RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13003/operation-finale-eichmann

Martin Heidegger, who was Hannah Arendt’s teacher and lover, was anything but banal. Nor were Göring, Goebbels, Himmler, Hitler and the numerous doctors and lawyers who were tried at Nuremberg. Neither were the university students who began by burning Jewish books and ended by burning Jewish children. Adolf Eichmann was also anything but banal, as a perusal of the trial transcript reveals.
Although the film Operation Finale partakes of Hollywood liberties, Ben Kingsley’s fictional portrayal of Eichmann is far more realistic than the allegedly non-fiction account by Arendt.
That mendacious and dangerous phrase, “the banality of evil,” should be struck from the historical vocabulary of the Holocaust and the trial of Eichmann, lest we look in the future for banality and miss the brilliance of those who would repeat Eichmann’s crimes.

One of the most notorious lines — and lies — that grew out of the trial of Adolf Eichmann for his important role in the Holocaust, was what Hannah Arendt called “the banality of evil,” meaning that even the most horrific people can appear insipid. Arendt was assigned to report on the 1961 trial of Eichmann in Jerusalem, but according to contemporaries, she rarely attended the trial. She came to Jerusalem having made up her mind in advance that Eichmann in particular and other perpetrators of the evils of the Holocaust in general, were ordinary nondescript functionaries. She reported on the trial with an agenda. It was not necessary for her actually to observe and listen to Eichmann because to do so might undercut her thesis. So instead she wrote a mendacious screed in which she constructed a stick-figure caricature of one of the most significant perpetrators of the Holocaust.

I use the word mendacious deliberately, because it seems Arendt knew better. One of Hitler’s key supporters was Professor Martin Heidegger, perhaps the most influential philosopher of his day. Arendt was his student and lover. After the war, she tried desperately to rehabilitate him. He was anything but banal. Nor were Göring, Goebbels, Himmler, Hitler and the numerous doctors and lawyers who were tried at Nuremberg. Neither were the university students who began by burning Jewish books and ended by burning Jewish children. The perpetrators of the Holocaust — from those who organized it in Berlin to those who carried it out in the death camps and killing fields — included some of the most brilliant young men and women in Germany. Many left university to participate in the “final solution” and then returned to highly prestigious jobs in post-war Germany.

Adolf Eichmann was also anything but banal, as a perusal of the trial transcript reveals. In the new film Operation Finale, he is played by Ben Kingsley. Although the film partakes of Hollywood liberties — a romance between a beautiful doctor who in reality was a man and the film’s Israeli hero — Kingsley’s fictional portrayal of Eichmann is far more realistic than the allegedly non-fiction account by Arendt.

http://politicalmavens.com/

Heavy-handed and cliche-ridden are the kindest adjectives I can summon for the screenplay of Meg Wolitzer’s novel; since I never read that, I can’t say whether “The Wife” is faithful to the original, but the film bats it out of the ballpark on both scores. The plot concerns a writer/husband who wins the Nobel Prize for Literature and his long-suffering writer/wife who turns out to be the actual talent that sparked his otherwise lifeless output. This is not a spoiler because the revelation is obvious at the start from the following tonsorial clues: Glenn Close has a hairdo like Joan of Arc, Jonathan Pryce has wild hair and a scruffy beard, the disturbed son has a nutty comb-forward – uh oh – something’s not right with this family!

In subsequent flashbacks, we will see that Glenn has been locked in a room to pound away at a typewriter for 8 hours a day while her little boy screams for his mommy outside. We will learn that a successful writer advised her that “nobody reads books by women,” obviously leaving her with no choice but to ghost her husband’s work. While in captivity, Glenn clearly hasn’t heard about the hundreds of highly successful women writers in mid-century America (see Wikipedia’s list for evidence). The stereotype of Jonathan Pryce’s Jewish serial lecher is the equivalent of Shylock’s money-lending skills and of course it will extend into the Nobel ceremony itself. If you’re a male Jewish writer, your genes are partly in your jeans.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12958/american-flag-moon-gosling

Ryan Gosling admits he sees things as a Canadian. So it is all right for Gosling to see himself as a Canadian, but it is not all right for Neil Armstrong to see himself an American?

During the Second World War, Oskar Schindler escaped the clutches of the Gestapo by claiming that “his” Jews were doing essential war work. But Schindler also did something that, had it been discovered, he would have been tortured and executed. He stole guns and gave them to “his” Jews, so that they could defend themselves.

The film “Schindler’s List” ran 3 hours 15 minutes, yet somehow there was no time to include this incident. An anti-gun agenda was apparently more important to the filmmakers than the depiction of this dramatic and revealing incident.

Rewriting history and erasing images are symptoms of budding totalitarianism. The moon landing was “one giant step for mankind.” Omitting the planting of the American flag is another small step away from freedom and toward totalitarianism. Totalitarians do not really care whether you believe their lies. If you do, you help to maintain their power. If, however, you do not believe the lies, yet are forced to repeat them, you admit that you have sold your mind — and perhaps your soul.

We learn both from what we see and from what we do not see: this is especially true if we do not see something because it was intentionally deleted. This tells us something about those who deleted it. They considered it so important that they went to the trouble of trying to erase it from our national consciousness. Why? What was so contrary to their value system that they found it intolerable?

The photo above is one of the most famous images in history. In 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first humans to set foot on the moon: planting the American flag on the moon was an iconic event. I would bet serious money that the great majority of the 7.5 million people on earth can identify that photo. But not Hollywood. The scene was omitted from the movie “The First Man”

Ryan Gosling, who plays Armstrong, claims that Armstrong did not see himself as an American hero. Like Medal of Honor recipients, he did not see himself as a hero, but he surely saw himself as an American. As 95-year-old Chuck Yeager says, “That’s not the Neil Armstrong I knew.”

Gosling admits he sees things as a Canadian. So it is all right for Gosling to see himself as a Canadian, but it is not all right for Neil Armstrong to see himself an American?

http://politicalmavens.com/index.php/2018/09/03/operation-finale-a-review/

Yet another movie about the capture of Adolf Eichman, architect of the Nazis’ Final Solution of the Jewish Question. This one, directed by Chris Weitz, features two Hollywood stars – Ben Kingsley as Eichman and Oscar Isaac as Peter Malkin, the Mosad agent most responsible for his capture and, according to this movie, for the murderer’s final cooperation in Israel’s kidnap of an Argentine citizen. Living openly as Ricardo Klement, Eichman had a wife (the unrecognizable and little-used Greta Scacchi) and two children, one a handsome young man and one a toddler A young woman, briefly involved with the former, introduces him to her blind father who quickly figures out his father’s real identity and contacts Mosad with the information that Eichman is alive and well in Argentina.

A plan is hatched and Malkin is one of the leaders of the team designated to “catch and extract” him and bring him back to Israel alive for trial. There are the requisite number of false starts and obstacles and some questionable and unanswered events, primarily – the 10 day delay of the El Al plane supposed to transport the team back to Israel. We are never told why the plane was so seriously “delayed” – equivalent to the driver of the getaway car in a bank heist not showing up at the last minute. We also don’t understand why no one on this clever team is capable of forging Eichman’s signature on a release form necessary for him to be transported back to Israel. Instead of answers to these pivotal questions, we are given a far too lengthy interval of Oscar Isaac attempting to bond with Eichman in order to get the essential signature; scenes which include Eichman on the toilet (TMI), Isaac promising to let the mass murderer see his wife before he dies (disturbing) and a particularly jarring exchange between Isaac and his on-screen girlfriend who accuses him of making this “all about his pain” – an anachronistic concept that surely would not have entered the mind of an Israeli doctor working for Mosad in 1960, a brief 15 years after the holocaust decimated the Jews of Europe.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/banality-of-truth-in-operation-finale-eichmann-propagated-lies-are-validated/

The new film “Operation Finale” about Adolf Eichmann’s dramatic 1961 capture is technically masterful. It is a shame that audiences aren’t told what is technically the historical truth as well.

Like German-Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt’s portrayal of Eichmann — who was commonly known as the “architect” of the Holocaust — “Operation Finale” downplays Eichmann’s role in the massive genocide of the Jewish people. Additionally, the film validates his fallacious statements about “ignoring orders” and his supposed attempts to rescue Jews from the death camps.By inspiring empathy for Eichmann and allowing him to minimize his wartime –and pre-war — activities, the producers of “Operation Finale” placed their film at home with Arendt’s seminal work, “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil,” written after his trial.

In her 1963 opus, Arendt blamed European Jews for their own slaughter. She also declared that Eichmann was not motivated by anti-Semitism, and that both he and his evil were “banal,” or unoriginal.

For viewers unfamiliar with Eichmann’s role in the Holocaust, the film’s primary “explanation” takes place during the opening credits, as train schedules, maps, and lists of killing facilities appear in a dramatically scored montage. Throughout the film, Eichmann is referred to as “the man who ran the trains,” and someone who “transported millions to their deaths.” These labels, however, do not express the scope of Eichmann’s 13-year career in the SS.

“I never gave an order to kill a Jew,” said Eichmann in real-life, as well as in the film. His only crime was “aiding and abetting,” said the SS leader. Like Arendt’s book, “Operation Finale” makes Eichmann out to be a neurotic, uninspired master of train schedules.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/neil-armstrong-movie-leaves-out-the-american-flag-planting/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
Rewriting history to own the patriots

Touted as one of the year’s leading Oscar contenders, First Man, from Whiplash and La La Land director Damien Chazelle, is touted as an intense drama about Neil Armstrong and Apollo 11. Critics have praised it for avoiding patriotism and flag-waving, because Trump. From The Hollywood Reporter: “Most notable is the film’s refusal to engage in the expected jingoistic self-celebration that such a milestone would seem to demand. At a time when the toxic political climate has cheapened that kind of nationalistic fervor, turning it into empty rhetoric…[that] is to be savored.” This turns out to mean that the movie omits the moment when Armstrong planted the American flag on the moon. Says the Canadian Ryan Gosling, who plays Armstrong, “I don’t think that Neil viewed himself as an American hero. From my interviews with his family and people that knew him, it was quite the opposite. And we wanted the film to reflect Neil.”

At the Venice Film Festival, where First Man debuted ahead of its U.S. release on October 12, Gosling said the moon landing “transcended countries and borders,” adding, “I think this was widely regarded in the end as a human achievement [and] that’s how we chose to view it. I also think Neil was extremely humble, as were many of these astronauts, and time and time again he deferred the focus from himself to the 400,000 people who made the mission possible.”

Got that? It’s more faithful to Neil Armstrong, who died in 2012, to leave out the thrilling moment when he placed the flag on the lunar surface. This is daft. Congress discussed placing a U.N. flag on the moon instead but ultimately decided that an American project should be celebrated with an American symbol.

Under the guise of being a reversal of the classic Cinderella story, Crazy Rich Asians gives us a super-smart, pretty Chinese-American woman who is a professor of Economics at NYU in love with a super-smart, handsome Chinese man from Singapore. He has to go home to be best man at a wedding and wants to take her along to meet his family. When they get there, she discovers that he forgot to mention that he is the scion of the Chinese Rockefellers – the wealthiest family with the best real estate, most lavish parties and best known name in that part of the world. Of course she cares only about true love, not money.

Our heroine is the daughter of a single mother – both women climbed their respective ladders of success through hard work and determination. Contrast this with the caricatures of vapid Chinese society women of Singapore who live only for conspicuous consumption of clothes, jewels, homes, plastic surgery and slavish imitation of western excess. Even though this movie belongs in the typical rom-com genre, this caricature of the wealthy class is genuinely offensive, particularly at a time when we are not allowed to spoof other minorities and are currently obsessed with parity in film opportunities for minority women. Are Chinese women excluded from this category because they tend to be well-educated, self-directed, ambitious and successful whenever there’s an open opportunity? Are they like the majority Asian students at Stuyvesant who are to be denied entrance in order to share the limited academic space with students without their work ethic who demand entrance based on the color of their skin?

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/sir-ben-kingsley-another-holocaust-is-going-to-come-from-a-very-surprising-place/

WASHINGTON – Sir Ben Kingsley, the Academy Award-winning actor who stars in the new film Operation Finale, told PJM that another Holocaust will come from a “very surprising place.”

Kingsley, who won an Oscar for Gandhi, plays Adolf Eichmann, one of the key architects of the Holocaust, in Operation Finale, which tells the story of Nazi hunters finding and capturing Eichmann in 1960.

Kingsley recently warned that downplaying the humanity of Holocaust victims puts the world at risk of genocide happening again.

“If we dismiss them in a sort of capsule, an aberration of history, saying ‘well, they weren’t really human, so they don’t count,’ then we’re really letting history off the hook and we are in grave danger of allowing it to happen again,” Kingsley said during a recent interview.

PJM asked Kingsley why he is concerned about another Holocaust.

“I’ll tell you who told me it might happen – that it probably could happen again: that’s Simon Wiesenthal and Elie Wiesel, have both said that openly and publicly. So it is not for me to voice that concern. What do I know?” Kingsley said at the Washington premiere of Operation Finale on Wednesday evening at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

“I’m just an actor but they are the voice of the Holocaust, and if those men are saying that then we better sit up and listen. And I’m not saying it’s going to come from Europe. I’m not saying it’s going to come from any part of the world that we think it’s going to come from. It’s not. It’s going to come from a very surprising place,” he added.

“This film will not be released on Netflix. Due to an internal miscommunication, it appeared to be scheduled for release on Netflix, but it is not,” a Netflix spokesperson told JNS.

A documentary featuring the notorious Louis Farrakhan will not be available to Netflix customers next month after all, with the media streaming giant citing an “internal miscommunication.”

“This film will not be released on Netflix. Due to an internal miscommunication, it appeared to be scheduled for release on Netflix, but it is not,” a Netflix spokesperson told JNS. “We apologize for any confusion this has caused.”

The 2014 film, “The Honourable Minister Louis Farrakhan: My Life’s Journey Through Music,” was produced by Farrakhan’s son and profiles the Nation of Islam leader’s life as an extreme and polarizing figure.

In a video post on Twitter on Tuesday, Farrakhan announced that the documentary would soon appear on Netflix.

“My dear viewers and listeners, on August 1 you will be able to view the premiere on Netflix of the minister’s life journey through music. And, if you would like to leave a comment of what you think about that documentary, and its music, you can go to LCTWMusic.com and leave your comment. May God bless you—As-Salaam Alaikum,” said Farrakhan.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/louis-farrakhan-netflix-documentary-coming/

Netflix will begin offering a film chronicling the life of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan on August 1 despite the activist’s penchant for resorting to anti-semitic and anti-gay slurs.

The documentary, The Honourable Minister Louis Farrakhan: My Life’s Journey Through Music, was produced in 2014 by Farrakhan’s son and chronicles the minister’s life as an activist and fringe political figure.

The documentary will be released on August 1, according to a list of newly licensed films Netflix released this month. Farrakhan teased the Netflix release in a Monday tweet.

My official @netflix announcement will be forthcoming later today. #LetsChangeTheWorld pic.twitter.com/R1Gr5Wd7Yl

— MINISTER FARRAKHAN (@LouisFarrakhan) July 30, 2018

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Farrakhan began his career as a civil-rights activist in the 1960’s and later gained notoriety for helping organize the first Million Man March in Washington, D.C. in 1995. But he has been criticized for frequent bigoted statements against Jews, gays, and others. He routinely blames the socio-economic plight of African-Americans on a cabal of wealthy Jewish financiers and criticizes homosexual “immorality” in harsh terms. As a result, a number of liberal politicians and activists have been forced to distance themselves from him.

Most recently, Women’s March co-founder Tamika Mallory was roundly criticized by political opponents and allies alike after she attended Farrakhan’s Saviour’s Day address in Chicago. During the speech, which Mallory praised on social media, Farrakhan railed against Jewish people, calling them “satanic,” and suggesting that they are responsible for the socioeconomic disparity between races in America.