It's been panned by the critics, its box office is doing poorly, so of course the promoters of Miral are turning to the anti-Semitic marketing tactics (Hat Tip: Elder of Ziyon).
You've got to love that Star of David.
By the way, the movie is doing far better outside the United States (click on the Foreign tab) than in the United States and better in Europe than in the Arab world (what a shock), although those statistics aren't current.
Daniel Greenfield writes an open letter to Harvey Weinstein, the director of the anti-Semitic and anti-Israel movie Miral, which is previewing this week in the United Nations General Assembly.
Come along Harvey, into the bedroom where a father and his three-month-old daughter, Hadas, were fast asleep. It can be hard to get a 3-month-old baby to fall asleep. Her father must had quite a time of it that night. Babies may not have language, but they do have fears. They are afraid of the strange new world they were born into. And they need parents to comfort them and assure them that everything will be all right. That they are loved and protected.
When Rabbi Fogel finally got his little baby daughter to sleep, she must have felt safe with her father there. The man who would have taught her about life. Who would have done his best to protect her. And the man whose throat was slashed in his sleep along with his child's.
Tell me Harvey, do you know what goes through a three month old baby's mind when her throat is being slashed? You can't make a movie about it and you wouldn't it if you could. Movies are complex stories. The characters change and grow. They become someone else. A three-month-old baby having her throat cut will never become anyone else. She is fixed in that moment of horror and pain. Dying without knowing why. Only that her parents couldn't protect her.
If you were going to make a movie about this scene, it would be about the killers. You would show their past and explain their actions. Surely an Israeli soldier stepped on their toe once or blew up their house. Stretch it out over two hours and you can justify anything. Even the knife being drawn across Hadas' throat. That is the magic of cinema. But to three-month-old Hadas, there is no context. The movie of her life ended the night you were hard at work promoting yours.
The mother had been in the bathroom while the bloody work took place. A small moment of peace while her children slept. She didn't let them cut her throat, the way they had that of her husband and her baby daughter. Instead she fought them. They had to stab her to death.
If you ever make a movie about these particular terrorists, be sure to emphasize how hard it is to stab a mother to death. She will fight for her children. And the terrorists will have to work to kill her. You should swoop the camera down sympathetically on their sweating faces as they do the hard work of murdering her.
From there they went on to murder 11 year old Yoav who was reading in bed. Next was 3 -year-old Elad. Why stab a 3-year-old boy twice in the heart? That is the question, Harvey. I understand once. Once is certainly enough to kill any 3 year old. But twice? Maybe it was that each killer wanted a turn and a share of the glory of murdering a toddler. They had already murdered three children and their parents, but the laws of Islam can be arcane sometimes. Is it possible then that the Shaheed (the martyr) will not enter paradise unless he murders a 3 year old too?
Maybe there are more virgins waiting in paradise for each child killed. Murder a child and trade his body in for more virgins. Or maybe it is that the brave Jihadists who climb through living room windows and cut the throats of children in their sleep wanted to feel the violence of that blow. The thrill of the knife slamming home into a child's heart. Or maybe it is that Elad's heart was strong enough that even two adult Muslim terrorists had to stab twice to kill him.
I would like to think so.
Your article promoting Miral urges that 'understanding the "other" requires us to step out of our comfort zones'. Step now out of your comfort zone. And understand the other. I don't mean the murderers themselves. I think you understand them a little too well. If you didn't understand them at all, Miral would be lying on a back shelf somewhere.
I urge you to understand your own 'Other', not those who kill in the name of Islamic terrorism, but those who die of it. Who die and yet refuse to give in. Who cling to their tiny patch of land, more than you would ever cling to your Connecticut estate.
Family members have released photos of the children lying in their blood, but I don't think you will want to see them. They are too far outside your comfort zone. There is plenty of blood and gore in your movies, but this is different. These are the bodies of inconvenient children. Their deaths don't fit into your ideological framework. You know quite well that Muslims are good people, and Jews who live on land claimed by the Muslims, are bad people. If they are murdered it is inconvenient because it retards the peace process. The process by which terrorists climb through living room windows and slash the throats of children. Until whole families are at peace.
...
"Unless the Palestinian narrative is finally understood and acknowledged by Israelis and their American supporters, there will never be peace in the Holy Land," you say. As if peace were in your hands to give. But we understand the Palestinian narrative all too well. The real one and the fake one. We know the olive groves, the bulldozers and the keys. And we also know the terrorist gangs trained by Islamic fanatics and Socialist dictators to seize the land and murder its inhabitants. The gangs whom Moscow gave a nationalist gloss calling them the Palestinian people, the smirking thugs on whom President Clinton and European leaders bestowed legitimacy and billions of dollars.
If you want to know the real narrative, then put Miral on a shelf and ask where the Christians of the region have gone. Where have the Zoroastrians gone? Why are there so few left? The answer would make for a much better movie, but it is not a movie that you will ever make. It is a story of bigotry and genocide. It is an old story and a new one. You can find its oldest chapters in the Koran, along with the graves of the Jews of what is today Saudi Arabia. Its latest chapters are being written in Europe, where Jews once again flee European cities, not from men in uniforms, but in long robes. And unless that narrative is understood, there will be no peace in the Holy Land, or anywhere else.
I know that none of this will move you. Controversy is your bread and butter. The more you hear cries of pain, the more you count the cash. Miral will make you money. Just as Der Ewige Jude made money. And you will protest that there is no comparison between the two. Miral is only giving the Palestinian narrative, just as Der Ewige Jude gave the Aryan narrative. It is more subtle, I'm sure. The audiences you count on are liberal and sophisticated. They won't be taken in by gutter propaganda.
You will dismiss this as, what you describe in your article, being, "smeared by those who insist on reducing this conflict to us vs. them." So stand outside while Rabbi Cohen walks with his gun, a twelve year old by his side, her heart beating almost as hard as her little brother's did when the knife came down on it, and wait while she goes inside. And then answer her this, if you truly believe in not reducing the conflict to 'Us vs Them' then why are you telling the story of Miral and not her story?
You have chosen a side. Our 'Them' is your 'Us'. Soon that girl will leave the house again, along with her younger brothers. Three children who somehow survived. Look her over carefully. She is your 'Other'. The story you do not want to hear. The face you do not want to see. She survived tonight. So did two of her brothers. Next time they might not. No movie is needed to tell her story. Her life is her story. Her survival a testament.
The United Nations General Assembly will be screening a virulently anti-Israel film called Miral on Monday.
Sources said that invitations were sent out on Thursday afternoon for the Monday night screening. Members of the Israeli delegation to the UN said the decision to screen a feature film in the General Assembly hall – especially such a dramatically pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli film – was a “horrible” one. The decision seems to have been made unilaterally by Switzerland’s Joseph Deiss, the General Assembly’s president. Messages to his spokesperson left by the Post Sunday were not returned.
On Friday morning, Israel’s delegation to the UN sent a letter of complaint to Deiss, protesting his decision to host the US premiere of Miral, Israeli spokeswoman Karean Peretz told the Post.
In the letter, Israel’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Haim Waxman wrote, “We find it very troubling that the UN has chosen to feature this film in the GA Hall. We are not aware of any other films with such contentious political content that have received this kind of endorsement from the President of the GA.”
The event, according to the Israeli delegation, “will mark a rare occasion in which the UN’s GA Hall is used for a movie premiere. This is clearly a politicized decision of the UN, one that shows poor judgment and a lack of evenhandedness.”
According to members of the Israeli delegation, various offices at the UN denied having any knowledge of the event beforehand, including the office of the Secretary General Ban Ki Moon. His office did not respond to the Post’s request for comment.
Waxman told the Post that Deiss, as president of the General Assembly, in some circumstances is independent and therefore has the prerogative to make decisions such as these.
“But the hall of the General Assembly is not his own property,” Waxman continued. “This is the main hall of the global community and belongs to the countries of the world. Anything that happens there has to be decided with great care. We find ourselves arguing about commas here and there on every document – so how can this screening happen?”
I've reported previously on the film and shown you the trailer here.
Here is the plot from Wikipedia (it's actually based on a true story, which has been propagandized).
A chronicle of Hind Husseini's effort to establish an orphanage in Jerusalem after the 1948 partition of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel.
Jerusalem, 1948. On her way to work, Hind Husseini (Hiam Abbass) comes across 55 orphaned children in the street. She takes them home to give them food and shelter. Within six months, 55 had grown to almost 2,000, and the Dar Al-Tifel Institute was born.
In 1978, at the age of 7, Miral (Freida Pinto) was sent to the Institute by her father following her mother's death. Brought up safely inside the Institute's walls, she is naïve to the troubles that surround her. Then, in 1988, at the age of 17, she is assigned to teach at a refugee camp where she is awakened to the reality of her people’s struggle. When she falls for Hani, a political activist, she finds herself torn between the fight for the future of her people and Mama Hind's belief that education is the road to peace.
You can probably guess to whom this movie is sympathetic....
...
So what's wrong with a highly visible film that's likely to get a lot of attention (even though it may be out of the running for an Oscar) and that shows the 'Palestinians' in a favorable light? Well, let's start with Hind Husseini. Does the name sound familiar? I thought it might. She was the sister of Haj al-Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem and a collaborator with Hitler. And she never apologized for that. And no, the movie isn't going to highlight it either.
And guess where the original 55 children in the orphanage came from? They were survivors of what Wikipedia calls the 'Deir Yassin massacre.' (There never was a 'massacre' there, but I won't get into that now). So you can bet that lie will be repeated.
The orphanage ended up in Sheikh Jarrah, directly across from what was until 2002 the 'Palestinian' headquarters in Jerusalem known as Orient House. Maybe we'll even see the nearby Shepherd's Hotel....
Do you all have a sense of where this is heading? This entire movie is one massive slander against Israel....
But as a reminder, I am going to show you the trailer again.
I'd like to show you a trailer of a movie that you may not like. The movie is called Miral. Here is the plot from Wikipedia (it's actually based on a true story, which has been propagandized).
A chronicle of Hind Husseini's effort to establish an orphanage in Jerusalem after the 1948 partition of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel.
Jerusalem, 1948. On her way to work, Hind Husseini (Hiam Abbass) comes across 55 orphaned children in the street. She takes them home to give them food and shelter. Within six months, 55 had grown to almost 2,000, and the Dar Al-Tifel Institute was born.
In 1978, at the age of 7, Miral (Freida Pinto) was sent to the Institute by her father following her mother's death. Brought up safely inside the Institute's walls, she is naïve to the troubles that surround her. Then, in 1988, at the age of 17, she is assigned to teach at a refugee camp where she is awakened to the reality of her people’s struggle. When she falls for Hani, a political activist, she finds herself torn between the fight for the future of her people and Mama Hind's belief that education is the road to peace.
You can probably guess to whom this movie is sympathetic....
The movie was released on September 3 at the 2010 Venice Film Festival and in France on September 15, 2010. The film was set for release (I assume it's been released by now) on December 3, 2010 in the United Kingdom, and on March 25, 2011 in the United States. That's nearly a month after Oscar. We don't know what films will be nominated yet because nominations just closed on Friday. We do know that the Golden Globe Awards were Sunday night and it didn't win anything there. But it could still win an Oscar (NOTE - The following was written in March 2010).
Miral: (No US distributor yet)
Another under the radar film. This is a real life story about a Palestinian woman who opens an orphanage in Jerusalem in 1948. It stars Freida Pinto, the darling of Slumdog Millionaire, and is helmed by Julian Schnabel (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly). Expect a lot of early critics’ awards, which should propel this film onto the Best Picture short list.
I don't know what the rules are, but this film could be eligible for awards next year, given that it's not even opening in the US until March.
And here's the trailer. Let's go to the videotape.
And the director? I'm sure you'll all be shocked to hear that he's Jewish.
Schnabel revealed that the project had relevance for his own family history; "Coming from my background, as an American Jewish person whose mother was president of Hadassah [the Women's Zionist Organisation of America] in 1948, I figured I was a pretty good person to try to tell the story of the other side."
Isn't it great how good we Jews are at taking the other side?
So what's wrong with a highly visible film that's likely to get a lot of attention (even though it may be out of the running for an Oscar) and that shows the 'Palestinians' in a favorable light? Well, let's start with Hind Husseini. Does the name sound familiar? I thought it might. She was the sister of Haj al-Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem and a collaborator with Hitler. And she never apologized for that. And no, the movie isn't going to highlight it either.
And guess where the original 55 children in the orphanage came from? They were survivors of what Wikipedia calls the 'Deir Yassin massacre.' (There never was a 'massacre' there, but I won't get into that now). So you can bet that lie will be repeated.
The orphanage ended up in Sheikh Jarrah, directly across from what was until 2002 the 'Palestinian' headquarters in Jerusalem known as Orient House. Maybe we'll even see the nearby Shepherd's Hotel....
Do you all have a sense of where this is heading? This entire movie is one massive slander against Israel....
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
You've got to love that Star of David.
