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COPYRIGHT 2006 Kurdish Library
Last year director Stephen Spielberg produced the film "Munich," to tell the story of the killing of 11 Israeli athletes by the Palestinian group Black September at the 1972 Olympics. Jewish critics wasted no time charging that the film "morally equates Israel with terrorists." Jews were urged not to see it.
In February of this year the Turkish film "Valley of the Wolves--Iraq" precipitated another outcry. Largely a fictionalized adaptation of an actual event and critical of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the film has one as one character, a Jewish-American doctor who carries out organ transplants on unwitting Iraqi casualties in order to send their organs to Israel and the United States. American actor Gary Busey plays the part. (Reuters 2.3.06) Cinemas in the U.S. and Europe have been urged not to show the film.
In March, another film, this one titled "Paradise Now," was the target of organized Jewry. The drama features two West Bank Palestinians recruited to carry out suicide attacks in Tel Aviv. A group of Israeli and American Jews demanded that the film be excluded from competition at the annual Oscar Awards because it depicts the would-be bombers too "sympathetically." In Israel, major cinema chains shunned the film, but the board of the Academy refused to remove it. (Haaretz 3.1.06) Nonetheless, given the outcry there was little doubt that "Paradise Now" would not win an Oscar, despite the fact that it had won a Golden Globe Award.
According to the LA Times: Some Israelis were incensed that the organizers of the Golden Globes, which gave an award to the film, listed the production "as coming from 'Palestine,' because there is no state by that name ... Israel quietly lobbied Oscar organizers in favor of 'Palestinian Authority'" (3.4.06)
It doesn't end there. Perhaps the most egregious of all efforts to smother critics targeted the primary organization for academics in higher education in the United States. In a report captioned, "U.S. Jews block conference in which anti-Israel professors participating," Haaretz explained: "Pressure exerted by Jewish organizations in the United States has succeeded in preventing an American Association of University Professors (AAUP) conference, in which a number of supporters of an academic boycott on Israel were scheduled to take part. The...
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