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Film
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Protect the Legacy
Demme polishes Carter's do-good image by J. Hoberman October 16th, 2007 12:00 AM |
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Basically a vérité-style infomercial that follows Carter during the course of a late 2006 book tour to promote his bestselling critique of Israel's West Bank occupation, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, the film provides perfunctory background on its subject's piety and down-home Georgia roots, then plunges along with him into the media maelstrom. Carter stubbornly fences with Charlie Rose, gamely educates Larry King, and cheerfully signs a vast quantity of books. It's striking to see the number of grateful Palestinian-Americans who turn out to thank him, and it's notable that people still ask about his handling of the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis. Carter is scarcely the first commentator to characterize the enforced, unequal separation that exists in Israel's occupied territories as apartheid—the Israeli left has called it that for years. But, waving the term like a red cape before the American public, Carter has been notably disingenuous in exploiting it. Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid actually gives the implied analogy between Israel and white supremacist South Africa short shrift, as does the film. The conditions of the occupation are largely unexplored. Demme does, however, give sound bites to Carter's critics, notably Allan Dershowitz—who cannot resist noting that he supported Carter for president. (There's something about the place that Carter calls the Holy Land that brings out the Holier Than Thou.) A montage of Israeli bulldozers and Palestinian suicide bombers triggers a flashback to Carter's shining moment at the 1978 Camp David negotiations, one of America's few diplomatic triumphs in the Middle East and the ultimate example of Carter's do-goodism. A detour to some habitat-building in New Orleans aside, Jimmy Carter never strays far from the controversy. (Carter defends his book's inflammatory title by calling the West Bank worse than South Africa—citing, for example, the existence of highways constructed exclusively for settler use; Jews picket a book signing in Phoenix.) But neither does the movie delve into the situation. Carter's personality, not Palestine's predicament, is Demme's focus. A benign presence, Carter flies coach, mingling easily with his fellow passengers. At once soft and steely, reasonable and unyielding, he sits for interviews with both Israeli TV and Al Jazeera. (The latter is notable for the evident surprise expressed by correspondent Riz Khan when Carter blames Palestinians as well as Israelis.) At least as much time, however, is given to a scene in which Carter banters with the make-up artist who is applying his pre-TV pancake. In the end, managing finally to deliver a lecture at Brandeis without having to debate Dershowitz as a condition, the 82-year-old former president is evidently weary. He resents that he's been called a liar, a bigot, an anti-Semite, and a plagiarist—as well he might. He's just doing what he can. So too Demme, who tries to heighten the drama with strategic infusions of faux-Arab and faux-gospel mood music. But a book tour isn't even a political campaign, and traveling with Jimmy Carter isn't exactly going backstage with the Rolling Stones. It's a measure of Demme's quiet desperation that he would cite, as one of the movie's "excitements," the opportunity to see NPR radio interviewer Terry Gross in the flesh. |
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More by J. Hoberman
Michael Haneke's Funny Games: One-Trick Phony
Blind Mountain's Chinese torture trumps Haneke's tortured antics Radicals Get Retrospectives Renegade Georges Franju, meet rebel Kim Ki-young Manoel de Oliveira: Man of the Century BAM celebrates 100 years of a Portuguese master CJ7: ET Phone Hong Kong Tamer f/x and a cute little gremlin in Stephen Chow's new one Paranoid Park Returns Gus Van Sant to his Roots Namely disaffected youth, shoestring budgets |
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In fact, Carter doesn't go far enough in his apartheid analogy. Not only the West Bank but all of Israel is an apartheid state or worse. In many ways, it is more extreme than South Africa of yesteryear. In South Africa, blacks were allowed to remain IN South Africa. Jews in Israel threw out most Palestians from 'Israel' proper. All those Palestinians who have every right to live in Israel had to live under the most humiliating conditions in the occupied territories, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, etc. Zionism started out as an extremist nationalist ideology and sought land at other people's expense. Uganda was, at one point, seriously considered as the new homeland for the Jews. Had that been realized, of course Israel-uber-Uganda would be called an Apartheid state. The reason why Palestinians got it up their ass was because Americans--main backers of Israel--felt no sense of guilt regarding Arabs or Muslims as they do with blacks. And the national media--not exactly dominated by Muslims, is it?--have made us see Israel as an oasis of sanity and democracy in the middle of dark, evil Middle East.
Hoberman calls white-ruled South Africa a white-supremacist nation, but in a similar vein Israel is a Jewish-supremacist nation.
1.2 billion Muslims can't be wrong. Palestians who've been brutalized or murdered by Israelis can't be wrong.
And, why is Palestian 'terrorism' wrong when similar acts of liberation by Nat Turner and Algerians-against-the-French are justified and celebrated by the likes of Hoberman?
Oh, right, there's the Holocaust thing. But, Palestinians didn't kill 6 million Jews. Palestinians had been victims of Turkish and European imperialism. They wanted to be free like everyone else in Africa, Asia, and rest of Middle East. But, guess what? The great powers allowed Jews to come and settle and drive out Palestinians from THEIR OWN LAND where countless generations had lived!!! Palestinians NEVER said Israel has no right to exist. They said it has no right to exist on Palestinian land.
We accept that China or France has the right exist but would it be okay if rich Chinese or Frenchmen bought huge chunks of real estate in the US with the longterm agenda of turning them into New China or New France?
Palestianians got burned real bad for the sins of the Germans. And before Jews play the noble victim card, they should consider how many ethnic peoples were forcibly migrated and killed in the millions by the communist state in which many Jews played a very important role. No, communism wasn't entirely Jewish, but MANY Jews played key roles in the mass murder of millions.
At any rate, Palestinians were forced to pay for the crimes committed against Jews by Europeans; and it was convenient for Europeans to push the burden onto a people other than themselves. But, even without the Holocaust, many Jews would have pulled all tricks to turn Palestine into Jewish-supremacist Israel.
Today, Hamas accepts the right of Israel to exist but NOT on Palestinian land. A lot of Jews are rich, so why don't they buy a chunk of land the size of Israel in some part of the globe and set up an Israel that doesn't steal land and hope from a helpless people?