Maybe it’s the simple fact that a high-profile film written by a Palestinian is cause enough for Jewish opprobrium. Maybe it’s because the director of the film, Julian Schnabel, is Jewish, and his commitment to any perspective other than the dominant Jewish paradigm is akin to tribal and national betrayal. Maybe it’s because the distributor of the film, Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein was reared and raised a New York Jew and should know better – haven’t the Jews and their State of Israel had it hard enough? Or, maybe a cultural malaise has taken hold that’s made it impossible for Jews to empathize with anyone but each other. That the film ‘Miral,’ a portrait of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seen through the eyes of an orphaned Palestinian girl is earning the early ire of mainstream Jewish groups is not at all surprising. It makes perfect sense that a film told from the Palestinian perspective would rouse cries of condemnation from the American Jewish Committee, the Simon Wiesenthal Center and others for being “one-sided” as AJC’s executive director David Harris wrote earlier this week, protesting the screening of the film for the U.N. General Assembly in New York (since when do Hollywood movies have an obligation to objectivity?). Another knee-jerk reaction came from SWC founder Rabbi Marvin Hier who called thescreening of the film “anti-Israel” in a widely- released statement.
I think this is the most hateful screed against Jews that the Jewish Journal has ever published. Until reading Danielle Berrin’s blog post, I had never heard of the film Miral and I suspect that 99% of Jews have not heard of it either. Nobody — Jew or Gentile — has ever mentioned this movie to me. Can you imagine a headline — “Blacks Can’t Handle XYZ”? Can you imagine any other people being collectively trashed? But somehow, when it comes to Jews, it’s OK.
