A review in today’s Independent about last night’s Louis Theroux film, The Ultra Zionists, demonstrates exactly what I feared.
In it, author Alice-Azania Jarvis makes a generalisation that I’m sure many viewers have and will continue to make.
She says: “It was the bloody single-mindedness of the Zionists that stole the show.”
Theroux maintains that he is clear throughout the programme that he focusses on a fringe, extreme group of Zionists and that clearly there are a host of other Zionists who do not necessarily share the same attitudes.
He also told me that his programmes always focus on an extreme group. And this is certainly true of most his previous films.
But this film does not just focus on the goings-on of one extreme group. It looks at an incredibly complex conflict as a whole and attempts to explain different aspects of it.
It looks at the everyday lives of Palestinians and the effect it has on those living in East Jerusalem. But on the “other side” it only looks at a small group of extreme Zionists and does not attempt to explore any other Zionist, Jewish or Israeli attitudes.
That missing word in the Independent review speaks volumes about the “single-mindedness” of those who are so quick to criticise Zionism as a whole.
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