opinion | Get Out the Barf Bags for New Documentary ''Til Kingdom Come'
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There are people who should be ashamed of their actions. Others should be ashamed of their government’s actions. But in Israel a new kind of shame has been revealed – the shame of knowing who its friends are. The Israel-lovers of 2020 are either tyrants or ignoramuses. That’s what’s left.
On Tuesday Kan 11 aired a documentary about the latter. The movie by the Emmy-winning filmmaker Maya Zinshtein, “'Til Kingdom Come,” looks at the boorish Israel-lovers, American Evangelical Christians. Instead of a bag of popcorn, a barf bag would have come in handy.
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If these are Israel’s friends, it has no need for enemies. If this is the coalition that is supposed to support Israel, it would be better off without support. Millions of primitive, ignorant, devout fundamentalists who are led like sheep by equally ignorant charlatan pastors, would not bode well for any country. The fact that they’re awaiting Armageddon in which the Jews will either be destroyed or convert to Christianity only adds another bizarre dimension to this twisted love story, a tale of love and great darkness. The connection with their Jewish counterparts – the settlers and the Jewish organizations that plead for donations – makes the picture even bleaker. Watch the movie and see us. Tell us who our friends are and we’ll know who we are.
Being hit with such a concentrated dose of this awfulness is a most difficult and revolting experience. Just think about how far Israel has come from the era of the ingenuous Scandinavian volunteers who came here because of their admiration for the idea of the kibbutz, to the Evangelical volunteers who come to help the violent land thieves work the stolen lands in the settlements. Just think what has happened since we dropped a coin into the blue collection box – perhaps it was also a dubious contribution, but there was an innocence about it – and now the poor children of America are asked to donate to a wealthy, well-established country with a strong, well-equipped occupying army. Pennies to buy a ninth submarine? A quarter to outfit the prime minister’s new plane?The teacher of these brainwashed children, Pastor Boyd Bingham IV, explains to them, “Israel and the Jews are better than us, you have to accept this,” and the stomach turns at the thought of what will become of these children. “Jesus was right when he said that salvation will come from the Jews,” he continues, making the worst of the settlement rabbis suddenly seem wonderfully enlightened.
With their own special brand of cynicism, the settlers pounced upon this mass movement, which has flourished in the age of Donald Trump, to milk it for all it’s worth. They were joined by the usual shnorrers from the shows put on by the Adelsons and Sabans, and the Friendship Foundation that squeezes money out of these Christians, who probably never heard about the existence of a Palestinian people that lives in their Holy Land, or about the apartheid regime there. The donations are relayed to a 77-year-old “terror attack survivor” who cries when she is given a food package. No more Holocaust survivors, now we have terror survivors to tug on the heartstrings. The good Christians have also joined Friends of the IDF, another ridiculous organization – why does the IDF need to beg for donations in an extravaganza, with disabled soldiers coming on stage to show their stumps – as Haim Saban and Sheldon Adelson, Israel’s saviors in America, the country where only money talks, look on teary-eyed.
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How revolting. How revolting to see Yael Eckstein, daughter of the late Rabbi Yehiel Eckstein, founder of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, acting almost like a Christian preacher just to schnorr more money. Why should these people donate money to Israel? Neither its hardships nor the rightness of its path justify this. How revolting to hear a settler condescending about her guests from America: “The Jews are the stars of the movie. If we let [the Christians] be supporting players, at least they’ll have a role in the movie.” And how revolting to see Benjamin Netanyahu telling the anti-Semitic pastor John Hagee, “We have no better friend in the world than you.” Well, at least this time Netanyahu was telling the truth.
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