r/JewsOfConscience • u/isawasin Non-Jewish Ally • Jul 15 '24
Celebration Children of Palestine
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u/ArmyOfMemories Jewish Anti-Zionist Jul 15 '24
I remember watching the Roy Battersby documentary 'The Palestinian' (1977), starring Vanessa Redgrave. She speaks to Palestinian refugee children in Lebanon I think. It's difficult to watch for me because I think of all that human potential that has been lost, generation after generation, due to Israel's colonial enterprise and genocide against the Palestinian people.
In 1978 Vanessa Redgrave spoke up against the JDL, later designated as a terrorist group, during her acceptance speech for Best Actress.
The audience gasped and some booed, albeit briefly. Then, Paddy Chayefsky took the opportunity during his time to announce an award to lecture Redgrave to just 'shut up and dribble act'.
The context for Redgrave's comments were this:
Her comments were directed at extremists in the Jewish Defense League, who had not only burned her in effigy but had offered a bounty to have her killed. There was even a firebombing at one of the cinemas showing the documentary. But the phrase “Zionist hoodlums” discredited Redgrave for many — even if she concluded her speech promising “to fight anti-Semitism and fascism for as long as I live.”
The JDL offered a bounty for her head & firebombed a theater where her film was shown. Etc.
Yet, she was booed and people clapped when Chayefsky chastised her. As if politics and Hollywood acceptance speeches were taboo all of a sudden.
Over the years I've seen a lot of documentaries about Palestine from different eras.
Another documentary, which was difficult to find for decades (perhaps due to pro-Israel lobbying against it at the time of release), was 'Days Of Rage' - about the 1st Intifada. Eventually this documentary was shown - but packaged alongside a pro-Israel documentary 'for balance', followed by a debate between a young James Zogby and pro-Israel activists. It was re-titled, 'Intifada: The Palestinians and Israel'.
On September 6, 1989, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict spilled onto American can public television in a two-and-a-half-hour special called "Intifada: The Palestinians and Israel." The special was built around Franklin-Trout's ninety-minute minute documentary, "Days of Rage." The national broadcast followed several months of meetings, letter-writing campaigns, and protests by pro-Israeli Jewish-American organizations and Arab-American groups sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians.
Eventually, viewers saw "Days of Rage" packaged between two specially produced six-minute videos presenting an Israeli perspective spective on the Intifada and a follow-up panel discussion tilted in favor of the program's critics. Pro-Israeli groups charged PBS with airing Palestinian propaganda by broadcasting "Days of Rage" in any context; Arab-American groups and independent dependent film makers charged PBS with censorship for attempting to neutralize tralize the voices of the Palestinians by setting them in a broader context.
- B.J. Bullert. Public Television: Politics and the Battle over Documentary Film (Communications, Media and Culture Series) (Kindle Locations 976-982). Kindle Edition.
I bought an original, un-edited copy from Vanderbilt's archive, because I couldn't find it anywhere. Funnily, it eventually did get posted to YouTube months later:
The YouTube version is partially censored though. This was the version that aired after pro-Israel advocacy groups launched a censorship campaign, so it is 'paired' with the pro-Israel documentary but doesn't include the debate afterwards.
There is SO MUCH history of these mini-battles that play out elsewhere in the world, regarding Israel/Palestine.
There is so much censorship.
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