Art/Propaganda

I recently wanted to write a long post about how horrible art becomes when the political message overwhelms it. However, at this moment i can hardly piece one coherent sentence together so i'll leave that rant for another time. Instead i'll link to an Israellycool post about the new movie Paradise Now and urge you to boycott the film propaganda which "humanizes" two suicide bombers. Dave post a letter (and a website) response to the film from two fathers who lost their teenage sons in the Haifa bombing of bus 37 . A bus i regularly took last summer to get to work.

Update: Here an exerpt from the letter:

Try closing your eyes and imagining the following movie. A religious Jewish American doctor is immigrating to Israel and settling in Hevron. While building his family cell and working at his profession, he is feeling humiliated and depressed seeing his fatherland that was given to him by a divine promise, being conquered by Arabs. Every day our doctor is treating the victims of terrorist attacks in his vicinity. During the movie the viewer will be manipulated, in order to understand and justify the mental trauma our doctor is going through due to the events surrounding him. The movie will include a few flashbacks from the 1929 massacre in Hevron, pictures of wounded children, graveyards. Coming toward the end of the movie our doctor decides to do something about this awful situation. If this illusion rings a bell of reality- you are not mistaken.

In theory, this is quite a legitimate movie, just like "Paradise Now". The truth is that no one in Israel would have allowed this movie past its front door, least to say about the rest of the world .All the critics would have referred to it as political propaganda, and the film itself – even if done in the highest quality - will be compared to the endorsements made by Joseph Goebbels. One can imagine the anarchists and the extremists of the left wing in Israel standing in front of the theatre that dares showing a movie that justifies and understands the massacre of Arabs .

If you can see merits in the film described above then by all means go see Paradise Now.

On a side note: A friend of mine attended a special screening of the film in Boston where a discussion was going to take place after the film. One of the speakers was a former Israeli soldier, when the largely pro-palestinian crowd heard who the speaker was they promptly left their seats and started booing without even listening to what the man had to say. Remember it is all about the dialogue just as long as only one side gets to tell its side of the story.