Israel Can Trust the International Community
It's impossible to underestimate how little the average international intellectual cares about Jewish lives:
A controversial film about two Palestinian suicide bombers, Paradise Now, won a major prize at the 55th Berlin Film Festival on Saturday... a correspondent for the Austrian Jewish newspaper Die J dische was harshly critical of the film, especially the decision by Abu Assad not to show the victims of a suicide bombing that takes place at the film's end, as the screen fades to white just before the blast takes place.
"Throughout the movie, Israelis are invisible; you can only see them from afar, only as figures, not as human beings," wrote Tobias Ebbrecht. "You are not allowed to get to know any of them, neither the civilian at the bus station, the soldiers in the bus, the little girl next to the bus driver, for otherwise the audience could empathize with them.
This quotidian, caustic kind of anti-Semitism - barely expressed as concern with the "Palestinian plight" - flows under the surface of international sensibility, erupting alternatively as violence against Jews on European streets and action against Israel in the United Nations General Assembly.
A controversial film about two Palestinian suicide bombers, Paradise Now, won a major prize at the 55th Berlin Film Festival on Saturday... a correspondent for the Austrian Jewish newspaper Die J dische was harshly critical of the film, especially the decision by Abu Assad not to show the victims of a suicide bombing that takes place at the film's end, as the screen fades to white just before the blast takes place.
"Throughout the movie, Israelis are invisible; you can only see them from afar, only as figures, not as human beings," wrote Tobias Ebbrecht. "You are not allowed to get to know any of them, neither the civilian at the bus station, the soldiers in the bus, the little girl next to the bus driver, for otherwise the audience could empathize with them.
This quotidian, caustic kind of anti-Semitism - barely expressed as concern with the "Palestinian plight" - flows under the surface of international sensibility, erupting alternatively as violence against Jews on European streets and action against Israel in the United Nations General Assembly.
