Israel Palestine on Swedish TV 1958-1989 review: Venice festival documentary is a must-see

Goran Hugo Olsson's film is both a revelatory historical document and a fascinating dissection of supposedly objective journalism

A young Palestinian boy featured in Israel Palestine on Swedish TV 1958 - 1989, which debuts on Friday at the Venice Film Festival. Photo: Story AB

Israel Palestine on Swedish TV 1958 – 1989 is a document of war – not just of regional conflict, but of narrative. It is made up of footage from dozens of individual reports that once aired on Sweden’s national public television broadcaster SVT, stitched together with little context added and almost no editorial comment.

But behind each segment is a clear author, each with their own judgments, preconceptions and ideology – though they were each presented as objective. And each used their state’s leading platform to shape Sweden's public opinion, the power of which is difficult to calculate, a paradigm that was seemingly repeated across the world.

Early on, the reports approach euphoria at Israel’s existence. In 1960, for example, a report entitled Israel – Land of Wonders aired, in what we are told was a five-part film series by Lars-Eric Kjellgren.

It is a portrait of a utopia, narrated by a young woman who emigrated to Israel from Sweden in 1948, when it was founded. She walks through co-operative markets where fresh goods are affordable and readily available, and state-of-the-art hospitals where care is free.

Moments later, David Ben-Gurion, the primary founder of Israel, appears on screen. He outlines the basic story of the country from a Zionist perspective, a place in which, he explains, a persecuted people sought peace and found refuge through their resilience and ingenuity. We see footage of a barren desert, which the Israelis are apparently set to turn into fertile farmland.

“In this parched land,” another Swedish narrator says, “dedication and skill have made the dream of the millennia a reality. Before the Jews cultivated this land, it was a land of bare mountains and hills. Scorched earth, hopelessness, misery and begging.”

Moments later, the narrator wonders just how extraordinary this place is, which reflects “the fusion of one million immigrants from 102 different countries, speaking 72 different languages in a moral and cultural unity. A world was in doubt, but the wonder is a fact”.

There is no mention of Palestinians to be found in the story that Kjellgren told, the many people who once tilled that same soil and called that land home for countless generations. There is no mention of the Nakba that drove them out of their homes, nor the tens of thousands who reportedly died. There is no mention of the way that even Israeli immigrants themselves were not all treated equally at the time, according to other reports in the same film.

Instead, it is a story of a heavenly place where nothing is wrong.

Years later, another report aired which features an interview with the then-head of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation Yasser Arafat, which finds the leader wondering aloud why the Swedish people do not support the Palestinian cause as much as they did the Vietnamese one contemporaneously. The answer, viewers are left to speculate, is to be found in the way things were presented more than a decade earlier.

While the narratives in the presented reports shift over time, they are often in stark contrast one after the next. In many, the Palestinian plight is readily apparent and their story is told with unflinching clarity, featuring interviews with leaders as well as regular people, sometimes even children. But moments later, another report appears that ignores this perspective and once again flatters the opposing viewpoint.

The whiplash is palpable, even among reports that feature only Israelis. One documents a picnic of Israelis of North African descent, who have come together to keep their cultural traditions alive. In another, other Israelis of Arab origin are shown to be living in abject poverty, lamenting the fact that opportunity and help from the state only comes to those of European descent, though they were invited to the country with promises of equality.

In some, Palestinians are referred to as terrorists with barely acknowledged humanity. In others, they are presented as freedom fighters, with those holding rifles and battle scars given the opportunity to explain their perspective during conflict.

In one report from the 1970s, an SVT producer interviews a voice of dissent within Israel, who laments that then-Prime Minister Golda Meir’s rhetoric about Palestinian birth rates was akin to Nazi rhetoric in the 1920s, and that if it is to go unchecked, it could put his country on a similar path. In a subsequent report, Meir repeats this same rhetoric unchallenged. And in another startling moment, Ben-Gurion says something to similar effect, which causes the Swedish interviewer to laugh in apparent agreement.

As the years go on, no perspective seems to win out among the SVT contributors. Rather, there is an increasing desperation for the conflict to end. The producers seem to be searching for anything that can exemplify a path forward for peaceful co-existence between these two peoples, though there is never any clarity on how to get there, just an apparent underlying, often naive, optimism that a solution is just around the corner.

With this documentary, Swedish director Goran Hugo Olsson has created a film that, even without comment, is an astonishing, invaluable document of the history of Israel and Palestine, and a fascinating insight into the complicated nature of journalism.

It does not attempt to tell the whole story. Most of the major developments happen off-camera, though several pivotal moments are captured as you may never have seen them before. From an educational perspective, if approached by someone with enough media literacy to discern the intent behind each report, it is necessary viewing. And even for those lacking media literacy, this may be the kind of film that engenders it, and can be used in schools to explain the concept.

Olsson explained in an interview with The National that, while the project was in the works long before the current Israel-Gaza war began, he felt a sense of urgency to finish it when he saw footage of the current devastation.

Viewed with the current tragedy in mind, it is heartbreaking to see how few things have changed, how many have died over the decades, and the sheer number of elements that have become catastrophically worse. And all this, even while so many were aware – both among peace-wanting Israelis and Palestinians – of the issues from their inception, though remained powerless to stop them.

And while so much of the film can be excruciating, it is also inspiring. Through it all, the spirit of the Palestinian people shines through. They, by and large, have an unwavering clarity of purpose throughout each era, regardless of whatever biased perspective it is presented.

Through Palestinian eyes, there is always light at the end of the tunnel – Palestinian freedom is forever somewhere on the horizon, though it is unclear how long it will take to get there.

And that optimism is for a harmonious future. As one young female Palestinian refugee describes when interviewed in the 1970s, a free Palestine will be a place where Jews will be welcome too, to live alongside them in peace, a sentiment still echoed in 2024.

Perhaps now, as millions of people globally learn more about the history of this conflict and overcome decades of insufficient reporting within their own countries, a solution may be closer than ever. Hopefully, this movie helps those efforts towards peace for all involved.

Israel Palestine on Swedish TV 1958-1989 premieres on Friday at the Venice Film Festival