martillo@ihuxt.UUCP (Yehoyaqim Shemtob Martillo) (03/21/84)
Many reviews of Costa-Gavras' new movie, _H_a_n_n_a _K., have ignored the fundamental offensiveness of this film. _H_a_n_n_a _K., _M_y _M_i_c_h_a_e_l, _T_h_e _L_o_v_e_r and several other recent films and books represent the rebirth or persistence of an old and popular genre of antisemitic pornography. In this pornography, a dashing non-Jew typically rapes or seduces a Jewish woman. The sexual conquest has always been a metaphor for the subjugation or annihilation of the Jewish people. Usually, there is an implication that the Jewish woman is atoning for some sin (e.g. deicide) committed against non-Jewish people. Arab Jews (like my family) find the story of _H_a_n_n_a _K. offensive because Arab Muslims are historical oppressors of Jews just like Germans, Poles or Rumanians. Jews have no reason at all to feel guilty about the treatment of Arab Muslims in Israel. Just as the archetypical Black-hating Southern Red-Neck is supposed (unlike the ordinary southern white laborer) never to have seen any crime in raping black women, Arab Muslims have considered raping Jewish women perfectly permissible behavior. The black community would find extremely offensive a movie in which a Black female attorney had an affair with a Red-Neck client suspected of taking part in a lynching. A truly daring and original theme for a book or movie would have described an Arab women who rejected Islamic fanaticism and bigotry and who showed her disgust at Islamic culture by taking a Jewish lover at risk to her own life.