"Liberating" Palestine, Boycotting a Film Tainted by Israel

"I am sending my love and prayers to my fellow Israeli citizens."
"Especially to all the boys and girls who are risking their lives protecting my country against the horrific acts conducted by Hamas, who are hiding like cowards behind women and children."
Israeli actress Gal Gadot

Israeli actress Gal Gadot arrives at the premiere of Warner Bros. Pictures' 'Wonder Woman' at the Pantages Theatre on May 25, 2017 in Hollywood, California. (Frazer Harrison/Getty Images/AFP)

"In typical Lebanese fashion and because we definitely have our priorities in order, Lebanon’s government decided to rise up from its slumber and resist, even though the movie has been announced for over three years now."

"The fact of the matter is that if you have a problem with the content of a movie, the actor or actress leading it or anything pertaining to it… Simply don’t go watch it."

"Call for a boycott, but you sure as hell have no right in making sure no one else gets to watch it too."

Blogger Elie Fares --  “A Separate State of Mind” blog

It is a cardinal sin to be an Israeli. All the more so, an Israeli who served in the Israel Defence Force. And since everyone in Israel, male or female, is expected to serve through general conscription for a two-year period in defence of their nation, those who wish to see Israel destroyed feel justified in considering all Israeli Jews as criminal persecutors of Palestinians. The simple fact that Israel must maintain a standing army in preparedness for any contingency owes to the other fact; that its neighbours wish to destroy it.

Palestinians cannot have it both ways; waging both physical war with Israel and expecting Arab Palestinians to recognize their obligation to attack Jews in an effort to 'recapture' the land it sits upon as its ancient heritage, but which Palestinian Arabs contest as their very own, and engaging in slanderous propaganda popular wherever anti-Semitism thrives, eager to join the Boycott-Divestment movement. But eager and prepared to present itself as a partner for peace with Israel.

The film Wonder Woman, which sets out to portray women as physically powerful, courageous and as determined as any man, in a campaign to save the world, has garnered lots of praise and worldwide attention. Advance premieres have resulted in critics giving it excellent reviews, and people are eager to see the film, considered a first of its kind because it features a woman in a super-hero role, usually reserved for super-men.

"She's incredibly strong, but she also stands for something which is the opposite of being violent -- which is love, truth, compassion."

"As a woman, it was interesting sometimes that I would say, 'I think [females] might fight a little differently than [males] might fight."

"The challenge is to see both the good and bad of mankind..."

"We all want to bring, not only a hero to the world, but a message of helping anybody find their voice."

Patty Jenkins, director, Wonder Woman

Perhaps the director's words hit the issue square, though of a certainty they weren't intended to be political. But what she says and how she describes the film and what it explores in human relations appears to lead directly to Israel-as-metaphor.

Wonder Woman is opening during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and theatres in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Kuwait are scheduled to run the film. Oman and Bahrain are also going to feature this blockbuster that has aroused interest in theatre-goers worldwide. But film enthusiasts in Lebanon are just plain out of luck, because its ministry of economy has banned the film. Not because the theory  of a woman daring to do what men have always done is offensive to a religion where women are neither seen nor heard in public.

But because its star, a woman, is an Israeli Jew; a combination that makes for detestation and anger. Beirut had prepared to schedule the film at one of its cinemas but though posters and billboards went into play no one in the capital of Lebanon or elsewhere in the country will now see it because it has become symbolic of the state of war between Lebanon and Israel. Lebanon's Iran-led Hezbollah paramilitary group and the Islamic Republic of Iran, both committed to Israel's destruction, have, needless to say, great influence in this matter.

An Islamist Republic whose focus is on supporting terrorism world-wide and its creature, a terrorist group, both of which are helping Syria's mass-murdering president in his sectarian war against his own people would like the world to believe that it is Israel and its presence in the Middle East that is responsible for the violence, bloodshed and barbarism that floods the nations of Arab and Aryan Islam. The freedoms that Lebanese once enjoyed in a country once admired for its openness and social advancement has disappeared, with Druze, Christians, Sunni and Shiite Islam at one another's throats.

And it all began when the Palestinian Liberation Organization under the late Yasser Arafat made Lebanon its conflict outpost after Jordan's then-King Hussein refused to allow his country to continue to be overrun by Palestinian militias, attacking Israel over the border and destabilizing both Israel and Jordan. What the PLO failed to accomplish in Jordan (though a slow-simmering effort continues) it accomplished handily in Lebanon before it was forced from there, too.

But the chain of events leading from Lebanon's dystopian malfunctions which bred Hezbollah when the Iranian Republican Guard Corps infused Shiites with the sacred vision of jihad and martyrdom has entirely disrupted the country and its administration, the larger waves of which stimulated Sunni states like Saudi Arabia to encourage their own brand of death-dealing-and-loving jihad beginning with al-Qaeda and ending with Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

Should anything untoward happen to ISIL, the Muslim Brotherhood hovers in the background, infesting the Islamic nations of the Middle East and North Africa, and installing themselves throughout the Western world, infiltrating Europe, North America and Oceania.