Churchill A Corrupt Drunk

AN OBSESSION THAT CAUSED MILLIONS TO DIE IN WORLD WAR II

Documentary hails Judeophiliac Churchill

Documentary hails Churchill as Zionists' greatest ally
By MARTIN KNELMAN
The Toronto Star Tuesday, 11 January 2011


Documentary on Churchill and Jews aired on Jan. 17.

TORONTO — Millions of people credit Winston Churchill, Britain’s
inspiring wartime prime minister during its darkest hours, with
saving the world from Hitler.

But was Churchill also — as we’ve rarely heard — the greatest
ally the Jewish people have ever had?

The answer is a passionate yes, according to Barry Avrich,
whose compelling documentary — An Unlikely Obsession:
Churchill and the Jews — will have its premiere at 10 p.m.
Monday on the Vision channel.

“When I was first approached about making a film based a book
by Martin Gilbert,” Avrich recalls, “I said ‘No, I’m the wrong guy
for this project.’ But then I read the book, and I met Gilbert, and
I undertook some research on my own. I pored over the material,
trying to connect the dots. What I discovered is powerful stuff.
By then I was hooked. I knew what a great subject this was,
and I had to make the film.”

Avrich runs a major Toronto marketing firm but moonlights
directing, producing and writing movies. Typically he does one
film a year. But the past year has been far from typical. For the
second year in a row, he made a screen version of a Stratford
Shakespeare Festival production; The Tempest, already a hit
in HD at Canadian cinemas, will be released in the U.S. in May.
And next month TIFF’s Bell Lightbox will present the premiere
of Unauthorized, Avrich’s titillating portrait of Hollywood mogul
Harvey Weinstein. His next project: a documentary about
veteran comedian David Steinberg, featuring a concert
performance.

Jewish celebrities acclaim Sir Winston

The proposal to make the Churchill film had come from Michael
Levine, the Toronto entertainment lawyer, agent and occasional
producer. Gilbert, a renowned British scholar and author, was one
of Levine’s clients.

Gilbert had spent 20 years writing the official 10-volume biography
of Churchill. He had also written many books on Jewish subjects.
In his book about Churchill and the Jews, Gilbert argued that it
was largely thanks to decades of support from Churchill (going
back to World War I) that the state of Israel was born in 1948.

One of Churchill’s old friends described him as being “too fond of
Jews.” And it has also been said that Sir Winston’s strong support
for creating a Jewish homeland did not always win him friends.

But is Alan Dershowitz, the celebrated Harvard law professor,
exaggerating a tad when he claims that there really ought to
be a huge statue of Sir Winston in Jerusalem? If he’s right, then
Churchill ought to loom as large in the story of Israel’s birth as
those legendary Zionist prophets Theodor Herzl and Chaim
Weizmann.

Dershowitz is one of many intellectual celebrities who appear on
screen. Yes, it’s a talking heads film of the traditional variety,
but what an array of heads! Among those who pop in and out
of the frame, offering insights into Churchill’s and his obsession
with the Jewish dream of establishing a homeland, are fallen
media tycoon Conrad Black (doing his first TV interview since
being released from jail), historian Margaret MacMillan (author
of Paris 1919); and, of course, Sir Martin Gilbert. Z

Took inspiration from Old Testament tales

The off-screen narrator is that man with the golden voice,
Gordon Pinsent.

The starry commentators tell the story of how at a time of
casual anti-Semitism at the highest social and political levels
of post-Victorian British society, Churchill took inspiration from
Old Testament tales, aspiring to become a latter-day Moses.

Denouncing pogroms in Russia even while British voters wondered
what events so far away had to do with them, Churchill hob-
nobbed with influential Jewish leaders and articulated the view
that the foundations of modern civilization and ethics came out
of Jewish history — for which he felt the rest of the world should
show its gratitude.

Not all historians agree with Gilbert. Some claim Churchill’s main
motive was to extend the power of the British Empire, and that
at some points he sacrificed Jewish interests in an effort to
protect access to Arab oil.

“Churchill’s support for a Jewish homeland may have wavered
now and then over the years,” Avrich says. “But mostly he was
giving the cause huge support when no other world leader was
doing so. Not Franklin Roosevelt in the U.S. and certainly not
William Lyon Mackenzie King in Canada.”

http://www.thestar.com/article/920129--documentary-hails-churchill-as-zionists-greatest-ally