Blockade of Claude Lanzmann’s film “Why Israel?”
This is a rough translation about a forceful blockade of a showing of Claude Lanzmann´s film “Why Israel?” in Hamburg, Germany a few weeks ago.
Seht nicht beim Juden
29.10.2009 | RedokHamburg, Germany — A group of left anti-Semites on Sunday has violently prevented the showing of a film about Israel. During the blockade of the cinema insults such as “Jewish swine” were to be heard. A Hamburg association of the Left Party published a justification of the action, saying a “Zionist propaganda film” was prevented from being shown.
The film to be shown was the 1972 movie “Why Israel,” by the French filmmaker Claude Lanzmann, who is best known for his nine-hour documentary “Shoah.” According to the cinema in the district of St. Pauli, and the organizer of the planned demonstration which had about 15 people from an anti-imperialist group, the Center internationalist B5, access to the cinema was blocked and the incoming visitors were filmed and photographed.The blockaders were wearing gloves and wielding a bike lock and a belt prepared for a violent action. In fact, there had been a scuffle, and some visitors were injured by blows to the face. The demonstration was called because of the boycott campaign.
The chairman of the Jewish community Pinneberg, Wolfgang Seibert, condemned the action and called it “the actions of the petit bourgeois running wild” who understood themselves however as on the left, but “in their approach can certainly be described as followers and stooges of neo-Nazis.” With insults like “Jewish pig” and “sissy,” the blockaders have discredited themselves: “Those who use such anti-Semitic and homophobic words, have lost every right to call themselves ‘internationalists’.” That it is determined by force “what is allowed to be seen and what not,” is completely unacceptable, said Seibert: “We are fed up with this kind of censorship.”
A justification by the left anti-Semites was distributed during the blockade on the website of the Hamburg Association of the Left Party and then later removed. It said that they had prevented the showing of a “Zionist propaganda film.” It said that the boycott action was “criticism of Zionism”, that the film organizers from the spectrum of the “anti-Germans” had intended to “provoke the spectrum of B5.” The boycott justification was published on a sub-site to the Hamburg Left Party website that is maintained by an intra-party working group “Critical Left Hamburg.”
The incident was also covered by the Jerusalem Post: “‘Why Israel’ film canceled after violent German leftist protest“
This entry was posted on Sunday, November 22nd, 2009 at 6:39 pm and is filed under Germany, anti-imperialism, anti-zionism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
on November 24, 2009 Anti-Zionist Attack on Film Showing « schalom libertad wrote:
[...] few weeks ago Redok reported about a group of „internationalists“ who forcefully prevented the showing of a [...]
on December 12, 2009 Jan wrote:
for detailed information about this incident read this:
http://kommunistischeassoziation.wordpress.com/at-the-end-of-the-enlightenment-are-the-“anti-germans”-concerning-the-anatomy-of-german-neo-conservatism-in-hamburg/
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on December 12, 2009 schalomlibertad wrote:
As you will see if you follow the link, the “detailed information” linked to by Jan is actually a statement justifying the attack on the film viewers put out by the “Communist Association Hamburg.” It was originally posted on the website of the Hamburg Left Party, but was later removed.
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