A different kind of excitement may be injected into the Oscar ceremonies in Los Angeles next Monday if the Jewish Defense League and pro-Palestinian groups have their way.
The JDL has announced that it will stage a demonstration at the internationally televised Motion Picture Academy Awards ceremony to protest the nomination of British actress Vanessa Redgrave for an Oscar as best supporting actress in Julia.” At the same time, Arabs and pro-Palestinian sympathizers announced plans to stage a counter-demonstration against the JDL.
Anger against Ms. Redgrave has been expressed by the JDL and other Jewish groups for having made a documentary film, “The Palestinian,” which presents what has been termed a one-sided pro-Palestinian anti-Israeli view. Protests against the film have been mounted in cities where it has been shown in this country and some have called for a boycott against that film and any film in which the actress appears.
REASONS FOR OPPOSING PROTESTS
At the same time, many in the film industry and outside, Jews as well as non-Jews, have voiced opposition to these demonstrations and calls for boycott. Among the reasons for opposing these actions, and specifically the one planned next Monday night, is that Ms. Redgrave has been nominated for her role in “Julia” in which she portrays a member of the anti-Nazi underground which smuggled Jews out of Germany, a film she made after “The Palestinian.”
Other reasons given are that the boycott has been used against Jews in the past and, in fact, is now being used by the Arabs in their economic boycott of Israel and Jewish-owned enterprises around the world and firms dealing with such enterprises; and that a boycott against Ms. Redgrave as an actress evokes bitter memories of similar actions against actors and actresses during the McCarthy witch-hunt period in the 1950s.
TERMED UNRELENTING PROPAGANDA
Many Jews throughout the country have taken issue with Ms. Redgrave’s anti-Zionist and anti-Israel attitudes but oppose any demonstrations at the Oscar ceremonies. Among them is Dore Schary, famed film producer and playwright who is a member of the Motion Picture Academy, and who has headed the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith and is its honorary chairman.
Schary said he has seen some two hours of the two-and-three-quarters-hour pro-Palestinian film and that it is both anti-Israel and anti-Zionist. He, as others who have seen “The Palestinian,” described it as rambling, tiresome and tedious.
The film, which has been termed an unrelenting presentation of the Palestinian cause and which contains statements by Palestinians characterizing Zionism as Nazism and comparing Israel to Nazi Germany, was defended by Ms. Redgrave as an effort to present the Palestinian cause to the West which, she claimed, has not given that cause a fair hearing.
Nevertheless, Schary is opposed to any form of protest at the Oscar ceremonies. “I feel very strongly about her (Ms. Redgrave) political position but I don’t believe in boycotts,” he said. “Many years ago, in Hollywood, when people were called Communists, attempts were made to toss them out of the industry on the basis of political principle. It was an awful time.”
The calls for a boycott of Ms. Redgrave have also been criticized by Richard Roth, producer of “Julia,” 20th Century Fox, the Motion Picture Academy, the Screen Actors Guild and distributors of “Julia.”
FEELINGS HIGH AGAINST REDGRAVE
Nevertheless, feelings against the actress, who for years has been espousing a Trotskyist view, are running high as a result of “The Palestinian.” Dr. Eli Spira, president of the B’nai B’rith Shalom Lodge, a Jewish social organization in Los Angeles, which announced it would take part in the protest demonstration next Monday, said: “She should not be nominated for best supporting actress. What she supports best is murder, terrorism and destruction of innocent people.”
Herbert Luft, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s motion picture columnist, and himself a native of Germany and a victim of Nazism, wrote in a recent JTA column that “The Palestinian” was produced in conjunction with PLO chief Yasir Arafat and that Ms. Redgrave has allegedly made public statements that Israel should be dissolved altogether and transformed into a multi-national society governed jointly by Moslems, Christians and Jews.
“The dilemma faced by Hollywood,” Luft wrote, “not merely deals with the freedom of expression. The question arises whether we as Jews and Americans can afford to endorse by our silence the blunt advocacy of a destruction of the Jewish State–after more than six million Jews were murdered by the Nazis because there was no national country to protect or shelter them at that time.”
Irv Rubin, West Coast head of the JDL, told a press conference yesterday in Los Angeles that his organization is no longer calling for Ms. Redgrave to be boycotted professionally and that the JDL is not planning its demonstration “to destroy the Academy but to tell Vanessa Redgrave, never again. We will be innovative with this demonstration. We will be peaceful.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
