28 Israeli FM using Hitler photo to counter world pressure over Settlements

(1) Opera song - Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman
(2) Israel's foreign minister orders embassies to display photo of Hitler with a Palestinian cleric
(3) Israeli FM using Hitler photo to counter world pressure over Settlements
(4) Dershowitz rejects depiction of Israelis as the "new Nazis", asserts Hamas tie to Nazism instead
(5) Demolition in the East, but Palestinians can`t buy Homes in West Jerusalem
(6) Arabic street-names to be removed from Israeli road-signs
(7) San Francisco Jewish Film Festival to screen Rachel Corrie film

(1) Opera song - Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman

From: Eric Walberg <efgh1951@yahoo.com> Date: 30.07.2009 12:01 PM

> Time to say goodbye (Con te partirè). You can see the video clip at
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_JLkIOnq04
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbN0g8-zbdY

the song is indeed lovely but it is pseudo-opera. i always look for the composer, and i had a difficult time with this song. i finally found the composer to be Francesco Sartori (born 1957) an Italian composer and piano and trumpet player best known for composing "Con te partirò" ("With you, I will go") with Lucio Quarantott.
try some verdi or puccini. they are great and have good politics as well -- late 19th c italian risorgiamento.
eric

Reply (Peter M.):

> it is pseudo-opera

Maybe that's why I liked it.

But I do notice that Pavarotti sings with Bocelli.

Can we have more pseudo-opera, please?

(2) Israel's foreign minister orders embassies to display photo of Hitler with a Palestinian cleric

From: ReporterNotebook <RePorterNoteBook@Gmail.com> Date: 30.07.2009 05:07 PM

Israeli Orders Display of Hitler Photo in Embassies and Consulates
ABC News (Australia)
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/07/23/2633944.htm?section=justin

By Middle East correspondent Anne Barker for AM

Posted July 23, 2009 08:49:00
Updated July 23, 2009 10:12:00

Israel's firebrand foreign minister has ordered that his country's embassies and consulates around the world display a photograph of Adolf Hitler with a Palestinian cleric.

It is part of a government push for the construction of a Jewish residential development in East Jerusalem.

The United States does not want the development to go ahead, but Israel is defying the pressure and making a point of showing that the land in Jerusalem's Arab quarter once belonged to the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem - a known Nazi collaborator.

In 1941 Hitler was photographed in Berlin with the then Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini.

At the time the Mufti led a number of violent campaigns against Jewish immigrants in what was then British-ruled Palestine, and he unsuccessfully sought Hitler's support for Arab independence and against Israel's creation.

But the Mufti was also the owner of a building in Arab East Jerusalem, which Israel annexed in 1967.

The site is now the centre of a dispute between Israel and the US, which is demanding a halt to plans to convert it into a Jewish apartment block.

Already Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected the US demand, saying "unified Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish people and the state of Israel".

"Our sovereignty is non-negotiable. We cannot accept the idea that Jews will not have the right to live and buy in any location in Jerusalem," he said.

Now, Israel's ultra-nationalist foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman has waded into the dispute, dredging up the photograph of Hitler and the Grand Mufti to support the case.

He has had copies of the snap sent to about 100 Israeli embassies and consulates overseas so the world will know the truth and presumably ease pressure on Israel.

"It is not reasonable that we will discriminate against Jews in Jerusalem. Just like no-one thinks to make any remarks about Jerusalem Arabs who buy apartments in Jewish neighbourhoods," he said.

The US State Department put its case to Israel's ambassador in Washington, Michael Oren, at the weekend, telling him the development should not go ahead.

The international community regards the development as a Jewish settlement and therefore illegal, while Palestinians want East Jerusalem as their capital in any future independent state.

Senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat says the planned development "underminds the peace process".

"The Israeli Government continues its defiance of the international community, as the American administration calls to stop settlement activities including natural growth," he said.

"This undermines the peace process and this undermines the credibility of those involved in making the peace process continue."

As for the Grand Mufti, he failed miserably in his anti Zionist campaign. He fled Palestine a few years before it became Israel.

And 11 years after his death, his building site was sold to an American-Jewish millionaire. ==

The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Meets With Hitler
Deutsche Wochenschau -- YouTube (Video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSUEx1cKUlg

The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, an important Arab nationalist leader, meets in November 1941 with Hitler in the Reich Chancellery in Berlin. Excerpt from the weekly German wartime newsreel, "Deutsche Wochenschau," supposedly from No. of Dec. 10, 1941. Runtime: 30 seconds.

(3) Israeli FM using Hitler photo to counter world pressure over Settlements
Israeli FM using Hitler photo to mute world pressure

(AFP) – Wed Jul 22, 4:36 am ET

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090722/wl_mideast_afp/mideastconflictdiplomacyisraelnazi

JERUSALEM — Israel's ultra-nationalist Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has ordered embassies abroad to use a photo of Adolf Hitler meeting a top Palestinian cleric to counter international criticism over a Jerusalem settlement project, a senior Israeli official said on Wednesday.

The decision to circulate a 1941 photo featuring the Nazi dictator sitting with the then grand mufti of Jerusalem Amin al-Husseini is aimed at easing pressure on Israel over a construction project on land in annexed east Jerusalem once owned by the cleric, the official told AFP.

"The foreign minister ordered the distribution of the photo to all embassies abroad as a response to the Shepherd Hotel incident in order to prove a well-known point that the mufti collaborated with Hitler," the official said on condition of anonymity.

Foreign ministry staff opposed the move, he added, one of the latest in a series of disagreements they have had with their firebrand boss since he was sworn in on March 31.

The United States last week summoned the Israeli ambassador to Washington, demanding that the project in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of occupied east Jersualem be halted, a call echoed across the international community.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu flatly rejected the demand, saying Israel's sovereignty over east Jerusalem, which it occupied and annexed in 1967, was "unquestionable" -- a claim not recognised by the international community.

The Shepherd Hotel is located on a site known to Palestinians as Karm al-Mufti, which had once belonged to Husseini, and in 1985 was bought by American Jewish millionaire Irving Moskowitz.

Husseini led a number of violent campaigns against the Jewish community and the British authorities in Palestine in the 1920s and 1930s. He allied himself with the Nazis as an anti-British leader during World War II.

Copyright © 2009 AFP

(4) Dershowitz rejects depiction of Israelis as the "new Nazis", asserts Hamas tie to Nazism instead

From: ReporterNotebook <RePorterNoteBook@Gmail.com> Date: 29.07.2009 10:10 AM

http://cgis.jpost.com/Blogs/dershowitz/entry/will_hamas_s_new_culture

Sunday Jul 26, 2009

Double Standard Watch: Will Hamas's new "Culture War" acknowledge its historic ties to Nazism?

Posted by Alan M. Dershowitz

Hamas, the terrorist organization that specializes in targeting civilians, has now decided, according to a New York Times headline, to shift "from rockets to culture war" in an effort to garner public support for its cause. Part of its ongoing public relations campaign is to portray the Israelis as the "new Nazis" and the Palestinians as the "new Jews." To bring about this transformation, it must engage in a form of Holocaust denial that erases the historical record of widespread Palestinian complicity with the "old Nazis" in perpetrating the real Holocaust. It has become an important part of the mantra of Hamas supporters that neither the Palestinians people nor its leadership played any role in the Holocaust.  Listen to Mohammad Ahmadinejad talking to students at Columbia University:

"If [the Holocaust] is a reality, we need to still question whether the Palestinian people should be paying for it or not. After all, it happened in Europe. The Palestinian people had no role to play in it. So why is it that the Palestinian people are paying the price of an event they had nothing to do with? ...The Palestinian people didn’t commit any crime. They had no role to play in World War II. They were living with the Jewish communities and the Christian communities in peace at the time."

The conclusion that is supposed to follow from this "fact" is that the establishment of Israel in the wake of the Nazi genocide of the Jewish people was unfair to the Palestinians. Central to this claim is that neither the Palestinian people nor their leadership bore any responsibility for the Holocaust, and if any reparations are owed the Jewish people, it is from Germany and not from the Palestinians. The propounders of this historical argument suggest that the West created the Jewish state out of guilt over the Holocaust. It might have been understandable if a portion of Germany (or Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, France, Austria, or other collaborator nations) had been allocated for a Jewish homeland - but why Palestine? Palestine, according to this claim, was as much a "victim" as were the Jews.

I hear this argument on university campuses around the United States, and even more so in Europe.

The truth is that the Palestinian leadership, supported by the Palestinian masses, played a significant role in Hitler's Holocaust.

The official leader of the Palestinians, Haj Amin al-Husseini, spent the war years in Berlin with Hitler, serving as a consultant on the Jewish question. He was taken on a tour of Auschwitz and expressed support for the mass murder of European Jews. He also sought to "solve the problems of the Jewish element in Palestine and other Arab countries" by employing "the same method" being used "in the Axis countries." He would not be satisfied with the Jewish residents of Palestine - many of whom were descendants of Sephardic Jews who had lived there for hundreds, even thousands, of years - remaining as a minority in a Muslim state. Like Hitler, he wanted to be rid of "every last Jew." As Husseini wrote in his memoirs, "Our fundamental condition for cooperating with Germany was a free hand to eradicate every last Jew from Palestine and the Arab world.
"I asked Hitler for an explicit undertaking to allow us to solve the Jewish problem in a manner befitting our national and racial aspirations and according to the scientific methods innovated by Germany in the handling of its Jews. The answer I got was: 'The Jews are yours.'"

The mufti was apparently planning to return to Palestine in the event of a German victory and construct a death camp, modeled after Auschwitz, near Nablus. Husseini incited his pro-Nazi followers with the words "Arise, o sons of Arabia. Fight for your sacred rights. Slaughter Jews wherever you find them. Their spilled blood pleases Allah, our history and religion. That will save our honor."

Not only did Husseini exhort his followers to murder the Jews; he also took an active role in trying to bring about that result. For example, in 1944, a German-Arab commando unit, under Husseini's command, parachuted into Palestine with the intention of poisoning Tel Aviv's wells.

Husseini also helped to inspire a pro-Nazi coup in Iraq and helped to organize thousands of Muslims in the Balkans into military units known as Handselar divisions, which carried out atrocities against Yugoslav Jews, Serbs and Gypsies. After a meeting with Hitler, he recorded the following in his diary:

The Mufti: "The Arabs were Germany's natural friends... They were therefore prepared to cooperate with Germany with all their hearts and stood ready to participate in a war, not only negatively by the commission of acts of sabotage and the instigation of revolutions, but also positively by the formation of an Arab Legion. In this struggle, the Arabs were striving for the independence and the unity of Palestine, Syria and Iraq..."

Hitler: "Germany was resolved, step by step, to ask one European nation after the other to solve its Jewish problem, and at the proper time direct a similar appeal to non-European nations as well. Germany's objective would then be solely the destruction of the Jewish element residing in the Arab sphere under the protection of British power.
"The moment that Germany's tank divisions and air squadrons had made their appearance south of the Caucasus, the public appeal requested by the Grand Mufti could go out to the Arab world."

Hitler assured Husseini about how he would be regarded following a Nazi victory and "the destruction of the Jewish element residing in the Arab sphere." In that hour, the mufti would be the most authoritative spokesman for the Arab world. It would then be his task to set off the Arab operations that he had secretly prepared.

Husseini's significant contributions to the Holocaust were multi-fold: first, he pleaded with Hitler to exterminate European Jewry and advised the Nazis on how to do so; second, he visited Auschwitz and urged Eichmann and Himmler to accelerate the pace of the mass murder; third, he personally stopped 4,000 children, accompanied by 500 adults, from leaving Europe and had them sent to Auschwitz and gassed; fourth, he prevented another two thousand Jews from leaving Romania for Palestine and one thousand from leaving Hungary for Palestine, who were subsequently sent to death camps; fifth, he organized the killing of 12,600 Bosnian Jews by Muslims, whom he recruited to the Waffen-SS Nazi-Bosnian division.

He was also one of the few non-Germans made privy to the Nazi extermination while it was taking place. It was in his official capacity as the leader of the Palestinian people and their official representative that he made his pact with Hitler, spent the war years in Berlin, and worked actively with Eichmann, Himmler, von Ribbentrop and Hitler himself to "accelerate" the final solution by exterminating the Jews of Europe and laying plans to exterminate the Jews of Palestine.

Not only did the Grand Mufti play a significant role in the murder of European Jewry, he sought to replicate the genocide against the Jews in Israel during the war that produced a so-called Nakba. The war started by the Palestinians against the Jews in 1947, and the war started by the Arab states in 1948 against the new state of Israel, were both genocidal wars. Their goal was not merely the ethnic cleansing of the Jews from the area but their total annihilation. The leaders said so and the actions of their subordinates reflected this genocidal goal. They were aided in their efforts by Nazi soldiers - former SS and Gestapo members - who had been given asylum from war crime prosecution in Egypt and who had been recruited by the grand mufti to complete Hitler's work.

It is also fair to say that Husseini's pro-Nazi sympathies and support were widespread among his Palestinian followers, who regarded him as a hero even after the war and the disclosure of his role in Nazi atrocities. The notorious photograph of Husseini and Hitler, together in Berlin, was proudly displayed in many Palestinian homes, even after Husseini's activities in the Holocaust became widely known and praised among Palestinians.

Husseini is still regarded by many as "the George Washington" of the Palestinian people, and if the Palestinians were to get a state of their own, he would be honored as our founding father is. He was their hero, despite - more likely, because of - his active role in the genocide against the Jewish people, which he openly supported and assisted. According to Husseini's biographer, "Large parts of the Arab world shared [Husseini's] sympathy with Nazi Germany during the Second World War... Haj Amin's popularity among the Palestinian Arabs and within the Arab states actually increased more than ever during his period with the Nazis."

In 1948, the National Palestinian Council elected Husseini as its president, even though he was a wanted war criminal living in exile in Egypt. Indeed, Husseini is still revered today among many Palestinians as a national hero. Yasser Arafat, in an interview conducted in 2002 and reprinted in the Palestinian daily Al-Quds on August 2, 2002, called Husseini "our hero," referring to the Palestinian people. Arafat also boasted of being "one of his troops," even though he knew Husseini was "considered an ally of Nazis." Today many Palestinians in east Jerusalem want to turn his home into a shrine.  (Ironically, it is this home that was bought by a Jew to build the controversial Jewish housing development in east Jerusalem.)

It is a myth, therefore - another myth perpetrated by Iran's mythmaker-in-chief as well as by Hamas and by many on the hard left who seek to demonize Israel - that the Palestinians played "no role" in the Holocaust. Considering the active support by the Palestinian leadership and masses for the losing side of a genocidal war, it was more than fair for the United Nations to offer them a state of their own on more than half of the arable land of the British mandate.

The Palestinians rejected that offer and several since because they wanted there not to be a Jewish state more than they wanted their own state. That was Husseini's position. Hamas still takes that position. Perhaps their new "culture war" will finally cause them to reconsider - and to accept the two-state solution.

(5) Demolition in the East, but Palestinians can`t buy Homes in West Jerusalem

From: Kristoffer Larsson <kristoffer.larsson@sobernet.nu> Date: 26.07.2009 01:58 PM

Israeli Attorney Yael Azoulay, of Zeev and Naomi Weil Lawyers and Notary Office, explains that if a foreign national purchases an apartment they must show the ILA proof of eligibility to immigrate to Israel in accordance with the Law of Return. Non-Jewish foreigners cannot purchase apartments. This group includes Palestinians from the east of the city, who have Israeli identity cards but are residents rather than citizens of Israel.

http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=34703

Palestinians Can`t Buy Homes in West Jerusalem

WAFA Palestine News Agency
21/7/2009
http://english.wafa.ps/?action=detail&id=12834

TEL AVIV, July 21, 2009 (WAFA)- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed this week that Jerusalem is an `open city` that permits all its inhabitants, Jewish and Palestinian, to purchase homes in both its eastern and western parts, the Israeli daily Haaretz said.

An examination by Haaretz, however, presented a rather different situation on the ground. According to Israel Lands Administration (ILA) rules, the Palestinians of East Jerusalem cannot take ownership of the vast majority of Jerusalem homes.

When an Israeli purchases an apartment or house, ownership of the land remains with the ILA, which leases it to the purchaser for a period of 49 years, enabling the registration of the home (`tabu`). Article 19 of the ILA lease specifies that a foreign national cannot lease - much less own – on lands controlled by ILA.

Israeli Attorney Yael Azoulay, of Zeev and Naomi Weil Lawyers and Notary Office, explains that if a foreign national purchases an apartment they must show the ILA proof of eligibility to immigrate to Israel in accordance with the Law of Return. Non-Jewish foreigners cannot purchase apartments. This group includes Palestinians from the east of the city, who have Israeli identity cards but are residents rather than citizens of Israel.

Most residences in West Jerusalem and in the Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem are built on lands controlled ILA. All the neighborhoods built after 1967 - Gilo, Pisgat Ze`ev, Ramot, French Hill and Armon Hanatziv - are built on lands controlled by ILA Even in the older neighborhoods of Kiryat Hayovel, Katamonim and Beit Hakerem, tens of thousands of apartments are built on lands controlled by ILA and cannot be sold to Palestinians. In the ultra-Orthodox central Jerusalem neighborhoods of Geula and Mea Shearim, as well as in Rehavia and Talbieh, there are homes built on private land - mainly owned by one of the churches or purchased in the past by Jews.

It goes without saying that a Palestinian seeking to purchase an apartment in a Haredi area would be rejected out of hand, and Rehavia or Talbieh would in any event be out of the range of most East Jerusalemites` budget.

Nevertheless, dozens of Palestinian families have moved into Jewish neighborhoods, mainly French Hill and Pisgat Ze`ev. Most are renting, while a few buy apartments without registering them. Lawyers in the field say the law is not always applied, and that if a resident of East Jerusalem were to apply to register the apartment at the ILA, they would not have problems doing so.

If the amendment to the Israel Lands Administration Law is passed - the bill is in an advanced stage - an Israeli apartment owner would be able to take ownership of the land and could then sell it to anyone, including foreign nationals and Palestinians.

(6) Arabic street-names to be removed from Israeli road-signs

From: adibsk <adibsk@cyberia.net.lb> Date: 21.07.2009 11:59 PM

Israeli Road Signs

By JONATHAN COOK

July 17, 2009

http://www.counterpunch.com/cook07172009.html
http://www.uruknet.de/?s1=1&p=56077&s2=18

Thousands of road signs are the latest front in Israel’s battle to erase Arab heritage from much of the Holy Land.

Israel Katz, the transport minister, announced this week that signs on all major roads in Israel, East Jerusalem and possibly parts of the West Bank would be "standardised", converting English and Arabic place names into straight transliterations of the Hebrew name.

Currently, road signs include the place name as it is traditionally rendered in all three languages.

Under the new scheme, the Arab identity of important Palestinian communities will be obscured: Jerusalem, or "al Quds" in Arabic, will be Hebraised to "Yerushalayim"; Nazareth, or "al Nasra" in Arabic, the city of Jesus’s childhood, will become "Natzrat"; and Jaffa, the port city after which Palestine’s oranges were named, will be "Yafo".

Arab leaders are concerned that Mr Katz’s plan offers a foretaste of the demand by Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, that the Palestinians recognise Israel as a Jewish state.

On Wednesday, Mohammed Sabih, a senior official at the Arab League, called the initiative "racist and dangerous".

"This decision comes in the framework of a series of steps in Israel aimed at implementing the 'Jewish State’ slogan on the ground."

Palestinians in Israel and Jerusalem, meanwhile, have responded with alarm to a policy they believe is designed to make them ever less visible.

Ahmed Tibi, an Arab legislator in the Israeli parliament, said: "Minister Katz is mistaken if he thinks that changing a few words can erase the existence of the Arab people or their connection to Israel."

The transport ministry has made little effort to conceal the political motivation behind its policy of Hebraising road signs.

In announcing the move on Monday, Mr Katz, a hawkish member of Likud, Mr Netanyahu’s right-wing party, said he objected to Palestinians using the names of communities that existed before Israel’s establishment in 1948.

"I will not allow that on our signs," he said. "This government, and certainly this minister, will not allow anyone to turn Jewish Jerusalem into Palestinian al Quds."

Other Israeli officials have played down the political significance of Mr Katz’s decision. A transport department spokesman, Yeshaayahu Ronen, said: "The lack of uniform spelling on signs has been a problem for those speaking foreign languages, citizens and tourists alike."

"That’s ridiculous," responded Tareq Shehadeh, head of the Nazareth Cultural and Tourism Association. "Does the ministry really think it’s helping tourists by renaming Nazareth, one of the most famous places in the world, 'Natzrat’, a Hebrew name only Israeli Jews recognise?"

Meron Benvenisti, a former deputy mayor of Jerusalem, said Israel had begun interfering with the Arabic on the signs for East Jerusalem as soon as it occupied the city in 1967. It invented a new word, "Urshalim", that was supposed to be the Arabic form of the Hebrew word for Jerusalem, "Yerushalayim".

"I was among those who intervened at the time to get the word 'al Quds’ placed on signs, too, after 'Urshalim’ and separated by a hyphen. But over the years 'al Quds’ was demoted to brackets and nowadays it’s not included on new signs at all."

He said Mr Katz’s scheme would push this process even further by requiring not only the Arabic equivalent of the Hebrew word for Jerusalem, but the replication of the Hebrew spelling as well. "It’s completely chauvinistic and an insult," he said.

Meir Margalit, a former Jerusalem councillor, said official policy was to make the Palestinian population in East Jerusalem as invisible as possible, including by ignoring their neighbourhoods on many signs.

The transport ministry’s plans for the West Bank are less clear. In his announcement Mr Katz said Palestinian-controlled areas of the territory would still be free to use proper Arabic place names. But he hinted that signs in the 60 per cent of the West Bank under Israeli military rule would be Hebraised, too.

That could mean Palestinians driving across parts of the West Bank to the Palestinian city of Nablus, for example, will have to look for the Hebrew name "Shechem" spelt out in Arabic.

Mr Benvenisti said that, after Israel’s establishment in 1948, a naming committee was given the task of erasing thousands of Arab place names, including those of hills, valleys and springs, and creating Hebrew names. The country’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, told the committee: "We are obliged to remove the Arabic names for reasons of state."

In addition, the Arabic names of more than 400 Palestinian villages destroyed by Israel during and after the 1948 war were lost as Jewish communities took their place.

Israel’s surviving Palestinian minority, today one-fifth of the population, have had to battle in the courts for the inclusion of Arabic on road signs, despite Arabic being an official language.

Many signs on national highways were provided only in Hebrew and English until the courts in 1999 insisted Arabic be included. Three years later the courts ruled that Arabic must also be included on signs in cities where a significant number of Arabs live.

However, as the political climate has shifted rightward in Israel, there has been a backlash, including an unsuccessful bid by legislators to end Arabic’s status as an official language last year.

Recently the Israeli media revealed that nationalist groups have been spraying over Arabic names on road signs, especially in the Jerusalem area.

Israel has also antagonised Palestinians in both Israel and the West Bank by naming roads after right-wing figures.

The main highway in the Jordan Valley, which runs through Palestinian territory but is used by Israelis to drive between northern Israel and Jerusalem, is named "Gandhi’s Road" – not for the Indian spiritual leader but after the nickname of an Israeli general, Rehavam Zeevi, who called for the expulsion of Palestinians from Greater Israel.

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are "Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East" (Pluto Press) and "Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair" (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.

A version of this article originally appeared in The National (www.thenational.ae), published in Abu Dhabi.

(7) San Francisco Jewish Film Festival to screen Rachel Corrie film

From: ReporterNotebook <RePorterNoteBook@Gmail.com> Date: 25.07.2009 10:15 AM

http://jta.org/news/article/2009/07/23/1006756/sf-festival-under-fire-over-p
lan-to-screen-rachel-corrie-film

S.F. festival under fire over plan to screen Rachel Corrie film

By Dan Pine · July 23, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO (J. Weekly) -- If the Academy handed out an Oscar for community turmoil, the Rachel Corrie flap at this year’s San Francisco Jewish Film Festival would win handily.

Dissension in the local Jewish community continued unabated over the festival’s upcoming screenings of “Rachel,” a film that investigates the death of anti-Israel activist Rachel Corrie, and the festival's invitation to her mother, Cindy Corrie, to speak afterward.

On July 20, festival board president Shana Penn resigned from her post, citing “healthy differences on how to approach sensitive issues,” with five months left on a two-year term.

This came as a pro-Israel speaker was hastily added to the July 25 screening in San Francisco and as some sponsors criticized the festival’s program. Penn will continue to serve on the board. Vice president Dana Doron, a marketing and product development executive, has assumed the post of president.

“Rachel” is a sympathetic portrait of the American pro-Palestinian activist who was killed in 2003 in Gaza while protesting a home demolition in front of an Israeli bulldozer.

Booking the film and Cindy Corrie for the festival has struck a nerve with some in the Jewish community, who believe the festival crossed a line into overtly anti-Israel propaganda. Some have called for a boycott of the festival, saying Corrie, and now her parents, worked to ostracize and delegitimize Israel.

In a statement released July 21, festival executive director Peter Stein apologized “for not fully considering how upsetting this program might be,” though he added that the festival stands by its decision to screen the film.

The apology was not good enough for many, who flooded local Jewish leaders and this newspaper with protest letters.

Sponsors of the festival also voiced their concerns. The Koret Foundation and the Taube Foundation for Jewish Life and Culture, each headed by philanthropist Tad Taube and self-described as “sister philanthropies,” issued a joint statement July 21. Koret and Taube, among dozens of sponsors of the S.F. Jewish Film Festival, criticized the festival for working with the American Friends Service Committee and Jewish Voice for Peace -- “two virulently anti-Israel, anti-Semitic groups” -- in co-presenting the film, for inviting Cindy Corrie to speak and for booking “Rachel” in the first place.

The statement read in part: “Those who cavalierly fling Israel’s future into the grasp of those who would destroy it betray a mainstay of the mainstream Jewish community to support Israel and to counteract anti-Israel propaganda events, speakers and organizations. In this case, the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival has aligned itself with the wrong side.”

Penn, the festival board member who resigned her presidency, is the executive director of Taube Philanthropies. But the foundation said she made the decision to step down as festival president on her own. (Click here to read both the Koret and film festival statements.)

Another festival funder raising objections is the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation. CEO Daniel Sokatch disagreed with the decision to invite Corrie to speak but otherwise supported the festival and its showing of “Rachel.”

Sokatch reported receiving numerous calls and e-mails criticizing his organization for supporting the film festival.

In a response to one donor who threatened to pull his federation support over the “Rachel” flap, Sokatch wrote that the festival “made a mistake in inviting Cindy Corrie to speak without offering a range of perspectives on the film’s controversial subject.”

Festival director Stein said no funder has withdrawn or threatened to drop their financial support. Walter and Elise Haas Fund executive director Pam David told j. her organization will “continue to support the S.F. Jewish Film Festival financially,” though she would not comment on the “Rachel” controversy. Koret Foundation and Taube Philanthropies in their statement said, “We have made no decision regarding future funding.”

One issue upsetting both funders and writers of protest letters is the involvement of Jewish Voice for Peace as one of the co-presenters of film’s two screenings, July 25 at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco and Aug. 4 at the Berkeley Repertory’s Roda Theater.

Mainstream Jewish organizations consider JVP to be a left-leaning group that often is harshly critical of Israel over the country’s dealings with the Palestinians. Rachel Pfeffer, a film festival board member, is also a member of JVP and until last year was its interim national director. In a letter published in j. last week, Pfeffer strongly supported the festival’s decision to screen “Rachel.” In that letter, she identified herself as a festival board member, though she did not mention her affiliation with JVP.

Meanwhile, festival organizers have taken steps to address accusations that the program was not fair and balanced. Stein invited pro-Israel activist Michael Harris to speak just before the Castro Theatre screening. No speakers are scheduled to appear before or after the Aug. 4 showing in Berkeley.

Harris, who spearheads the group S.F. Voice for Israel, was brought in as a counterweight to Cindy Corrie, who will address the audience after the screening.

Stein hopes Harris’ appearance will help turn down the heat. “I wanted to be certain that our large and diverse community understands we are listening, we are responsive,” Stein said.

Harris commended the festival for inviting him to offer an alternative view of events, saying organizers “indeed responded to the outcry.”

“I’m going to set a context for what was going on in Israel around that time,” Harris said of his intended remarks, “so people understand the events that led to Rachel Corrie being in Gaza did not happen in a vacuum. It’s important that people understand that Israeli civilians were getting blown up on buses and in restaurants at the time [Corrie] was in Gaza.”

The scheduling of “Rachel” prompted a flood of letters and online comments to j. from supporters and opponents of the film festival. Even the blogs got into the act, with a posting on the left-of-center DailyKos blasting the film’s critics and j. for its editorial last week.

Though the film festival has faced controversy before, the “Rachel” debate might mark a new level of vitriol among opposing factions in the Bay Area Jewish community.

Why did this situation elicit more of an outcry than anything else at the festival in recent years? Stein said that is “the $64,000 question.”

“This is far beyond the question of one film and one speaker at a festival,” Stein added. “Many people feel Israel is under siege, and that’s the elephant in the room. This is an indicator of the passion around this issue, and is reflective of a deep divide in our community that we want to be a part of addressing.”