‘Israel Palestine on Swedish TV’ Is an Urgent History/Not History Lesson

Documentary film can be a form of empathy tourism, helping us quite literally see something through another’s eyes and a different lens; this is certainly implied by a new film’s title, Israel Palestine on Swedish TV 1958-1989. Like director Göran Hugo Olsson’s earlier found-footage classic, 2011’s The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975, this new film examines a sociopolitical conflict from the tertiary perspective of Swedish journalists and filmmakers at the time. 

It’s a seemingly odd trick, but it works, just like the great documentaries of Adam Curtis. The comparison is perhaps inevitable. Olsson and Curtis each spend inordinate amounts of time thoroughly combing the archives of their respective public service broadcasters to create postmodern historical studies using contemporary sources. Olsson used to work at Sweden’s SVT, and Curtis used to work at England’s BBC, and they’ve each probably skimmed through more nationalized television than anyone outside the censors.

Israel Palestine on Swedish TV 1958-1989 is being released almost exactly two years after October 7, 2023, the day Hamas attacked Israel and took hostages; those last still alive two years into their ordeal were only just released at the time of writing. Of course, that horrific day came after a century of violence and oppression against the Palestinian people on the part of both Hamas and Israel, and has led to what the United Nations and Amnesty International have rightfully called an ongoing genocide in Gaza. The future is still very much up in the air, so if a history lesson was ever warranted, it’s now.

Simply put, Israel Palestine on Swedish TV isn’t as historically encompassing as most great books on the subject, such as Rashid Khalidi’s The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine, Avi Shlaim’s Collusion Across the Jordan, and Ilan Pappé’s History of Modern Palestine. That’s despite its three-and-a-half-hour runtime. Nonetheless, the film is a treasure trove of primary texts and firsthand accounts, all carefully assembled to capitalize on the medium and captivate throughout.

Olsson pieces together footage from different Swedish news programs (such as Fokus, Rapport, Panorama) to tell a chronological story of Israel. Considering Sveriges Television only began in 1956, the film unfortunately rushes through the early history of the country. It begins with a 1958 program commemorating the 10th anniversary of Israel. This touches upon the early architects of Zionism and the United Nations’ Partition Plan for Palestine, though the film never utters the word “Nakbah” (“the catastrophe”), a woefully glaring omission.

It’d be wrong to call Israel Palestine on Swedish TV biased, though. Well, sort of. “Archive material doesn’t necessarily tell us what really happened. But says a lot about how it was told,” onscreen text informs viewers at the start of the documentary. It adds, “[This film] does not presume to tell the whole story of the Israel-Palestinian conflict. But rather to show how it was presented by the public service in Sweden.”

It’s an interesting intellectual exercise to determine for yourself whether this message acts as a cowardly cop-out, a paradoxically objective admission of bias, or a clever meta-reflection on the film’s themes regarding perspective and media. Nevertheless, the three decades of actual reporting and filmmaking on display here are mostly excellent, especially after the Six-Day War of 1967, when the Swedes seem to fully comprehend the fundamentalist dangers of Zionism.

While the experience of Israel Palestine on Swedish TV is greatly aided by a viewer’s media literacy and historical knowledge, it does not require them; in fact, it eventually teaches them. The film features interviews with major figures (Abba Eban, Yasser Arafat, Anwar Sadat, Moshe Dayan, Bassam Abu Sharif, and even Nahum Goldman), as well as fascinating yet lesser-known individuals, ranging from leaders of the Israeli Black Panthers and fedayeen fighters to anonymous families, children, and soldiers.

These interviews and their accompanying archival footage are downright eerie in their current relevance. A reporter asks both an Israeli couple and a Palestinian couple, each living in Sweden, what it’s like to watch a war play out on television, bringing to mind today’s daily dose of disturbing images from Gaza and the West Bank. Asked about violence as a form of resistance in 1977, PFLP member Raymonda Tawil says, “This is an answer to taking your home and expelling you and chasing you out.” It all feels so familiar.

More striking still is Professor Israel Shahak’s words in 1973. The Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights leader pointedly tells the camera, “My society, of which I am a part and a law-abiding citizen, is undergoing a process of Nazification.” Shahak would know, having survived multiple concentration camps during the Holocaust.

The modern situation in Gaza and the current plight of the Palestinians in general is impossible to avoid when watching Israel Palestine on Swedish TV 1958-1989, as if the film is the very poetry that makes the phrase, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” One of several queasy moments of foreshadowing features Left Camp of Israel politician Ury Avnery in 1980, telling the Swedes, “The government of Israel is practically interested in radicalization of the Palestinian leadership, so as to justify that we can’t talk with the Palestinians.” Decades later, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would send millions of dollars to Hamas.

This rhyming history and dark prognostication cast a fatalistic, mournful shadow over Israel Palestine on Swedish TV. Yes, watching the death and destruction of Israel’s brutal expansionist policies is painful (especially during the graphic section on the Sabra and Shatila massacre, or whenever Palestinian children are featured), but almost more tragic is the hope on display. 

Half a decade later and knowing what we know now, it’s truly sorrowful to watch people who believe that there is an end to all this horror on the horizon, people who devoted every atom of their being to the revolution. At one point, Arafat tells the camera, “I have the right to ask the whole international public – for how long our people will continue suffering from the occupation and from exodus?” He stares at the camera (it’s 1988), then adds, “We are human beings.”

Israel Palestine on Swedish TV is a long film, but time genuinely flies by thanks to the exquisite pacing and constant yet cogent streams of information. If anything, it’s not long enough, as it lacks sufficient details about the aforementioned Nakbah and other significant events. Despite the excellent journalism throughout, it also carries the inherent culturally Western bias found in most media coverage of Israel and Palestine, though that’s possibly part of the point (and unavoidable either way, given the perimeters of its form). 

Additionally, and as the title suggests, the film simply stops at 1989. Hopefully, there’s a sequel, though the documentary is fascinating enough to compel curious viewers to seek additional information on their own and fill in the gaps. Regardless of its flaws, Israel Palestine on Swedish TV 1958-1989 is a striking snapshot of three turbulent decades, revealing not only a detailed picture of the conflict, but also the camera that filmed it.