Jewlicious speaks with Edward Zwick

Edward Zwick director of DEFIANCE is a Jewish Harvard grad, known for his ealier films, "Blood Diamonds" and "Glory." The story is based on the true exploits of three Jewish farmers in the forest of Belarus during World War II. The brothers escaped from the Novgorod ghetto after 4000 Jews were slaughtered in a mass execution. They weren’t saints and had their sibling rivalries, but were still able to resist Nazis and Nazi supporters and 1,200 Jews survived the war under their leadership. Zwick, who filmed the project in Lithuania, was attracted to this Holocaust story since it was not about the iconography of Jewish victimization, but about fighting back.

Zwick was asked by a Jewlicious reporter whether by opening in Europe, he would create an equivalency between the current situation in Gaza and the story of Defiance. Zwick replied that, “…the argument comparing what the Jews are doing and what the Nazis did is just such a preposterous exaggeration, because when one uses the word genocide, you have to ask: If Israel were interested in genocide when they have more than the means necessary to accomplish such a thing, and given that, in context, they’re using a certain amount of restraint. Yes, I know the word “restraint” is hard to talk about, given what’s happening in Gaza, but it is a type of restraint. What I’m responding to is equivalence. Words are important. Genocide is a word thrown around too easily. This is happening now in Poland and Lithuania. There’s an attempt to make an equivalence between alleged war crimes of the Bielskis and the Holocaust.“ Asked about comparing Israel and Hamas, Zwick replied, “What I see is that there is a double standard, that on one side you have an organization dedicated to creating the maximum amount of destruction and horror, and doing it in a way that is deliberately bloody-minded and terrorizing. On the other hand you have an extremely powerful state with all the means at its disposal to create a horrifying result, and yet trying, despite the resulting horrible casualties, nonetheless seeming to use extraordinary restraint. It’s really an interesting contradiction.”

Well said Edward Zwick! In my opinion your have stated the case for Israel better than I have been trying to do for years. Maybe that explains why you are a great director and I am a frustrated armature author of a Blog. The world judges Israel too harshly and unfairly. War is never a "clean and clear cut proposition." As a Jewish child born May 1st 1945 in Poland, days before WW II ended in Europe, I offer the following examples of War never being 100% fair. My parents lost their parents, many siblings and almost all of their other relatives including their first born son to the German Nazis. They survived the Holocaust-the lucky ones! The Nazis were far from innocents, but were the German infants of these Nazi's who were bombed and killed guilty of anything? Were the murders of brave German people who unsuccessfully attempted to hide and save Jews justified?

From the time the United Nations voted to permit the Jews to hoist the Star of David and declare Palestine to henceforth be the State of Israel, it has been besieged by the countries surrounding the tiny land mass they were allotted and legally occupied. Hostile Arab countries refused to recognize the new Nation and declared they would drive the Jews to their death into the sea. Miraculously, the "Chosen" people survived all the threats and hostilities that followed (continuing until this day) and in a relatively short time frame, transformed the tenuous fledgling Nation into a powerful force in the Middle East. Overwhelming odds have not kept Israel from becoming the most powerful nation in the region. With no oil (G-d could have given Israel just one oil well) but substantial financial support, especially from the United States government and American Jewry, they stand today, ready and capable of insuring that "Never Again!" is not just a slogan. As a Jew who lived in a displaced person's camp in Austria before coming to America in 1948, I support Israel and I support it's right to protect it's people from it's enemies. Shalom