March 1, 2009

Broadcast Date: 
Mar 1 2009

Argentina expels a Holocaust-denying bishop; is the film Waltz with Bashir a soul-searching attempt to face up to Israeli responsibility for the Sabra and Shatila massacre or a propaganda coup? Plus a new release from the California band Klezmer Juice.

Episode segments
  • Holocaust Denying Bishop Expelled from Argentina
    Holocaust, Global, Anti-Semitism

    Brian Byrnes is a American free-lance journalist living in Buenos Aires who covered the Bishop Williamson story for CNN.

     
    Esther Kaplan

    Shortly after Pope Benedict welcomed back into the church several priests from the ultra-conservative Saint Pius X movement, who had been excommunicated for their opposition to Church reforms of the 1960s, one of them, Bishop Richard Williamson, gave an interview to Swedish television in which he denied any Jews had been killed in gas chambers and said the numbers reported killed had been greatly exaggerated.  Saying that Pope Benedict was unaware of Richardson's views prior to his rehabilitation, the Vatican demanded that he "distance himself" from his views "in an absolutely unequivocal and public manner."  Argentina then ordered Williamson to leave the country, where he had been head of the seminary of the breakaway movement.

  • Waltz With Bashir
    International Politics, Middle East, Israel/Palestine, Film, Arts & Culture, Occupation

    Liel Leibovitz is a ninth generation Israeli who immigrated to the U.S. in 1999, where he works as a journalist and cultural critic.  He is the author of:
    Aliyah: Three Generations of American Jewish Immigrants to Israel  and Lili Marlene: The Soldier's Song of World War II  (with Mathew Miller)

     

     
    Esther Kaplan and Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark

    Winner of several international film awards, the highly praised Israeli animated film, Waltz With Bashir, was expected by many to win an Oscar for best foreign film (although it didn't win.)  Lauded by the Jewish Telegraph Agency as "a film that suggests a nation caught in the depths of a profound collective amnesia, unable or unwilling to come to grips with one of the most troubling episodes in its history" and slammed by Haaretz's Gideon Levy as "an act of fraud and decit, intended to allow us to pat ourselves in the back to tell us and the world how lovely we are," Waltz With Bashir reveals a puzzling paradox in Israeli society.  How can the same public who voted the film the third most favorite Israeli film of all time also have overwhelmingly supported the recent blockade, bombing and invasion of Gaza, and elected a right wing Knesset (whose third largest party is the anti-Arab party of Avigdor Lieberman)?  We talk with cultural critic Liel Leibovitz whose Nation essay Waltzing Alone tries to make sense of this dissonance.

  • New Klezmer Juice Release: JEWFRO
    Music, Arts & Culture
    Argentinian born clarinetist Gustavo Bulgach is the leader of the West Coast based Klezmer Juice.
    Abe Velez

    Beyond the Pale contributor and leader of the Hip Hop Hoodios, Abe Velez, talks with Gustavo Bulgach about and plays some cuts from Klezmer Juice's new release: JEWFRO.