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(PJ Media Exclusive) To Sway U.S. Jews, National Jewish Democratic Council Fraudulently Edits, Exploits Sderot Jews

Beyond the pale? An NJDC promotional video falsely represents the most terrorized Jews in Israel as being pro-Obama.

by
David Farer

Bio

September 6, 2012 - 5:57 pm
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He was thanking Obama for the help the United States has extended to Israel, and for financing the Iron Dome rocket systems. Ammar’s “thank you” appears among a barrage of “thank you” extended by quite a few Israelis, so that each “thank you” reinforces the other, sounding as if they were coming from a chorus. The context into which Ammar’s brief speech is edited changes Ammar’s meaning. It sounds like praise and thanks are due specifically to President Barack Obama, rather than to the United States and its people.

Pinchas Ammar told me he does not support Obama and that he thinks Obama is not really pro-Israel and does not understand Israel’s problems in the least. He was not happy to find himself in a film promoting Obama’s re-election.

So far, pretty manipulative. The next participant revealed the filmmakers participating in unquestionable, outright fraud.

I first read of this movie in Herb Keinon’s article in the Jerusalem Post. The tone he employs in his piece is ironic and rather dismissive of the film. Within less than a minute of commencing watching the video, I knew something was rotten, because the first man to appear is the formidable Mr. Sasson Sara, praising Obama in the most effusive manner.

I have known Sasson Sara for a number of years. I knew he does not think what he says in the film.

Sasson Sara’s shop is on the famous square, where it has been since his father founded it  more than half a century ago. Many folks around here call that part of town “Kikar Sasson” (“Sasson’s Square”); they also mostly refer to streets as “Mr. X’s Street” rather than by the official names. Many people of Sderot neither know nor care about the names of streets, not even of their own — small towns are like that.

Sasson Sara was brought up tending that shop, and his daughters now work there every day. Sasson was among the first townsmen here to obtain higher education, at a time when an Iraqi Jew like him was automatically directed to non-academic courses. Sasson insisted on going to college and becoming a teacher. He taught for a number of years until his father asked him to take over the shop. His children all study; they are too young to have experienced much anti-Sephardic feeling.

Sasson Sara is a politically aware man who once ran for mayor, and I am grateful for the help and education he has kindly extended to me, especially about the early days of Sderot. The synagogue he regularly attends is on the same street where Yaakov Dehan and Pinchas Ammar live, and it too had a missile through its roof about half an hour after everybody went home for the evening. Had the rocket come half an hour earlier, dozens would have died.

I walked up to Sasson the morning after I saw this video. “Good morning!” I greeted him. “I see you became a movie star.” We laughed.

“I didn’t know you like Obama so much,” I continued.

“I do not support him!” he responded emphatically (“Ani lo tomech bo!”).

Sasson explained that his portion of the film had been edited tendentiously, omitting his “if”s, and even truncating his sentence to give it a meaning opposite to that Sasson had intended it to convey. The video shows Sasson saying:

Sderot is important to him [Obama], the Jewish people are important to him, the state of Israel is important to him.

Sasson told me that he actually said the following:

If Sderot is important to him, the Jewish people are important to him, the state of Israel is important to him, then Obama should do more about Iran.

There is a word for such a deliberate distortion; it is called fraud.

It is tempting to see the outrageous lie that this video is as merely something a lazy, mediocre filmmaker made in order to get his job finished and his fee collected, but there are larger issues here as well. It is immoral to use people for purposes of which they have no inkling, which they do not support, and in which they have no interest. It is like finding your photograph on a box of cereal or a pack of cigarettes, and discovering your image and person have been used to sell somebody else’s wares, or in this case, to buy him votes.

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