Vice Magazine again outdo themselves with the three-part documentary, Israel’s Radical Left. Click here to watch part one, the other two parts will play directly after each part finishes.

Ignore the word “Left” in the title. First, it’s not entirely accurate. The film covers all sorts of struggles, left, anarchist, and just human. Also, the word “Israel” in the title isn’t entirely accurate, as the film includes both Israelis and Palestinians in a favorable light.

Basically what this movie shows is how governments screw people over around the world, how people are angry at it, and how the people of a given country are not the government of that country.

I remember traveling around Europe in 2004 showing my film D.I.Y. OR DIE: How To Survive as an Independent Artist at anarchist squats in six countries: England, Ireland, France, Germany and Belgium. The anarchists were cool with me being from the geographic region known as America. They know I was not defined by my place of birth. But many people on the streets, in bars and on public transportation took me to task for George W. Bush’s war mongering….as if the guy on the train with a few Euros in his pocket is the one making military decisions at the international level. I’d say in my defense, “I didn’t vote for the guy”, but they’d still rail at me. One man tried to punch me in a bar in Ireland, just because I was American. A few people pulled him off me. They didn’t kick him out of the bar, but kept him away from me the rest of the night.

When I said of Bush, “I didn’t vote for the guy”, I still was a voter back then, but didn’t vote in that election. I hadn’t yet realized that voting was participating in a violent system. But I was already starting to grok the fact that every election is just “two millionaires arguing over who loves the common man more.” Or as they put it on South Park, “Elections are a choice between a turd sandwich and a giant douche.”

But people are not their countries, and people are not their governments. The group “Israel Loves Iran” included in Israel’s Radical Left is a good proof-of-concept for this simple fact. I’m not going to give spoilers, but I’ll just say there’s some very heavy shit in this film, and it made me cry at one point. And I very rarely cry.

Like Vice’s other documentary, Heavy Metal in Baghdad, the film Israel’s Radical Left basically shows that we’re all in this together, the real “us vs. them” of the world isn’t (or shouldn’t be) “us vs. rich people” but rather people vs. the governments who claim to represent them while doing nothing more than stealing and controlling.

Governments will always do far more harm than good.

–MWD