Dinesh D’Souza’s new documentary faces anti-Zionism head-on
Phelim McAleer
End-times evidence
Still, D’Souza’s film is thoroughly dispensationalist. Israel’s present turmoil is portrayed as evidence that the end times are near, that evil is intensifying, and that God is making Himself more visible through signs and miracles. The fate of Israel, in this reading, is inseparable from the fate of the world.
The film’s second half is a series of interviews with Israeli archeologists who discuss evidence for figures like King David and Pontius Pilate, treating their discoveries as confirmations of Scripture. When combined with commentary from a Messianic Jew such as Jonathan Cahn, the Israeli-Gaza conflict becomes a mystical drama between cosmic good and cosmic evil.
That argument rests on a contested theological system. However one responds to the film’s defense of Israel, it must be filtered through the angular lenses of American dispensationalism — a hurdle many viewers may be unwilling to clear.
Centrist appeal
There are smaller criticisms as well: The film appears to lean heavily on AI-generated imagery, which raises its own questions about execution. But in the main, the film is preaching to the broad American center — those who support Israel without belonging to either extreme.
Despite these theological quirks, the film ultimately does something I have long wished D’Souza’s documentaries would do: It speaks clearly and with conviction about an issue that possesses lasting moral weight.
Israel will remain a defining struggle for decades. October 7 is only one chapter of that broader conflict. In taking it on, D’Souza presents a moral argument to a conservative audience that is increasingly drifting from him. Whether one agrees with his conclusions or not, he is operating on the level of enduring questions of faith rather than the transitory skirmishes of electoral politics. For once, he isn’t simply preaching to the choir.
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