I went to "The Debt" last night, the new Miramax thriller based on an Israeli film. I took the film on its own terms, which are very Israeli terms. Culturally-bound, as the anthropologists say. This is a film about Ashkenazi Jews. There are no Palestinians in sight, no Mizrahi Jews either. The characters are Europeans fleeing horror to settle in the Middle East.
On its own terms, the film is kind of great. It's about Israel's foundational lies-- the lies that Israel's first militant generation told about the Holocaust and their own heroism in order to create a nationalist warrior myth for the children.
The three Mossad agents at the center of the film are all hard to like. One is a mendacious, ambitious political tool who does very well in Israeli politics. You hate him. The Helen Mirren character is the movie's hero but she's also kind of despicable. She sticks with the political tool even though she loves the other male Mossad agent, and as for him, well his character is all about the new paradigm of young Israelis doing military service and then traveling to India or South America to smoke dope and decompress. This guy spends years decompressing. He's lost. Just like Israel is lost.
The movie makes mordant jokes about Israel's lostness. When the characters are in East Berlin, capturing the Eichmann/Mengele bad guy, and things go wrong, the political tool Mossad guy says, "The Americans are going to bail us out, don't worry." I wanted to vomit.
Then a few minutes later he finds out that the Americans won't bail them out. "We're all alone." That's about Israel's new fear...
The larger way Israel is lost, the film acknowledges, is that the Holocaust material doesn't work anymore. You see how it once did, in the East Berlin chapters. There's a real Eichmann in Jerusalem feeling to this part of the movie: how Israel used Nazis to constitute its identity far from Europe. The Holocaust material is rendered as parody. The Helen Mirren character, who's lost her mother in the Holocaust, keeps telling Israeli audiences, "When I was desperate, I thought about my mother"-- and you don't buy it.
Until the end, when you do buy it. At the end, the movie tries to rescue the Holocaust narrative after all. And redeem Israel. So Israel is like Helen Mirren. It tells a lot of lies but it's really tough, it knows how to kill the way European Jews didn't; and it staggers forward.
And yet that Israel is imaginary: a European place on the beach in Tel Aviv, hipsters listening to American music. It feels very Raj.
Walking out to my car, I thought about the Tent protests in Tel Aviv. The tent protests reflect a deep spiritual discomfort inside Israel, as this film does. But the Israeli tent protesters won't talk about the occupation, and many of my friends judge the protests on that basis; if you won't talk about the oppression of the Palestinians, what good are you? "The Debt" is blindered in the same way. It's about a neocolonial group and their American pals (the producers) trying to keep the myth going, despite a disquieting sense that it's built on lies.
Phil, you hate Israel so much, that unless a movie bashed Israel as is dome on your site, you would hate it. You generalize about Israelis yet you would take umbrage when Palestinans are generalized.
You are a prisoner of your own narrative, there cannot possibly be anything positive about millions of Israelis.
As for the Holocaust, YOU don’t buy it. Most of us that were directly or indirectly impacted very much do. You don’t however think we are capable of looking back and forward.
Hirsh Goodman says it better.
link to nationalpost.com
If Phil’s handle were longlivepalestine, you might have a point.
Funny that Phil’s whole point is about the prisoners of (false) narratives, who use those as an excuse/justification for their vile cruelty to others. And please spare us from your attempt to use the Holocaust for your petty point-scaring games. As usual, you think it is all about you.
As for the Holocaust, YOU don’t buy it.
interesting. weiss is no longer simply a ‘self-hating jew’, he has fully bloomed into a holocaust denier. lli, this type of hyperbole says everything about your mental state and nothing of weiss’s character.
‘the debt’ is straightforward enough. the political moral of the story is that israel’s humanism, its soul when bared to the goyim, was its weakness. (the only ‘soul’ in all of germany, on theatrical display, is the smokey piano playing of mossad and the love triangle. the rest of the scenary is bleak, anonymous, and, above all, irredemiably threatening to jews.) israel/mossad allowed itself to briefly see the enemy as human back in the 1960s, and its lack of ruthlessness was a mistake. a mistake not to be repeated today. the psychoanalytical interpretation of the film, hamhandedly displayed, is that ‘the jews’ and nazis are still engaged in wrestling match to the death on the filthy floor of a mental hospital in eastern europe. and that is where the movie makers hope they remain, psychologically speaking, as this sacrifice (embrace?) allows their their children and supermodel citizens to frolick on a mediterranean beach or give articulate, self-congratulatory speeches at book signings. those are the material and mental poles of the film. the poles are held in place with the glue of suspicion of america as a reliable ally, it essentially being a non-jewish enterprise. (this is a theme repeated in ‘munich’ where the palestinian terrorists are literally helped over the fence of the olympic compound by naive americans, or, worse, where CIA agents actively interfere with mossad operations against swarthy plo agents strutting about london. see also ‘saving private . . .’ where the intellectual, overanalytical, humanism of the upham character causes the release of a german prisoner who subsequently, pornographicallly murders/rapes the jewish GI. similarly untrustworthy allies are the french who are either simpering children (‘saving private …’) or amoral and double-dealing, still profiting from the misery of jews in 1970s france (‘munich’)). but mostly the movie is about recognizing israel’s need for increasing ruthlessness, finishing the job in a knife fight.
“where the intellectual, overanalytical, humanism of the upham character”
That nearly ruined the movie for me. The one person who is displayed as a hypocritical coward is, of course, the character who is constantly talking about the laws of war and naturally he turns out to be wrong in every way. Not that this couldn’t happen, but I thought it was really cheap. What an amazing coincidence he later gets to gun down the person he had argued shouldn’t be killed earlier. I didn’t catch the ethnic dimension to it.
The opening scene was (I am told) utterly realistic. The rest of the movie was exciting enough to watch, but nothing more than that.
donald, the combat scenes in ‘the thin red line’ were done amazingly as well, and terrence malick can summon up a bit more moral ambiguity than spielberg. like ‘the debt’, any modesty or soul searching among the heroes in a spielberg film is just theatrical artifice. for example, it is no surprise that herr doktor birkenau meets a violent end in ‘the debt’. that is the only result that is permissible/satisfying in this type of movie. it’s just a question of sufficiently developing the superior moral bona fides of the heroes on film before they get to snuff him out.
Q: You are a prisoner of your own narrative, there cannot possibly be anything positive about millions of Israelis.
R: Watch Yoav Shamir’s ‘Defamation’ once more.
Trailer @ link to topdocumentaryfilms.com
Phil loves his fellow Jews and doesn’t want to see them suffer needlessly nor drive themselves off a cliff, and he doesn’t want to see any more suffering going on in that part of the world or elsewhere that is caused by the I/P conflict. That is why Mondoweiss exists.
Unfortunately for the likes of you, longliveisrael, eee, and the other ziocaine addicts, you cannot see what is obvious to the rest of the world and the overwhelming majority of posters here – zionism is an abject failure because it has descended into racist, apartheid, serial war-crimes that have corroded the very souls of their proponents and led them to a sort of zombified state of kill-burn-terrorize-bulldoze-eavesdrop-spy-bribe-torture-maim and blame the victim … you are a one-trick pony and the world has had enough of your cruelty and land-grabs and viciousness. The outlines of the peace deal have been around forever and you take the deal or the world and historical events will impose one you like less upon you.
What about the fact that I kinda liked the movie?
There, you got a promotion : interesting. weiss is no longer simply a ‘self-hating jew’, he has fully bloomed into a holocaust denier. Marc b.
They are very generous with that kind of accusation.
Munich.
Inglorious Bastards.
The Debt.
Hollywood sure is keen on churning out these ‘jewish revenge’ storylines eh. Well how else to repackage the holocaust? And believe me hollywood think-tanks sure as heck by now know it needs repackaging.
Dump the helpless and nerdy jew image and upgrade to militarized and hip white skinned jew out on a revenge mission.
It’s a kinda new genre: jewish-avenger adventures. Gone now the old jewish-suffering sagas.
How effective of a whitewash of the blood on Brand Israel will this evident make-over have? We shall see… but the unintended consequence of movies like The Debt for sure is that it gets people talking about evident love-affair between right-wing israeli propaganda and left-wing hollywood zionists.
Disappointing though that Ms Mirren isn’t as politically enlightened as Vanessa Redgrave.
Remember Redgrave’s statement in her Oscar acceptance speech regarding the ADL’s public attack on her for the movie ‘Julia’ (where Redgrave’s character is killed by a Nazi for her anti-fascism activities)?
Indeed she announced that neither she nor the Academy would be intimidated by “a small bunch of Zionist hoodlums – whose behaviour is an insult to the stature of Jews all over the world, and to their great and heroic record of struggle against fascism and oppression.”
More info on this is under ‘Julia and Related Controversy’:
link to en.wikipedia.org
Thanks for the review Phil. You saved me from wasting my time watching a buncha hollywood hasbara.
smart Taxi. more good context. very helpful. Forgot the Redgrave, wow.
Taxi, just to clarify, the ‘zionist hoodlums’ Redgrave was referring to was Meir Kahane’s JDL, not the ADL.
As well as burning effigies of her they also – and this is missing from the wiki entry – bombed the LA theatre where her documentary was set to premiere that evening.
I don’t know if she had a run-in with the ADL – I wouldn’t be surprised – but in this instance it was JDL.
I’d seen an edited clip of Redgrave’s Oscar speech, and just now found the full thing, it’s even better in it’s entirety:
Vanessa Redgrave winning Best Supporting Actress
And a 60 Minutes interview with Redgrave from a few years ago which goes into that incident and has some awesome footage from her documentary and the related protests:
Vanessa Redgrave (pt 1.)
Vanessa Redgrave (pt 2.)
I love Redgrave’s incredulous response when Wallace asks her “was it worth it”? That’s integrity, and the world would be a better place if more people had it.
Thanks for correcting my oversight, Sumud.
Wow, Mike Wallace is a jerk.
“Wow, Mike Wallace is a jerk.”
That’s what I thought. His facial expressions, esp. in part 1, are priceless and strangely familiar. I’ve seen the same grimacing on people’s faces whenever someone criticizes Israel. I’ve seen it even on the face of close friends at dinner table discussions when I say more or less what Redgrave said to Wallace. What’s up with that? Now I’ll think of it as the ”Wallace Face’ on future occasions
I thought the Kahane group and the JDL was outlawed in the US.
“I thought the Kahane group and the JDL was outlawed in the US.”
Not in France or Israel where this comes from (Hebron):
link to 1.bp.blogspot.com
As far as i know, ms redgrave was talking about kahanists sending her death threats for her political views.
And wouldnt you know, after she spoke at the oscars another member of the academy chastised her for getting political.
Big surprise. The guy who did it was jewish i think and also a zionist. His comments were kind of cruel. He said no one cares about her opinions and she should just stick to her award speech.
So under the mask of preserving the supposed integrity of the broadcast, he wasted another five minutes on his lecture specifically for her.
the audience also boo’d i think.
The swell guy who chastised her for “getting political” was Paddy Chayefsky:
That statement by Vanessa Redgrave expresses what is probably emblematic of the fire that burns within those jewish men and women who must be sickened by the way that judaism has been made to be one with zionism by those “zionist hoodlums” when in truth nothing could possibly be further from the truth.
“The Zionists were more clever than the others, since they exchanged nationalism for the Torah and commandments, as Mandelstam wrote publicly, that a Jew doesn’t have to be someone who keeps the commandments , but rather is a Zionist, even if he does not wear phylacteries and does not keep the Sabbath….”
Lubavitcher Rebbe, Grand Rabbi Sholem Dov Ber Schneersohn ZT”L
I can only afford one or two movies a year, so I’m saving my admission money for the release of Van Onselen’s “The Fox and the Flies”. It’ll be the cinematic event of the century, a sprawling, brawling and lusty epic, but not withstanding, tender and romantic withal, if you know what I mean.
And with an all-Jewish cast, no less.
Thanks for the recommendation. It’s about Jack the Ripper, isn’t it? Is it also an allegory about violent events in our time?
I need a ghost writer to do a thriller about a American woman who becomes an assassin and stalks and executes zionist leaders and politicians in the US in revenge for Israel killing her husband by mistake in a targeted assassination in Italy.
Any recommendations?
Hi American,
Q: Any recommendations?
R: Uhm…, Abe Foxman?
If you meant ghostwriters, mail me @ danielrich_jp@yahoo.com
Not sure I agree with you, Phil.
I saw the movie last night, too, and I liked it as a combination thriller and morality tale. In her lie “Sarah” keeps repeating that she was able to be strong because she remembered her mother. In the last scene, Sarah, who has left her story to a Ukrainian journalist, picks herself up and seemingly refuses to die, I think, because it is important for her to be able to explain all this web of deceit to her daughter. That was a nice twist.
And even her pregnancy, facilitated as it was by the Nazi gynecologist, is symbolic of the kind of Zionism that was built on the experience of European Jewry, as Hannah Arendt or Avraham Burg might explain it.
The film made me think again about the absolute weirdness and psychopathy of a nation plunked smack in the middle of the Arab world, yet with a national “memory” born in a romanticized, and to some degree fictionalized, European history. I think this is also the message of the film. You can see it yourself everywhere. Sderot, despite its closeness to Gaza, looks like a Bavarian town with sand. The JNF trees which were planted everywhere to conceal destroyed Arab villages were all pine trees you’d find in Germany or Hungary. The whole nation remains a European ghetto, with people continuing to surround themselves with barbed wire.
The message of the film, I thought, was not to “redeem” Israel but to argue for truth about the nation’s history. Like the protagonist, before it’s too late.
Orrr, these subtleties will be lost on most audiences and it’ll wind up being just another Holocaust/Mossadie picture and excuse to glorify and/or sympathize with Mossad and to continue to crank the “eternal victim” narrative proving that the Holocaust is the gift that keeps on giving to Zionists.
But of course, the temptation to enable Zionist Hollywood is so great since they make the ride just too enticing to turn down and boycott.
Curiosity killed the cat…and everyone’s a sap.
Here’s what I’m sick of that makes me want to vomit:
1. I’m sick of the almost yearly Holocaust pictures reinvented a thousand different ways like cheesecake from the Cheesecake factory that are obviously meant to keep the “eternal victim” fresh in every one’s mind to the detriment of the REAL victims of Zionism.
Never mind that reinventing the cheesecake in hundreds of flavors lures tens of thousands of vulnerable hearts to their early demise! Oh but it’s so irresistible, just like a by-pass, right?
So Hollywood indulges the blind and the “eternal victims” who can never be satiated wallowing in a bottomless pit of “woe-is-me” self-pity and paranoia that Zionist producers can bank on.
2. I’m sick of the self-indulgent, psycho-existential crisis and psychobabble that inspires rivers of ink in books, blogs and celluloid and that “Liberal” Zionists drag on forever into oceans of crocodile tears while their comrades on the right wreak hell on Palestinians year in and year out. After a while you kinda start to notice that it’s leading nowhere and that it’s more about their existential woe than the real physical suffering of the victims of Zionism. How dare we ask that they not vacation in Israel and keep their condo on stolen land! It’s more about “Out, damn’d spot! out, I say!” and cleansing the soul than proactively risking everything, selling the condo and banging on doors and screaming “NOT IN MY NAME YOU DON’T” to STOP ETHNIC CLEANSING of Palestinians.
3. I’m sick of MOSSADies with a conscience on the silver screen ONLY!! Meanwhile in REAL life, they’re trekking the globe in search of their next assassination, false flag terrorist act and revolution!
4. And finally, I’m sick of Jews with a conscience looking for answers and “signs ” of change getting sucked in by Hollywood again and again. Here’s a clue: Be the change! Just say NO!: I’m not gonna play your game anymore; I’m not gonna help you cash in on the Holocaust industry or the Muslim bogeyman! I’m not going to enable this tired, biased, over-exploited and racist narrative any more until you deal with the victims of ZIONISM and depict this Zionism as the sequel to the previous supremacist experiment that it is! And I don’t care how creative and how clever you make this version. I won’t let my own need or curiosity get the better of me again!
Of course it would be too much to ask to boycott the self-indulgence and manipulation that Zionists in Hollywood serve up on the screen in so many titillating flavors with big names in the credits to boot! They wouldn’t get those big names to draw attention to their narrative without your financial backing at the box office.
The Mossadie character isn’t loooost. Israelis aren’t…lossssst. In REAL life, they’re right on course, going after exactly what they want and getting it! Thanks to…Congress, the Lobby, the press, Holly…woood and YOU, the loyal consumer.
No, they’re not the lost souls. The “lost souls” are sitting IN THE AUDIENCE, captivated, while Zionists are laughing all the way to the bank and keeping their shabby albeit reinvented narrative front and center and their whipping boy in his place. Meanwhile the dark side of the moon remains darkened and hidden from the dumb masses upon whom all subtlety and/or nuance are lost, but not the subliminal message: Holocaust=eternal victims=Zionists=Israel=FIRST.
Gimme the REAL picture or nothing at all! I’m an army of one, intent on making them pay “the debt” they owe to humanity!
Here’s a title suggestion for a new kind of picture you can all invest in: “Irgun is Israel”, but they won’t give you that version. They’ll give you the version you keep going back for, again and again, to read between the lines for change, and they’ll “change” it alright.
It’s better to keep the change and be the change than to be repeatedly short-changed by these shysters of fraudulent cinema and emotional blackmail.
Hi kalithea,
Plenty of rumors abound about the upcoming epic Russian and Chinese flicks:
Pjotr Chalasnikov’s ‘Glasbroke’ – How 22,000,000 Russians were slaughtered.
Hang Lo’s ‘Peking Ducks’ – How 11,000,000 Chinese were butchered.
It’s all in the eye of the beholder…
…and Zen and Confucius are lost on the masses.
In the end everyone gets something for their chunk of change, as Hollywood aims to please those looking for a “profound” message and those who just want to be moved from their numb existance to momentary intense distraction when they churn out these Holocaust revival films , as long as the masses don’t start reading between the lines too. Good thing those Zionist producers can count on that never happening.
Go kalithea! Especially loved this:
“the subliminal message: Holocaust=eternal victims=Zionists=Israel=FIRST
Here’s a clue: Be the change! Just say NO!: I’m not gonna play your game anymore; I’m not gonna help you cash in on the Holocaust industry or the Muslim bogeyman! I’m not going to enable this tired, biased, over-exploited and racist narrative any more until you deal with the victims of ZIONISM and depict this Zionism as the sequel to the previous supremacist experiment that it is!
Gimme the REAL picture or nothing at all! I’m an army of one, intent on making them pay “the debt” they owe to humanity!”
So, Kalithea, if I understand you correctly.
You hate/are sick of the following:
* Holocaust Movies
* Liberal Zionists and their crocodile tears
* Manipulating Hollywood Zionists
* Jews with a conscience looking for answers and “signs”
* Zionists who laugh all the way to the bank
* Israelis, “Congress, the Lobby, the press, Holly…woood and YOU”
Hmm.
Hmm what?
My response has been censored 3 times so far. Will this be no. 4?
You know: The gathering of dark clouds, ominous music signaling impending doom and then a disembodied screeching alien sound that penetrates the soul.
The boogyman!
A good rant is great for the soul.
Kalithea : this was an excellent comment and it will find its way on my fb page unless you object.
RE: “The larger way Israel is lost, the film acknowledges, is that the Holocaust material doesn’t work anymore. ” ~ Weiss
MY COMMENT: Netanyahu & Co. were very upset by Obama’s having referred to the Holocaust, etc. as justifying Israel’s existence in his Cairo speech.
What’s that you asked dear Mondoweiss reader? Say again? Oh, I’m so happy that you asked why the Likudniks/neocons were so upset by Obama’s referring to the Holocaust, etc. Apparently it is because the Holocaust, etc. might well justify the existence of Israel, but they fear it does not necessarily justify Israel’s absorption of “Judea and Samaria” [a/k/a the "disputed" West Bank (f/k/a the occupied West Bank)]. Consequently, they want the “Biblical narrative” used to justify Israel’s existence because it is more specific to “Judea and Samaria”.
Of course, some might say that the “Biblical narrative” sort of leaves Tel Aviv and the coastal plain somewhat “out in the cold”, but the Likudniks/neocons probably do not “in reality” think it is likely that they will “lose” that particular territory.
When the right is selling Zionism they like to go with the religious fairytale, makes them think they’re next to godliness. But Democrats don’t go for all that religious stuff and the Holocaust really pulls at their heartstrings, so Obama was just doing what comes natural to Democrats when selling Zionism (i.e. land theft and ethnic cleansing), going with his “heart”.