Daniel Greenfield
Sultan Knish
13 March '11
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2011/03/open-letter-to-harvey-weinstein.html
On the same day that a family of five were being murdered in their home in Israel, Harvey Weinstein ran a self-congratulatory promotional piece for his company's terrorist propaganda flick, Miral. The photos stand out. The fat smirking face of Harvey Weinstein contrasted with the sleeping baby, the smiling little boys and the earnest couple who were their parents. They are all dead, and a Harvey Weinstein lives on to smirk another day. So it is with perpetrators and victims. The innocent children and the fat ugly men who profit from trafficking in the narrative of their killers.
Harvey Weinstein denounces Peter King and urges him to go watch Miral. But perhaps it is Harvey Weinstein who should drive to a small town lost in the Samarian Mountains and retrace the steps of the murderers in the name of the nationalistic mythology that movies like Miral glamorize. To fit himself through the living room window where the two terrorists entered, moving quietly in the dark, not seeing the six year old boy sleeping peacefully on the couch. That six year old boy who survived because like so many other little boys during the Holocaust, the men who were coming to murder him went right past him without seeing him. The six year old boy who was being orphaned around the same time that Harvey Weinstein and his PR people were conferring on a final draft for their Miral puff piece.
Come along Harvey, into the bedroom where a father and his three month old daughter, Hadas, were fast asleep. It can be hard to get a 3 month old baby to fall asleep. Her father must had quite a time of it that night. Babies may not have language, but they do have fears. They are afraid of the strange new world they were born into. And they need parents to comfort them and assure them that everything will be alright. That they are loved and protected. When Rabbi Fogel finally got his little baby daughter to sleep, she must have felt safe with her father there. The man who would have taught her about life. Who would have done his best to protect her. And the man whose throat was slashed
in his sleep along with his child's.
Tell me Harvey, do you know what goes through a three month old baby's mind when her throat is being slashed? You can't make a movie about it and you wouldn't it if you could. Movies are complex stories. The characters change and grow. They become someone else. A three month old baby having her throat cut will never become anyone else. She is fixed in that moment of horror and pain. Dying without knowing why. Only that her parents couldn't protect her. If you were going to make a movie about this scene, it would be about the killers. You would show their past and explain their actions. Surely an Israeli soldier stepped on their toe once or blew up their house. Stretch it out over two hours and you can justify anything. Even the knife being drawn across Hadas' throat. That is the magic of cinema. But to three month old Hadas, there is no context. The movie of her life ended the night you were hard at work promoting yours.
The mother had been in the bathroom while the bloody work took place. A small moment of peace while her children slept. She didn't let them cut her throat, the way they had that of her husband and her baby daughter. Instead she fought them. They had to stab her to death. If you ever make a movie about these particular terrorists, be sure to emphasize how hard it is to stab a mother to death. She will fight for her children. And the terrorists will have to work to kill her. You should swoop the camera down sympathetically on their sweating faces as they do the hard work of murdering her.
From there they went on to murder 11 year old Yoav who was reading in bed. Next was 3 year old Elad. Why stab a 3 year old boy twice in the heart? That is the question, Harvey. I understand once. Once is certainly enough to kill any 3 year old. But twice? Maybe it was that each killer wanted a turn and a share of the glory of murdering a toddler. They had already murdered three children and their parents, but the laws of Islam can be arcane sometimes. Is it possible then that the Shaheed (the martyr) will not enter paradise unless he murders a 3 year old too. Maybe there are more virgins waiting in paradise for each child killed. Murder a child and trade his body in for more virgins. Or maybe it is that the brave Jihadists who climb through living room windows and cut the throats of children in their sleep wanted to feel the violence of that blow. The thrill of the knife slamming home into a child's heart. Or maybe it is that Elad's heart was strong enough that even two adult Muslim terrorists had to stab twice to kill him.
I would like to think so.
Your article promoting Miral urges that 'understanding the "other" requires us to step out of our comfort zones'. Step now out of your comfort zone. And understand the other. I don't mean the murderers themselves. I think you understand them a little too well. If you didn't understand them at all, Miral would be lying on a back shelf somewhere. I urge you to understand your own 'Other', not those who kill in the name of Islamic terrorism, but those who die of it. Who die and yet refuse to give in. Who cling to their tiny patch of land, more than you would ever cling to your Connecticut estate. See the 'Other' in murdered family beneath your regard.
Family members have
released photos of their children lying in their blood, but I don't think you will want to see them. They are too far outside your comfort zone. There is plenty of blood and gore in your movies, but this is different. These are the bodies of inconvenient children. Their deaths don't fit into your ideological framework. You know quite well that Muslims are good people, and Jews who live on land claimed by the Muslims, are bad people. If they are murdered it is inconvenient because it retards the peace process. The process by which terrorists climb through living room windows and slash the throats of children. Until whole families are at peace.
The Fogel family is at peace now, for the most part. They have found the only form of peace that the terrorist gangs have ever delivered, in return for land, money, weapons and international legitimacy. Not the entire family of course. Three children survived. Three settlers. Three obstacles to peace.
The oldest daughter returns home to find the door locked. She goes to her neighbor's house for help. Her neighbor, Rabbi Cohen returns with her carrying a gun. Have you known many Rabbis who carry guns, Harvey? You probably haven't. But in the Samarian mountains, Rabbis and farmers and everyone else carries guns. Because sometimes men with knives come through your living room windows. If you're lucky, then you will see them coming and you will shoot them. However if you aren't lucky, then your neighbor will have to open the door for your twelve year old daughter. And then she will scream, as twelve year old girls do when they see entire family butchered. You have probably auditioned plenty of girls and listened to them give their best Fay Wray scream. But this is a different thing, Harvey. It is real. You will not hear this at an audition anywhere. It is the sound a twelve year old girl makes when the PLO fighters that movies like Miral glamorize have murdered her entire family.
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