Rising to take back Israel

Israel is not its government. It’s a point emphatically expressed on Israeli protest placards. But the distinction is lost on tens of millions around the globe who have condemned the Jewish State over two years of war in Gaza.

In theory, a democratic government reflects a majority of society, but in reality that’s only as far as a lumbering political system allows.

Australian Jewish filmmaker Esther Takac’s latest project Rising: Voices of Hope and Protest portrays the outcry of a vibrant, passionate, dazed, wounded, brawling society intent on keeping the checks and balances, the norms and values of its democracy intact.

Rising takes the temperature of an angry public pouring into Israel’s streets; everyday Israelis who have been shoehorned in, under the most far-right government in the nation’s history. Takac portrays a government of stark certitudes, entrenched interests and transactionalism; that tried to muzzle an independent judiciary, shaking democracy to its core and fatally distracting the nation from sworn external foes.

Early in the film, Rising takes us to the Gaza envelope. When Hamas struck on October 7, 2023, its pogrom of death and abduction was the greatest Jewish bloodletting in a single day since the Holocaust. More than 1200 innocents were murdered that day alone.