Colliding Dreams

Few ideas in the modern era have had as momentous an impact on the world as Zionism. Born in the late 19th century, this seemingly utopian dream was meant to solve the age-old problem of anti-Semitism and to allow a place for Jewish life and culture to thrive in the modern world. Few could have envisioned its remarkable and rapid success: the creation in less than a century of a thriving democratic Jewish state. And yet despite its success, the very legitimacy of the Zionist Idea – and the State of Israel – are questioned more today than ever before. The debate over Israel -- triggered by the latest war, or terrorist attack, or national election – is often guided by emotion rather than substance, by fear or anger rather than a thorough understanding of Zionism and its history. Incorporating interviews with writers, politicians, activists, the young and the old, Israeli and Palestinian, together with rarely seen footage culled from archives all over the world, the film focuses on several critical moments in the history of Zionism: its origins in Europe the early relations between Jews and Palestinians in turn of the century Palestine the 1948 war known alternately as the War of Independence and the Nakba the euphoria of the Jewish People and the devastation felt by Palestinians after Six Day War of 1967 the messianic West Bank Settlement Movement and the idealism of the Peace Movement and the colliding forces among Jews, and between Jews and Palestinians today.