Steven Meet Mahmoud...So What Did You Expect?
Phyllis' List
by Gerald A. Honigman
Well over a half century ago, Munich was the scene of a tragic sell-out of the Czech people and nation by its alleged friends.
Britain's Chamberlain promised peace if Hitler would just be handed the Sudetenland, an important region of Czechoslovakia heavily populated by ethnic Germans. Imagine Mexico doing likewise regarding somewhere in the United States' own southwest for a bit of an analogy.
Thinking minds knew better then as they should now.
Regardless, yet another sell-out via Munich is about to occur…this one by a Jew to the Jew of the Nations as Steven Spielberg’s new movie is set for release late this December.
Even though this is really nothing new (there have long been more than a few anti-Zionist, self-hating, and/or Jews who thrive on victimization), Spielberg, admittedly, had me fooled for a while.
After all, you’d think the sire of the movie, Schindler’s List , the Shoah Foundation, and such would have learned the ultimate lesson here. But perhaps that was part of the problem…at least for Jews like Spielberg.
Should any nation’s raison d’etre be simply its victimization…even if, as in terms of the Jews, it has been the bloodiest and longest recorded in history? I came to expect this sort of thing from the Woody Allen types, but I thought the man who also brought The Prince of Egypt to the big screen knew better.
While becoming somewhat of an expert on the ashes of the Holocaust, Spielberg, unfortunately, indeed seems oblivious to its lessons and to the role of Israel as the risen Phoenix…just as the Prophet Ezekiel predicted over 2,500 years earlier in the biblical passages of the Valley of the Dry Bones.
Yet, if the interviews, early reports, and such about the movie are correct, this is about the most that Spielberg concedes: Israel exists because of the harsh hand history has dealt to its people. And he plays right into the hands of the anti-Semites…and they are anti-Semites.
While one may disagree with one Israeli policy or another, to deny Jews the same rights one does not deny other peoples is not simply “anti-Zionism.”
Rare, indeed, is the nation created in perfect justice. Yet this is evidently what Steven expects of the Jews.
Most of the Arabs’ almost two dozen certainly weren’t. Indeed, most were ruthlessly conquered and forcibly Arabized from mostly non-Arab peoples over the centuries…and still going on today. Does Darfur, gassed Kurds, murdered Copts and such ring a bell?
While, right from the getgo, the original April 25, 1920 Mandate of Palestine was divided so that Arabs (most of whom were newcomers themselves into the Mandate) received some 80% of it with the creation of Transjordan in 1922, Arabs would allow no such compromises for millions of Berbers, Copts, Jews, Kurds, Black African Sudanese, Assyrians, and other native, non-Arab peoples as well. The latter were simply expected to consent to Arab subjugation or were killed.
After having already received the bulk of the Mandate in 1922, had Arabs agreed to the subsequent 1947 partition, Arab nationalism would have wound up with some 90% of “Palestine,” the name the Roman emperor, Hadrian, gave to Judaea after the Jews’ second major revolt for their freedom and independence against the Soviet Union of its day in 133-135 C. E.
Judaea (not Palaestina) Capta coins were issued after the first revolt and can be found in museums all over the world today. The Arch of Titus still stands tall in Rome commemorating these events as do the writings of several famous Roman and Roman-sponsored historians such as Tacitus, Josephus, and Dio Cassius.
In addition to the Arabs themselves, other Muslim despots like Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are quick to state that the Jew of the Nations should be destroyed or moved to the Christian West.
Like the others, Ahmadinejad pretends that he doesn’t know of the Jews’ Middle Eastern origins, that half of Israel’s Jews fled Arab and/or Muslim lands like his own (indeed, there is a long history linking the Jews both as a nation and a people to Iran itself), and that another million descendants of these native Middle Eastern Jewish refugees fled elsewhere as well. Or, if he concedes this, they were simply expected to willingly be absorbed into the Dar ul-Islam.
Keep in mind that while Ahmadinejad lectures Israel in its struggles to survive, Iran continues to suppress and massacre Kurds, Baluchis, Arabs, and others in Iran…all in the name of his own country’s nationalism.
And Spielberg played right into all of the above’s hypocritical hands.
When I first got wind at what he was up to early last summer, I wrote two articles, Steven--Say It Isn’t So and Can Kushner. Unfortunately, it appears that those of us who were watching had plenty to be concerned about.
I know I’ll be criticized for what I’ll say next, but here it comes anyway.
I will not see Munich. Not even when it eventually makes it to the video stores.
Spielberg does not need my money (though he’s received a lot of it over the decades), but I will not give him any more. And here’s my reason…
Would Steven or any fair-minded person relegate, for example, the chronicling of the struggle of Blacks for civil rights in America to David Duke and the Klan?
Absurd…correct?
Yet Spielberg chose Tony Kushner, a nominal Jew who has openly and repeatedly expressed his opposition to Israel’s very existence, as the script writer for Munich, the story of Israel’s attempt to bring to justice the murderers of its eleven athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
So what did Steven or any of us expect would be the outcome of such an endeavor?
Did it require Einstein (a Zionist, by the way) to figure this one out?
Is there not a difference between Arab innocents dying by accident (usually because they were used as human shields, purposely put in harm’s way to protect the rats in their dens) and Jewish innocents murdered because they were deliberately targeted? And the more innocent the latter the better for shock value?
How many Arab buses, restaurants, shopping places, and such have been blown up by the Jew of the Nations?
Yet moral equivalency is evidently the name of Spielberg’s game. But, again, given the nature of his chosen script writer’s beast, what else could be expected?
It has come to be accepted that most of Hollywood’s Jews and non-Jews alike will hold Israel up to a literally suicidal level of conduct expected of no other nation. Certainly not of Arabs.
Thirty million truly stateless Kurds saw their one best chance at independence sacrificed on the altar of British petroleum politics and Arab nationalism after World War I. Will Spielberg and Kushner collaborate to tell their story? Or that of millions of others victimized in the name of the Arab nation as well?
Don’t hold your breath.
But the microscopic Jew of the Nations is simply expected to bare the necks of its kids so that Arabs can have their 22nd state and second one in “Palestine.”
That the Michael Moore, Angelina Jolie, Richard Gere & Co. crew espouse such things is bad enough…
For Jews to join them is nauseating.
And for Spielberg to willingly lend the power of his film making to such a travesty by placing the story into the hands of a person who doesn’t even believe that Israel has a right to exist is unforgivable.
Many will refrain from speaking out because of the money and efforts Spielberg contributes to the cause of dead Jews.
Shame on him and them as well.
The miracle of Israel reborn owes no human an explanation.
Crocodile tears and alleged sympathy for dead Jews a la the Holocaust simply doesn’t cut it in the post-Auschwitz era. Not that it ever did.
The Jews are back where King David continued to forge them into a nation over three thousand years ago. And in their same capital, Jerusalem--despite the trials and tribulations of one imperial conquest after the other. How many other nations can accurately state the same?
And they will continue to make mistakes from time to time—despite their best intentions—like all others do. The difference is that these will continue to be overwhelmingly mistakes, not injustices purposely committed without trying to reach an honorable compromise with their neighbors. Can Arabs say the same? Yet look at whom the Hollywood crowd chooses to single out and point its collective moral finger at. Indeed, Spielberg’s colleague, Michael Moore, has labeled Israel one of the world’s top three evils.
A nation should not have to be decimated before it receives its share of justice.
Empathy for live Jews is what is and has always been required…and, once again, understanding that, as in the story of Munich, in it’s struggle to survive, Israel, like all other nations, will make some mistakes.
But if any nation has a right to exist, it is that of the Jews—who, short of suicide (demanded even by the Arabs’ so-called moderates, like Abbas) have tried as hard as humanly possible to reach accommodations with those who claim, like Steven’s fellow nominally Jew buddy, Kushner, and Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, that the Jew of the Nations has no such right at all.
So Steven, meet your new friend, Mahmoud.
by Gerald A. Honigman
Well over a half century ago, Munich was the scene of a tragic sell-out of the Czech people and nation by its alleged friends.
Britain's Chamberlain promised peace if Hitler would just be handed the Sudetenland, an important region of Czechoslovakia heavily populated by ethnic Germans. Imagine Mexico doing likewise regarding somewhere in the United States' own southwest for a bit of an analogy.
Thinking minds knew better then as they should now.
Regardless, yet another sell-out via Munich is about to occur…this one by a Jew to the Jew of the Nations as Steven Spielberg’s new movie is set for release late this December.
Even though this is really nothing new (there have long been more than a few anti-Zionist, self-hating, and/or Jews who thrive on victimization), Spielberg, admittedly, had me fooled for a while.
After all, you’d think the sire of the movie, Schindler’s List , the Shoah Foundation, and such would have learned the ultimate lesson here. But perhaps that was part of the problem…at least for Jews like Spielberg.
Should any nation’s raison d’etre be simply its victimization…even if, as in terms of the Jews, it has been the bloodiest and longest recorded in history? I came to expect this sort of thing from the Woody Allen types, but I thought the man who also brought The Prince of Egypt to the big screen knew better.
While becoming somewhat of an expert on the ashes of the Holocaust, Spielberg, unfortunately, indeed seems oblivious to its lessons and to the role of Israel as the risen Phoenix…just as the Prophet Ezekiel predicted over 2,500 years earlier in the biblical passages of the Valley of the Dry Bones.
Yet, if the interviews, early reports, and such about the movie are correct, this is about the most that Spielberg concedes: Israel exists because of the harsh hand history has dealt to its people. And he plays right into the hands of the anti-Semites…and they are anti-Semites.
While one may disagree with one Israeli policy or another, to deny Jews the same rights one does not deny other peoples is not simply “anti-Zionism.”
Rare, indeed, is the nation created in perfect justice. Yet this is evidently what Steven expects of the Jews.
Most of the Arabs’ almost two dozen certainly weren’t. Indeed, most were ruthlessly conquered and forcibly Arabized from mostly non-Arab peoples over the centuries…and still going on today. Does Darfur, gassed Kurds, murdered Copts and such ring a bell?
While, right from the getgo, the original April 25, 1920 Mandate of Palestine was divided so that Arabs (most of whom were newcomers themselves into the Mandate) received some 80% of it with the creation of Transjordan in 1922, Arabs would allow no such compromises for millions of Berbers, Copts, Jews, Kurds, Black African Sudanese, Assyrians, and other native, non-Arab peoples as well. The latter were simply expected to consent to Arab subjugation or were killed.
After having already received the bulk of the Mandate in 1922, had Arabs agreed to the subsequent 1947 partition, Arab nationalism would have wound up with some 90% of “Palestine,” the name the Roman emperor, Hadrian, gave to Judaea after the Jews’ second major revolt for their freedom and independence against the Soviet Union of its day in 133-135 C. E.
Judaea (not Palaestina) Capta coins were issued after the first revolt and can be found in museums all over the world today. The Arch of Titus still stands tall in Rome commemorating these events as do the writings of several famous Roman and Roman-sponsored historians such as Tacitus, Josephus, and Dio Cassius.
In addition to the Arabs themselves, other Muslim despots like Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are quick to state that the Jew of the Nations should be destroyed or moved to the Christian West.
Like the others, Ahmadinejad pretends that he doesn’t know of the Jews’ Middle Eastern origins, that half of Israel’s Jews fled Arab and/or Muslim lands like his own (indeed, there is a long history linking the Jews both as a nation and a people to Iran itself), and that another million descendants of these native Middle Eastern Jewish refugees fled elsewhere as well. Or, if he concedes this, they were simply expected to willingly be absorbed into the Dar ul-Islam.
Keep in mind that while Ahmadinejad lectures Israel in its struggles to survive, Iran continues to suppress and massacre Kurds, Baluchis, Arabs, and others in Iran…all in the name of his own country’s nationalism.
And Spielberg played right into all of the above’s hypocritical hands.
When I first got wind at what he was up to early last summer, I wrote two articles, Steven--Say It Isn’t So and Can Kushner. Unfortunately, it appears that those of us who were watching had plenty to be concerned about.
I know I’ll be criticized for what I’ll say next, but here it comes anyway.
I will not see Munich. Not even when it eventually makes it to the video stores.
Spielberg does not need my money (though he’s received a lot of it over the decades), but I will not give him any more. And here’s my reason…
Would Steven or any fair-minded person relegate, for example, the chronicling of the struggle of Blacks for civil rights in America to David Duke and the Klan?
Absurd…correct?
Yet Spielberg chose Tony Kushner, a nominal Jew who has openly and repeatedly expressed his opposition to Israel’s very existence, as the script writer for Munich, the story of Israel’s attempt to bring to justice the murderers of its eleven athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
So what did Steven or any of us expect would be the outcome of such an endeavor?
Did it require Einstein (a Zionist, by the way) to figure this one out?
Is there not a difference between Arab innocents dying by accident (usually because they were used as human shields, purposely put in harm’s way to protect the rats in their dens) and Jewish innocents murdered because they were deliberately targeted? And the more innocent the latter the better for shock value?
How many Arab buses, restaurants, shopping places, and such have been blown up by the Jew of the Nations?
Yet moral equivalency is evidently the name of Spielberg’s game. But, again, given the nature of his chosen script writer’s beast, what else could be expected?
It has come to be accepted that most of Hollywood’s Jews and non-Jews alike will hold Israel up to a literally suicidal level of conduct expected of no other nation. Certainly not of Arabs.
Thirty million truly stateless Kurds saw their one best chance at independence sacrificed on the altar of British petroleum politics and Arab nationalism after World War I. Will Spielberg and Kushner collaborate to tell their story? Or that of millions of others victimized in the name of the Arab nation as well?
Don’t hold your breath.
But the microscopic Jew of the Nations is simply expected to bare the necks of its kids so that Arabs can have their 22nd state and second one in “Palestine.”
That the Michael Moore, Angelina Jolie, Richard Gere & Co. crew espouse such things is bad enough…
For Jews to join them is nauseating.
And for Spielberg to willingly lend the power of his film making to such a travesty by placing the story into the hands of a person who doesn’t even believe that Israel has a right to exist is unforgivable.
Many will refrain from speaking out because of the money and efforts Spielberg contributes to the cause of dead Jews.
Shame on him and them as well.
The miracle of Israel reborn owes no human an explanation.
Crocodile tears and alleged sympathy for dead Jews a la the Holocaust simply doesn’t cut it in the post-Auschwitz era. Not that it ever did.
The Jews are back where King David continued to forge them into a nation over three thousand years ago. And in their same capital, Jerusalem--despite the trials and tribulations of one imperial conquest after the other. How many other nations can accurately state the same?
And they will continue to make mistakes from time to time—despite their best intentions—like all others do. The difference is that these will continue to be overwhelmingly mistakes, not injustices purposely committed without trying to reach an honorable compromise with their neighbors. Can Arabs say the same? Yet look at whom the Hollywood crowd chooses to single out and point its collective moral finger at. Indeed, Spielberg’s colleague, Michael Moore, has labeled Israel one of the world’s top three evils.
A nation should not have to be decimated before it receives its share of justice.
Empathy for live Jews is what is and has always been required…and, once again, understanding that, as in the story of Munich, in it’s struggle to survive, Israel, like all other nations, will make some mistakes.
But if any nation has a right to exist, it is that of the Jews—who, short of suicide (demanded even by the Arabs’ so-called moderates, like Abbas) have tried as hard as humanly possible to reach accommodations with those who claim, like Steven’s fellow nominally Jew buddy, Kushner, and Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, that the Jew of the Nations has no such right at all.
So Steven, meet your new friend, Mahmoud.
posted by Marko at 12/23/2005 12:07:00 AM
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