About That Evil Jew in Act of Valor
A reader in Amsterdam wrote to remonstrate with me because my positive review of the film Act of Valor ignored the evil Jew character and thus missed the film’s anti-semitic message. This is a fair criticism: I meant to mention this scene but, having thought it through to my own satisfaction, neglected to include my thoughts in the blog.
This is a small spoiler. It turns out the Islamist plot against America that powers the movie is being financed, irony of ironies, by a Jewish guy. When I saw this reveal, my jaw dropped and my first thought was: “You have got to be kidding me!” Was the movie selling some sort of Elders of Zion scenario where the Jews financed everything, including the work of those dedicated to wiping them off the face of the earth?
On reflection (and after consulting with the mighty and also all-knowing John Nolte at Big Hollywood), I came to feel that this was not the intent of the film. Rather I thought it was a ham-handed attempt to avoid the appearance of Islamophobia and give the picture some sort of moral complexity. Often, as we know, it’s the person who is NOT bigoted who says the most awkward thing — “Boy, that black gymnast is swinging around like a monkey!” — because he hasn’t got the implied slur in his mind. I believe that to be the case here.
First! Hah! Actually, this sort of thing is what I look for in movies and tv shows, mostly because I constantly try to compare art with reality. The problems start when I talk about it with someone that seems to think art IS reality. Odd debates begin at these times…
I seldom frequent the movies, but did see Act of Valor. My take on the Jewish guy is that there are many westerners,iincluding some Jews , who are not down with the struggle. As a supporter of Israel, I cannot understand anyone, “not getting it, “particularly someone who is Jewish,” not getting it.” Some one explained it to me ,not too long ago. That American Jews are no more predisposed to Israel, than I am to my own Scottish ancestors. That may be true, but to me ,Scotland is not on the front lines ,of the battle ,for the survival of our civilization, Israel is. Maby the evil Jew, was a dig at those guys.to wake up.
I can picture George Soros doing that type of funding, and I believe he is ethnically Jewish. Am I correct in that fact?
You are correct. Soros as a teen helped the Nazis in Hungary. Now, I could somewhat understand a scared kid helping the bullies against his own kind, but George, decades later, is not ashamed of what he did.
And he’s funding a regime that makes common cause with the Muslim Brotherhood & CAIR. Benedict Arnold at least did have a legitimate grievance when he turned traitor. Soros doesn’t. Ninth Circle of Hell and then some for him.
Unfortunately, There are George Soros’s in this world and I wouldn’t put it past them.
When I saw that scene, I thought the film makers were just trying to show that terrorism and its desire to wipe out the USA is not purely Islamic. They are by far the largest and most dangerous for sure. One look at Occupy Wall St and you know that there is a whole melting pot of people that want to kill us.
“It turns out the Islamist plot against America that powers the movie is being financed, irony of ironies, by a Jewish guy.”
I maybe got this wrong, but I understood the “Jewish guy” not to be the financier, but a facilitator working for money. He was a smuggler whose organization was useful for getting the bombs into the U.S., after helping to get them made.
Klavan
Thanks for clearing that up
I was starting to think that even Jews can do evil things
No problem, Rev. Don’t be too hard on yourself. We all make mistakes. And remember: we at PJMedia are here to help!
Quite a few American Jews are not supportive of Israel and are so far left politically they end up facing backward. It used to be called self-hatred, a psychological malady; now it’s political. Maybe that’s what the guy in the movie was about.
I thought the Jewish guy was just some Russian nationalist or something like that, who blames the US for the decline of Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union. In that case he was willing to help an old friend cause harm to the US in spite of the fact the friend is now a fanatical Muslim.
Summed up in one word:
KAPO.
Every nation. Every race. Every culture. These exist.
Rabbi Gittelsohn’s Iwo Jima Sermon from the archives of The American Jewish Historical Society
” The fight for Iwo Jima in 1945 was one of the bloodiest of World War II. A tiny island in the Pacific dominated by a volcanic mountain and pockmarked with caves, Iwo Jima was the setting for a five-week, non-stop battle between 70,000 American Marines and an unknown number of deeply entrenched Japanese defenders. The courage and gallantry of the American forces, climaxed by the dramatic raising of the American flag over Mt. Suribachi, is memorialized in the Marine Corps monument in Washington, DC. Less remembered, however, is that the battle occasioned an eloquent eulogy by a Marine Corps rabbi that has become an American classic.
Rabbi Roland B. Gittelsohn (1910-1995), assigned to the Fifth Marine Division, was the first Jewish chaplain the Marine Corps ever appointed. The American invading force at Iwo Jima included approximately 1,500 Jewish Marines. Rabbi Gittelsohn was in the thick of the fray, ministering to Marines of all faiths in the combat zone. He shared the fear, horror and despair of the fighting men, each of whom knew that each day might be his last. Roland Gittelsohn’s tireless efforts to comfort the wounded and encourage the fearful won him three service ribbons.
When the fighting was over, Division Chaplain Warren Cuthriell, a Protestant minister, asked Rabbi Gittelsohn to deliver the memorial sermon at a combined religious service dedicating the Marine Cemetery. Cuthriell wanted all the fallen Marines – black and white, Protestant, Catholic and Jewish – honored in a single, nondenominational ceremony. Unfortunately, racial and religious prejudice was strong in the Marine Corps, as it was then throughout America. According to Rabbi Gittelsohn, the majority of Christian chaplains objected to having a rabbi preach over predominantly Christian graves. The Catholic chaplains, in keeping with church doctrine, opposed any form of joint religious service.
To his credit, Cuthriell refused to alter his plans. Gittelsohn, on the other hand, wanted to save his friend Cuthriell further embarrassment and so decided it was best not to deliver his sermon. Instead, three separate religious services were held. At the Jewish service, to a congregation of 70 or so who attended, Rabbi Gittelsohn delivered the powerful eulogy he originally wrote for the combined service:
Here lie men who loved America because their ancestors generations ago helped in her founding, and other men who loved her with equal passion because they themselves or their own fathers escaped from oppression to her blessed shores. Here lie officers and men, Negroes and whites, rich men and poor . . . together. Here are Protestants, Catholics and Jews together. Here no man prefers another because of his faith or despises him because of his color. Here there are no quotas of how many from each group are admitted or allowed. Among these men, there is no discrimination. No prejudices. No hatred. Theirs is the highest and purest democracy …
Whosoever of us lifts his hand in hate against a brother, or who thinks himself superior to those who happen to be in the minority, makes of this ceremony and the bloody sacrifice it commemorates, an empty, hollow mockery. To this, then, as our solemn duty, sacred duty do we the living now dedicate ourselves: to the right of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, of white men and Negroes alike, to enjoy the democracy for which all of them have here paid the price …
We here solemnly swear that this shall not be in vain. Out of this and from the suffering and sorrow of those who mourn this will come, we promise, the birth of a new freedom for the sons of men everywhere.
Among Gittelsohn’s listeners were three Protestant chaplains so incensed by the prejudice voiced by their colleagues that they boycotted their own service to attend Gittelsohn’s. One of them borrowed the manuscript and, unknown to Gittelsohn, circulated several thousand copies to his regiment. Some Marines enclosed the copies in letters to their families. An avalanche of coverage resulted. Time magazine published excerpts, which wire services spread even further. The entire sermon was inserted into the Congressional Record, the Army released the eulogy for short-wave broadcast to American troops throughout the world and radio commentator Robert St. John read it on his program and on many succeeding Memorial Days.
In 1995, in his last major public appearance before his death, Gittelsohn re-read a portion of the eulogy at the fiftieth commemoration ceremony at the Iwo Jima statue in Washington, D.C. In his autobiography, Gittelsohn reflected, “I have often wondered whether anyone would ever have heard of my Iwo Jima sermon had it not been for the bigoted attempt to ban it.”