The Promise (2011): A review of a historically accurate miniseries

There’s a show I’d really like to recommend to anyone who wants to understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – it’s called The Promise, from 2011, produced by Channel 4.

This great show has a few minor flaws – for example, why is it only the Parachute Regiment that appears in the film? And why doesn’t the protagonist just read the diary she comes across till the end straight away?

However, this masterpiece does capture most things accurately.

For example, the fact that Israeli settlers get to throw rocks at the Palestinians in Hebron and the army does nothing (as is seen in episode 3), or how those who come to Hebron on Breaking the Silence tours (tours given by former IDF soldiers to make more Israelis aware of the horrors of occupation) get harassed by settlers shouting at them through loudspeakers (also seen in episode 3)… I mean, when I went on one of those Breaking the Silence trips I got to witness it all with my own eyes, it’s shocking how regularly it happens there.

What people outside of Israel often fail to understand is that the settler ideology is practically identical to a neo-Nazi ideology – belief in racial superiority, the idea of creating a Jewish Lebensraum, messianism, support of violence (most settlers see murderers such as Baruch Goldstein as heroes)… and this ideology gets funded, encouraged, and supported by the Israeli government.

But that is not the main thing I wanted to talk about. Growing up in Israel, we were exposed to a very specific narrative at school – basically, the Jews peacefully settled in Israel, when Israel was declared the Arab countries declared war, the Arabs who lived in Palestine left because their leaders told them to… and that’s it.

We weren’t taught anything about how what they call “the War of Independence” in Israel, in fact, started in 1947 as a civil war in Mandatory Palestine, and that the Arab countries didn’t invade Israel until 1948. We weren’t taught how Arab villages were erased or how the people living there were threatened and shot at in order to make them leave. The Balad al-Shaykh massacre, the Bayt Daras massacre, the Deir Yassin massacre, and the Ein al-Zeitun massacre all happened before Israel’s Declaration of Independence, before the neighbouring Arab countries declared war on Israel.

I’m not saying that either side is completely innocent. For example, we can’t ignore how the 1929 Palestine riots, the 1938 Tiberias massacre, and the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine were characterised by numerous acts of violence and murder against the Jewish population of Palestine… and we can’t ignore the terrorist organisations the Irgun and the Lechi murdering innocent Palestinians in acts of “reprisal” or “deterrence” (basically, killing Arabs just for the sake of intimidating Arabs).

But what I’m saying is this, look up the numbers, the statistics, learn the whole history. For example, the Israeli narrative involves this notions that Israelis were few whilst the Arabs were many, and hence, the Israeli victory was “miraculous” – this is statistically inaccurate.

At the start of the civil war in Palestine, the Jewish military groups encompassed about 10,000 men, whilst the Palestinian Arab army had only a few thousand soldiers (mostly untrained peasants); at the end of the war, Israel had about 117,500 soldiers, whilst the Arab armies altogether had an estimated maximum of 63,500 soldiers.

In fact, I wasn’t exposed to any of that until I got to Tel Aviv University and where I took some classes in history (despite my degree being in geography) and got to see how much the narrative we were taught at school was a lie.

Again, I’ve always said that the solution to this situation is a two-state solution carved along demographic lines. Holding on to past grudges can only make it worse, or as Gandhi said, “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.” Also, if the West stopped unconditionally arming Israel, that would be great. I mean, the Israeli far-right government gets to have all the weapons it wants, continue creating and expanding illegal settlements… and getting away scotch free.

If you have a relative who has a drug addiction and demonstrates aggressive behaviours, surely giving them an unlimited access to your cash isn’t the best way of helping them, right? Same with Israel. Peace would benefit both the Israelis and the Palestinians, however, how is Israel expected to see that whilst its violent behaviour is rewarded with more subsidies and weapons?

I’ve made sure to not give any spoilers (except a small extract from episode 3) in order to not stop you from enjoying the show, so I hope you get to watch it.

The Palestinian people, the Chechen people, the people of Kosovo, the Kurds, the Copts, the Assyrians… there are many groups in the world that suffer dispossession, oppression, humiliation, and whose voices are being silenced. Don’t let your heart be numbed by propaganda to the suffering of those people.