Israel/Palestine

American films critical of Israel:

Munich (2005): Directed by Steven Spielberg, this historical drama follows a group of Mossad assassins tasked with hunting down the Palestinians responsible for the Munich Olympic massacre. The film does not cast Israelis as classic villains, but it portrays their retaliatory actions with deep moral ambiguity, showing how the cycle of violence compromises the characters' humanity.

The Other Son (2012): This French-American co-production explores the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the story of two young men—one Israeli, one Palestinian—who discover they were accidentally switched at birth. While not an action film with a "villain," the movie acts as a strong critique of the entrenched political and cultural hostilities in the region.

The Gatekeepers (2012): Although this is an American-Israeli documentary, it heavily critiques the state of Israeli policy. The film features interviews with six former heads of the Shin Bet (Israel's internal security service), who frankly discuss the ethical failures, brutality, and moral costs of Israel's military occupation.

The Hammer of Boravia in Superman (2025): Director James Gunn's Superman film drew significant cultural commentary due to its plotline. The movie features the fictional country of Boravia alongside an antagonistic military presence, which many critics and audiences interpreted as an allegorical representation of the Israel Defense Forces and the U.S.'s role in the Gaza conflict.

Looking beyond America, there are many, many recent films portraying Israel and Israelis in very negative lights.

And of course, looking at portrayals of Jewish people in film, literature, and art over hundreds of years, it's overwhelmingly negative and hateful. Check out Shakespeare's portrayal of Jews in The Merchant of Venice. Read almost any American or British novel written in the 19th or 20th century and if there's a Jewish character, they're portrayed as shifty, sly, sneaky, criminal. I'll be reading, say, a detective novel written in the mid 20th century and out of nowhere there's an evil "money lender" from "the Levant" with a "hooked nose" who is "greedily" stealing.