If you think I can’t stitch ‘Slumdog’ into my hopeful narrative of Israel/Palestine, you’re wrong

I write my stuff so hurriedly these days that I seem to miss everything. I would just like to note that in the excerpt I offered yesterday from Bernard Avishai, Avishai points out that a Palestinian scientist who participated in a major breakthru in Israel recently is "the child of a family which a 1948 version of national unity failed to drive away."

This is a beautiful and ironic statement (about Avigdor Lieberman and liberalism) that will I think be the doorway for a lot of Jews– this morning and tomorrow morning and the morning after that– to a bigger understanding of Israeli history in the age of Obama. The failure to do anything about the 1967 borders has made 1948 the new backstory– not 1967– and 1948 (as Walt and Mearsheimer and Jerry Slater have shown us) was about ethnic cleansing and a Jewish majority in Palestine.

Avishai is trying to undo Exodus, the story by Leon Uris that so baked the American and American Jewish understanding of Israel/Palestine 50 years ago. We are all in our way, undoing Exodus. Barack Hussein Obama, Slumdog and a stage filled with South Asians at the Academy Awards… culturally the global moment is ours.

About Philip Weiss

Philip Weiss is Founder and Co-Editor of Mondoweiss.net.
Posted in Beyondoweiss, Israeli Government, Nakba, US Politics

{ 5 comments... read them below or add one }

  1. Doppler says:

    Not to mention the pivotal scene where a communal bath is disturbed early in the movie as a mob of Hindus attack Jamal's slum and kill his mother because they are Muslims.

  2. The movie Exodus includes the scene where Paul Newman threatens to blow up the ship filled with Jewish refugees if the Brits don't let them leave Cyprus. That's not even a voluntary suicide plot, and certainly a dastardly threat for such an allegedly noble movie!

  3. Citizen says:

    Did Paul Newman ever publicly address the plight of the Palestinians? Even once in his whole sheltered life?

  4. delia says:

    No Slumdogs at Ha`aretz today. But Burston's "Winslet, 'Waltz,' and how Hollywood likes its Jews" is quite insightful–except on one point. He doesn`t appear to notice that “Bashir“ is on one level just another film about Jews as victims. If Burston wants Hollywood to give up its singular image of Jews as emaciated and dressed in rags, then the Israel elite and the American Israel lobby will just have to give up trying to control the discourse.

    http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1066356.html

  5. john the plower says:

    your a fagot and your talks suck ass like pamela anderson

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