by Dan Lieberman:

FROM battlefields to legislative arenas, and to Academy Awards, it is difficult to reconcile reality with the manner in which events are presented to the public. The world stands still and its inhabitants spin.

Battlefield

THE Trump administration’s state department declared, ‘The Chinese government is committing genocide and crimes against humanity through its wide-scale repression of Uighurs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities in its northwestern region of Xinjiang, including in its use of internment camps and forced sterilization.’ Before being elected, president Joe Biden affirmed the previous administration’s rhetoric. He said, through a spokesperson that ‘the policies by Beijing amounted to genocide.’

Not a single Uighur killed, not a single Uighur starving, not a single Uighur forced out of a bombed home, and no Uighur property expropriated. The Uighurs are working, enjoying life, going to refurbished mosques, gaining more prosperity every day, and the US government charges genocide. The charge is based on the temporary relocation of Uighurs to massive ‘education camps’ several years ago and having them listen to what their government expects of its citizens, such as learning the Chinese language, working at a responsible job, and knowing that if you live in China you must follow Chinese laws and not engage in terrorism. Human rights violations in Xinjiang are a matter of perspective; it’s certainly not approaching genocide.

A report released last year by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights concluded that since 2017 the Chinese government had committed grave rights violations against millions of Uighurs and other Turkic people in Xinjiang, abuses so systematic and widespread that they ‘may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.’

Pakistan journal, the Express Tribune, reported that, ‘Xinjiang, an autonomous region of China, has never been more prosperous than it is now due to unprecedented achievements in socio-economic development and the improvement of people’s lives. One of the many achievements of the region is the protection and inheritance of the languages, traditional cultures and customs of all ethnic minorities in the region as all residents fully enjoy their rights, live a happy life in a stable environment.’

In the West Bank and Gaza, Palestinians are murdered by Israelis every day, their property expropriated, their families forced out of bombed homes, and many starved. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller states, ‘The US has not observed acts in Gaza that constitute genocide. Those are allegations that should not be made lightly … we are not seeing any acts that constitute genocide.’ Evidently, the US State Department gets its information from the Israeli government press office. It should pay attention to official channels, such as Craig Mokhiber, director of the New York office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights who left his post, protesting that the UN is ‘failing’ in its duty to prevent what he categorises as ‘a textbook case of genocide’ in Gaza.

How can it be? How can a powerful department in the most powerful state have the most corrupt leadership and consider that what is light is dark and what is dark is light?

Legislative arena

SENATOR Chuck Schumer expounded the US government’s latest use of words that criticise Israel, while refraining from actions to change Israel’s policies. Speaking harshly on the Senate floor and characterising prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu ‘as one of the main stumbling blocks to Israeli-Palestinian peace,’ Schumer intended to convince a portion of American public, which is critical of Biden’s subservient attitude towards apartheid Israel, that the Biden administration is getting tough with the genocide killers of the Palestinians.

Who is Chuck fooling; all Israeli governments and not only Netanyahu’s, have been ‘stumbling blocks to Israeli-Palestinian peace.’ Try to tell Israel what to do and they will assuredly do the opposite. Schumer has sent a signal to Netanyahu, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll use harsh words but will not do anything to impede your genocidal plans. You can count on us. We’ll fool all the innocents into thinking what is light is dark and what is dark is light. Gotta win the election.’

Award ceremonies

THE tentacles of foolery and deceit reach into all avenues of daily life. The Oscar awards, already noted for ‘questionable choices’ in awards, displayed the role that politics plays in the Academy’s ‘votes.’ The awards contradict the assumption that there are independent votes by independent people — a majority of experienced and knowledgeable cinema professionals cannot make the same mistakes and be inclined to introduce the same politics into the awards. In a secret vote, one or two can err, but, without collusion, a majority cannot have exhibited the same errors.

The winner in the documentary category, 29 days in Mariupol, had two failings: (1) It is not a documentary, and (2) it is not original.

A documentary is a non-fiction movie, television, or radio show that uses facts and information to tell a story about a subject. The subject is defined and the facts and information are gathered from media sources — film, books, television, newspapers, archives, historical records — to prepare a script that focuses on the subject. The film 29 days in Mariupol does not fit the description of a documentary; material is not gathered and objectively selected to fit the subject in a truthful and honest presentation. In the film 29 days in Mariupol, a subject has been selected to fit the available film, which contains one person’s selective reporting of the war in Mariupol.

The entire film content is a compilation of NBC news dispatches by one NBC reporter. These news dispatches have been shown on television and there is no reason to repeat what was recently available. The film lacks focus on a defined subject and tends to highlight destruction to hospitals and wounding of children.

The film 29 days in Mariupol is not a documentary; the film 29 days in Mariupol is a political statement — Putin’s Russia is waging a war of aggression that has destroyed a Ukrainian city and harmed the children. All that might be true, but statements should not solicit academy awards. Considering that last year’s documentary winner, Navalny, also had a political content of similar nature, the charge of the film being a statement can be changed to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science using the award ceremonies to make political statements.

Another award winner, in the category of foreign films, The Zone of Interest, a fictitious story of Rudolf Höss, German Commandant of the Auschwitz Camp, and his family doing daily chores in their home close to the concentration camp, is not a film. A film has a story, a defined script, movement, action, and characters that capture the sympathy of the audience. The Zone of Interest has none of these and as much impact as sitting on a bench and watching people frolic along the path.

We are told that behind a wall, close to the Höss family home, is the Auschwitz concentration camp and its victims. This is all right for a book of fiction (the film is fiction, only the names and camp are real) but not for cinema, which tells its story by celluloid images and not by words. In this ‘film,’ the audience is expected to create images from words reflecting from the walls and become emotionally involved from the imagined contrasts — challenging tests of imagination and sensitivity.

The Zone of Interest is not entirely boring. The reason for that anomaly is its creation of expectation — what is the next device that the movie will employ to get us disturbed again? Other than those who get their jollies from hearing people scream, who could be interested in this lugubrious and sinister nightmare? Who is willing to pay the price of admission to be bored, disturbed, and have to excuse the use of unfortunate concentration camp victims as a backdrop for an entertaining film?

At the Academy Award ceremony, the film’s director, Jonathan Glazer, spoke against the memory of the Holocaust as justification for Israel’s war in Gaza. However, the film was prepared and finished much before the latest atrocities on the Gazans and can serve to justify, in many unknowing minds, Israel’s attack on the Gazans. Glazer was caught in the realisation of having released the film at the wrong time and revealed it could have a sinister purpose.

The major academy award winner, Oppenheimer, arouses a question of purpose. The Oppenheimer story has been told in several films, biographies, plays, documentaries and TV presentations and is a voice of a distant past. Why project him again at this time? Producer Emma Thomas considered Oppenheimer ‘to be her and Nolan’s riskiest film to date.’ So, why did they undertake this ‘risky’ adventure?

Derived from a popular and excellent biography, the production had some impetus and a difficult climb to commercial viability. Did someone, other than the writers and directors, want Oppenheimer on the silver screen and furnish the publicity and distribution that guaranteed its winning the academy award and achieving box office success? I’m not a conspiratorial theorist; I abhor reckless conspiracies, but what was considered conspiratorial regarding Zionists has become facts, and I see another possible conspiracy.

J Robert Oppenheimer, who never represented himself as a Jewish person, is often mentioned in the film as being of Jewish heritage. In one particular scene, he relates he wants to do something to help the Jews (not the Americans or Europeans) in their struggle against Hitler? Did Oppenheimer ever say this and how would anyone know he did? The physicist admitted he never read the newspapers and the persecution of the Jews in Germany did not reach top news until after the war. Why is his statement plugged into the script and who did it?

The script features a great deal of discussion about its subject’s Judaism, including Oppenheimer’s efforts to recruit Jewish scientists exiled from Nazi-occupied Europe, and emphasizes the role that he and Jewish scientists played in the developments of ‘little boy’ and ‘fat man,’ the first two atomic bombs. Is this a way of telling Americans that the Jews were instrumental in winning World War II? It may sound far-fetched, but could Oppenheimer be another subtle means of Zionists recreating the biblical David vs Goliath story, one of their favourite tales, where David is represented by the Jewish scientists and Goliath is Nazi Germany? This was definitely not the intent of those who wrote the biography and those who produced, directed and scripted the movie, but it is a theme of the film and emerges as an interpretation. I apologise if I offend anyone for mentioning the interpretation.

Making a commercially successful movie, and Oppenheimer is a huge financial success, is more than its script, acting, direction, and production. Getting the idea from the right people to the right people at the right time, financial backing, distribution, and publicity are equally important. The LA times writes that, ‘Since 2015, the film rights had been under option by J David Wargo, a successful New York businessman who studied physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was itching to get the book into production. Various scripts had been commissioned and rejected.’ After languishing for years with no sign of appearing on the big screen, Oppenheimer hit the jackpot.

Decades before the production of the movie, the Zionists brought Oppenheimer to Israel and had him glorify apartheid Israel in a speech he made in 1958.

‘I can say that the whole world sees in Israel a symbol, and not just a symbol of courage, and not just a symbol of dedication, but of faith and confidence in man’s reason, and a confidence in man’s future, and in the confidence in man, and of hope. These are all now largely and sadly missing in those vast parts of the world which not so long ago were their very cradle.’

Martin Kramer, an American-Israeli scholar of the Middle East at Tel Aviv University and the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy, claims that Oppenheimer expressed his admiration for Israel at a 1965 talk to a New York audience.

‘Israeli society, he told his New York audience a few months later, was ‘forced by danger, by hardship, by hostile neighbours, to an intense, continued common effort.’ As a result, ‘one finds a health of spirit, a human health, now grown rare in the great lands of Europe and America, which will serve not only to bring dedicated men and dedication to Israel, but to lead us to refresh and renew the ancient sources of our own strength and health.’

Another bothersome aspect that indicates the Zionists are everywhere, promoting whomever and whatever they can is that a Google search of ‘Oppenheimer life’ retrieves several citations, all starting the same as that of Time Magazine: ‘He was born in 1904 into a wealthy secular Jewish family in New York City and educated at Manhattan’s Ethical Culture School, graduating in 1921 …’ Why are Oppenheimer and other Jewish scientists identified by a religious ethnicity they never followed, while other non-Jewish scientists are not identified by their religious ethnicity?

That’s the Academy Awards for this year. Next year brings other award hopefuls:

Anthony Hopkins plays the role of Sir Nicholas Winton in a soon to be released film, One Life, which tells the story of Sir Winton’s enabling 669 children to leave Czechoslovakia for England after the Nazi 1938 occupation.

The World Will Tremble is described by Variety as telling the story of ‘Solomon Wiener and Michael Podchlebnik, [two prisoners at the Chelmno extermination camp] who, against all odds, managed to escape. On Jan. 19, 1942, they became the first people in the world to provide eyewitness accounts of the systematic murder of Europe’s Jews at the hands of the Third Reich.’

In Symphony of the Holocaust, a documentary about the survival, life, and final wish of 13-year-old Holocaust survivor and violinist, ‘Shony Braun transforms his experiences in four Nazi camps into the Symphony of the Holocaust, a musical testament to the millions of Jews murdered by the Nazis during World War

Origin compares the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany to that of Black people in America and the Dalits in India.

I previously wrote that it is difficult to argue against the mentioning of the past Holocaust atrocity until we realize that its constant highlighting is a principal tool in the Zionist extermination kit. The Zionist use of the Holocaust to divert attention from the contemporary genocide of the Palestinian people is as criminal as the Holocaust, making the victims a silent partner to an additional genocide, and demonstrating that their deaths keep Zionism alive.

The world is off its axis, shadowing the day with misconceptions, blinding the night with a light that makes comfort impossible.

The firing ceased and like a wounded foe

The day bled out in crimson: wild and high

A far hyena sent his voice of woe

Tingling in faint hysteria through the sky.

Tell her I fought as blindly as the rest,

That none of them had wronged me whom I killed,

And she may seek within some other breast

The promise that I leave her unfulfilled.

I should have been too tired for love or mirth

Stung as I am, and sickened by the truth —

Old men have hunted beauty from the earth

Over the broken bodies of our youth!

—  Roy Campbell

DissidentVoice.org, March 22. Dan Lieberman publishes commentaries on foreign policy, economics, and politics at substack.com. He is author of the A Third Party Can Succeed in America, Not until They Were Gone, Think Tanks of DC, The Artistry of a Dog, and a novel: The Victory (under a pen name, David L McWellan).