Honouring, Memorializing Murder and Mayhem

If it stands as a cultural expression then it has merit. Artistry and authentic vision, creativity. Recording a tribal heritage that spurs a population to value grievance, vengeance and murder, welcoming death to themselves in the ardour of their martyrdom for the divine cause of returning Islamic land to Islam holds a certain allure to the West.

Glorifying and memorializing the deaths of shaheeds, those who eagerly gave up their lives to attain the honour of martyrdom in service to the cause, resonates in a certain perverse way with those in the West who twist the warped neurosis into a badge of courage.

There is a certain, recognized cachet in aligning leftist, artistic expression with the 'struggle' of the militias of Allah, against the 'foreign occupation' by the State of Israel. Which had no business imposing itself through its manipulation of Western sensibilities, guilty over the occurrence of the Final Solution reaching a state of near success in the Holocaust, to give support to a Jewish State.

The propaganda machine of militant organizations that have developed a 'social-political' arm and a viciously murderous one of militant jihad, has cleverly adapted itself to the methodology of Western-inspired public relations, reaching out for sympathy and support as an underdog battling a Goliath seeking to impose its imperialist will on a helpless, hapless group of innocents.

The mirage of an undeserving slight of immense proportions done to innocent Arabs by an assertively arrogant nation of Jews, transporting themselves holus-bolus to already-settled-and-owned Arab land is a visage of savage intemperance. Sympathies naturally flow toward the wronged, and the land of Jews is repudiated as unworthy of former support. Irrespective of an ancient and more modern Jewish presence, never interrupted.

Hamas has unveiled its "Cinema of Resistance", a clever propaganda tool by which, through the medium of entertainment, education and empathy an entire Western audience of elite media artists may engage themselves in allied and righteous anger against Jewish usurpers of Arab land. Hamas is premiering its homage to one of their own, a Palestinian terrorist who murdered Israeli soldiers and settlers.

It is entertaining high hopes that the Cannes Film Festival will succumb to the allure of an entertainment 'scoop', inviting the Islamist Hamas's feature film to be shown to an international audience of haute-cultural-entertainment elite. That the film makes no bones about glorifying tribal vengeance in all its bloody finality, giving the imprimatur of solid acceptance through a Cannes showing a celebratory legality makes one shudder.

"Through Imad Aqel (the name of the 'hero' and the eponymous title of the full-feature film) many high-quality attacks were carried out against Israeli troops, to the extent that the Israeli army because obsessed with his operations", according to the director, Majed Jendeya. "Imad Aqel represents a new military school in the history of Palestinian armed struggle in general."

High-quality attacks equates with successful death-dealing. The 'armed struggle' equates with an violently obdurate resistance to ever accepting the reality of the presence of a Jewish State in an otherwise-Arab geography. Little wonder the Israeli army was interested in the man's 'operations', marking him as a special target.

Hamas officials have launched a new tack, seeking a propaganda approach to battling Israel through the court of public opinion internationally, and what better instrument than that of an entertaining, informing, empowering mechanism to engage people's interest and ultimately their choice of support?

Just as well to turn attention away from the unfortunate but largely ineffectual cross-border rocket attacks, now that the separating wall has succeeded in lessening the occurrence of suicide attacks. The agenda of Hamas is right up there, front and centre: refusal to renounce violence, recognize Israel, and accept the potential of a peace agreement. Order of business: destroy the Zionist entity.

Desert hawks. The romance and beauty of intransigence against a more powerful force. A tiny, isolated country battling the forces of terror. A reality that has been turned inside-out and which has entranced the imagination of the gullible, the witless and the anti-Semites.