(JEWISH GROUP) Dear internet: Having Jews in movies isn't 'Zionist propaganda'

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What the terminally online crowd often mean to say when they shout “Zionist propaganda” is “there are Jews in this!” It’s not a great way to interpret art, and it undermines the legitimacy of the argument that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism. But a film need not even have Jews in it for some to claim it’s really about Israel.

My colleagues and I have written about how Dune, Superman, and Zootopia 2 have been seized by the internet as part of the monomyth of Israeli villainy. When people make these connections, they may believe they’re thinking deeply, but they’re really just reaching for the nearest headline or playing to their own biases.

This insistence on Israel as the ultimate Big Bad reminds me of a remark made by Denise Gough, an actor in the Star Wars series Andor (another property said to be about Israel-Palestine, even though the creator Tony Gilroy mentioned numerous historical inspirations, most directly the Wannsee Conference). In an interview, Gough said a fan sent her a Star Wars analogy, which she said she only half understood.

The fan argued that just as the Death Star, a planet-destroying weapon, has an Achilles’ heel in its exhaust port, that when fired at explodes the whole thing, the conflicts of the world have a focal point in Palestine from which the architecture of oppression can be demolished.

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