‘My reckoning with the Zionism I was raised in’: Film premiers on anniversary of October 7 attacks
‘PERSONAL RECKONING’: Hannah Levy in Inheritance
By Simon Bristow, Co-Editor
A short film billed as “a personal reckoning with Jewish heritage and the Palestinian experience” will have its premiere in Hull tomorrow, on the third anniversary of the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel.
Inheritance, written by and starring Hannah Levy, will be screened at 7pm at Reel Cinema as part of the Shorts 4 section of the Unthinkable Film Festival.
The film was made in Hull by a team of local industry professionals in association with Fly Girl Films and Never Dull Productions.
Hannah said: “7 October marks the anniversary of the horrific attacks and violence against Israeli civilians in 2023, which I condemn unreservedly.
“It’s a coincidence that our premiere falls on this date. But it’s a fitting one because 7 October is also the date that began my own reckoning: with the Zionism I was raised in, and with 78 years of Palestinian displacement and occupation, including what a UN Commission of Inquiry, alongside Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have determined to be a genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. This film is part of that reckoning.
“Inheritance isn't about politics in the abstract, it’s about what we inherit, what we’re taught to believe, and what it means to unlearn it. I wanted to make this with a team who understood that kind of reckoning, and there was nowhere better to do that than in my home town of Hull.
“This is a city built on its port, on generations of immigration, and on a proud history of standing up to fascism. That spirit runs through everyone who made this film, and it’s the spirit I hope audiences take away from it – not peace as an abstraction, but freedom, real and overdue, for the Palestinian people.
“We remember the Holocaust annually and say never again, for anyone. I cannot condone the current situation and I will not allow my Jewish inheritance to be hijacked by Zionism that seeks to eradicate one nation to build another, on the rubble of a colonial past.
“The Jewish word for truth is ‘emet’ and it must prevail to demolish the propaganda of decades. Not in my name!”
The October 7 attacks were the most deadly in Israeli history. More than 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage. More than 73,000 Palestinians have so far been killed in Israel’s retaliatory offensive.
In September 2025, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory found that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza.
Last month, the UK announced sanctions on illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. Speaking in the Commons, Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband said: “The British government agrees that there is ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in areas of the West Bank, perpetrated by settler terrorists.”
On Sunday, members of the Green Party of England and Wales adopted a motion declaring Zionism a form of racism, which has divided senior party figures.