Vanessa Redgrave, whose staunch support of the Palestine Liberation Organization provoked a controversy last year when she was cast as a Jewish prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp in the CBS-TV production of “Playing for Time,” is now involved in promoting two anti-Zionist films, the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith reported today.
According to Justin Finger, director of the ADL’s civil rights division, Ms. Redgrave is promoting a propaganda film entitled “Occupied Palestine,” which was premiered in October at the San Francisco Film Festival, and is preparing another film that accuses “Zionists” of being Nazi collaborators. In the late 1970s she produced and played a leading role in “The Palestinian,” in which she was shown dancing in a PLO camp, holding a rifle over her head.
Finger said that financing for the new film has been provided by the Crown Prince of Kuwait, other Kuwaiti “petrodollar tycoons” and Palestinians. The Kuwaiti and Palestinian financial assistance, he said, was solicited during a Middle East tour made by Ms. Redgrave to promote “Occupied Palestine.” Finger said that the premise of Ms. Redgrave’s new film — an alleged conspiracy between Zionists and Nazis during World War II — is a frequent theme of Soviet anti-Jewish propagandists and extreme left-wing groups.
The “Occupied Palestine” film, according to Finger, “is a slick, so-called documentary that villifies Israel and misrepresents conditions in the Jewish state today.” Although Ms. Redgrave does not appear in the film, nor does it bear her name, he pointed out, it is being advertised as “Presented by Vanessa Redgrave Productions” and in addition to Kuwait, she has traveled to Syria, Jordan, Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia to promote it.
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.
