ROMAN POLANSKI MAKING FILM ON DREYFUS AFFAIR

AMY SPIRO

The convicted child rapist is expected to begin shooting the movie later this year.

Film director Roman Polanski, Madeleine Church for ‘popular tribute’ to late French singer and actor Johnny Hallyday in Paris, 2017. . (photo credit: CHARLES PLATIAU / REUTERS)

Roman Polanski, the famed director and convicted sex offender, is working on a film about a wrongly accused man.

The French-Jewish filmmaker is set to begin shooting a movie later this year about Capt. Alfred Dreyfus, the French-Jewish soldier who was falsely accused of spying for the Nazis. Dreyfus was tried and convicted of treason in 1894, but he was later pardoned, set free and exonerated of the charges. Public opinion and antisemitism were said to play a significant role in the story. The Dreyfus Affair, as it became known, has remained a famous and well-known chapter in history that has been made into dozens of plays and films.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Polanski is slated to begin shooting the movie, called J’Accuse, for Legende Films in Paris in the coming months. The report stated that Louis Garrel will play Dreyfus and Oscar-winner Jean Dujardin will play the officer who proved his innocence.

Polanski has been working on this film project for the past six years. But, in the wake of the #metoo movement, his acceptance in the international film community is more in question than ever.

In 1977, he was arrested and charged with raping a 13-year-old girl. Polanski cut a deal and plead guilty to statutory rape, but fled the US before he could be sentenced or imprisoned. He has largely lived in France, escaping extradition, ever since. Polanski, now 85, has continued to produce films and even won an Oscar in 2003 for The Pianist. But earlier this year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts voted to expel him in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal and the body’s vow to uphold new standards of conduct.

News of Polanski’s new film was greeted by skepticism by some and outright hostility from others.

Writing in The Independent, Annie Corcoran said that “the fact that he is able to make this film at all is astonishing… A rich, straight, white man who has yet again proved that society cares more about his career than victims of sexual assault.”

In SPIN magazine, Maggie Serota wrote an op-ed titled “The World Does Not Need This New Roman Polanski Movie.”

And CNN anchor Jake Tapper shared a link to the news on Twitter, adding just one word: “yikes.”

Last year, Polanski sued Israeli activist Matan Uziel for NIS 1.5 million on libel charges. Uziel said that five separate women told him that Polanski had raped or assaulted them over the years. The case is still ongoing.

Israel Leads Fight Against Multiple Sclerosis

   StandWithUs

Netanyahu to CNN: Israel Must Have ‘Overriding’ Security Control in Any Two-State Solution

Benjamin Kerstein

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the 71st UN General Assembly debate at UN headquarters in New York on Sept. 22, 2016. Photo: Kobi Gideon/GPO

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel must exercise “overriding” security control of the West Bank in any two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In an interview with CNN, Netanyahu addressed President Donald Trump’s seeming endorsement of the two-state solution during a meeting between the two men on Wednesday.

“Israel has to have the overriding security,” in any political arrangement with the Palestinians, he said, “not the UN, not Canadian Mounties, not — I don’t know — Austrian or Australian forces — Israeli forces have to have the security control, otherwise that place will be taken over by Islamist terrorists, either ISIS or Hamas or Iran, all of the above. And that’s my condition.”

“People say, ‘Was that commensurate with a state?’” he added. “I don’t know, you decide. … I want the Palestinians to govern themselves, but not to be able to threaten us.”

“I’ve discovered that, if you use labels, you’re not going to get very far because different people mean different things when they say ‘states.’ So rather than talk about labels, I’d like to talk about substance,” he said.

Netanyahu has consistently stood by his demand for Israeli security control over the West Bank for some time.

Nonetheless, the prime minister said he will examine President Donald Trump’s upcoming peace plan with “a keen and open mind, because I know there’s great friendship to Israel.”

“The question of what happens, you know, precisely, when he puts it out depends on — I’ll look at it,” he added. “In fact, I was — you know, I always said that I’m willing to look at peace proposals put forward by the United States.”

Meeting with Netanyahu on Wednesday on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, Trump told reporters, “I like two-state solution. I like two-state solution. That’s what I think works best. I don’t even have to speak to anybody, that’s my feeling.”

Trump had previously stated that he would support whatever solution the Israelis and Palestinians agreed to. Shortly after his Wednesday statement, he appeared to return to this position, saying, “If the Israelis and the Palestinians want one state, that’s OK with me. If they want two-state, that’s OK with me. I’m happy if they’re happy.”

Netanyahu faced some domestic friction after Trump’s Wednesday statement, with Education Minister Naftali Bennett, a key member of his government, asserting, “The president of the US is a true friend of Israel. Nonetheless, it is important to emphasize that a Palestinian state, which would be a disaster for Israel, will not be established as long as we are in the government.”

In response, the prime minister reiterated his security demands, saying, “Make no mistake: Israel will not give up on security control west of the Jordan (river) as long as I am prime minister. I think the Americans accept that principle.”

EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT COMMITTEE VOTES TO FREEZE €15M TO PA OVER INCITING TEXTBOOKS

LAHAV HARKOV

“There was only a vision of one state from the river to the sea, which is not EU policy,” IMPACT-se CEO Marcus Sheff said.

Palestinian students display their new Palestinian educational syllabus at the beginning of his new school year in Gaza Strip September 7, 2000. (photo credit: REUTERS)

The European Parliament Budgetary Committee voted to freeze over 15 million Euros from the Palestinian Authority if they do not remove incitement from their textbooks.

“The reserve will be released,” the bill reads, “when the Palestinian Authority has committed to reform its school curriculum and textbooks to bring them in line with UNESCO standards standards for peace and tolerance in school education.”
The bill, an amendment to the EU’s draft budget proposed by Budgetary Committee chairwoman MEP Dr. Ingeborg Grässle, is expected to go to a plenary vote on October 24th.

If the bill passes the plenary vote, the EU will withhold €15,440,597 until the PA changes its textbooks. The European Union is the largest single donor to the Palestinian Authority.
The bill states: “The textbooks published by the PA in 2017, which are financed by the EU…contain, across all subjects, numerous examples of violent depictions, hate speech – in particular against Israel – and glorifications of jihad and martyrdom. As has already been pointed out by Parliament in its resolution on the 2016 budget discharge (par. 272), EU-financed teaching and training programs should reflect common values.”

IMPACT-se, a textbook analysis organization, said its recent report contributed to the Budgetary Committee’s decision.

“We are delighted that our policy recommendations have been taken up and are certain this will help sway the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Education to stop inciting 1.2 million Palestinian children and take hate out of their curriculum,” IMPACT-se CEO Marcus Sheff told The Jerusalem Post Thursday.

Sheff explained that once European Parliamentarians were made aware of the contents of PA textbooks, “No matter what part you’re in, you don’t want…to be paying to encourage jihad or a one-state solution.”

The IMPACT-se report showed that there was no mention of Israel or two states for two nations living side by side. Israel was almost only referred to as the “Zionist occupation,” the textbooks include antisemitic motifs and “incorporate themes of heroism and martyrdom…in clashes with Israelis.”

“There was only a vision of one state from the river to the sea, which is not EU policy,” Sheff said.

IMPACT-se COO Arik Agassi cited “a very negative trend of serious anti-American content,” in Palestinian textbooks, including blaming the US for the September 11th, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center.

Former SS guard, now 94, to go trial in Germany in November

By:  AFP

Suspect charged with complicity in the mass murders of Pole and Jews at Stutthof concentration camp

Gas chamber at Stutthof (Courtesy David Schonberg)

BERLIN — A 94-year-old former SS guard faces trial in November charged with complicity in the mass murders at the Nazi concentration camp Stutthof during World War II, a German court said Friday.

The man from the district of Borken, who was not named, was a watchman at the Nazi camp near what was then the free city of Danzig, now Gdansk in Poland.
BERLIN — A 94-year-old former SS guard faces trial in November charged with complicity in the mass murders at the Nazi concentration camp Stutthof during World War II, a German court said Friday.

The man from the district of Borken, who was not named, was a watchman at the Nazi camp near what was then the free city of Danzig, now Gdansk in Poland.

These included more than 100 Polish prisoners gassed to death on June 21 and 22, 1944, as well as “probably several hundred” Jewish prisoners murdered in the same way from August to December 1944 as part of the Nazis’ so-called “Final Solution” operation.
Prosecutors believe that the man “knew about the killing methods” at the camp and that the guards were a crucial part of the camp system.

As the former SS guard was not yet 21 at the time of the crimes, he will be tried before a juvenile court from November 6.

Germany has been racing to put on trial surviving SS personnel, after the legal basis for prosecuting former Nazis changed in 2011 with the landmark conviction of former death camp guard John Demjanjuk.

John Demjanjuk in Munich, May 2011  (photo credit: AP/Matthias Schrader)

He was sentenced not for atrocities he was known to have committed, but on the basis that he served at the Sobibor camp in occupied Poland — for having been a cog in the Nazis’ killing machine.

German courts subsequently convicted Oskar Groening, an accountant at Auschwitz camp, and Reinhold Hanning — a former SS guard at the same camp, when they were aged 94 for the mass murders seven decades back.

But neither served jailtime as they both died before they could be imprisoned.

Prosecutors had filed charges against another former SS guard at Stutthof, a 93 year old from the city of Wuppertal.
But a decision on whether the case will go ahead is pending as it is yet to be determined if he is fit for trial, the court in Muenster said.