You cannot deny that the Palestinians have been in that land for untold hundreds of years. Also, after doing a little research into this time and place, the film does indeed seem to depict a fairly accurate account of what actually happened.
Although I will admit, that since the film was following a ‘Palestinian friendly’ British soldier, it thereby avoided depicting the actions of the British forces in their no-so-innocent role.
But rather than ranting about the inaccuracies of this film, I would only suggest that you go and make your own version of how you believe it all went down. And I’ll be sure not to watch it.

Blah blah blah…. you act like Israel isn’t doing the very thing you’re bitching about a million times every day. But guess what…your use of ‘big words’ doesn’t make your cause a bit more legitimate.
The fact that the real history of ‘Israel’ does not promote the Zionist agenda, doesn’t mean that this film should be ‘banned’. In my view, it’s one of the most important films of our time. It’s exceedingly difficult to get anything close to real truth when coming from a Zionist point of view.
Nice try Otto. And before you start calling me an ‘anti-Semite’ you can save your breath. I have absolutely nothing against Judaism or Jews. It’s deceit and terror that both repulses me and compels me to seek an end to it.

So I don’t go for the all peace and harmony line before the Zionists came along line being well aware of the situation in Hebron in the 20s and elsewhere, but that does not excuse, in my opinion, and that of many Israelis, the state of siege imposed there today. Furthermore, the film is about in part 1948, there is no reason to mention the Mufti of Jerusalem, as it is clear that there is a civil war between the Yishuv and Palestinians. And remember that the main Palestinian character in the contemporary part was a terrorist who served time. So he is not an ‘innocent’.

(What you also add about the Mongol Hordes is a bit beyond the series I think as is reference to 9/11)

The series has been through the complaints roundabout in the UK and complaints dismissed by the UK Complaints authority (Ofcom). If you think that Ofcom is weak kneed and pro-Arab, it has upheld complaints against Islamic broadcasters.

It is interesting that Channel 4 characterises the series as “a fictional story, set within a historical context”. Yet much of the promotion of the series by SBS, and many of the responses from viewers posted on the SBS website, stress that the series portrayed “history” and was in some sense true and accurate. This is just downright dishonest. I hope Senate Estimates gets well and truly stuck into SBS about its use of tax-payers money to promote Jew-hatred. I am sick of it, and sick of SBS doing it.

A few points here and I know they are random, but I don’t have much spare time.

I agree, it would have been good to have an allusion to what happened in the 20s and 30s, but Kosminsky’s argument is that he was developing a story based on what British soliders experienced in the 40s (including the use of disturbing’honey traps’ such as Clara, but Haganah spies were everywhere. We all know that).

Of course, however, there will be some factual errors and collapse in the story, as in any tele-story. But there some pretty amazing attempts to provide accuracy as well. For example, I noticed that during the 57th minute of the second episode, painted on a staircase, when the solidiers are in hot pursuit, we see the Ivrit slogan “Down With British Imperialism”. Now you can’t tell me that sort of attention to detail comes out of anti-semitic or anti-Israel intentions from an Israeli crew who would have been responsible for such matters. If you can listen to the voice over to the first episode (a pity it isn’t available for all of them), you can see the concern that the director had to develop a confronting story based on a reasonable version of what we know happened during the last years of the Mandate.

Another example of reasonable attention to detail is the raid on Kibbutz Mesheq Yagur where arms were secreted. The Army intelligence records are in fact online and appear to have been used to inform how this episode was done (though there is no record of kids sitting on the cache entrances). It is also very clear that there is a civil war between the Yishuv and Palestinians.

Thus, there is no place, as claimed in the ECAJ submission for an exaggerated comment such as ” The Jewish narrative is either denied a hearing or presented only in caricature. Instead of confronting history honestly, The Promise unrelentingly portrays the entire Jewish presence throughout the country, including modern-day Israel, as an act of usurpation by Jews who, without exception, are aliens, predators and thieves and who enforce their usurpation by brutal, racist policies akin to those inflicted by the Nazis upon the Jewish people.” Nor is it right, as the ECAJ claims, to label the series as having a “psychopathological” view about Jews.

Yet much of the first episode is about the Shoah and immigration to Palestine in the fact of the holocaust. The lead character Len, is clearly close to tears at times and gets confined to barracks for letting a person get into Palestine. Len’s becomes political.

As for the accusation that the film lets Palestinians off scott free, the film has a confronting scence with two of the main characters attending a meeting of former Palestinian and Israeli combatants, struggling for reconciliation and Omar is very reluctant to help her until struck by seeing the family key. If that isn’t a strong opinion coming from some Palestinians– and it was filmed, in Arabic, with local Palestinians– in East Jerusalem– reflecting the activity of a real organisation (http://cfpeace.org/) then I don’t know what is. The same issue of struggle when Erin ends up in a house that is to be demolished because it was the house of a suicide bomber: should the innocent child suffer for the sins of the older sister, but as well, should the grandmother who knew Erin’s grandfather suffer again by losing her home?

I agree, however, that character development for the main Palestinians is weak. In particular, I find it impossible to believe that a chai wallah in the 40s would 1) speak English so well 2) have an apparently very nice house. To this the director responded he was dealing with urban Palestinians in his story and this was his choice. I still find this weak.

As for the main Christian Palestinian character, in 2005, Omar he remains somewhat mysterious and conflicted (as he was a terrorist), but then, he goes through humiliation at a checkpoint. And this is a fact of life in Israel/Palestine. To go through checkpoints is a pretty grim and insulting experience (I have done it and felt like a criminal). He lives in Abu Dis, right next to the wall that cuts the village in half (I have been there) In the case of Abu Dis, this is about economic sanctions against Paletinians, nothing to do with preventing terrorism. This case is well made by the Israeli NGO Ir Amim.

Thus the film is taking a political stance: Israel is born in out of violence and caught up in violence and division to protect itself. All its characters are metaphors for different aspects of the conflict. Privilege over poverty and entrapment, the ability to live one’s live as one wants as distinct from having to pass through checkpoints are used to promote discomfort and questioning. None of this is made up or akin to a anti-Semitic stereotyping. The film is not meant to be about the ethnic diversity of Israel, it is about the relationship between Israelis and Palestinians, and it uses what happens on a day to day basis: suicide bombings, checkpoints, insults from women and stone throwing in Hebron by kids (well attested) and so on. If the film had perhaps taken up the views in contemporary Israel, it would have in fact got something similar (or worse) than this a-typical family: haredim living off donations, messianists, secular lefties, leftish religious, modern nationalist orthodox right-wing Mizarahim and so on–conflicted views and attitudes about Palestinians and their narrative. It would have been impossible to write this into the script well, so it has been collapsed into Eliza’s family.

Now, you may not agree with this my political interpretation of the film (such as whether or not the occupation is justified, and to what degree Palestinians are collectively to be held at arms length from Israelis) but I hope you can see that a strong case can be made that the film is not based on any stereotyping.

Indeed the call to pull the DVD from public circulation would be a political disaster for the ECAJ and the wider Jewish community as it would (again) be seen as an attempt to muzzle different opinions being broadcast, distributed and discussed in this country. Of course, such a move would only make downloading of the series, off the internet, if it isn’t happening already, rife.

It is worth remembering that similar complaints were made in the UK to the UK Broadcasting Ombudsman (Ofcom) and they were not upheld. Ofcom deals with many complaints about programming in the UK, includin those from various Muslim channels. I think they know what anti-Semitism and nutty anti-Israelism is.

Larry Stillman, for your information, SBS received numerous complaints that the series is antisemitic, including one from the Australian Association of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, of which I am President. The series presented an undeniably biased version of events, both past and present. You write that the production “asks the viewer to investigate the problems … in the attitudes taken by Israelis and Palestinians to each other.” Except that the attitude of the Arabs to the Jews was not shown, not from then nor from now. No mention of the massacres by Arabs of unarmed Yeshiva (seminary) students in Hebron in 1929 nor of the ongoing threat “to drive the Jews into the sea” and all the violence between. So I ask you, Larry Stillman, how do viewers assess the attitudes of Palestinians to Israelis in this series? Clairvoyancy?
We totally endorse Peter Wertheim’s careful and painstaking analysis. It is well worth reading in and shows up UK Channel 4’s attempt to whitewash the series as complete humbug. It isn’t ECAJ that’s over the top.