The Guardian: First in anti-Israelism

You wouldn’t expect a glowing PR piece about a Hamas film that idealizes the life and death of a terrorist in any mainstream newspaper’s film section. But that would only be if you had never read the British Guardian. (Via reader Neil M.)

The headline and teaser:

First film produced by Hamas screens in Gaza

Imad Aqel is an action-packed movie of the life and violent death of a Hamas militant who topped Israel’s most-wanted list

The lead:

The film’s hero is a young militant, blamed by Israel for the deaths of 13 soldiers and settlers, who was killed at the age of 22 in a firefight in 1993.

Note the language: They are casting doubt in the first sentence on whether or not he murdered thirteen Israelis. And of course, instead of the word “civilians,” “settlers” is used.

The lead graph continues with this sad fact:

Many of the actors are Hamas members and, since the movie was finished, four of them have been killed in an Israeli attack. This is Imad Aqel, the first feature film funded by Hamas.

So does the Reuters

The description of the film:

Shot on the grounds of Gnai Tal, one of the Jewish settlements evacuated in 2005 when Israel withdrew from the territory, it is a two-hour, action-packed thriller celebrating the life and martyrdom of Aqel, a commander of the Hamas military wing who topped Israel’s most-wanted list.

This could be straight out of the Hamas PR release, and I would not be at all surprised to find out that it is.

According to newspaper reports, the line that elicits the biggest cheer from the Gazan audience is when one of the characters declares: “To kill Israeli soldiers is to worship God.”The film’s director, Majed Jendeya, says he hopes to screen Imad Aqel at the Cannes film festival.

Despicable. But not as despicable as this last paragraph, in which the writer editorializes as to why Hamas is making movies that honor mass murderers:

The biopic is just the latest effort in Hamas’s media campaign to instil a “culture of resistance” in the territory. It also owns a satellite television station, a radio network and websites, as well as sponsoring art exhibitions, plays and poetry which tell of the harsh conditions in Gaza.

“Resistance” is the word that terrorist groups use to describe suicide bomb attacks and other methods of murdering civilians. It is getting more and more mainstream as more and more of the world reverts to the Jew-hatred it has held over the millennia. The demonization has reached such heights that Phyllis Chesler can’t even bring herself to write about Israel anymore, and I have to admit it has affected me as well. And part of the problem are media outlets like the Guardian, which never hesitates to excoriate Israel, and builds up terrorist murderers with puff pieces on films about their lives.

If you need a palate cleanser, you can read the National Post of Canada, which may be based on the Reuters article, but at least uses the word “terrorist” to describe the subject of the film. But the Post is one of the few voices in the wilderness of anti-Israel media. Yaacov calls them the antisemitic media. I don’t think he’s wrong.