'Watching the moon at night': The film that speaks truth to terror
A documentary about terror, especially if you have come perilously close to experiencing it in your own life or have lost people you love to it, as I have, can have you biting your lips, pressing your hand against your mouth or shutting your eyes to avoid horrific sights. None of those reactions are applicable to "Watching the Moon at Night: On terrorism and anti-Semitism," a film which instead, has you wiping unexpected tears of empathy from your eyes, feeling your heart break or taking deep breaths to overcome the despair brought on by thiinking too much about the state of the human race.Learn How to Make the Case for Israel, with Professor Alan Dershowitz
This unforgettable movie is not out to show you gory details of terror attacks, although, of course, it cannot avoid them completely. The film is meant to make you think, to stay with you after you leave the theater. And it does.
"Watching the Moon at Night" is filled with ordinary people, not terrorists, people whose world has alternated for years between shock and resignation at the senselessness, the uselessness, of what befell them on what should have been an ordinary day. Swedish filmmakers Bo Persson and Joanna Helander have, with great sensitivity, given those bereft by terror the opportunity to describe the indescribable, and the effect is much more powerful than scenes of actual terrorist attacks.
Unadorned narratives of loss and the geographic range in which it has been experienced, the cultural diversity the speakers display contrasted with the commonality of their sadness, make for a gripping way to expose the spreading scourge of terror permeating the period in which we live and the political attempts to justify it. For me, a neighbor of sunny Malki Roth whose Australian-born father Arnold speaks in the film, his words about the feeling of isolation since her murder in Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria at the age of 15, were particularly devastating.
WATCH: SJWs Protesting 'Nazi' Ben Shapiro's Speech Are Confronted By Reporter. They're Totally Clueless.
On Monday, about 200 SJW protesters took to the campus of UCLA in an attempt to silence conservative writer and commentator Ben Shapiro. The protest was unsuccessful and Shapiro gave his speech, which was, ironically, about creeping fascism on campus.Free Speech Protesters Can't Compete with Ben Shapiro Supporters at UCLA
The protesters engaging in the sort of behavior that Shapiro was warning against inside the lecture hall were confronted by right-wing journalist Austen Fletcher, known as Fleccas. They were about as incoherent and clueless as you might imagine.
Flooding the venue, protesters chanted loudly, "Nazis go home!" — (Shapiro is an Orthodox Jew) — "Right-wing bigots go away!" and "It isn't a debate when you're just spreading hate!"
"I don't think he should be able to speak. Ben Shapiro incites hate speech, he does not incite free speech," explained one clueless female protester.
"Donald Trump is worse than Hitler!" screamed another anti-free-speech college student. As noted by Fleccas, this chant, like the rest of them, seems misplaced (and insultingly inaccurate) considering Shapiro did not even vote for Trump.
"Just because somebody is wearing a suit, just because he looks like Richard Spencer, is wearing a haircut like the Hitler youth, doesn't mean they're right," said one male protester.
Yeah, apparently there's a strong stereotype that a person who has a "Hitler youth" haircut is always "right." Shapiro doesn't even have that haircut. The protester was also completely ignoring Shapiro's consistent condemnation of the alt-right, which has consistently targeted him.
"F*** Ben Shapiro and f*** Milo Yiannopoulos," screamed another protester, apparently totally ignorant of Shapiro's take on Yiannopoulos.
Other protesters trying to shut down Shapiro were confronted by pro-free-speech counter-protesters. When the protesters were asked what their beef was with Shapiro, they deflected to President Trump, gave no specific answer, and then fled the interaction.