Hollywood Stars Sign Pro-Israel Statement Condemning Hamas

The Boycott Israel (BDS) movement has its celebrities including Emma Thompson, Danny Glover, Roger Waters, Russell Brand, Stephen Hawking, Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem, Alice Walker and a slew of others. Some have just bowed to the pressure of BDSers and cancelled appearances and visits to Israel, others have signed petitions and actively condemned Israel for doing what it has every right to do- defend its citizens from Hamas aggression and violence.

Cruz and Bardem recently signed a letter condemning Israel, calling what was happening in Gaza genocide, now some pro-Israel celebs have signed their own statement calling for an end to "singling out" Israel.

Among those almost 200 Hollywood stars and execs signing the statement were Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Seth Rogen, Sherry Lansing and:

 Sarah Silverman, Minnie Driver, Ziggy Marley, Kelsey Grammer, Tom Arnold, Benji Madden, director Ivan Reitman, writer Aaron Sorkin, producer Michael Rotenberg, composer Michael Nyman, producer Haim Saban, Justin Bieber’s manager Scooter Braun.

Initiated by the Creative Community For Peace (CCFP) the petition condemns Hamas for its "ideologies of hatred", as well as efforts to boycott Israel.

The full Statement:

We, the undersigned, are saddened by the devastating loss of life endured by Israelis and Palestinians in Gaza. We are pained by the suffering on both sides of the conflict and hope for a solution that brings peace to the region.

While we stand firm in our commitment to peace and justice, we must also stand firm against ideologies of hatred and genocide which are reflected in Hamas’ charter, Article 7 of which reads, “There is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him!” The son of a Hamas founder has also commented about the true nature of Hamas.

Hamas cannot be allowed to rain rockets on Israeli cities, nor can it be allowed to hold its own people hostage. Hospitals are for healing, not for hiding weapons. Schools are for learning, not for launching missiles. Children are our hope, not our human shields.

We join together in support of the democratic values we all cherish and in the hope that the healing and transformative power of the arts can be used to build bridges of peace.

Good for them. It's about time. But check out the comments on the link below.  Anti-Semitism is alive and well in the USA.

Source: Deadline Hollywood.

How Hollywood Helped Hitler and The Nazis- by Ben Urwand

Ben Urwand has written a book- The Collaboration: Hollywood's Pact with Hitler-  about how Hollywood, in essence, "collaborated" with the Nazis pre-World War II.  I had no idea.

The Hollywood Reporter discusses the book:

In devastating detail, an excerpt from a controversial new book reveals how the big studios, desperate to protect German business, let Nazis censor scripts, remove credits from Jews, get movies stopped and even force one MGM executive to divorce his Jewish wife.

[snip]

Drawing on a wealth of archival documents in the U.S. and Germany, he reveals the shocking extent to which Hollywood cooperated and collaborated with the Nazis during the decade leading up to World War II to protect its business.

Indeed, "collaboration" (and its German translation, Zusammenarbeit) is a word that appears regularly in the correspondence between studio officials and the Nazis. Although the word is fraught with meaning to modern ears, its everyday use at the time underscored the eagerness of both sides to smooth away their differences to preserve commerce.

The Nazis threatened to exclude American movies -- more than 250 played in Germany after Hitler took power in 1933 -- unless the studios cooperated. Before World War I, the German market had been the world's second largest, and even though it had shrunk during the Great Depression, the studios believed it would bounce back and worried that if they left, they would never be able to return.

Beginning with wholesale changes made to Universal's 1930 release All Quiet on the Western Front, Hollywood regularly ran scripts and finished movies by German officials for approval. When they objected to scenes or dialogue they thought made Germany look bad, criticized the Nazis or dwelled on the mistreatment of Jews, the studios would accommodate them -- and make cuts in the American versions as well as those shown elsewhere in the world.

The rest here. 

Are we doing the same thing with other individuals and special interest groups?

Iran To Sue Hollywood Over "Iranophobic" Films Like "Argo"

There's a new word on the block- "Iranophobia"- and French anti-Zionist lawyer and Muslim convert Isabelle Coutant-Peyre will use that as the basis of a lawsuit filed on behalf of the government of Iran. They're suing a bunch of Hollywood elite for portraying the Islamic Republic in a distorted manner. "Argo", which won an Academy Award for Best Picture seems to have been the proverbial straw.

"I'll be defending Iran against films that have been made by Hollywood to distort the country's image, such as Argo," she said, according to quotes carried by the semi-official Isna news agency.

As with most films inspired by historical events there were some embellishments In "Argo" not based in reality. The Canadians (most importantly Ambassador Ken Taylor) were far more instrumental in the escape of the six U.S. diplomats than the CIA's Tony Mendez, who was in Tehran less than two days. The six were hidden by the Canadians for three months, and the CIA almost botched the whole escape. But that's Hollywood. It's creative license.  Ken Taylor wasn't happy about Canada being relegated to a very minor role in the film, but he's not suing.

Taylor and the Ayatollahs aren't the only ones who were angered by "Argo".

A large group of Iranians believe that the film stereotypes Iranians in a negative way without drawing a distinction between ordinary citizens and the revolutionaries behind the US hostage crisis.

Perhaps. Then again, the vast majority of Iranians did vote for Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to establish an Islamic Republic after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, so one can only assume that although they might not have participated in the hostage taking, they were probably initially sympathetic.

The other films Iran has taken umbrage with:

 300, which depicts King Leonidas and a force of 300 men fighting the Persians at Thermopylae in 480 BC – which was described by Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as "insulting to Iran"; Brian Gilbert's 1991 film Not Without My Daughter; and The Wrestler.

All of which are based on truth.

Isabelle is in Tehran to work on the lawsuit they plan on presenting to an international court.

A little background on the charming Isabelle.

Coutant-Peyre is the wife of the notorious Venezuelan-born terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, known as Carlos the Jackal, whom she is also representing. Ramírez, a self-styled international revolutionary, is serving a life sentence for the killings in 1975 of two French policemen and a suspected informant. Coutant-Peyre and Ramírez married in a ceremony held in jail in 2001 after she converted to Islam.

She also attended "The Hoax of Hollywood", a conference which, according to Mohammad Lesani, was meant to "unify all cultural communities in Iran against the attacks of the west, particularly Hollywood".  "Argo" was deemed to have violated "international cultural norms", whatever that means, and that the Academy Award it received was a "propaganda attack against our nation and entire humanity".

I'm not quite sure what they feel is a distortion. It's a fact that hundreds of  Islamic revolutionary students held a bunch of U.S. diplomats hostage for 444 days. End of story.

Of course, threats of a lawsuit and claims of producing their own film to counter Affleck's "Argo" could be just that, threats and nothing more.

We shall see what unfolds.