Oscar Nominations for Hamas & ICJ Short Films

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I know it’s early to talk about the 2025 Oscars, but two new films deserve to start the ball rolling, for the category of Best Live Action Short Film—not documentary of course, which is separate. Best Live Action Short Film rewards fictional films, although docudrama-like simulations are eligible.

Both films appeared this past week, but I’ll start with the simpler and more dramatic one, aired today. Hamas, in it’s time-honored style, effectively used a static shot of a masked, uniformed fighter talking directly to the camera in his inimitable stern, you-can-trust-me fashion. Timed perfectly with its midnight release, it gives us a static photo of a man in camo with a keffiyeh-wrapped face holding up a stiff instructional finger that takes us right back to first grade, and is all the more compelling for that scary memory. Also, the only moving part of the picture at first—a rippling light-green audio wave sound tracing against a dark-green background—draws our eyes like a line of dancers.

The captioned translation says, “Our fighters carried out a complex operation on Saturday afternoon in the northern Gaza Strip.” Soon we see a video of a bloody person in military clothing being dragged limp up across a tunnel floor; next, three photos of weapons “seized” in this “complex operation.” Since the weapons shown are not Israeli, the filmmakers can be faulted for not getting better advice on how to achieve verisimilitude with their props. But film fans around the world want entertainment, not petty accuracy.

Our teacherly instructor goes on, “Our fighters lured a Zionist force into an ambush inside one of the tunnels…and clashed with them from close range. Our fighters withdrew after blowing up the tunnel and leaving all members of the force dead, wounded, or captured…”

Now, Israel claims no such event occurred, and it is almost never possible to conceal the death of a single soldier for more than a few hours while the family is notified. Killing “all members of” a “Zionist force” without Israeli news media finding out would take some added ingenuity on the part of Hamas, but they can do a lot now with fictional film. Adding an ad campaign with an Israeli soldier-doll in a Hamas fist and a bare arm stuck out of a tunnel grasping at a Hamas boot gives the film true artistic flavor.

Nevertheless, and I am sure this will be controversial, I think the best short-film fiction of the year so far comes from the International Court of Justice, in its filmed reading of it’s latest judgment against Israel in yet another case brought by South Africa. The Court’s cinematic achievement extends also to shielding South Africa from allegations that it is both authoritarian and corrupt, but that is not its main Oscar-worthy accomplishment here.

That is of course its magnificently devious account of its own conclusions. It didn’t really misstate them, it just put them in such a way that gullible news outlets like the New York Times could publish completely misleading headlines. Brilliant work on the part of the screenwriters here! And the head of the ICJ read his lines with such seriousness!

Here is the New York Times headline: “U.N. Court Orders Israel to Halt Rafah Offensive.” Perhaps they thought their subtitle would be a helpful clarification: “The International Court of Justice ruling deepens Israel’s international isolation, but the court has no enforcement powers.” Ah, pity. The court can’t enforce what the Times falsely claims it ruled.

To find out what it did rule, we have to actually read the script of the film as performed by the Chief Judge of the ICJ. The operative passage is #57 in the 18-page ruling:

“THE COURT… Indicates the following provisional measures: The State of Israel shall, in conformity with its obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, and in view of the worsening conditions of life faced by civilians in the Rafah Governorate: (a) By thirteen votes to two, Immediately halt its military offensive, and any other action in the Rafah Governorate, which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part…” (italics mine)

Now let’s see… does the New York Times reporting capture the meaning of this ruling, including the words I italicized? Hmm. Now, what about the Wall Street Journal headline? “U.N. Court Orders Israel to Halt Some Military Operations in Rafah.” Okay… Court Orders Israel to Halt Rafah Offensive… or Court Orders Israel to Halt Some Military Operations in Rafah…

I’m thinking about my first-grade teacher again, the one who taught me how to read. I don’t think she would be proud of me if I chose the Times headline as the better description of what the ICJ ordered. I’ve written many articles for both the Times and the Journal, and I promise you I know the limitations of both, but in this case only the Journal’s headline writer clearly knew how to read.

The court’s conclusions do mandate two and only two actions: That Israel re-open the Rafah Crossing for humanitarian aid, and that Israel give access to a fact-finding committee to inspect conditions throughout Gaza.

The first is based on a misconception; the Rafah Crossing was closed from the Egyptian side, not the Israeli side. This is proven by a phone call from President Biden to President el-Sisi this weekend resulting in Egypt’s agreeing to send aid through the Karem Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) crossing at the junction of the Egypt-Israel-Gaza borders. This crossing was closed on May 5 after Hamas bombed it to stop the aid flow. Anyway, aid is flowing, never enough to overcome what Hamas steals after entry, but flowing nevertheless.

As for the second mandate, if the committee expects to be protected by the IDF, it had better follow their advice about where and when.

Meanwhile, as to the ICJ’s main “provisional measure,” Israel continues to refrain from any action in Rafah “which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.” Still, the court’s ability to trick the New York Times and some other news outlets into misreading its conclusions—or allow them deliberately to spin them against Israel with all their power—is Oscar-worthy. Unfortunately it seems a bit of a stretch to give the Wall Street Journal headline writers a Pulitzer for knowing how to read.

War Crimes? Really?

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This has been an intriguing week. President Biden announced that he was putting a hold on shipments of certain American arms, notably hundreds of 2,000 pound and 500 pound bombs, because Israel had begun limited operations in Rafah without waiting for a hostage deal. A week or so earlier, Antony Blinken said that Israel had made an extremely generous offer and “the ball” was in Hamas’s court. Hamas eventually came back with a “counter-offer” of many detailed pages that amounted to, You stop the war, we win, you lose, you release thousands of terrorists, we give you back some hostages, dead and alive, and we once again rule Gaza as we did on October 6.

All concerned knew that this was not something Israel could have taken remotely seriously, and it amounted to no change in Hamas’s months of stonewalling. Yet most Western media, before they had time to read the document, took Hamas’s word that it was a real counter-offer, and proceeded to castigate Israel for going in a limited way into Rafah—beginning, of course, with the orderly evacuation of 100,000 civilians.

This arms shipment holdup was largely political posturing. There is little likelihood that Israel would use those kinds of bombs again (although it did early in the war), and all indications are that Israel’s plan for its Rafah operation, preceded by systematic civilian evacuations, was approved behind the scenes by the Americans. Netanyahu has treated Biden shabbily, and he finally got his wrist slapped, along with a clear warning that Biden could hit him harder in the future.

Biden is not betraying Israel nor is he flip-flopping, he is threading a very narrow needle. Neither he nor we nor the world can afford to have him lose the coming election, and so he tried to show that he would make it impossible for Israel to use those big bombs in crowded Rafah. This point is moot, because Israel was not planning to use them, and even if it was, it has enough of a stockpile to do it anyway.

Continue reading →

Dear Campus Campers: Do You Know What You’re Up Against? Hint:

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It’s not the police, or the university administrations, or President Biden. It’s this:

These numbers are from late March, before your movement spread widely. We’ll have to see how your protests move the numbers—and in which direction.

I am sympathetic to student protests, having been in the leadership of some on two university campuses in the ‘60s. Our two main goals were 1) to end segregation (the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was our real leader on that) and 2) to end the war in Vietnam. In retrospect, I still believe today what I believed then: We were right on both counts.

But were we successful? On the first count, we accomplished a lot, although there was a long way to go, and there still is now. One big reason for this relative success was of course Dr. King, but another was President Lyndon Baynes Johnson, who politically strong-armed into existence the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (yes, the same laws being broken apart by the current Supreme Court). Nevertheless in those years the culture of the country with regard to race improved in some ways that are difficult to reverse.

But on the second goal, ending the war, we failed miserably. Continue reading →

The Time of Our Freedom?

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Today is the thirtieth Sabbath of the Gaza War. It is also the Sabbath of Passover, the holiday called z’man cherutenu—the time of our freedom—since it celebrates the exodus of the Hebrew slaves from Egypt. This comes from the Haggadah, the service read at the Passover seder, or sacred—and ordered—meal.

The service also contains the words, “In each generation they have stood against us to destroy us.” So many generations. So many different they’s. The Haggadah in some form has existed for at least two thousand years, and I don’t know when these exact words first appeared, but they are the same in my facsimile edition of The Copenhagen Haggadah of 1739, exactly two centuries before the Holocaust. And my friend Dr. Shlomit Finkelstein found the same words in a Haggadah dated to the late 1330s in Catalonia.

Thus, centuries before the Holocaust, before even the Cossack attempted genocide against Jews in 1648, Jews said every Passover, “In each generation they have stood against us to destroy us.” In this generation, the grotesque mass atrocities committed against Jews by Hamas—who soon promised to do the same a thousand times, as their charter pledges them to do—easily serve to confirm the Haggadah’s grim words. (For details of what Hamas did, see my description and this moving film starring Sheryl Sandberg.)

In the past week or two, US college campuses have imploded with demonstrations and encampments in favor of Palestinians and often Hamas, and virulently anti-Israel and often antisemitic. I say imploded rather than exploded because although they have spread throughout the country, they are implosive because they have mainly damaged themselves. Many have crossed the line from free speech to illegal action, inviting local and state police suppression. Ironically, they have risen up just as deaths in Gaza have reached their lowest levels ever. (See chart.)

Deaths in Gaza as counted by Hamas’s Health Ministry and reported by the UN (OCHA).

Continue reading →

Gaza: The Goebsie Big Lie-Blood Libel Awards

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Today, I will reveal the honorees for First Annual—okay, they might have to be more frequent—Big Lie-Blood Libel Awards, for the individuals or collectives who have done the most recently to promote the Big Lie and the Blood Libel against the Jewish people (see chart for hints).

Timeline of deaths with blood libelers

But first: Just as the holy, peaceful, month of Ramadan—including four sacred Fridays and the feast of Eid-al-Fitr—blessedly passed with none of the predicted Islamic violence on the Temple Mount (the Noble Sanctuary), in the Middle East, and throughout the world, so the martial, belligerent, massive, unprecedented attack on Israel last night passed with virtually no damage. The coalition that completely blocked the attack included the US, the UK, France, and Jordan shooting down Iranian missiles and drones and Saudi Arabia providing logistic support. Imagine the degree of cooperation that such coordinated response must have involved. Now imagine the formidable coalition that will follow the war, annealed by alliance against this attack. My brother likens the attack to an amateur boxer throwing a hundred punches none of which lands, then waiting with tired arms for the professional blow that will pop his lights out. Now we’ll see what punch Israel uses. Its stock market finished higher today.

But back to our Big Lie-Blood Libel Awards, known colloquially as Goebbsies in honor of Joseph Goebbels, the master propagandist who put it to history’s most effective use.

The chart above shows today’s Goebbsie honorees against the timeline of the dramatically declining deaths in Gaza since the war started. These are total deaths in successive two-week periods (the blue line) as provided by the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry and reported by the United Nations. There are many reasons to doubt these numbers, which are almost certainly over-estimates, but I am accepting them for present purposes because I want to focus on the steep decline—by Hamas’s numbers—and the remarkable fact that the lower the number of deaths got, the bigger the Big Lie got and the Bloodier the Blood Libel got as well. Five of the six Big Lies and Blood Libels shown here were smeared on Israel and the Jews when the number of deaths was about one quarter of what it was in the first month of the war—and declining. Continue reading →

Gaza War: A Visual Aid

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(Blogging on the Gaza War since January 14th. Please link them on to others.)

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then I shouldn’t have much more work to do this week. I started with the very good public website of Kevin Drum, who presented the first graph in the top half of the picture (panel a). Based on data from the (Hamas-run) Gaza Health Ministry via the UN, it displays the daily deaths (red dots) of Gazans from October 7 to February 19, with a linear function (dotted black line) fitted to the daily data. This function declines from between 300-400 in October to 100 in February.

The lower part of the figure (panel b, my responsibility alone) is my attempt to extend Drum’s excellent graph from February to today. The daily deaths (also from the Gaza Health Ministry via the UN) are shown as blue dots, with the red line representing the 7-day moving average. Please note that the two graphs are on very different scales. Continue reading →

Gaza War: Silly Sauce

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(Scroll down to see earlier posts starting January 14th.)

Given certain remarks in the news lately, I thought it might be silly season, but not everybody is silly. Upon careful investigation I learned about Silly Sauce. Like beluga caviar, it is only for a select few—but not the rich. Only political leaders who can’t resist sipping it and don’t mind brain fog.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) first alerted me. He must have sipped some from his hip flask before going down to the Senate floor on March 14th. It was an interesting speech, touching to me in many ways. He said he was speaking for “a silent majority” of “mainstream Jewish Americans” in his “nuanced” view of the Gaza War. He’s a landsman of mine; I went to the next high school over from his a few years earlier. We grew up in the same culture of Brooklyn-Jewish love for Israel in the time when its survival was unlikely. “We love Israel in our bones.”

But, “What horrifies so many Jews especially…is that Israel is falling short” of “distinctive Jewish values.” What exactly are those? He recounts the history of the conflict and the “perfidy” of Hamas in a way that most Jews, including Israelis, can accept. He blasts the right-wing thugs in the Israeli cabinet and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas as “obstacles to peace.”

Fine. But he gives Bibi Netanyahu special attention. Almost all he says about Bibi would be endorsed by the great majority of Israelis. Eighty-five percent disapprove of Bibi, and a growing number support early elections—which Schumer crossed a line to call for.

But here’s the silly part: Schumer calls Bibi too an obstacle to peace, which implies that without him the war would be different. It would not. If 85 percent of Israelis dislike Bibi, about the same percentage approve of how the war is being conducted. Replace Bibi with Gantz or Gallant, and you will get the same war, the same operation in Rafa, the same checking of aid trucks for weapons. The vast majority of Israelis want the war to continue until Hamas is completely disabled.

Apparently Chuck then passed the Silly Sauce on to Vice President Kamala Harris, Continue reading →

Gaza War: Hamas is Haman

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(Scroll down to see earlier posts starting January 14th.)

We have passed not just the start of Ramadan, but the first and second Fridays, with today’s noon service considered particularly sacred. Forty thousand Israeli Muslim citizens and East Jerusalem Residents have come to the Noble Sanctuary—for Jews, The Temple Mount—each Friday to pray in one of its two great mosques, without a single untoward incident. Aside from a lone gunman in the West Bank, these Ramadan Fridays have been peaceful in the region and throughout the Muslim world. Estimates of Muslims visiting the Old City of Jerusalem today are up to 120,000. An Israeli journalist reporting from the crowded Noble Sanctuary as services let out described the atmosphere as reverent and celebratory.

Meanwhile, the tiny Jewish world—there are 100 Muslims for every Jew—is preparing for Purim, an irreverent, raucous, often drunken celebration of the survival of the Persian Jews, who came under deadly threat some 2,600 years ago. The Book of Esther,  chanted aloud in the evening and following morning in synagogues circling the globe, tells the story.

This year Purim begins tomorrow, Saturday, exactly 24 weeks after the Saturday (both the Sabbath and another Jewish holy day), on which Hamas terrorists committed grotesque mass atrocities against 1200 Jews and others in Israel, deliberately inviting destruction on themselves and the women and children they hide behind. Many say that this was the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust. That it was, but actually the Nazis rarely took the time to rape women with knives or cut off the limbs of children before killing them. The Nazis did torture Jews at times, but mainly aimed at efficient mass murder.

Continue reading →

Anti-Zionism is Antisemitism

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(Scroll down to see earlier posts in this series, beginning January 14th.)

This will be my most personal posting, since its wellspring is my childhood experience. Although I supply citations, I could have written this from memory. One example: during the years I was praying regularly (age 8-17), I said these words every day: V’tekhazena eyneynu b’shuvkha l’Tzion b’rakhamim—May our eyes behold Thy return to Zion in mercy. In fact, observant Jews said it three times every day for twenty centuries, as part of the Amidah,[1] the holiest prayer after the Shema (Hear O Israel). Along with God’s Unity and the primacy of Torah—the first five books of the Bible—the longing for Zion is intrinsic to the Jewish faith.

Let’s go back to, not the beginning of Judaism, but early enough: the composition of Psalm 137, roughly 2,500 years old, describing the exile of Jews in Babylon. Some may recall the 1970s Rastafari song that echoed the Psalm:

By the rivers of Babylon, where we sat down,

And there we wept, when we remembered Zion…

For the Jamaican singers, Zion stood for Africa, but, as with other African diaspora songs, they adopted the ancient Jewish narrative as a symbol for their suffering. But for the Jews in Babylon it was no metaphor. It was brutal exile and a desperate longing for home. The psalm begins as the song does, but in lines 5-6,

If I forget thee O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning…

Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth, if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.

Continue reading →

Gaza War: America’s Ramadan Bear Hug

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(Scroll down to see earlier posts in this series, beginning January 14th.)

We are days from Ramadan, sacred to Muslims—30 days of strict daytime fasting ending in a celebratory feast (Eid-al-Fitr) on the last day. It is one of the Five Pillars of Islam, the others being ritual prayer, alms, the holy pilgrimage of the Hajj, and bearing witness to the Oneness of God and the truth of the Prophet Muhammad.

It is a bit confusing to outsiders that Ramadan rotates around the year, because unlike the Chinese and Jewish calendars, which come back to the solar cycle, the Muslim calendar is purely lunar, losing 11 days each year. So the ambience of Ramadan changes—one year wintry, another autumnal—back through the seasons. For my Muslim students, this is a time for spiritual reflection.

However, the idea that Ramadan should restrain Israel from attacking Gaza is very naive. Egypt and Syria attacked Israel on Yom Kippur of 1973, the holiest day of the year when Israeli Jews were in synagogues fasting, and the mass atrocities committed by Hamas came on what was both the Sabbath and a holy day. But Muslims have never considered Ramadan a time when war must stop, because the Qur’an does not forbid it.

In the long war between Iraq and Iran, both Islamic, key assaults by each side not only coincided with Ramadan but were named for it. Iran launched Operation Ramadan, then the largest land battle since World War II, on July 13, 1982, three weeks into the fast.  100,000 troops swept into Iraq in human waves; many had signed martyrdom contracts called “Passports to Paradise.” In six weeks an estimated 80,000 were killed on both sides.

And Iraq launched Operation Ramadan Mubarak (Blessed Ramadan) the day before Ramadan began in 1988, sending 100,000 troops against Iran with heavy use of chemical weapons. Iranian resistance collapsed. Continue reading →