From Ian:
A Blood Libel Against Israel on Netflix
On Dec. 1, Netflix started streaming the Jordanian film "Farha," which depicts fictionalized, heartless Israeli soldiers viciously killing Palestinian men, women and children in cold blood. These events never actually happened and the film admits that it is "dramatized." But that does not mean it will not have an outsized impact on anti-Jewish hate and violence.
The movie offers a fanciful retelling of the 1948 war in which the would-be genocidal Arab armies failed to destroy a newborn Jewish state (and kill all its inhabitants in the process). Those who tried to help them do it are romantically recast as the helpless victims of a horrible catastrophe.
Yet primary sources - from the Arab side - attest to the fact that the vast majority of Arabs who left their homes did so voluntarily, or under orders from the invading Arab armies, not the Israeli armed forces.
This is not a matter of perspective or worldview. A movie that malevolently depicts Israeli forces murdering defenseless Arab children in order to feed the nakba mythology is nothing short of a modern blood libel.
In a world of rising antisemitism, it is dangerous and disgusting for Netflix to feed false and anti-Jewish information to the masses by giving a film like this a platform.
Netflix is under fire for screening a movie depicting Israeli soldiers executing a Palestinian family in cold blood, made by filmmakers who have a track record of inflammatory comments about the Jewish state.
The film, Farha, set in the 1948 Israeli War of Independence, is being launched on Netflix in most countries from 1 December, and is likely to be Jordan’s entry to next year’s Oscars.
Dan Diker, president of the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs, told the JC that the film was intended to “destroy [Israel] by all means possible”.
He said: “I find it deeply troubling that Netflix has apparently failed to do the most basic due diligence before supporting and promoting this project.”
In an investigation into the filmmakers, the JC and activist group GnasherJew discovered that producer Ayah Jardaneh tweeted last year that “Israel is the real terrorist” and posted a “map of Palestine” that erased all trace of Israel.
She also tweeted that Mike Pence was supporting “an apartheid state, an occupier and Zionism”.
Addressing Mr Pence, she wrote: “If you love them so much give them your land and leave your house live as a refugee and let them live there instead”.
In 2014, Ms Jardaneh retweeted a post that said “Hamas or his firecracker rockets is not a problem, but seven decades of Israeli brutality and oppression is”.
She has also used the hashtag #27027KM, described as “the area of all Palestine from the river to the sea”.
Ms Jardaneh, who works at the Amman-based company TaleBox, is not the only member of the team to have made such controversial statements online, the JC found.
Netflix blocks controversial Nakba film for Israeli subscribers
The Jordanian movie "Farha" – which shows Israeli soldiers executing a Palestinian family - became available on Netflix several days ago, but it seems not for all the subscribers of the popular streaming service.
Although many Israelis have expressed outrage and terminated their Netflix subscription after the streaming platform announced that it would upload the film, Israelis who chose to keep their subscription would not be able to view it after it was blocked for them.
Many Netflix subscribers in Israel said that when they tried to upload "Farha" in the Netflix search engine, and could not find it, while others received a message saying "this title cannot be viewed in your country."
It should be noted that for some subscribers who had an English interface, the film remained available for them, but still many had an error message and couldn't watch it.
Last week, Far-right lawmaker and destined National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir slammed the new Jordanian film.
"The inciteful Jordanian film that will be broadcast on Netflix demonstrates how hypocritical the world could be," Ben-Gvir said.
"Israel has been attacked by murderous terror before it was even established, this consciousness engineering should be handled by the Foreign Ministry with advocacy that shows the real picture, and who the real bloodthirsty murderers are," he said.
From Ian:
Abe Greenwald:
Kanye West, Louis Farrakhan and Anti-Semitism
What lessons can we learn from the rubbish-cluttered mind of Kanye West? We can start by drawing some important distinctions.
Mr. West’s is a particular kind of anti-Semitism. The left-wing activist Shaun King writes in Newsweek that “you don’t have to be white to be a white supremacist,” and that “Kanye West is now a full-blown white supremacist.” This is a category error.
The “white extinction” conspiracy theory promoted by white supremacists holds that Jews promote integration, miscegenation and civil rights as part of a plot to replace the white race. Mr. West appears to believe the opposite. “Jewish people have owned the black voice,” he said on a recent podcast, later speaking of black Americans “being signed to a [Jewish-owned] record label, or having a Jewish manager, or being signed to a Jewish basketball team, or doing a movie on a Jewish platform like Disney.”
That sort of talk sounds very much like the ravings of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, the world’s foremost black anti-Semite. “You can’t do nothing in Hollywood unless you go by them”—the Jews—Mr. Farrakhan said in a 2010 speech. “You a hip-hop artist? You can’t do nothing, you gotta go by them. You want to be a great sports figure? They own that plantation. Children of Israel, they got you jumping through hoops.”
Similarly, Mr. West’s claim that Planned Parenthood was founded by Jews to control the black population is the inverse of the white-supremacist notion that Jews have promoted abortion to eradicate whites. Again, Mr. West was merely echoing the Nation of Islam, which has long implicated Planned Parenthood in a supposed black “depopulation agenda.”
IMDB:
Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America
Trivia
Film was included on a recommended viewing list by the Congressional Black Caucus at the request of long time Democrat Party supporter Louis Farrakhan
Why is conservative media defending anti-Semitism?
Kanye West’s descent into anti-Semitic hysteria has been a clarifying moment for American Jews. We have found out who our friends are from their reaction or non-reaction to Kanye’s appalling statements. Unfortunately, not enough conservative and Republican leaders have spoken out. The Daily Wire’s Candace Owens’s incoherent defense of Kanye, who is a friend of hers, was disappointing. Hopefully she will reconsider and put some distance between herself and Kanye.
Much worse, however, is the case of Jason Whitlock. A black Christian conservative with 600,000 followers on Twitter, Whitlock works at Glenn Beck’s The Blaze and frequently appears on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show. He is not only defending Kanye’s anti-Semitic outbursts, but also engaging in anti-Semitism himself, attacking Jewish people with rhetoric one would expect to find only on a fringe neo-Nazi website.
In an article at The Blaze defending Kanye’s comments about Jews having too much power and controlling black lives, Whitlock wrote, “I’m not going to entertain the lie that progressive secular elites—black, Jewish, LGBTQ or feminists—wield no power in the United States. Miss me with that ‘trope.’ Denial of the mass power they’ve collected is just one of the many lies they use to avoid accountability.”
“On the surface, progressive secular black people, Jewish people, LGBTQ and feminists seem united in their hatred of white people,” he continued. “It’s not white people. It’s a hatred of Christianity that unites them. That hatred compels them to try to destroy anything that Christianity created, including the patriarchy, Western civilization and the United States of America.”
Blaming Jews for trying to destroy Christianity is one of anti-Semitism’s oldest libels, and it has led to centuries of Christian violence against Jews. Moreover, why single out Jews for promulgating left-wing policies that Whitlock believes are harming America? Are there no progressive Christians or Muslims in the U.S. who wield political power? Has Whitlock ever heard of former President Barack Obama? Current President Joe Biden? Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi? They all routinely cite Christian doctrine to promote left-wing values.
How Theodore Roosevelt Embarrassed an Anti-Semite While Protecting His Freedom of Speech
In 1892, Hermann Ahlwardt was elected to the German parliament on an explicitly anti-Semitic platform. Three years later he broke off from his party to found the “Anti-Semitic People’s Party.” Dovi Safier and Yehuda Geberer tell the story of his brief tour of United States in the same year, in which he was feted by the newly formed Anti-Semitic Society of America. At the time, Theodore Roosevelt was New York City’s police commissioner. Safier and Geberer cite the future president’s description of what followed:
“While I was Police Commissioner of New York City, an anti-Semitic preacher from Berlin, Rector Ahlwardt, came to New York to preach a crusade against the Jews. Many Jews were much excited and asked me to prevent him from speaking and not to give him police protection. This, I told them, was impossible; and, if possible, would have been undesirable, because it would make him a martyr. The proper thing to do was to make him ridiculous. Accordingly, I sent a detail of police under a Jewish sergeant, and the Jew-baiter made his harangue under the active protection of some 40 police, every one of them a Jew.”
Safier and Geberer add:
As a result, his U.S. tour wasn’t overly successful, and the American press was full of derision for his stated mission. When he arrived in Hoboken, New Jersey to deliver an address at the local anti-Semitic society, he was berated and beaten by the young Jewish crowd, causing him to draw his (illegally obtained) pistol and wave it at the crowd. This act landed him in prison for disorderly conduct and carrying a concealed weapon. Borrowing a page from Commissioner Roosevelt’s playbook, the authorities in Hoboken placed him in a cell together with his assailants—who surely didn’t file a complaint about overcrowding.
Monday, December 05, 2022
