There's seems to be a trend that it is somehow dishonorable to examine the motives of our enemies and to hyperventilate about those who do. I guess it's so that people who don't have any real contibutions to make to the war can pretend they have something to do—sort of the way Jehovah's Witnesses were castrated and lynched in WWII because they wouldn't take the Pledge of Allegiance.

This seems extreme on my part? Well, Bertold Brecht wrote a rather interesting work, "The Private Lives of the Master Race", with (among other things) a scene showing why an alienated German teen joins the Hitler Youth. You can argue that Brecht was a closet nazi-sympathizer, but I don't think you'll have much luck.

AJL:

There's seems to be a trend that it is somehow dishonorable to examine the motives of our enemies and to hyperventilate about those who do.

That's a remarkably generous description of what Paradise Now does. Here's a part of that interview with Yediot Aharanot:

And there are no suicide bombers who do what they do because of anti-Semitism?

That's a racist notion. No one hates Jews because they are Jews like in Europe, he replies.

I know I don't need to find you the screeds from Hamas, Fatah, the PA, etc. Claiming that these terrorists aren't antisemitic isn't 'examining motives', it is a flat-out lie.

Then you should see Ms. Wafa Sultan on Al-Jazeera TV

She is also very brave!

You can watch her recent appearances on MEMRI TV

Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it" (The Martyr, Imam Hassan al-Banna, of blessed memory).

"There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through jihad. All initiatives, proposals, and international conferences are a waste of time and vain endeavors" (Article 13).

"Allah is its goal, The Prophet its model, the Qur'an its Charter, jihad its path, and death for the cause of Allah its most sublime belief" (Article 8).

The Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to implement Allah's promise, whatever time that may take. The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said: "The Day of Judgment will not come about until the Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them), until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: Oh Muslim! Oh Abdullah!, there is a Jew behind me, come on and kill him. Only the Gharqad tree would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews."

We can only stop terrorism by destroying the leaders and the polical system that encourages these actions. It's a good idea to study their motives as the police and the military do, to trace their actions and to find their whereabouts (preferably with the necessary lattitude and longitude). However, interpreting individual personal issues while ignoring the larger political system does nothing to stop terrorism.

Yes, mass murderers may have some personal issues and they may be alienated - Magda and Joseph Goebbels had bad childhoods: cry me a river.

We can only stop terrorism by destroying the leaders and the polical system that encourages these actions.

As for Colt's remark, I don't understand you on two levels. The first is that its relevance to Hollywood's ethics escapes me, whether Hamas' suicide bombers are anti-Semitic. On second thought, maybe it doesn't escape me; perhaps your mind is unable to deal with the fact that since the abandonment of the Hays self-censorship code, movies are no longer required to have all of the bad guys get their just deserts.

Just to provoke you further, while there probably are "anti-Semites" in the classical sense in the Palestinian movement, I think they are much outnumbered by anti-Zionists and anti-Israelists (to coin a word). Unless you wish to argue that some of the better known Hasidic movements are anti-Semitic, you'll have to concede that Hamas's charter is repulsive, it shouldn't be lumped in with Mein Kampf.

AJL -- your comments are Exhibit A on why Hollywood is totally on the other side, objectively, in the global struggle for freedom from brutal Sharia.

To honor a film glorifying Suicide bombers blowing innocent people, solely because these people are Jewish, is the very definition of anti-Semitism.

Of course, much of Hollywood is openly anti-Semitic, simply because GWB supports Israel's right to exist. That's enough to drive the uber-liberal Hollywood folks to explicit, overt, anti-Semitism.

Secondly, HAMAS is a brutal and vile terrorist organization. It surprises me not a moment that the Palestinians voted for terrorism. The Palestinian people are idiots. They believe "just enough" terror will drive the "Jews into the Sea" and they will loot Israel and enslave those few who remain. That's their master plan for achieving statehood and prosperity.

Yes of course we should recognize HAMAS as the legitimate winner of the democratic process. And cut off all aid and diplomatic recognition of the PA. Let Palestinians take care of their own needs, and see what endorsing a policy of explicit terror gets them.

Everyone knows that eventually the Palestinians will get their own State. The only question is what will the borders be and how will it relate to it's neighbors? Pushing terror so strongly has led Israelis to conclude that you can't trust or deal with the Palestinians and to act unilaterally to define the Palestinian State. They never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

At any rate, I find it ironic that Hollywood celebrates those who fund suicide murderers, and who also endorse honor killings, female genital mutilation, religious hatred, suppression of writers and thinkers, and the murders of cartoonists and film-makers.

Hollywood, objectively on the side of the enemies of freedom and human decency.

AJL:

The first is that its relevance to Hollywood's ethics escapes me, whether Hamas' suicide bombers are anti-Semitic. On second thought, maybe it doesn't escape me; perhaps your mind is unable to deal with the fact that since the abandonment of the Hays self-censorship code, movies are no longer required to have all of the bad guys get their just deserts.

I'm not sure where that came from, but as far as Paradise Now's makers are concerned, the bad guys do get their just desserts at the end.

Unless you wish to argue that some of the better known Hasidic movements are anti-Semitic, you'll have to concede that Hamas's charter is repulsive, it shouldn't be lumped in with Mein Kampf.

Those Hasidic movements disagree with Zionists about the interpretation of the Torah. To compare that to Hamas is more than a little disengenuous.

According to the Hamas charter, Jews are responsible for: Western imperialism, World War 1, World War 2 (during which they made a lot of money), the drug trade, alcoholism, the League of Nations and the United Nations ('through which they could rule the world') and literally every war, anywhere: 'There is no war going on anywhere, without having their finger in it.'

And to clarify whether this is only about Israel, Hamas even include this handy statement: 'Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Moslem people.' The charter is a call for genocide, pure and simple.

As for the 'classical' Jew-hatred, take your pick: is the Jew a restless wanderer who should leave (or be murdered), a secretive hand behind every war and disaster, a drinker of goy blood, a murderer of prophets?

The fact is that if Israelis were Muslim, and acting like Saddam, no-one would give a damn. The only explanation for the muted reaction to the numerous abuses in Arab countries versus the sustained and overwhelming hatred of Israel is Israel's being Jewish.

No one who's actually trying to stop terrorism really thinks as you do—including even George W. Bush.

George Bush is "actually trying to stop terrorism"? I didn't know that. What do you think George Bush is currently doing to actually stop terrorism?

And who are the other political figures who are "actually trying to stop terrorism"? Got any names? What, exactly, have they done?

If you were composing a list of people (in general) who were actually trying to stop terrorism, would your name be on that list?

Hamas' charter is just one example of Islamist goals: the Islamists who support Hamas all share these goals whether they're willing to admit it or not.

Hamas' charter is based on the same Sharia laws that guide these Islamist states. These are laws that support ethnic cleansing, slavery and apartheid.

Why do you think we shouldn't fight a campaign of ethnic cleansing, apartheid and slavery? Do you think that these things can benefit the world in some way? Please explain how.

_Just to provoke you further, while there probably are "anti-Semites" in the classical sense in the Palestinian movement, I think they are much outnumbered by anti-Zionists and anti-Israelists _

Dream on. Go and read Islam's holy books. Better still read what their religious leaders preach every Friday.

"The Prophet Mohammed, prayers be upon him, and Jesus Christ, peace be upon him, are not sacred anymore, while Semites and the holocaust and homosexuality have become sacred."

Al-Zawahri also offered his support to the militant Islamic Hamas group that is forming a new Palestinian government after sweeping legislative elections.

"Arriving at power is not the point but it is wanted to implement god's sharia (islamic law) on the earth," he said.

He complained that the previous Palestinian leadership had "sold Palestine."

"Recognising those people is against Islam's principles. They are criminals in the Islamic balance," he said. "Palestine is not their own property that they can give up."

"Just to provoke you further, while there probably are "anti-Semites" in the classical sense in the Palestinian movement, I think they are much outnumbered by anti-Zionists and anti-Israelists (to coin a word)."

Based on what evidence? Wishful thinking? To address your original point, that it is now deemed "dishonorable to examine the motives of our enemies" you are exactly wrong. It is deemd wrong to allow the enemies motives and beliefs to be whitewashed and apoligized away in the service of some politically correct idealogy. It is a leftist tenant that the Palestinians are victims and hence not responsible for any racism rife in their culture- to such an extant that the racism is actively covered up. It is indeed dishonorable to in essence lie about the widespread Arab anti-semitism oozing through the Middle East. You mentioned Mein Kampf but failed to mention it is a heavilly read and distributed book in exactly one region of the world today- the Middle East. The blood libels that appear daily in Saudi and Syrian newspapers echoing the lies of the Protocols of Zion are another example. Yes, to pretend that these things either do not exist or that they are not anti-semetic is dishonorable indeed. In fact it is precisely how naziism was treated in its early years by the rest of the West, apologized for and explained away, when not outright lauded.

To get back to the initial article:

So you see, feeling impotent is a perfectly valid excuse for murder and suicide bombing.

I haven't seen PN yet (It's on my list, I'll let you know when I do) but from my understanding it follows the bombers from neither a pro- nor con- state. In fact, according to ebert:

We may disagree, too, and yet watch the film with a fearsome fascination. The director and co-writer, Hany Abu-Assad, uses the interesting device of undercutting the heroism of his martyrs with everyday details... But in my mind, at least, that creates not sympathy, but pity; what a waste, to spend your life and all your future on behalf of those who send you but do not go themselves. These movies by necessity tell us versions of the same story: A true believer prepares for death, and we watch to see if death will come.

Do I agree with everything this guy is saying? No, I vehemently disagree with his comparison of the Palesitinian state & the Halocaust.... but in a way he may be right about armed mutiny taking time. The larger Jewish rebellions happened later in the war, mainly because it took that long to recognize what was happening to them.

Think of this in the opposite direction: If Eurpoe had sided with muslims after WWII and taken away Israeli land, would the Jews fight? It's a purely hypothetical question, and I don't claim to know the answer.

Even if we don't agree with his film, it is a middlepoint. He is having the debate, probably more among palestinians than among americans, aboutthe nature of martyrdom. I would much rather have that debate with films than with bombs.

Mark, doesn't it say something to you that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion had to be imported into the Muslim countries from Europe? Anti-semitism is a European concept that is being borrowed in the Middle East, but it piggybacks on anti-Zionism. Iranian TV featured a publicity-hungry clown rabbi from Neturei Karta denouncing Zionism as un-Jewish (a belief that was much more widespread in the religiously observant Jewish community before the Holocaust). Hitler wouldn't have done something like that.

The question in this thread does not appear to me to be whether Islamism must be fought. The question is whether Paradise Now is contemptible, and whether its director's failure to accept that suicide bombing is incomprehensibly evil is itself iniquitous. I realize that the Bush cult doesn't do nuance, but by now it should be more clear that is nothing to be proud of.