London, United Kingdom – Gillan Mosely began to question her upbringing as a teenager.
Growing up in a Jewish family that believed in Zionismshe spent much of her adolescence thinking about what she sees as a sense of entitlement toward the “Holy Land.”
For her 2022 documentary The Tinderbox, Mosely traveled to Israel to try to unravel her British family’s teachings.
Taking viewers through the story of the creation of the Israeli state, The Tinderbox interrogates an entrenched us-them dichotomy that Moseley suggests is embedded in Zionism. She speaks to a variety of people from all sides, including settlers, liberal Israelis, a Hamas official, and Palestinians in the occupied West Bank to try to get to the bottom of where frictions begin.
Al Jazeera speaks to Moseley about his personal journey, Israel’s latest and deadliest war in Gaza following the Hamas attacks on October 7, and a growing confrontation between Jewish communities.
Al Jazeera: With no end in sight to Israel’s war in Gaza, what should viewers take away from your film?
Gillian Mosely: When I watched the film after October 7th, I got really chills and found it quite disturbing because it effectively predicted in several places that something like this would happen if things didn’t change.
Unfortunately, it seems that October 7th was inevitable. If we don’t learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it. I wonder at what stage we will actually pay attention to the story and learn from it and do things better.
Al Jazeera: How would you characterize your experiences making the film, speaking to people on both sides of the conflict?
Moisés: It was good. Everyone we spoke to was welcoming. Of course some people didn’t want to talk, but some people really wanted to talk, and we’re so happy to be able to expose their truth.
Only by surveying a large number of people do you truly understand the entirety. I think that’s one of those things that’s wrong these days, because people end up in echo chambers and they really miss that.
You cannot judge something based on a one-sided understanding; you really need to understand everything and you certainly can’t fix something based on a one-sided understanding.
Al Jazeera: How important was it for you to root the film in the religious importance of the region?
Moisés: The Holy Land is important to three religions. … It always seems strange that one of these religions would try to dominate the others in such a big way. It’s a place for all the Abrahamic religions, and I think we forget that at our peril.
Al Jazeera: In your film, you discuss how Israeli media plays a crucial role in Zionism.
Moisés: I don’t think it’s just the Israeli media. I’m a little older, but I don’t remember this level of propaganda when I was younger.
It’s really interesting because [the Canadian author, activist and filmmaker] Naomi Klein gave a speech in Brooklyn last week on the occasion of Passover in which she basically suggested that Zionism has replaced Judaism as the be-all and end-all within a Jewish world.
But the reality is that more and more Jews in the diaspora do not adhere to this. We think Judaism is more important than Zionism. So I think this is really creating a conflict among the world’s Jewish population.
Judaism has existed for about 2,500 years. Zionism has existed for 150 years. So I don’t understand how some people think Israel is more important than Judaism, but apparently some do.
Many things that are done in the name of Zionism completely contradict my understanding of Judaism.
But I think that almost worse than the propaganda is the wall. The older Palestinians and Jews will have known each other. But we are now at a stage where there are several generations of people who may never have seen a Palestinian if he were a Jew and vice versa.
Al Jazeera: You have researched Britain’s role in the creation of an Israeli state. Will Britain’s response to the current conflict differ from its previous involvement?
Moisés: It’s very different, but I think one thing to make clear is that if you watch the film, you’ll probably have no doubt that, at the very least, Britain fostered this situation. And yet, we never take any responsibility for this, nor do we ever apologize.
But the reality is that when Britain marched on Jerusalem in 1917, 90% of the population were Muslims and Christians. When we left, it was close to 50-50. And in 1950, 90% were Jewish, which represents a huge demographic shift in 33 years.
What fascinates me is, historically, what will remain? And in this case, historically, what has remained are those people saying this is going to be a problem, and they have been proven right.
History, in my opinion, will prove the pro-Palestine case.
Al Jazeera: Israel is often described as the only democracy in the Middle East. Is this label valid?
Moisés: When I set out to make the film, several things surprised me, including when I finished making it, I felt that, for the most part, I had actually made a film about the nature of democracy.
I think that right now, all over the world, democracy is being sorely tested, and I think that is partly because there has been a lot of hypocrisy in the positions of the Western powers. This is certainly the case in Israel.
Israel is a partial democracy, but it cannot be a democracy when not everyone in the country, much less within the country’s international borders, has the same civil rights.
So this really made me think more about why democracy is important and what happens when we make excuses for our allies’ bad behavior. I think that for a democracy to survive and prosper, this hypocrisy will have to disappear.
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