Stern: A film that casts light on Israel's early history and its 'dark side'
Middle
East Eye's Hossam Sarhan's documentary centres on the life of a Zionist
militant who sought to form an alliance with Nazi Germany against the
British
Avraham Stern was killed by British forces in Mandatory Palestine in 1942 (Al Jazeera)
2 August 2024
The idea of the shadow is now a ubiquitous trope in popular
culture. This is evident in our familiarity with expressions such as "the dark side" or the idea of having "demons within".
Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung developed
this concept in the early 20th century, dividing consciousness into
what one allows oneself to express in day-to-day life and what one keeps
hidden from view, often involuntarily.
The shadow is the repository of undesirable impulses and everything
that can undermine the image a person or society presents to the world.
In his essay Wotan,
Jung describes the German nation becoming possessed by the spirit of
long-denied destructive qualities that finally erupted through the
figure of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi movement.
Watching the ongoing genocide in Gaza,
one cannot help but think about Jung's theories and the psychological
mechanisms requisite to the frenzy of death and destruction inflicted
on Palestinians.
What strange spirit has possessed those who release a hail of bullets on a six-year-old child trapped in a car, murder journalists and unleash attack dogs on disabled and elderly people?
The past often contains repressed instincts and memories, which is why so much psychotherapy focuses on childhood introspection.
Is that where this current destructive spirit resides and can casting a light help bring Israel's shadow to the surface?
My friend and colleague, filmmaker Hossam Sarhan, is the lamp bearer in this instance.
His documentary film Stern, which he produced for Al
Jazeera, explores Israel's "dark side" - one it prefers buried in
history but which reappears frequently in the creation of the terrorist
Palestinian "other" and its ruthless military campaigns in Gaza and the
occupied West Bank.
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The documentary centres on Avraham Stern, founder of the Stern Gang, a
splinter group of the Zionist Irgun militia known for its hatred of the
British occupation of Mandatory Palestine.
Stern, a Polish immigrant who moved to Palestine in the 1920s,
advocated for increased Jewish migration and the expulsion of the
"foreign" British presence from what he considered Jewish land.
His hatred towards the British was so intense that he was willing to negotiate an alliance with the Nazis to expel them from the mandate.
Stern's militia attacked British and rival Jewish targets even as the Second World War
raged on. Other Zionist factions, such as the Irgun and Haganah, had
instituted a moratorium on attacks against the British while they fought
the Nazis.
After a series of deadly bank robberies and shoot-outs, the mandatory
authorities caught up with Stern, capturing and killing him in 1942 at
the age of 34.
At the time, his actions were a source of embarrassment to the
Zionist movement, and the Haganah went as far as hunting down members of
his group.
How is it, then, that Stern is remembered as a freedom fighter in
Israel, with postage stamps issued in his honour and a village named
after him?
Unwanted truths
Evident among some of the film's Israeli interviewees is a feeling of
discomfort with inconvenient truths and the possibility that the heroes
of the Zionist movement may have had a "darker side".
This denial necessitates the rehabilitation of even those willing to collaborate with Nazis.
There is an acceptance among them that Stern did violent things, but always within the context of the greater good.
Stern's son Yair, for example, plays down his father's overtures to
the Nazis as an insignificant episode aimed at helping save Jews in
Europe.
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He argues that Stern could not have known about the Holocaust, as the
Nazis had not formalised their mass killing of Europe’s Jews until
shortly before the elder Stern's death.
Yair even dismisses confessions by Stern gang members of their
efforts to collaborate with Nazis on the basis of possible duress during
interrogation by the Haganah.
Put succinctly, there was never any real intent to act immorally; if there was, it was exaggerated or missing the point.
Of course, Stern is just one example of a Zionist figure rehabilitated after the establishment of Israel.
The late Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin's Irgun militia was
responsible for the King David Hotel bombing in 1946, which killed 91
people - including British officials, Arabs and Jews.
Despite its culpability, the Irgun was absorbed into the Israeli army
after the establishment of an Israeli state. Its crimes against
civilian Arabs and even Jews were erased from the record or reluctantly
accepted as a necessity of an independence struggle.
Both the willingness of Zionists to collaborate with the Nazis and
kill civilians are unwanted truths that have no place in Israel’s
national self-image.
But while willful forgetfulness and sympathetic reinterpretation can
leave unsavoury episodes out of the narrative, history never disappears
and neither does the underlying behaviour that causes shame and
discomfort.
The inclusion of Israeli historian Ilan Pappe in the film is particularly poignant in this regard.
In works such as The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Pappe has exposed truths that Israel would prefer to keep buried.
The "uncovered" truth in Pappe's book reveals that the expulsion of
Palestinians during the Nakba was a deliberate and coordinated effort
organised by the most senior Zionist leaders, who subsequently replaced
this reality with their own myth of Jewish survival against a foreign
Arab onslaught.
Pappe's reminder in the film that Stern must have been aware of the
years of Nazi persecution of Jews before his contact with them is a
sharp rebuke of attempts to downplay that aspect of his legacy.
In Jungian psychology, the shadow is expressed in its most
destructive forms when it is not integrated into an individual or
society’s self-perception. An inability to accept our own violent and
"dark" past results in the displacement of these unwanted traits on to
others.
In the case of Israel, this other is the Palestinian.
It is the Palestinian who cuts deals with dark forces, not a freedom fighter like Avraham Stern.
It is the Palestinian who usurps land that does not belong to him, not the settler.
It is the Palestinian who blows up buildings, not the Irgun or the Israeli army.
It is the Palestinian who rapes, not the Israeli soldier.
The basis of any confrontation with the past is honesty, and if
Israel is unwilling or incapable of approaching its history sincerely,
the truth will exist irrespective.
Stern is available to watch on Al Jazeera English from 12 August.