My Film Interview About Evil

by Phyllis Chesler

Like so many, I am no longer as young as I once was. (Imagine that!) Therefore, it takes me a bit longer to do everything, including prepare for an interview. Yesterday, the amazing, veteran, filmmaker, Gloria Greenfield, whose work I so deeply admire, came to call. She is working on a film titled: “A Collective Descent Into Evil: The Ongoing War Against the Jews and the Jewish State.” Gloria and her crew arrived and we talked all afternoon and long into the night, not all on camera, that only took about 80 minutes. At Gloria’s urging, we also watched Yariv Mozer’s extraordinary film, “We Will Dance Again,” based on the footage taken both by Israeli civilians and by Hamas terrorists, and thereafter, on interviews done with some of the survivors. (It is streaming on Paramount).

It conveys far more than it graphically depicts. What we come to understand is the sheer exuberant youthfulness of the Nova Festival party-goers. Those who had come to dance were merely children, adorned with tattoos, earrings, nose rings, (like our Foremother Rivka), and they were bursting with hope and happiness. They could have been my grandchildren, my great-grandchildren, had I become a mother early enough, and they were filled with joy and love as they sought to enjoy an experience of ego-less transcendence aka a “trance.” Above all, these trance-dancers were utterly innocent, peace-loving, and their lives still stretched out endlessly before them.

As dawn broke–terror struck. Death-eating fiends on motorbikes, terrorists with a plan, began systematically shooting down the unarmed children, one by one. The sight of Jews fleeing death is a sight I never again wish to see. I thought what might be considered heretical thoughts. Here they are.

From now on, every Israeli should be armed and, for that matter, every Jew anywhere should also be armed. Otherwise, the armed barbarian hordes will be shooting us down like the proverbial fish in a barrel. This footage is the closest I’ve ever gotten to Holocaust-era stories by and about some Jews survived by playing dead, hiding under the corpses of their relatives and friends.

A glutton for information and for knowledge, I also started watching another totally sensitive and unique film about 10/7 by Ben Shani, titled “Picture This” (up at Chai Flicks). This is a series of one-one-one interviews with survivors that also uses animation in a very creative way.

Every one, anyone, who really cares about good triumphing over evil should watch all these films. All those who wish to understand what really happened on 10/7 and what it means for the democratic West, should watch these films as well. Just as 9/11 changed many of us–so too, must 10/7. In order to survive, we must become 9/12 Americans and 10/8 Israelis.

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