the brilliantly leaping gazelle

It is said that every cloud has a silver lining and until yesterday evening, I never believed it true. First off, the cloud.

For reasons wholly to do with selective virtue signalling and wanting to be well thought of by the digital mob, Ken Loach and Mike Leigh resigned as patrons of the Phoenix cinema in London in protest over the venue hosting an Israeli state-sponsored film festival yesterday

As The Guardian reported 

The cinema – one of the UK’s oldest – is holding a private screening of Supernova: The Music Festival Massacre, as part of the international Seret film festival on Thursday night. The documentary tells the story of the attack by Hamas on the Nova music festival on 7 October through survivor testimony.

That would be the attack by Hamas in which 364 civilians were killed.

As I have observed before on this blog, Hamas knew well what sort of response this would provoke, but decided to do it anyway. So to my mind, any Palestinian deaths resulting from the subsequent Israeli military action is totally their fault. I don’t understand why people are so unwilling to accept this.

Leaving that aside – for now at least – and back to Ken Loach. I’d always admired him and his work. His was the kind of film-making which, whilst not always an easy watch, was imbued with a sympathy for the ordinary person and which was never patronising or condescending, but critiqued the forces, political with both a large and a small p, that confounded them.

His 1969 documentary about the charity ‘Save the Children’ despite being partly funded by them, was banned from ever being broadcast by them, it being so critical. In 1980, his documentary ’A Question of Leadership, about the steel workers strike of 1980 and the Thatcherism that had caused it, was considered so inflammatory it was withdrawn and when it was finally shown, was savagely edited and a ‘balancing’ programme shown afterwards.

So him telling the Guardian: “‘My resignation as a patron of the Phoenix shows what I think of their decision. It is simply unacceptable.” is so disappointing, not least because it is the sort of treatment he has faced.

Now the silver lining.

There were two protests outside the Phoenix last night. One was by the usual pro-Palestinian rabble rousers parading their selective virtue, and wonderfully, a counter protest by a pro-Israeli crowd shouted them down so much they gave up and went home.

Oddly enough ‘The Guardian’ wasn’t able to find enough digital space to run this story today, but thankfully, The Jewish Chronicle did. It was able, however to rehash yesterdays story today.