|
Trending Topics
|
Hamas Livestreamed Its Massacre to the World - that's Public Domain
(Times of Israel) Sarah Tuttle-Singer - When Hamas terrorists stormed into Israel on Oct. 7, murdering more than 1,200 people in a single day, they filmed these atrocities as they committed them and livestreamed their footage to the world. Less than two years later - while hostages are still rotting in terror tunnels - the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) decided this story is too risky to show because the filmmakers did not obtain permission from the perpetrators of the massacre. Let that sink in. A major international film festival is effectively saying: unless the murderers sign a waiver, the massacre cannot be seen. As comedian Benji Lovitt put it, "Imagine the Nuremberg Trials refusing Nazi footage because they didn't get Goebbels to sign a waiver." The Allied forces at the Nuremberg Trials used the footage as evidence because the world needed to see the truth. Film festivals have shown films that use footage from Nazis, from ISIS, from warlords and death squads across the globe. No one demanded copyright clearance from Osama bin Laden's estate. So why now? The answer is obvious: Jewish suffering has become politically inconvenient. Jews are the "wrong" kind of victims. This is not about clearance. This is about fear. Fear of protests, fear of disruption, fear of the headlines that might follow. And fear that folks will also have to reckon with Jewish trauma and suffering. The survivors of Oct. 7 do not need TIFF to validate their truth. But the world does need to see what happened - unvarnished, unblurred, unedited by the sensitivities of the comfortable.