San Francisco Jewish Film Festival Showing Anti-Israel Film

The below article is cross-posted from Frontpage Magazine and is written by Jamie Glazov. This weekend, the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival is featuring a film entitled; "Rachel", a film about Rachel Corrie, a Jewish-American activist with the International Solidarity Movement, an anti-Israel organization. Corrie was killed a few years ago in Gaza when she stood in front of a bulldozer that was trying to take down a house belonging to suspected terrorists. The film will be accompanied by a talk by Corrie's mother, Cindy Corrie, who, along with her husband, have continued their daughter's anti-Israel mission by lobbying and speaking against Israel-though the Corrie family is Jewish. The film and Mrs Corrie's appearance have been strongly opposed by various pro-Israel/Jewish voices.

With all due respect to the Corrie's, who appeared a couple of years ago at my university (UC-Irvine-sponsored by the Muslim Student Union), I feel that they are allowing themselves to be exploited by organizations like the MSU, who also sponsor radical speakers at UCI who are not only anti-Israel, but anti-American and anti-Jewish as well.
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By: Jamie Glazov
FrontPageMagazine.com | Thursday, July 23, 2009

Why is a Jewish film festival giving a platform to a documentary and to an individual that serve the cause of anti-Jewish hate?

"This Saturday, July 25, organizers of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival plan to show “Rachel,” an anti-Israel propaganda film. The documentary is based on the life and death of Rachel Corrie, an anti-Israel, anti-American activist who was killed in Gaza in 2003 when she deliberately ran in front of an Israeli bulldozer to protect a home that was sheltering terrorists. And not just content with showing the propaganda film, the organizers have invited Rachel’s mother, Cindy Corrie, also an Israel-basher, to speak at the screening and to participate in a question-and-answer session after the viewing.

A closer look at who Rachel Corrie was – and what she represented – demonstrates why this event is such an outrage:


A native of Olympia, Washington, Corrie was a member of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a viciously anti-Israel organization that calls and works for the destruction of the Jewish state. The radical organization recruits activists to travel to the Palestinian territories to obstruct Israeli security operations. The activists intentionally put themselves in harm’s way to hamper Israeli soldiers in their efforts to fight Palestinian terrorists.


That is precisely how Corrie met her death. The twenty-three year old activist was fatally crushed in March 2003 when she tried to obstruct the path of an Israeli bulldozer that was preparing to demolish the house in Rafah where she was lodging.


Like her ISM colleagues, Corrie was knowingly abetting terrorists. A few months earlier, for instance, when Palestinian militants seized the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, it was ISMers who smuggled food to them.


Many of the homes in Rafah rested atop a network of ninety tunnels that were used by terrorists for smuggling rockets and other weapons from the Egyptian border to Rafah. It was impossible for Corrie and her ISM comrades to have lived in Rafah and not witness the activity connected with these tunnels.


That is why the bulldozer was in operation: The Israelis were trying to interrupt this tunnel activity. The rockets that have been, and are, fired into Israeli towns from Gaza are smuggled in this process. They are tunnelled into places like Rafah, under houses just like the one Corrie was defending.


Like so many fellow travellers of totalitarian death cults, Corrie was ever ready to give her life for “the cause.” She deliberately stood in front of the Israeli bulldozer and made herself a poster child for the leftist pursuit of martyrdom. She sacrificed her life to keep open tunnels that supplied terrorists with the means to kill Israeli civilians. And that is why Israeli professor and journalist Steven Plaut has legitimately called Corrie’s death a suicide.


One would know little of this from the film that will be shown in San Francisco this weekend. “Rachel,” directed by Simone Bitton, gives a sympathetic portrait of this terror-abettor and of her anti-Israel cause.


That portrait will be further embellished by Rachel’s mom Cindy Corrie, who will be speaking and fielding questions in the post-viewing session. Cindy Corrie is the founder of the Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice, a pro-Palestinian group that promotes the world-view of her daughter. Given her own background, it’s unlikely that Corrie will provide an objective presentation of her daughter’s life.

It is no surprise, however, that the Jewish Film Festival is giving a platform to those who hate Israel and who make every effort to help the forces who seek to destroy it. After all, two stridently anti-Israel groups, The Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) are listed as co-presenters on the website of the Festival’s Board of Directors. They support boycotts, divestment and sanctions against the Jewish State and they are closely associated with the ISM and other terror-allied organizations.

The JVP's Advisory Board, for instance, includes Noam Chomsky and Naomi Klein. Chomsky is an infamous Israel-hater and has distinguished himself best by his travels to Lebanon to personally embrace the leaders of Hezbollah. Klein, meanwhile, put herself on the map in her 2004 column in The Nation, “Bring Najaf to New York,” in which she reached her hand out in solidarity to Muqtada al-Sadr and his Islamofascist Mahdi Army in the Iraqi Shi’ite stronghold of Najaf.

What’s next for the Jewish Film Festival? Screenings of Nazi and Islamist propaganda films? Holocaust Denial documentaries? Speeches and question-and-answer sessions by Hamas, Hezbollah and Muslim Brotherhood representatives? It’s impossible to rule it out.

A Jewish film festival worth its name might be expected to feature films that show the suffering of innocent Israelis at the hands of their tormentors and killers. At a minimum, it would expose the Rachel Corries of the world for the terrorist abettors they are. Directly complicit in the brutal deaths of Jewish civilians killed by Palestinian terror, Rachel Corrie will always have blood on her hands. Now, in a dark irony, Jewish civilians will be showing a film in her honor.

Editors' note: Jamie Glazov dissects the phenomenon of leftist Jews’ dalliance with Islamic terror in his new book, United in Hate: The Left’s Romance With Tyranny and Terror.]
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Fousesquawk comment; All I can add is that during my time trying to expose the anti-Semitism that has arisen out of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, it never ceases to amaze me how fragmented the Jewish community is. In my view, if one group needs to come together, it is the Jews. They are faced with a resurgence of anti-Semitism and a force that wants to wipe them off the face of the earth. I don't expect all Jews to blindly endorse everything Israel does, but they do need to recognize the reality of those seeking Israel's destruction and that there is an anti-Jewish undertone to it as well.