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Israeli Actress Noa Cohen Responds to Backlash About Her Playing Jesus’s Mother in Netflix Film ‘Mary’
Noa Cohen in the Netflix film “Mary.” Photo: Christopher Raphael/Netflix
Israeli actress Noa Cohen defended the decision to cast her as Mary of Nazareth, the mother of Jesus, in a new Netflix movie and also admitted she was not surprised about the social media uproar regarding the casting.
“I expected it but you know what, I feel like DJ [Caruso, the director], our producer, and the rest of the team did the best they could to stay as authentic as possible and they just wanted to find the right person and the right cast for the job,” Cohen told the Associated Press on Tuesday. “And I am a Jewish woman, who’s playing a Jewish woman. I grew up in Israel, which is modern day Judea, which is where Mary grew up. So I feel very, very comfortable portraying her and I did that from a place of true sincerity in my heart.”
“People don’t have to like it, but I like this role very much and I’m very, very proud of it,” she concluded.
Netflix released the official trailer for “Mary” in November and began streaming the film on Dec. 6. The coming-of-age drama, which additionally stars two-time Academy Award winner Anthony Hopkins as King Herod, tells the story of the birth of Christ. Besides Cohen, “Mary” also stars four other Israeli actors — Ido Tako, who plays Cohen’s husband Joseph; Ori Pfeffer; Hilla Vidor; and Mili Avital. The film was shot in Morocco and American Pastor Joel Osteen served as an executive producer on the film. Netflix said filmmakers “consulted with a wide range of religious scholars and leaders to capture the story’s historical elements.”
After the trailer for “Mary” premiered, pro-Palestinian activists on social media quickly lambasted the filmmakers and called for a boycott of the film because an Israeli Jewish actress was cast to play the lead role. They falsely claimed that Mary and Joseph were Palestinian, and that Jesus was also Palestinian or “a Palestinian Jew.” The Palestinian media outlet Quds Media Network also related the film to the “ongoing genocide of Christians in Palestine.”
Cohen shared in an interview on Tuesday night that she received multiple death threats while filming the Netflix project in Morocco last year.
“I got messages from Moroccan profiles [on social media] who said they know ‘what hotel you’re staying at,’” she told the Keshet 12 Israeli television program “Good Evening With Guy Pines,” according to The Jerusalem Post. “That didn’t make me feel the safest in the world. And you go to film in what is, after all, a Muslim country, Morocco … and you need a special visa to get in, and you have to have heavy security guarding you at all times.”
“It was scary. Some people began to understand that I was in Morocco and I got messages on Instagram, I got threats, the feeling wasn’t always the most comfortable,” Cohen added. She also said that once the trailer was released, “it was amazing to see how the responses started with ‘Zionist,’ then went to ‘Israeli,’ and finally ended up with straight-up ‘Jew … you Jewish whore’ — excuse the language. It was amazing to see how much of it was pure antisemitism and not anything else.”
Caruso previously praised Cohen’s performance in the film, saying that she “navigates the complexities of Mary’s journey so extraordinarily that every time I watch the film, she blows me away.”
“She beautifully captures Mary’s innocence, pain, joy, grace, and fierce perseverance in a captivating way,” he added.
The post Israeli Actress Noa Cohen Responds to Backlash About Her Playing Jesus’s Mother in Netflix Film ‘Mary’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends an inauguration event for Israel’s new light rail line for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
i24 News – Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Sunday that the government would establish an administration to encourage the voluntary migration of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
“We are establishing a migration administration, we are preparing for this under the leadership of the Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] and Defense Minister [Israel Katz],” he said at a Land of Israel Caucus at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. “The budget will not be an obstacle.”
Referring to the plan championed by US President Donald Trump, Smotrich noted the “profound and deep hatred towards Israel” in Gaza, adding that “sources in the American government” agreed “that it’s impossible for two million people with hatred towards Israel to remain at a stone’s throw from the border.”
The administration would be under the Defense Ministry, with the goal of facilitating Trump’s plan to build a “Riviera of the Middle East” and the relocation of hundreds of thousands of Gazans for rebuilding efforts.
“If we remove 5,000 a day, it will take a year,” Smotrich said. “The logistics are complex because you need to know who is going to which country. It’s a potential for historical change.”
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Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30
A general view shows the plenum at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – The Knesset’s (Israeli parliament’s) Special Committee for Foreign Workers held a discussion on Sunday to examine the needs of wounded and disabled IDF soldiers and the response foreign caregivers could provide.
During the discussion, data from the Defense Minister revealed that the number of registered IDF wounded and disabled veterans rose from 62,000 to 78,000 since the war began on October 7, 2023. “Most of them are reservists and 51 percent of the wounded are up to 30 years old,” the ministry’s report said. The number will increase, the ministry assesses, as post-trauma cases emerge.
The committee chairwoman, Knesset member Etty Atiya (Likud), emphasized the need to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy for the wounded and to remove obstacles. “There is no dispute that the IDF disabled have sacrificed their bodies and souls for the people of Israel, for the state of Israel,” she said. Addressing the veterans, she continued: “And we, as public representatives and public servants alike, must do everything, but everything, to improve your lives in any way possible, to alleviate your pain and the distress of your family members who are no less affected than you.”
Currently, extensions are being given to the IDF veterans on a three-month basis, which Atiya said creates uncertainty and fear among the patients.
“The committee calls on the Interior Minister [Moshe Arbel] to approve as soon as possible the temporary order on our table, so that it will reach the approval of the Knesset,” she said, adding that she “intends to personally approach the Director General of the Population Authority [Shlomo Mor-Yosef] on the matter in order to promote a quick and stable solution.”
The post Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30 first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians
Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with Sky News Arabia in Damascus, Syria in this handout picture released by the Syrian Presidency on August 8, 2023. Syrian Presidency/Handout via REUTERS
i24 News – Over 1,300 people were killed in two days of fighting in Syria between security forces under the new Syrian Islamist leaders and fighters from ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect on the other hand, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Sunday.
Since Thursday, 1,311 people had been killed, according to the Observatory, including 830 civilians, mainly Alawites, 231 Syrian government security personnel, and 250 Assad loyalists.
The intense fighting broke out late last week as the Alawite militias launched an offensive against the new government’s fighters in the coastal region of the country, prompting a massive deployment ordered by new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“We must preserve national unity and civil peace as much as possible and… we will be able to live together in this country,” al-Sharaa said, as quoted in the BBC.
The death toll represents the most severe escalations since Assad was ousted late last year, and is one of the most costly in terms of human lives since the civil war began in 2011.
The counter-offensive launched by al-Sharaa’s forces was marked by reported revenge killings and atrocities in the Latakia region, a stronghold of the Alawite minority in the country.
The post Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians first appeared on Algemeiner.com.