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"The most honest, the
most comprehensive
and most mobilizing
news
and analysis on the Middle East always comes from
MER.
It is
indispensable!" - Robert
Silverman - Salamanca,
Spain
HOLLYWOOD and ISRAEL
HOLLYWOOD and "THE
JEWS"
By Mark
Bruzonsky*
Mid-East Realities - MER -
www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 25 Feb 2004:
Even
the title is so emotion laden. It's OK to talk about "the
Americans",
"the French", "the Israelis"..."The Kurds", "the Bosnians", "the
Catholics." We often hear references to Christians and
Muslims...to
Hindus and Buddhists. But "The Jews" has a particularly uneasy
and troubling
aspect to it -- this of course going back to historical associations,
to elements of Christian theology, to the European holocaust....and yes
indeed to Biblical
times.
As the modern-day media crucifixation of
superstar turned Jesus
story-teller Mel Gibson continues, a brief summary of the situation in
Hollywood is in order. First of course they brought great
pressure on
Gibson to not go forward with the movie in the first place. Then
they
tried hard to get the movie black-balled from distribution. Next
they put on the
pressure
to get the cut and script of the movie changed (i.e., like the editing
censorship that often
goes on with op-eds and books dealing with the Middle East and "The
Jews" in the U.S. and Europe). And now, with things having
backfired and the movie taking off with fireworks, the attacks
on Gibson
personally and on the extreme violence of his film generally continue
-- witness today's
blockbuster assault in the New York
Times (itself long known as a kind
of Israeli-centric heavily Jewish-influenced 'newspaper of record' in
the city where more Jews
now live than any other).
In the mid 1970s, there was a film
titled "Children of Rage" that
depicted early-on the Palestinian struggle against the Israeli
occupation.
There was a moving love story between a courageous Jewish doctor
and an attractive
Palestinian woman. There was a thoughtful portrayal of the
situation
Palestinian young people had found themselves in, of harsh life in the
refugee camps, of the increasingly bitter struggle for freedom and
Statehood. In the
end there was much death and destruction visited on all.
Looking
back, Children of Rage was
very much an early warning of the historic cancer which has since
metastasized into the Intifada, into the
American occupation of the Middle East, and yes into 9/11, the
Apartheid Wall, and the desperation of suiciders.
Children of Rage
was in fact written and directed
by an American
Jew, Arthur Seidelman. It was a substantial motion picture
that
opened in
major movie theaters in New York, Washington, Los Angeles and around
the country. But the protests and pressures from Jewish
organizations were considerable, after a
few
weeks the film was crushed (never to return), and the Jewish director
was
in a very real sense burned out by the whole affair. Seidelman
remained in Hollywood directing for TV and cinema but he never again
returned to
the subject of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
 In the 1980s a famous movie actor
got
interested in the story of
what happened to the U.S.S. Liberty in 1967. He
investigated a bit, held a few
meetings
with survivors, and went to top-level friends in Hollywood to try to
get
a movie
made, himself possibly staring as the Liberty
Captain.
He not only failed. He was very explicitly warned by the powers
that
be: "Don't even mention this again. If you even try to go
ahead with
this you
will never work in Hollywood again."
At the time of the first
Palestinian Intifada another famous
movie star, this one Jewish, was asked for his support regarding a
statement being published in the New
York Review of Books and other magazines by
Jewish professionals -- most lawyers, doctors, professors -- supporting
the Palestinian
struggle against the Israeli occupation and calling for a suspension of
U.S. aid to Israel until the Israelis ended the occupation and stopped
preventing a Palestinian State. "I definitely support what you
are doing, but I can't
sign
it" Ed Asner said. He added softly, almost in hushed tones:
"I'm a coward, I'm very sorry...my agent would kill
me."
A few years before, in the aftermath of Israel's
invasion of
Lebanon and the early-on suicide bombings that drove the Americans out
of
Beirut, a very high-level extraordinary meeting was quietly convened
near Capitol Hill in Washington. Brought
together for the first, and for the only time, were top representatives
of the
PLO, American Jewry, Congress, and academia. In retrospect
the
purpose was to find a way to head off what has now considerably
worsened and expanded
to become the "Clash of Civilizations". Mossad operatives
were soon
to visit some of the participants, in private, one by one, including
the high-level host of the meeting. The warning was very
blunt: "Your welfare, your career, the future of you and your
family
are at stake. Hold no more such meetings."
Those who 'obeyed' were
rewarded; the host with a life-long appointment to a very senior
position in Washington. Those who did not comply were punished
and black-listed. Though some of the key participants very
much wanted to push forward, no follow-up meetings ever took place.
In 'modern' times crucifixtions
take may forms these days
beyond the old Roman way of
nailing to the public cross for all to see and cower in excorciating
blood and tears. Ironically, in
a world
of instant mass communications and incessant news spam, deciphering
what
is
really happening may be even more difficult now than
then.
As for Mel Gibson he has
told a tale of Biblical proportions,
one that goes to the heart of Christian theology, and one which in fact
goes to the core of the Jewish predicament ever since those days of
the Sanhedrin and the history-changing Jewish schism that spread
worldwide from
Jerusalem erupting into Christianity. Others
can interpret the scriptures, both old and new, in their own ways as
they determine best and true --
fair enough. But to try to relentlessly crucify Gibson for
trying to
tell the
story as he knows it, or rather as he believes it, is in itself a kind
of
intellectual and political blasphemy. Rather Gibson
should be thanked for standing his ground, making his movie, telling
his story, and making us all ponder and think and feel...whether Jew,
Christian,
Muslim, Buddhist, aethist...or just plain human.
* The author was
Washington Representative of the World Jewish Congress for eight years
soon after he first came to Washington. Background
Information www.MiddleEast.Org/mab.
Email: MAB@MiddleEast.org
Phone: 202 362-5266.
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http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/ThePassionoftheChrist-1129941/
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