Israel National News

The Jewish Voice

Remember the footage of hundreds of thousands cheering Hitler in the streets of Vienna? Or again in Nuremberg? Oh, they are mad with joy, wild with passion? We now have a contemporary version of this in the star studded celebrity crowds in Venice at the 2025 Film Festival. The audience delivered the longest standing ovation ever given to a film--23 plus minutes. The film is titled "The Voice of Hind Rajab," and it's about the death of a six-year old girl in Gaza.

The film ostensibly uses some of Hind's recorded and very desperate cries for help. Alas, in the midst of a battle in a war zone, and as one of Hamas's carefully chosen human shields in their propaganda war against civlization, Hind was not found soon enough--and so she died.

One wonders whether this is really a film, a docudrama, or simply a well executed piece of propaganda masquerading as a work of art?

Ben Hania films Gazans as the world's most sacred of victims and the IDF as the most heartless of child killers. She does not celebrate Israel's mighty ability to defend itself against the most heinous and barbaric Jihad; she does not show us any of the horrific footage from Hamas's anti-civilian pogrom on 10/7; instead, she celebrates a narrative of Gazan victimhood, one which is so readily embraced by Westerners.

Women directors have been known to artfully, and in technically masterful ways, celebrate Evil. For example, Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler's favorite filmmaker, did so and some of her films also received awards at the Venice Film Festival.

Our contemporary Riefenstahl might very well be the Tunisian director, Kaouther Ben Hania, (she, too, is a woman). Interestingly enough, Riefenstahl filmed the Germans, one million strong, celebrating Hitler and Nazism in 1934 in Nuremberg; her film, "The Triumph of the Will," was an ode to Der Fuehrer's military might, power and glory.

In a sense, Ben Hania's film recycles the medeival Blood Libel against the Jews, namely, that they kill non-Jewish children.

The film (which I have not seen--how could I?) is not really the issue. I am far more concerned with the response of the Venice Film Festival audience.

According to the BBC, "people were crying. Some of them were sobbing noisily, some were sniffling, some had red eyes, and almost everyone was distraught."

It is just this excessive emotion of a crowd which deeply troubles me. These are not Nazi-era Germans who may have suffered poverty and humiliation after losing World War One. These were A-listers, well-dressed, well-fed, high celebrated millionnaires and even billionnaires who have been totally brainwashed by nearly sixty years of propaganda.

These people fund the Dream Factories which function as global propaganda against Israel, the Jews, and the United States.

Reuters, reprinted in The Jerusalem Post, describes the film as having received

a "rapturous premiere." They claim that the standing ovation lasted for 24 minutes and that the film is "the clear favorite to win the prestigious Gold Lion award."

Well, guess which film just won the Golden Lion? It wasn't "The Voice of Hind," it was Jim Jarmusch's "Mother, Father, SIster, Brother."

However, "The Voice of Hind" did win the Grand Jury Prize (no small thing, this will ensure it a long and prominent life).

Benny Safdie's film "The Smashing Machine" won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival.

My friends: Be afraid, be very afraid of what is happening and what is to come.

P.S. The Jews will ultimately be fine. We always are and always have been. But everyone else—both under Islamic rule, and in Europe may not be. The Western Cannon and Western Civilization itself, with all its flaws, may not be so fine. Islamist leaders have never, ever created a Reformation or been shown to assimilate to Western culture. Just sayin.’