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Israeli Director Criticizes Calls for Film on War to Be Boycotted From Venice Film Festival

Director Amos Gitai attends the ”Why War” photocall during the 81st Venice International Film Festival at Palazzo del Casino on August 31, 2024 in Venice, Italy. Photo: Daniele Cifalà via Reuters Connect

Israeli director Amos Gitai criticized on Saturday the nearly 350 members of the film industry who wanted his film to be boycotted from the Venice Film Festival.

“Why War,” which made its world premiere on Saturday out of the competition, was inspired by a correspondence in the early 1930s between Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud about how to avoid war. The film “traces the roots of war, and embarks on a search for an explanation of the savagery of wars that inhabit our world.” It was co-produced in Italy and shoot in Vienna, Tel Aviv, Berlin, and Paris.

“Why War” and Dani Rosenberg’s Hebrew-language film “Al Klavim Veanashim” (“Of Dogs and Men”) was the focus of an anti-Israel open letter signed by figures in the film industry and published on the opening of the Venice Film Festival last week. They claimed the films were “created by Israeli production companies that are complicit in whitewashing Israel’s oppression against Palestinians.” They further slammed the Venice Film Festival for showcasing both films, saying they are against “the artwashing of [Israel’s] Gaza genocide against Palestinians” at the prestigious film festival.

Speaking at a press conference on Saturday, Gitai said “Why War” did not receive any funding from the government of Israel and insisted that those who wanted the film boycotted from the Venice Film Festival had not even seen the movie, according to The Hollywood Reporter. He further noted that his film examines the topic of war in general, and not “the intoxicated Israeli-Palestinian relationship.”

“The film is not actually focused on Israel-Palestine, although they love always to think that they are the center of the world,” Gitai said. “There is no center of the world. The planet is round. [It’s] a very important conflict, but they are not the only one on the planet.”

“Everything is based on these great two thinkers,” he added. “Karl Marx probably inspired Albert Einstein, because it’s a very Marxist piece about money and greed, or industry. Freud is about the human soul and why these smart animals want to make war.”

In a previously released “director’s statement” about his film, Gitai said “Why War” does not feature any iconography or photographs from war and the destruction it causes because he believes that just further amplifies war. Regarding the current Israel-Hamas war, the director said on Saturday that he thinks current media coverage on the situation, from both Israel and the Palestinians, just makes the conflict worse and “prolongs the war.”

“If we look at Israeli TV, they will only show you atrocities of Oct. 7, the rape of the women, the burning of the kibbutzim. If I’m a normal Israeli and I see these images, I’ll say, ‘Let’s kill them all,’” he said, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “[And] the Arab networks, Al Jazeera, will show you just the destruction of Gaza, so the savagery and the destruction of tens of thousands of homes in Gaza and the killing of tens and thousands of people … that most are not terrorists … civilians, children. There is now polio, a lack of food. [If I’m] a Palestinian and I only see these images, they will not see the Israeli images, [I would] say, ‘Let’s continue the war.’”

“The iconography prolongs the war so we decided to make an anti-war film without images of war,” he added. “We need to find new ways of rebuilding this beautiful region … even in spite of the wounds and the tragedies and bad memories, we need to build something different. This cannot go on.”

The director also reportedly said the Hamas terrorist organization ruling the Gaza Strip and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government both need to be removed from power in order for there to be peace in the region.

“The two groups have to understand that the proposition of being under Hamas is not a good proposition. There will be no rights for women, no Christians of the Orient, no LGBT rights, nothing. The Iranians already went this way when they got behind Khomeini and they’re stuck with it,” he stated, referring to the Islamist regime currently ruling Iran. “We the Israelis have to get rid of the extremist, nationalist, right-wing, racist, ultra-religious government that we have. The two groups have to do some cleaning on their stuff and then maybe a new bridge can be constructed. It’s not there now but we have to keep the idea that one day, it will come, and I think it will come.”

The post Israeli Director Criticizes Calls for Film on War to Be Boycotted From Venice Film Festival first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Charlie Kirk Sought to Encourage Debate — His Murder Must Not Stop It

Charlie Kirk speaking at the inauguration of Donald Trump in January 2025. Photo: Brian Snyder via Reuters Connect

I first became familiar with Charlie Kirk after October 7, 2023, when my TikTok algorithm began showing me videos of him fiercely, and quite effectively, debating students on college campuses, often those in keffiyehs and with purple hair.

Thus began my fascination with what I soon learned was a man who was dedicating his life to debating and promoting what he believed in.

Charlie Kirk was the face of the young Republican movement, respected even by some Democrats. He had a promising future ahead of him. As Ben Shapiro wrote: “That kid is going to be the head of the Republican National Convention one day.”

Kirk dedicated his life to debate. To disagreement. To hearing the other side and persuading with facts and truth. And this, tragically, cost him his life. His assassination represents the meager and devastating state of the West, a state we have slowly, almost willingly, been accepting for years now.

There is a deep intolerance for differences. People do not want to be persuaded. They do not want to consider another perspective. Instead, they condemn what they believe is wrong, clinging to black-and-white narratives, even when an entire gray area holds the broader picture. They turn their heads away from nuance. Kirk aimed to change that. He devoted his life to it, fully aware of the risks.

As Adam Rubenstein wisely wrote for The Free Press: “Kirk was not naïve. In the video after he is shot, you can see a security team of at least half a dozen bodyguards surround him and spirit him away. Like anyone speaking their mind in public these days, he knew there was a risk.”

Kirk’s assassination signifies a low point for this country — and another attack on free speech. It was an assassination of dialogue, of diplomacy, of the ability to disagree without destruction. And perhaps the most bitter irony is that it all happened on a college campus, an environment that should foster growth mindsets and open-mindedness.

This attack was not only an attack on Charlie Kirk. It was an attack on freedom of thought and expression. And while it succeeded in killing the bright and young 31-year-old so many of us admired, I hope that is a rallying call to protect the broader freedom of speech we still enjoy — at least in part — in this country.

Alma Bengio is Chief Growth Officer at The Algemeiner Journal and founder and writer for @lets.talk.conflict

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Jews Are Indigenous to the Land of Israel — and Everyone Should Know It

The Western Wall and Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Few words in modern political discourse carry as much distortion as “Palestine.” Today, the term is wielded not as history but as a weapon — designed to delegitimize the Jewish State and recast Jews as foreign colonizers in their own homeland.

Take away the propaganda, however, and one unshakable truth remains: the Jewish people are the indigenous nation of the Land of Israel. The Arab claim to “Palestinian indigeneity” simply does not line up with history.

The Jewish people trace their roots back over 3,000 years to the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who lived in the land of Canaan — later Israel. By the time of King David, Jerusalem was the capital of a united monarchy, and Solomon’s Temple stood as the spiritual and political center of Jewish life. Even after the Babylonian exile, Jews returned, rebuilt, and re-established their national life in Judea.

Despite invasions, destruction, and exile, Jews never abandoned their homeland. They remained in Jerusalem, Galilee, Hebron, Safed, and along the coast. Their prayers, rituals, and festivals kept the bond to Zion alive. This is not the story of outsiders — it is the story of the land’s first and most enduring nation.

Rome tried to sever that bond by force. After the Bar Kokhba revolt in the second century, Emperor Hadrian renamed Judea as Syria Palaestina , borrowing the name of the long-vanished Philistines, and turned Jerusalem into Aelia Capitolina. It was an act of erasure, meant to punish the Jews by striking even their name from the map.

But the attempt failed. Jews continued to live, pray, and return to their ancestral soil. A new label could not undo thousands of years of rootedness.

The Arab story is very different; their origins lie in the Arabian Peninsula. The earliest records available to us describe nomadic tribes in Arabia and the Syrian desert. Their cultural centers were Mecca, Medina, Yemen, and Petra. It was only in the 7th century, with the rise of Islam, that Arab armies exploded out of Arabia and conquered the region. By 636 CE, they had invaded Byzantine Judea; within a century they ruled from Spain to Persia. Their presence in Judea was the result of conquest, not continuity.

For over a thousand years, under successive empires — Umayyad, Abbasid, Crusader, Mamluk, Ottoman, and finally British — the local Arab population never called itself “Palestinian.” They identified as Arabs, Muslims, Christians, or by their city and clan. In fact, during the British Mandate, the word Palestinian referred almost exclusively to Jews: the Palestine Post was a Jewish newspaper, the Palestine Symphony Orchestra was Jewish, and the Palestine Brigade that fought in World War II was Jewish.

Many Arabs in the region rejected the label, insisting instead that they were part of greater Syria or the wider Arab nation.

Only in the mid-20th century, particularly under Yasser Arafat and the PLO, did a separate “Palestinian” identity emerge. It was born not from centuries of shared history but from a political need: to create a narrative that could challenge Jewish nationhood and delegitimize Israel. It was, and remains, a tool of war by other means.

This is the historical bottom line: Jews are the only people with an unbroken, 3,000 year bond to the Land of Israel. The name Palestine was a Roman punishment, not an Arab heritage. Arabs arrived in the 7th century as conquerors from Arabia. The idea of a Palestinian people is a modern invention, forged in the 20th century as part of a political campaign against the Jewish State.

Israel is not a colonial project. It is the restoration of an ancient nation to its ancestral homeland. Jews are not foreigners in Judea; they are Judea’s people. By every measure — historical, cultural, and even genetic — the Jewish nation’s claim is authentic, continuous, and undeniable.

Sabine Sterk is the CEO of Time To Stand Up For Israel.

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Israel Attacked Terrorists in Qatar — and the Media Attacked Israel

Vehicles stop at a red traffic light, a day after an Israeli attack on Hamas leaders, in Doha, Qatar, Sept. 10, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa

On Tuesday, September 9, Israel targeted those who sought its destruction and planned the barbaric October 7, 2023 massacre.

Israel launched the daring attack on the Hamas leadership in their Qatari safe haven, after their ongoing refusal to agree to a Gaza ceasefire deal and in the aftermath of a deadly terror attack in Jerusalem, which Hamas claimed responsibility for.

But the media still shilled for Hamas by making Israel look like a rogue state attacking a key diplomatic player and destroying any chance for peace.

News outlets used three methods to achieve this goal:

  • Direct accusations
  • Subtle differentiation between a “legitimate” Hamas political wing and its military one
  • The glorification of Qatar as a business hub rather than a terrorist hub

The Independent and The Washington Post shamelessly employed headlines that portrayed Israel as the regional bully and an aggressor randomly attacking other Middle East countries in a bid for regional domination.

Sky News even blamed Israel for a previous attack on Qatar, although the Iranian regime carried it out:

After we publicly highlighted it, Sky quietly rectified its faux pas with no acknowledgment of the correction.

Meanwhile, the Economist was worried that attacking the very terrorists who ordered the mass murder of Jews on Oct. 7 was “a bridge too far” and that Israel had “crossed a line:”

And the BBC’s security correspondent called Israel’s surprising act of self defense “a campaign of score settling:”

NPR and The Wall Street Journal took the subtle approach of creating a false dichotomy between Hamas’ military and political wings — although the entire group is internationally designated as a terror organization.

This naive approach depicted the targeted Hamas leaders as legitimate officials simply because they carried pens and wore suits instead of AK-47s and green headbands.

They may not have got their hands dirty but this does not absolve them from orchestrating numerous bloody terror attacks, including the slaughter and kidnapping of thousands of people in Israel on October 7, 2023.

Finally, many outlets decried the violation of Qatar’s sovereignty, painting it as a peace-seeking state focused on business and regional cooperation, rather than a patron of terrorists.

The New York Times went as far as calling Qatar “a safe haven for business and tourism in a volatile region,” while it was, in fact, a safe haven for the region’s top jihadists.

How can this media distortion be explained? Why is a facade of legitimacy conferred upon terrorists in suits?

There are only two possible answers: Either the media believe the facade the terrorists want to sell, or they are carrying out an anti-Israel agenda.

Both options are detrimental to professional journalism, as well as to basic human ethics.

The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.

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