Hollywood against Israel / Op-ed: Modern-day art world home to Israel haters, takes pleasure in romanticizing terrorists (YNetNews.Com -Yedioth Internet) Giulio Meotti Published: 04.12.12, 14:16)
Source: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4215414,00.html
YNet News - Yediot Achronot
YNet News - Yediot Achronot Articles-Index-Top
Publishers-Index-Top
It doesn’t matter that Iran’s ayatollahs just hosted an international
conference, attended by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,
against "Hollywood and Satanism" and "Hollywoodism and Zionism." It
doesn’t matter that many blockbusters have been banned in Arab
countries, including Steven Spielberg’s "Schindler’s List," all of
Jane Fonda’s films, Paul Newman’s "Exodus" and the television
series "The Nanny" (because of Fran Drescher.)
Today, cinema is the most attractive show business for the haters of
Israel; Hollywood celebrities, such as the Trotskyite Vanessa
Redgrave and Viggo Mortensen, have boarded the anti-Israel bandwagon.
It’s an Israelophobic star system that joined the most perverse
sabotage of human rights. Seven-time Oscar nominee Mike Leigh and two-
time Oscar winner Emma Thompson are among three dozen actors and
directors who signed a letter calling for the boycott of Israel´s
national theater, Habima, which has been included in a Shakespeare
festival in England.
"Habima has a shameful record of involvement with illegal Israeli
settlements in Occupied Palestinian Territory," says the letter,
published in the Guardian newspaper. Elsewhere, more than 150
American artists, including actresses Julianne Moore, Redgrave and
Sex and the City´s Cynthia Nixon, signed a letter in support of the
boycott of Ariel’s cultural center in Samaria.
Several prominent actors and filmmakers, including Danny Glover and
Jane Fonda, boycotted the Toronto International Film Festival to
protest a week of screenings of Israeli films to mark the Tel Aviv
centennial (another "settlement" for them.) Then a film festival in
Scotland returned funding to the Israeli Embassy after succumbing to
pressure from anti-Israel celebrities who threatened to picket the
event.
Danish director Lars von Trier recently told an audience at the
Cannes film festival that he thought Israel was "a pain in the ass."
Oscar winner Jean-Luc Godard has called Israel "a cancer on the map
of the Middle East" and "a paradoxical form of Nazism." The decision
to award Palestinian film "Paradise Now" the Golden Globes Award for
best foreign film tells us that Palestinian terror against Israelis
has become cool and acceptable.
Soundtrack of anti-Semitism
A new generation of anti-Israel opera writers is also emerging in
recent years. The English National Opera, in London, just staged "The
Death of Klinghoffer," a music production that revolves around the
tragic Achille Lauro hijacking by the Palestine Liberation Front in
1985. Composer John Adams and librettist Alice Goodman claim that
their purpose in the production was to afford equal voice "to both
Palestinian and Israeli suffering."
The opera romanticizes the killing of a wheelchair-bound Jewish
passenger, shot in cold blood in the forehead and chest and then
dumped into the sea. When the Brooklyn Academy of Music first staged
Klinghoffer, Lisa and Ilsa Klinghoffer, the daughters of Leon,
attended anonymously. Disgusted at the idealistic portrayal of their
father’s killers, they issued this statement: "It’s a production that
appears to us to be anti-Semitic."
Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis, a winner of the UNESCO
International Music Prize, is a renowned Jew-hater who declared on
Greek television that he was "anti-Israel and anti-Semitic."
Meanwhile, "Manifest Destiny" by composer Keith Burstein and
librettist Dic Edward is another musical opera that romanticizes
Palestinian suicide bombers.
The 20th century will be remembered for the "Jew Süss," the film
commissioned by Joseph Goebbels that perverted the beautiful novel by
Lion Feuchtwanger, the most beautiful hymn to the Jews of the Middle.
It has also been the century of Leni Riefenstahl, whose hypnotic
depiction of Hitler’s Nuremberg rally, "Triumph of the Will," was
derided as the best propaganda film ever made.
But it was also the century of Marlene Dietrich, the German actress
who played a special role against the Nazis from Hollywood.
While today there are many new Riefsenthals around, you won’t find
another "blue angel" like Dietrich. Next time Habima Theater will be
overcrowded by Israelis running for an underground bomb shelter, our
horrible celebrities will remain silent, enjoying the prime time
Jewish bloodbath. In Israel, no Hollywood happy ending is allowed.
There are only images of hatred and the soundtrack of anti-Semitism.
(Copyright 2012 © Yedioth Internet 04/12/12)
Return to Top
MATERIAL REPRODUCED FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY