Julian Schnabel must have known that screening a film about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the United Nations General Assembly would be scene-stealing. To set the town talking, the event would unite all the trappings — provocative subject matter, prestigious venue, Hollywood glamour.
In fact, the March 14 screening of “Miral” in New York drew a crowd of movie stars (including Robert De Niro, Sean Penn and Vanessa Redgrave), diplomats, artists and intellectuals, raising the profile of an event that openly merged artistic prominence and political power.
But the screening also spawned a flurry of protest from some of the most powerful and prominent voices in the Jewish establishment, who accused the film of being one-sided and anti-Israel.
That the filmmaker, Schnabel, and the film’s distributor, Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, are Jewish was even more unsettling to some of the film’s critics.
The night before the screening, David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee, sent out an open letter to United Nations General Assembly President Joseph Deiss. “The film has a clear political message, which portrays Israel in a highly negative light,” Harris wrote. “Permit me to ask why the President of the General Assembly would wish to associate himself — and the prestige of his office — with such a blatantly one-sided event.”
Yet the film also had defenders within the Jewish community. Rabbi Irwin Kula, one member of the post-screening panel discussion at the U.N., suggested that “Miral” offers an important opportunity to approach the conflict with new eyes.
“Everybody should go see it,” Kula, president of CLAL: The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, said in a phone interview from his New York office. “If you’re a Jew and anything about Israel and Palestinians touches you in any way, you should see this film.”
But if the ire of mainstream Jewish groups is any indication, American Jews may not be ready to empathize with Palestinians. For older generations, the historic suffering of Jews has given rise to the indelible notion that “the world is against us” — especially at a place like the U.N., where a bloc of 55 Islamic countries is outspokenly anti-Israel.
“I’m not saying ‘Don’t screen an anti-Israel film at the General Assembly.’ What I’m saying is, ‘Don’t screen it there if you’ve never screened any pro-Israel films,’ ” said Simon Wiesenthal Center founder Rabbi Marvin Hier. “That’s not the business of the U.N., to tell that side of the story. Their business is to be fair and equitable.”
Schnabel and Weinstein, for their part, have had to defend themselves against critics who invariably are dismissing them as self-hating.
Schnabel has asserted that it is a “Jewish responsibility” to tell the story of the other side. “We have suffered so much that if anybody should understand the Palestinian problem, it should be Jewish people,” he told deadline.com’s Mike Fleming.
Weinstein was also moved to defend himself against the onslaught. In an emailed statement, Weinstein wrote: “I am very proud of my Jewish identity and heritage … My supporting a film about a Palestinian girl growing up in Jerusalem does not negate my love or support for Israel.”
For Kula and the filmmakers, the hope is that the film will provide rare insight into the Palestinian point of view and inspire dialogue.
“After 63 years of conventional diplomacy, we are now further from a two-state solution than ever before,” Kula said. “We need new forms of peacemaking. Let’s recover personal, intimate human stories, which have been completely clouded out by the political and power narratives.”