Kasama in defense of Godard

Revolutionary Film-Maker Jean Luc Godard Shamelessly Smeared

Posted by Mike E on November 3, 2010

by Mike Ely

The New York Times has given a worldwide forum to a completely false accusation aimed at the remarkable and beloved film-maker Jean Luc Goddard — just as he is about to be honored with an Oscar for his life’s work.

The charge is that he is an anti-Semite — and it is made without serious evidence, other than his principled and consistent opposition to Israel and its theft of Palestinian land.

Here is the operative paragraph from the New York Times correspondent Michael Cieply:

“Over the last month, articles in the Jewish press — including a cover story titled “Is Jean-Luc Godard an Anti-Semite?” in The Jewish Journal — have revived a simmering debate over whether Mr. Godard, an avowed anti-Zionist and advocate for Palestinian rights, is also anti-Jewish. And this close examination of his posture toward Jews has put a shadow over plans by the academy to honor him at the Nov. 13 banquet.”

In fact there is nothing to suggest that Godard is anti-Jewish. He is, however, an opponent of Israel and a supporter of Palestinian rights. He is also politically radical — with deep personal roots in the Maoist high tide in France during May 1968. And the charge of anti-Semitism is not substantiated. One prominently mentioned newspaper, The Jewish Journal, writes a cover (!) article with that screaming headline: “Is Jean-Luc Godard an anti-Semite?” and then cannot find anything to justify their attack, answering themselves in the small print with “a categorical ‘maybe yes or maybe no.’”

The rest of their smear pieces talks about the roots of his “alleged anti-semitism” without ever documenting that he has any. Including discussions of conflict in his family with an anti-Jewish grandfather, about whom Godard said “I am anti-Zionist, he was anti-Semitic.”

The method is exactly the same as the one used by Fox to promote belief that Obama is a Muslim terrorist –here are official press “reports” on baseless and paranoid rumors (noted and repeated without feeling the need to debunk the obvious lie).

Take a second and read the kind of twisted prose used to smear him. Here is raw innuendo dominating a sentence that reports on Godard’s vehement hatred of the Holocaust, and of French collaborators with the Nazis:

“Given his family background and pro-Palestinian activism, it would not be surprising if Godard were also a Holocaust denier. But, on the contrary, he is fixated on the murder of 6 million, including some 77,000 Jews living in France, and one of his main charges against Hollywood is that Jewish studio heads could have prevented the Shoah by producing a number of anti-Nazi films in the 1930s.”

Note: His opposition to the Holocaust is portrayed as an unexpected anomaly (when in fact it is integral to revolutionary politics in France and elsewhere). And Godard’s criticism of pre-war film-making is twisted to suggest he is blaming Jews for their own suffering. No reference or context is provided for the assertion that Godard aims his criticism specifically at Jewish studio heads. There is, as is well known, significant criticism to be made of Jewish Judenrat councils that sometimes helped suppress resistance in the ghettos of occupied Europe. Such criticism is neither anti-Semitic nor unjustified. But again, it is impossible to evaluate Godard’s alleged remarks, since they are characterized but not shared.

Or this discussion from the same article (which I have actually seen someone raise as “proof” of his supposed anti-semitism):

“The leitmotif running through Godard’s own work is the superiority of “images” as against “texts” or narratives, or, as he puts it, “the great conflict between the seen and the said.”

“He faults, for instance, Claude Lanzmann’s monumental nine-hour film, “Shoah,” for its use of personal narratives by survivors and others, and proposes that the Holocaust can only be truly represented by showing the home life of one of the concentration camp guards.

“Who is to blame for the Jewish preference of text over image? It is Moses, Godard’s “greatest enemy,” who “saw the bush in flames and who came down from the mountain and didn’t say, ‘This is what I saw,’ but, ‘Here are the tablets of the law.’ ”

“For the untutored layman, unfamiliar with the methods and passions of movie making, this and other Godard pronouncements can take on an Alice-in-Wonderland quality.”

Do we really have to explain why a reference to Jewish religious texts — theTalmudic tradition and the remarkable textual engagements within Jewish culture — is not anti-Semitic?

Third Rail for Culturally Executing Supporters of Palestinians

What this smear represents (on the part of the New York Times and the originating article) is a double assertion:

First, that anti-Zionism should be functionally treated as anti-Semitic bigotry. Israel is to be equated with Jewish people, and a political sympathy for Palestinian rights should be treated as an ancient murderous hatred of Jewish people (and the Palestinians should, once again, be simply disappeared and delegitimized in that process).

Second, support for Israel should be treated as a kind of “third rail” of politics and culture. Anyone opposed to Zionism (i.e. opposed to the existence of Israel as an artificial ethnic state on land ethnically-cleansed by force) should be treated as a pariah — denied honors, respect, public acclaim, and acceptance — no matter what their accomplishments or field. Supporting Israel’s existence should, in short, be a requirement of participation in public and civilized life, and denial of Israel’s right should be a one-say ticked to outlaw status, personal ruin and isolation.

This should not be tolerated. Godard is a remarkable filmmaker with a lifetime commitment to revolutionary change. He should be defended.

His latest film, “Socialism,” was screened at the New York Film Festival on Sept. 29 and Oct. 8.

The following excerpt from Godard’s La Chinoise, Omar’s talk to his comrades, is used as the preface (here) of Kasama’s 9 Letters to Our Comrades:

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