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Nazi propagandist Josef Goebbels knew the value of film in promoting the Holocaust. Documentary films like the Eternal Jew and commercial films such as Juden Suss helped mold public opinion in favor of Jew-hatred. How unfortunate that Jewish academics in film studies today, even those who have taught in Israeli universities, haven’t utilized fully the effect film can also have on the masses in showing the true story of the founding of Israel as a Jewish state. Instead, some Israeli professors abroad promote a narrative that Israel as a Jewish state is a bad thing, even in terms of looking at Israeli cinema.

A case in point is Film Studies Professor Yosefa Loshitzky. The redheaded professor of film teaches at London’s East End University. Prior to the year 2000, she was a lecturer in film at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and was involved in the Van Leer Institute that may explain her utopian view of a potential Israeli society where Israel ceases to be a Jewish state. The Van Leer Institute professes to make Israel a more civil society but seems to always promote Arab irredentist goals in the process. It was the Van Leer Institute’s objections to the placement of the Security Fence that the Arabs themselves forced Israel to build to keep out terrorists as just one part of Van Leer’s distorted agenda. No wonder Loshitzky’s perspective of Israeli society is so anti-Zionist, since she obviously was part of the Van Leer consortium at one time before going to London to teach film theory.

Astonishingly, a scion of Holocaust survivors, Loshizky was a featured panel speaker at a Nakba Day celebration at East London University where she teaches and can be viewed on video quoting some sentences allegedly in a letter being auctioned off in England that was written by Albert Einstein. The Nakba is of course the Arab word for catastrophe in referring to the founding of Israel.

The Arab propagandists like to cite this letter because in it Einstein remarks that he doesn’t consider the Jewish people any better or worse than other people, and questions the concept of their being “chosen”. Loshitzky implies in the video that Palestinians should be allowed to return to live inside Israel, a certain death to the Jewish state, something even a genius like Einstein would agree with. Meanwhile, Loshitzky resides in London surrounded by all manner of anti-Israel academics and anti-Semites with whom she cooperates.

But there’s another problem with Loshitzky’s presentation: Einstein was an ardent Zionist. Although he opposed nationalism, Einstein also wrote that

“The] Zionist cause is very close to my heart…. I am very confident of the happy development of the Jewish colony and am glad that there should be a tiny speck on this earth in which the members of our tribe should not be aliens”…and continued, “One can be internationally minded, without renouncing interest in one's tribal comrades.”

Point of fact, Einstein, like so many secular Jews, also misunderstood the concept of “The Chosen People.” It does not mean Jews are better than other people, but means they are chosen to strive and set an example for mankind through adherence to Torah, to be “a lamp unto the nations,” something that Israel has striven to do in a surrounding world out to destroy the Jewish state. This is why Israel sends medical teams even to hostile countries when disasters occur.

Loshitzky is either displaying abysmal ignorance as a Jew of her religious background, or else is being disingenuous to woo her fellows at East London University to her anti-Zionist political goals. Either way, she speaks with a forked tongue.

This is less surprising as we see how she presents her theories on film history for the last fifty years meshed with ideas as an acolyte of the late Edward Said. Her theories on films, particularly Israeli cinema, are laced with Said’s catchphrases such as “post-colonialism” and she promotes Said’s claims of victim hood of minorities because of the founding of Israel. The irony is Israel is the only country in the Middle East that protects the civil rights of its minorities.

Said was an academic fraud. Born in Egypt and educated in the United States, Said was proven to have lied about his family residing in Palestine by Justus Reid Weiner and was investigated by the academic senate at Columbia for throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers on the Lebanese border. His chief skills were the manipulation of words in the English language. He stressed for the Palestinian cause that “Facts do not matter, only emotions matter. Write your own history,” a credo adopted by Yasser Arafat (Said as a member of the Palestine National Council also rejected that Arafat even dared to talk peace with the Israelis).

As a professor of English literature, Said’s only expertise was as an expert on Jane Austen. But his chef d’ouevre was the book Orientalism where he claimed that only people indigenous to the Middle East could correctly write about Middle East politics and history, that Europeans could only do so from a “colonialist” perspective, as if there was some mysterious gene that could determine the right frame of mind. Promoted by Arab funded Middle East Studies professors, the book became a staple in Middle East Studies in the US.

Apparently, Yosefa Loshitzky has joined the ranks of anti-Israel academics who have found their futures tied to jumping on the bandwagon of Saidism in the worldwide University system, particularly in the American university system that Israel’s academic left tries so hard to emulate, a frame of mind driven by Arab oil money.

Yosefa Loshitzky’s theories as outlined in her books on Israeli cinema concentrate on the negative stratification of Israeli society during the first fifty years of Israel’s existence in keeping with promotion of the idea of the victim hood of minorities in Israeli society as promoted by the Arabs and their anti-Zionist allies. She discusses films in which there are cultural differences and social injustice shown between the Ashkenazic (European Jews) and the Mizrahi (Middle Eastern Jews) as their “victims” but with the “Palestinians” as the ultimate victims of Israeli society. Holocaust survivors are lumped in with the Palestinians, “victimized” by the “Zionist state.”

Quoting Yosefa Loshitzky herself:

“The identities represented in the films that I discuss are marked by victim hood. And indeed, as in the multicultural wars dividing the contemporary ethnic landscape of American society, so in Israel discussion of racism is often displaced by competition over victimization. Contemporary Israeli identity politics is based on perceived and real victim hood that demands recognition and on acknowledgment of victimization. The 1998 appeal for forgiveness by Ehud Barak from the Mizrahim for the way they were treated by the former Mapai (a predecessor of today's Labor Party) is a case in point. What connects the Mizrahim with Holocaust survivors and Palestinians is a strong sense of being victimized by the Zionist state. In recent years the hegemonic Israeli-Jewish narrative has been oscillating between the former myths of voluntary sacrifice and heroism on the one hand and the emerging appeals for recognition of involuntary past suffering on the other. To a large extent, Israeli society has become a society that thrives on victim hood and elevates it to the level of "civil religion." This was most evident in the recent Likud-dominated government, which viewed itself as a coalition of past victims or, in the language of contemporary Israeli journalistic rhetoric, a coalition of minorities composed of previously oppressed and stigmatized groups (ultra-Orthodox, Mizrahim, Russian immigrants, and the Israeli Right). This coalition points to the centrality of victimology in contemporary Israeli identity politics, which ironically, fails to acknowledge Israel's primary victims—the Palestinians. In fact, the basis of the identities of the Mizrahim and the Holocaust survivors resembles that of the Palestinians—the experience of spatial/geographic and cultural/spiritual displacement.”

By Palestinians, if she means those who are Israeli citizens, she should be referring to them as Arab-Israelis since polls conclusively show that rather than being victims, they prefer being citizens of the Jewish state with its benefits for them, democracy and civil rights by law, rather than living in an emerging 23rd corrupt and totalitarian Arab state called Palestine next door (while she would have you believe they have no such rights as Israelis). While it’s true during the early years of Israel’s existence as a state there was some stratification between Ashkenzic and Mizrahi Jews, over the last twenty years that has changed because, like in America, Israel became a melting pot. Intermarriage between Sabras, who she terms The New Jews, regardless of where their parents came from, as well as service in the Army have homogenized Israel society for quite some time. Like America, Israel has affirmative action programs for both Jews and Arabs today to balance things out.

For Loshitzky to compare Holocaust survivors with the Palestinian movement is an impossible leap; Haj Amin al-Husseini, Arafat’s predecessor, and his Palestinian movement were allied to Hitler, and Husseini may have even suggested the extermination camps to Hitler. As far as Mizrahi Jews being victims of Israel and Zionism, it is in fact the Mizrahim who are more vocal against giving into the Arab demands in negotiations, for it is they who lived among the Arabs and were dispossessed and murdered by them forcing them to flee to the “Zionist” haven called Israel. Many would object to being called “victims” of a Jewish homeland no matter what their beefs with the government might be.

Her New Jews (Israelis today) as compared to the Old Jews (immigrants from abroad including Holocaust survivors) are in reality the same thing: Jews, and therefore targets in an anti-Semitic world. No doubt, Loshitzky, rubbing elbows with Saidists in the UK and regarded as their equal (as long as she opposes a Jewish state in Israel and gives the Arabs what they want) doesn’t experience this anti-Semitism and can even promote her academic career. Her fellow academics who engage in modern anti-Semitism as expressed against Israel’s being the Jewish national homeland accept her, since she’s willing to be a spokesperson for their cause. It’s a great way to be accepted in her academic circles. Oddly enough, Loshitzky’s New Jews do not merit the inclusion of the Ethiopian community that is still undergoing flux in joining the Sabra community, but has made strides into the military and university systems of the country.

It could be a great thing if a Jewish film professor like Loshitzky, now ensconced and teaching in London, would deal with the Holocaust and show overseas students how the Zionist movement succeeded right afterward to create the only modern democracy in the Middle East for all its citizens, despite being composed of disparate groups seeking refuge from all over (the Baha’i faith has its international headquarters in Israel and there are many Christian and Muslim groups with freedom of worship, contrary to what is found in Arab or Muslim states). Yet Loshitzky would have us believe letting 5 million mostly Muslim Arabs move inside Israel and dismantle the state by changing the demographics would somehow create a more utopian society instead of another Holocaust. Can this woman, a literate academic, really be so pathetically one-sided and naďve?

The UK today has a significant Muslim and Arab population demanding more acceptance of an anti-Semitic point of view, and, sadly, there are even some politicians like the Mayor of London who are willing to promote such ideas due to Muslim immigration. As a London resident scholar, Loshitzky’s career no doubt also depends on being popular where she is.

England, with the White Paper, was also responsible in many ways for many Jews dying in Europe before the creation of Israel (few know how the British incarcerated Jews in prison under harsh conditions to discourage their escape from the European Holocaust to Palestine). This was despite the fact that 30,000 of the half-million Jews already in Palestine during the Second World War enlisted to fight for the allies (as compared with 9,000 of the 1.5 million Arabs). The White Paper was negotiated with the British on behalf of the Arabs by Haj Amin al-Husseini who, as mentioned, was later a Nazi ally and who spent the war with Hitler. Not long ago, one British MP even claimed 86 women were raped by Israeli soldiers in a report she made to Amnesty International that was proven totally fabricated (The actual number of rapes by Israeli soldiers of Arab women was zero). It is in this atmosphere that Loshitzky might have used film and her academic experience to counter in the UK such blood libels as those mentioned above and to tell the world the truth about the Arabs who were not only Nazi allies during the World War II, but who also support today another Holocaust against the Jews in Israel (it’s always the anti-Zionist Israeli academics who deny anti-Semitism or death threats by the Arabs it would seem, as the Arabs have no qualms about doing so even in their press and organizational charters).

Loshitzky could demonstrate through film how the State of Israel was originally to have included Jordan; how the British screwed the Jews giving it to the Arabs; or how Jews were being murdered by Arab terrorists in Palestine long before Israel was founded by the UN in 1948 while the British looked the other way; how the Arabs have today fabricated a fake nakba (catastrophe) and history that, through the same techniques used by Herr Goebbels, they have managed to persuade the rest of the world that such fabrications are history and truth when they are not. Residing in Britain as an educator, Loshitzky could refute the continuance of blood libel against the Jews among the Brits instead of vilifying Israel with Arab propaganda of Palestinians as victims of Israel under an even bigger umbrella of Jewish victims of Israel from the Holocaust! Ask most Israelis if they feel they are victims or were saved from the Arabs by the creation of Israel, something Loshitzky considers a catastrophe and you will get a resounding no!

But instead of doing this, Loshitzky, like so many of the loonies among the anti-Israel Israeli academics, particularly those working abroad in the UK and America, signs on to the same Arab propaganda and blood libel the Arabs continue to produce in their totalitarian state-run propaganda ministries.

Many of Loshitzky’s fellow academic signatories on a petition outlaying such falsified history of the creation of Israel are Jews who consider themselves “anti-Zionist,” but without understanding the real history or concept of Zionism. They are Jews who, due to their own ignorance, moral lack of equivalency, avowed secularism, anti-religious mindset and an inability to fathom the real world, verify Arab propagandists. Just like Hollywood moviemakers, they help fabricate a history for the anti-Semites they will all willingly believe.

This is particularly true of Yosefa Loshitzky, who signed the petition objecting to Israel’s celebration of independence and her acceptance of the nakba as legitimate, citing the same libels of “ethnic cleansing” and “violations of international law” the Arabs constantly repeat in true Goebbels-like fashion.

The following are ideas about Israel’s history that Loshitzky apparently thinks are true exemplified by her signing such a petition:

Besides believing that the Palestinian nakba is true, that a great catastrophe occurred in 1948 for Palestinian Arabs relegating 750,000 of them to homelessness and loss of their homes and property, she also believes that the Arabs were forced to pay the price for what she would term the European Holocaust of Jews. She also believes the Palestinian Arab suffering has been as equally onerous as that of the Jews during the Holocaust.

She apparently also believes, in true Hollywood dramatic cinematic style, that the Palestinians were removed from their homes and forced on a Death March (to conjure up images of the Dachau Death March by the Jews no doubt, or for American and British audiences to think of the Bataan Death March; that there was a massacre at Deir Yassin; and that the refugees have an inalienable right to restitution and return to live inside Israel. She believes she cannot celebrate the birthday of a state “founded on terrorism, massacres and the dispossession of another people from their land” and she says Israel conducts “ethnic cleansing,” that violates “international law,”; is inflicting a monstrous collective punishment on the civilian population of Gaza; and that Israel continues to deny to Palestinians their human rights and national aspirations.

The above were at least some of her gripes against Israel and her refusal to celebrate Israel’s 60th anniversary. But here are the facts about what Ms. Loshitzky thinks is the history of Israel, her own understanding of history, just like that of her anti-Israel Israeli academic cronies having been developed by the same propaganda ministries that copy Goebbels’ technique of the Big Lie. The Big Lie is not dead; it is being used constantly among the whacko Israeli academic far left such as in this case.

The nakba is a fabrication to gain sympathy for the Arabs in the face of Israel’s Independence Day. There never were 750,000 Arab refugees from the war in 1948, but there were many more Arabs set up to claim refugee status. The Progress Report of the United Nations Mediator on Palestine, submitted to the Secretary-General for Transmission to the members of the United Nations, General Assembly Official Records, Third Session, Supplement No.11 (A\648), Paris, 1948, p. 47 and Supplement No. 11A (A\689, and A\689\Add.1, p. 5; and "Conclusions From Progress Report of the United Nations Mediator on Palestine," (September 16, 1948), U.N. doc. A/648 (part one, p. 29; part two, and p. 23 and part three, p. 11), (September 18, 1948) show that the last census in Palestine was taken by the British in 1945. It found approximately 1.2 million permanent Arab residents in all of Palestine. A 1949 Government of Israel census counted 160,000 Arabs living in the country after the war of 1948. In 1947, a total of 809,100 Arabs lived in the same area. This meant no more than 650,000 Palestinian Arabs could have become “refugees.” A report by the UN Mediator on Palestine arrived at an even lower figure — 472,000, and calculated that only about 360,000 Arab refugees required aid.

The Arabs allowed any Arab who wanted to claim refugee status, even those already settled in Jordan and Gaza with homes and jobs to claim such status up until 1950 that swelled the numbers. Still, Israel repatriated over 100,000 Arab refugees with family still in Israel during the period from 1952-82 and paid compensation through the Office of Abandoned Property (yes, Israel did not just take land and homes from Arabs and put Jews in them, whereas the Arabs seized without compensation the property of over 800,000 Jews from Arab lands, 650,000 of whom fled to Israel). This information alone would make the number of refugees from 1948 far less than claimed even in 1948, but today, the Arabs claim the number is as much as 11 million, a canard many anti-Israel academics like Yosefa Loshitzky are more than willing to accept.

Had the Arabs succeeded in driving the Jews into the sea in 1948, and murdered many of them in a pogrom like the more than 100 Jews of Kfar Etzion who were murdered in a pit even after the Armistice, would Loshitzky still think the same? There were six million Jews systematically murdered in death camps all over Europe, starved to death through work or gassed, yet the Palestinian Arab population gets adequate food through UNWRA that runs the “refugee” benefits, and UNWRA was funded primarily by Israel after the war. Today UNRWA camps are run by Hamas, yet extra food is supplied by Israel as well as free medical care courtesy of Israel within the Green Line for those who need it. Should we take Loshitzky seriously as an academic if she is so obtuse about the facts surrounding Israel and the Palestinians?

There is no serious documentation of a Death March by Arabs as a result of the war in 1948, or a “massacre” at Deir Yassin (there was a battle, but no massacre of civilians, just like the faked massacre in Jenin). The Death March is a tit for tat fabrication to suggest a real Death March by Jews from Dachau during the Holocaust, another attempt to compare through cynical propaganda the Palestinian experience with the Jewish Holocaust in order to gain legitimacy. For Loshitzky to sign onto a petition that promotes blood libel against her fellow Jews is incomprehensible given the media and threats from the Arab world against Israel.

Well, that is, unless we are to believe that as an Israeli leftist, Loshitzky, teaching in a British university, is completely ignorant of Israel’s real history or the genuine threat still posed by the surrounding Arab states that seek to annihilate a Jewish homeland and prefers a Hollywood-like scenario of bad Zionist Jews oppressing (according to her) not only Arabs but Jewish Israelis too! Is this the real reason she considers the founding of the Jewish state a catastrophe to not be celebrated and lectures such an idea to students and others abroad in the UK?

Or finally, an alternative question is: Is she pandering to the Brits in another country where she now resides and teaches?

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Op-Ed articles appearing on IsraCampus.org are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the opinion of IsraCampus.org