Actor Sean Penn, who in separate TV interviews last week slammed critics of his visits to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and his earthquake aid to Haiti, has gotten some support from the South American leader.

Chavez Thursday said he is grateful that the Oscar-winning actor has defended him against his critics within the U.S. media.

In an appearance on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” last week, Penn slammed Chavez critics who refer to the socialist leader as a dictator.

He noted that Chavez has won repeated elections and suggested that media critics who call him a dictator should be jailed.

He says that “there should be a bar for which one goes to prison for these kinds of biases.”

Penn has visited Chavez several times and frequently defends the president’s leftist political policies.

Chavez welcomed Penn’s comments Wednesday and thanked the actor for standing up to his detractors.

In an interview on CBS’ “Sunday Morning, March 7, Penn, who was a presenter at that night’s Oscar ceremony, told correspondent Lara Logan what he thought of thosewho are critical of his recent efforts in Haiti to aid those affected by the earthquake.

“Do I hope that those people die screaming of rectal cancer? Yeah,” he said, “you know, but I’m not going to spend a lot of energy on it.”

Wow, Penn really has been hanging out with Chavez for too long. He’s beginning to sound like him.

Besides, any excuse to whip out that blog post title.

(hat tip: Yisrael)

“It’s said that I went into a rant, but I think it went on for about five words,” he said. “I was drunk. It just turned into a big thing. I apologized – not once, three times. So what’s the problem? It’s four years ago. Do I need to apologize again?”

Some of you may feel this is a reasonable response. But the real question is has Mel Gibson really seen the error of his ways? And was his rant just the silliness of a drunk man, or indicative of very real anti-Semitism?

Here’s another interview of Gibson promoting Edge of Darkness which I believe answers these questions.

Hollywood actor Mel Gibson is baffled by the furore surrounding Tiger Woods’ private life – insisting there are more important issues than celebrity gossip.

Like the Jews starting wars all around the world! Wake up people!

He says, “I feel sorry for Tiger Woods. Why are we talking about this when we are sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan? (because of the Jooooooos – ed) You’ve got this history-changing event going on and we’re talking about Tiger’s private life and golf injuries. He’s being used as a diversion and it just drives me crazy.’”

No, I’m thinking you were crazy well before the Tiger Woods scandal.

Update: An oldie but a goodie.

Mel Gibson was turned down for the role of James Bond as he is too short.

The 5ft 9ins star was keen to take on the iconic British spy role many years ago, but film producer Cubby Broccoli was not keen. He was adamant Bond had to be tall and intimidating, and didn’t think Gibson was imposing enough.

“At one point Mel Gibson wanted to play Bond and Cubby was against it,” says Tom Mankiewicz, who wrote Live And Let Die and The Man With The Golden Gun.

“Cubby first of all had a thing about tall people. Bond had to be tall. And so Mel Gibson was too short. But he was a big star.”

Would Mel Gibson have made a good Bond? If not, who would have been better? Have your say below.

Start of sidebar. Skip to end of sidebar.

End of sidebar. Return to start of sidebar.

Bosses at film studio United Artists were so keen to get Gibson on board they asked Mankiewicz to do everything in his power to persuade Broccoli, but he would not budge.

Mankiewicz recalled: “Somebody at United Artists said to me, ‘Call him and tell him Mel Gibson would be great.’
And Cubby said, ‘I don’t want to make a Mel Gibson movie, I want to make a James Bond movie.’ ”

Other stars to have played the suave spy include Timothy Dalton, who is 6ft 2ins, 6ft 1ins Pierce Brosnan and Sir Sean Connery who measures 6ft 2ins.

I am going to surprise everyone and place my support behind Mel Gibson as James Bond. Here’s my top 5 reasons for doing so.

The Top 5 Reasons Why Mel Gibson Would Not Make Such a Bad James Bond

5. He already enjoys a strong drink

4. Octo-Mel could handle Octopussy

3. He already knows how to knock up young Russian women

2. He wouldn’t be the first anti-Semitic Australian in the role

1. It is not such a stretch to imagine Bond referring to a woman as “Sugartits”

British actress Vanessa Redgrave – a well-known critic of Israel – has joined the controversy surrounding the Toronto Film Festival’s decision to showcase Tel Aviv, according to the Jewish Chronicle.

Only this time, she is on Israel’s side.

In a letter to the New York Review of Books co-signed by artist Julian Schnabel and playwright Martin Sherman, Redgrave defends the festival’s choice to spotlight Tel Aviv and denounces those who have called for a boycott.

“We oppose the current Israeli government, but it is a government,” Redgrave and her co-signatories wrote in their letter, “Freely elected. Not a regime. Words matter.”

Redgrave and her co-signatories went on to say in their letter that the films being showcase in Toronto deserved applause and encouragment, precisely because they were created by Israeli troubled by their own government’s actions:

“Thousands of Palestinians have died through the years because the Israeli government, military, and part of the population fervently believe that the Arab states and, indeed, much of the world do not want Israel to exist.

“How then are we halting this never-ending cycle of violence by promoting the very fears that cause it?

“Many citizens of Tel Aviv are particularly aware of the situation of the Palestinians and are concerned about their government’s policies and their country’s future. And none more so than the Tel Aviv creative community. This is exemplified by Israeli films that criticize their government’s behavior.

“These citizens of Tel Aviv and their organizations and their cultural outlets should be applauded and encouraged.

“We do not agree that this involvement is a reason to shun or protest, picket or boycott, or ban people who are expressing thoughts and confronting grief that, ironically, many of the protesters share.”

Artists who called for a boycott included John Grayson, Danny Glover and David Byrne and Jane Fonda – though Fonda later retracted her decision. Meanwhile, a number of Hollywood Jews, including Jerry Seinfeld, Sacha Baron Cohen and Natalie Portman, issued a counter statement in defense of the festival’s decision.

Meanwhile, here is Redgrave’s infamous “Zionist hoodlum” Oscar speech of 1978.

Notice who is the first person to appear in the footage.

That was Jane Fonda, who supported the Toronto Film Festival protest.

Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)

10:40PM: Israel is considering recalling recalling its ambassador to Stockholm in light of Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt’s remarks in support of the Goldstone report.

Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon called to re-examine Israel’s relations with Sweden.

“It is a shame that a person who refused to respond to the blood libel against Israel has come out in praise of this unprofessional report,” Ayalon told Ynet Thursday evening

5:48PM: A 15-year-old Arab boy has been killed after shots were fired at a school bus traveling between two Israeli-Arab villages. Police are looking into the possibility that the shooting revolved around a dispute between students.

5:32PM: Hamas claims to be preparing legal responses to the report’s findings of Hamas war crimes.

And as you can see, they feel confident they can rely on the Goldstone report itself, as well as previous Human Rights Watch findings, to validate their position.

Islamic Hamas movement started preparing “legal responses” to its accusations in a UN fact-finding mission’s report about Israel’s last winter war in the Gaza Strip, officials said on Thursday.

The report by South African Justice Richard Goldstone “was not built on true information regarding Hamas” which controls Gaza, said Mushier al-Massri, a Hamas lawmaker.

The 575-page report accused Israel of committing war crimes during its December 27 to January 18 war and also said that Hamas’ rocket attacks on southern Israel communities violated laws of war.

Al-Massri told Xinhua that a team of legal experts and other leaders from Hamas is working “to present clarifications to Goldstone’s committee because its members have not had complete information.”

Mahmoud Zahar, a senior Hamas leader and a member of the legal committee, told reporters that “the committee “will send its answers to the judge Goldstone as soon as they are ready.”

“The committee will put evidences that prove the opposite to Hamas’ and the resistance factions’ accusations,” Zahar said.

He added that the Hamas experts “will base their evidences on other international reports by rights groups, such Human Rights Watch (HRW) which denied that Hamas militants have used civilians as human shields.”

Zahar was referring to the New York-based rights organization which in March said that there was no evidence of Hamas using human shields in the vicinity at the time of Israeli attacks in various parts of Gaza (a report researched and written by Human Rights Watch staff Marc Garlasco, later revealed to have an unhealthy Nazi memorabilia fetish, for which he is unrepentant – ed.) In a later report, HRW has clearly said that Hamas’ rocket attacks on Israel amounted to war crimes.

Meanwhile, Zahar referred to the Israeli bombing of a UN school in Jabaliya refugee camp, defending his movement. From the 35 people who were killed on Jan. 6 attack on al-Fakhoura school, “there was no militant and no fighter was registered” among the casualties. “If Hamas was using the residents as shields, militants would have been killed in that attack.” (Regarding this claim, see here -ed).

Though the Goldstone report does not exclude Israeli allegations that the army fired at the school, which was sheltering about 1,300 people, in response to Palestinian rocket attacks form the area, it considered “the credibility of Israel’s position damaged by the series of inconsistencies, contradictions and factual inaccuracies in the statements justifying the attack.”

4:35PM: Another casualty of Israel’s “blockade” on Gaza: zebra-loving children!

Palestinian boys ride dyed donkeys at Marah Land zoo in Gaza City October 8, 2009. Two white donkeys dyed with black stripes delighted Palestinian kids at a small Gaza zoo on Thursday who had never seen a zebra in the flesh. A genuine zebra would have been too expensive to bring into Israel-blockaded Gaza via the smuggling tunnels under the border with Egypt, said zoo owner Mohammed Bargouthi. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem (GAZA SOCIETY ENVIRONMENT ANIMALS)

Hey, if the palestinians can fool the world into believing there really was such a thing as a Palestinian nation, they are certainly capable of fooling children into believing a donkey with painted stripes is a zebra.

4:22PM: Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt said he supports the Goldstone report which claims Israel committed war crimes during Operation Cast lead, and says we erred in not cooperating with the probe.

Perhaps he thinks if we investigate, the organ harvesting claims will be proven true.

1:55PM: Today’s Jerusalem Post caption blooper.

Either that, or he’s found G-d.

9:44AM: A US official has said President Barack Obama is impatient with the current situation (regarding the “peace process”) and expects the sides to move forward.

With all due respect to the President, I would rather we did not rush into anything, especially when lives are at stake, and especially considering we have been so badly burned by all the concessions we have already made.

8:00AM: Quote of the day:

“Building the road to the establishment of an independent state will not be furnished with flowers.”

- Palestinian “Prime Minister” Salam Fayyad

If the palestinians have their way, it might just be furnished with candies.

7:53AM: Highlights from yesterday’s Abbas shoe toss.

7:46AM: The UN Security Council yesterday rejected Libya’s request to hold an emergency session on the Goldstone Report, but did decide to bring forward a scheduled monthly meeting on the Middle East from October 20th to the 14th.

******************************************************************************************

Want to learn how to shoot with top Israeli anti-terror experts? Click here for more details.

******************************************************************************************

“We have no grand expectations out of one meeting,” said White House spokesman Robert Gibbs Monday, saying only that it would be an important way to continue “the hard work, day-to-day diplomacy that has to be done to seek a lasting peace.”

Meanwhile, Israeli sources say the meeting will just be a photo opportunity.

“The meeting will not inaugurate [renewed] negotiations and will not involve any significant details,” the sources said. “The differences on the issue of the settlements and the framework of the talks remain deep.”

Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)

10:48PM: Here is something I didn’t notice when I originally posted about the Toronto Film festival protest and counter protest.

Left, right or center, there’s two things nearly everybody in Hollywood agrees on: There’s no disease that can’t be cured by raising enough money and the state of Israel deserves unabashed support.

These days, sympathy for Israel puts the American entertainment industry at odds with much of the European film and academic communities. In those circles, vehement criticism of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians and boycotts of Israeli scholars and artists have become almost fashionable. (In cinematic London, Hamas militants are the new baby seals.) Hollywood has mostly shrugged all this off, until this week, when it decided that an outbreak of anti-Israeli agitation in Toronto was bringing things a little too close to home.

Canadian documentary filmmaker John Greyson pulled his latest movie from this week’s Toronto International Film Festival because he said the event’s sister-city relationship with Tel Aviv was an implicit endorsement of “the smiling face of Israeli apartheid.”

A variety of entertainers — including David Byrne, Julie Christie, Ken Loach, Jane Fonda, Viggo Mortensen and Wallace Shawn — published a letter alleging that Toronto had become an agent of the “Israeli propaganda machine.”

Some people in Hollywood took these initiatives not as a disagreement with Israeli government policies but as an attempt to isolate and ostracize the Jewish state’s vibrant, diverse and independent film community. (If there really is a dirty word in Hollywood, it’s “blacklist.”)

So former CAA agent Dan Adler, acting under the sponsorship of Los Angeles’ Jewish Federation and United Jewish Appeal of Toronto, put together a counter ad that denounced the boycott demands in Thursday’s trades.

“We all spent a lot of time talking about the original protest letter, in the sense that it seemed to be going after the wrong target by attacking Israel and its film artists,” Adler told The Times’ Patrick Goldstein on Wednesday night. “When I sat down at my computer and started asking for people to sign on, all I got was passion and enthusiasm. Everyone said, ‘I’m in,’ and then, even better, added, ‘Can I get you someone else?’ ”

The signatories do read like a who’s who of Hollywood’s elite with a cast that runs from the executive suites to the sound stages and cuts across generations. Among those who signed on are Jerry Seinfeld, Seth Rogen, Robert Duvall, Halle Berry, Sacha Baron Cohen, Lisa Kudrow, Lenny Kravitz, Ed Zwick, Jason Alexander, Chazz Palminteri and David Cronenberg, as well as A-list producers and executives Ron Meyer, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Sherry Lansing, Neal Moritz, Jonathan Glickman, Nina Jacobson, Darren Star, Nathan Kahane and Gail Berman.

(There’s even a precedent-setting credit for writer-director Michael Tolkin, who “polished” the ad’s text. Now, there’s something the Writers Guild would like to see catch on.)

In a phone interview, former Paramount head Lansing said she and her husband, director William Friedkin, were upset that the Israeli filmmakers had been singled out for retribution, especially as the community starts the Jewish new year and High Holy Days.

“These are independent filmmakers who are not working as the propaganda machine of the state of Israel,” Lansing said. “It’s dangerous to — in any way — turn the film festival into a political event. We do not want to return to the days of blacklisting.”

Media mogul Haim Saban was blunt in his assessment. “The world always had anti-Semites,” he said in an e-mail exchange. “It has now and always will, but the people of Israel always have, and always will live and prosper. Sorry Jew haters. You lose.”

Halle Berry? Wow, talk about repentance.

8:25PM: Picture of the day, Happy Campers edition

Obama: Now shake hands, even if it kills you!

8:18PM: Regarding the Israeli Arab who tried to run a checkpoint and then run over a soldier, his family is predictably blaming the targets of their son’s actions.

Tawil’s family members admonished what they called the IDF’s “trigger-happy” conduct on the part of Israeli security forces when Arabs are involved.

The real problem was Tawil’s “accelerator-happy” conduct.

Meanwhile, Reuters has released a number of pictures of Tawil’s grieving family. Needless to say, there are no pictures of the injured soldier.

7:50PM: I always enjoy listening to former Israeli ambassador to the UN Dan Gillerman. Here he is talking about a possible strike on Iran.

7:28PM: According to the Washington Times, a number of North African and Persian Gulf states have promised to give Israeli airliners flyover rights in their airspace, as well as other concessions, if Israel freezes “settlement” construction.

And while the Jerusalem Post report mentions commercial airliners and is accompanied by a picture of an El Al plane, I’m guessing this is related to a possible Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Which means the Arab states are offering to allow us to protect them if we stop building Jewish homes in Judea and Samaria.

5:28PM: Interesting Newsweek profile of Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat.

4:50PM: Here is Goldstone’s wholly unsatisfying response to an email in which he was asked why he did not invite Colonel Richard Kemp to give evidence.

From: “rjgoldstone…
To: “maurice@…” <maurice@…>
Date: Mon, 21 Sep 2009 22:34:49 +0200
Subject: RE: Shana Tova

..I have been under huge pressure with regard not only to the reportbut my teaching and other commitments. I am not in a position to respond in detail to the many e-mails I have been receiving. I would say, however that I will make inquries and support all the submissions to the Fact Finding Mission being accessible on the web. I would also mention that there was no reliance on Col. Kemp mainly because in our Report we did not deal with the issues he raised regarding the problems of conducting military operations in civilian areas and second-guessing decisions made by soldiers and their commanding officers “in the fog of war”. We avoided having to do so in the incidents we decided to investigate.
Warm regards,
Richard Goldstone

4:35PM: Honest Reporting takes on Liam Bartlett’s biased 60 Minutes story, as I did yesterday.

4:28PM: Here is Richard Goldstone at his obstinate best during an interview with Channel 2’s Yonit Levy (who, I had never realized before, has great English).

What was interesting to me was how even Levy seemed to be gunning for Goldstone, given she was accused of emphathizing with the enemy during Operation Cast Lead. In any event, she missed a good opportunity to ask the real questions of Goldstone, and not just the standard ones to which he already had boilerplate answers. For instance, I would love to have seen her take a few specific examples from the report and then bring the video and photographic evidence rebutting them – such as the report’s statement that “The Mission found no evidence that members of Palestinian armed groups engaged in combat in civilian dress” (493).

1:18PM: Fossil fool Jimmy Carter has used his winning of an award to attack Israel for “settlement” building.

“As [US] President Barack Obama has made clear, the key factor that prevents peace is the continuing building of Israeli settlements in Palestine, driven by a determined minority of Israelis who desire to occupy and colonize east Jerusalem and the West Bank,” Carter said.

Carter, a Nobel Peace laureate, spoke to a crowd of 6,500 as he and former first lady Rosalynn Carter received an award from James Madison University’s Mahatma Gandhi Center for Global Nonviolence.

Carter said he is convinced that withdrawal of Israeli forces from Arab territories will dramatically reduce any threats to Israel.

“All 22 Arab countries have offered diplomatic recognition and full trade and commerce if Israel will withdraw from occupied territories,” he said.

And withdrawal is necessary, Carter said.

“The alternative to two states is one nation in the same area, within which Arabs will soon comprise a clear majority,” he said. “This will mean the end of a Jewish state or else an apartheid system within which Palestinians are dominated and deprived of equal rights.”

Observations:

• How ironic that Carter should receive an award from James Madison University’s Mahatma Gandhi Center for Global Nonviolence, while he is in bed with the likes of Hamas and does not even mention terrorism as the key factor that prevents peace (instead focusing on “settlements”)
• If Carter is so convinced that our withdrawal of Israeli forces from territories we captured in the Six Day War “will dramatically reduce any threats to Israel” since “All 22 Arab countries have offered diplomatic recognition and full trade and commerce if Israel will withdraw from occupied territories,” how does he explain all the times before we captured this territory that the Arab states tried to destroy us? How does he explain Iran’s insistence that they will wipe us off the map? What about the Hamas charter?
• Withdrawal was necessary…a few seconds before Carter was conceived.

12:10PM: An Israeli Arab has been killed after refusing to stop his vehicle for inspection at a checkpoint, and then hitting a soldier with his vehicle.

An initial investigation into the incident revealed that the man, who arrived at the checkpoint at around 6 am, did not stop his vehicle when he was ordered by the soldiers to do so. The Arab-Israeli continued through the checkpoint, and an IDF jeep chased him to a nearby gas station. A soldier then stepped out of the jeep and was hit by the vehicle while attempting to approach the driver. Another soldier fired warning shots in the air and then opened fire at the driver.

The Toronto Film Festival opened on Thursday with an outcry against the fest’s City to City program, which spotlights Tel Aviv this year. Some prominent names in the industry — including Harry Belafonte, Jane Fonda, Julie Christie and Viggo Mortensen — are protesting the inclusion in light of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories. One filmmaker, John Greyson, withdrew his doc “Covered” in protest, although the group, led by writer Naomi Klein, says that their protest is not a boycott. Their letter is called “The Toronto Declaration — No Celebration of Occupation.”

I will admit he is a good actor, since watching him as Aragorn, one could be convinced he is a hero.

Meanwhile, some other celebrities have joined Jon Voight in speaking out against this anti-Israel protest.

TORONTO, Sept. 10 /CNW/ – Leading members of the film industry are speaking out against the group that opposes the Toronto International Film Festival’s spotlight on Tel Aviv. Judging films, they say, by their country of origin rather than the quality of the artistic product, is censorship. “I am against censorship in all its forms. The attempts to stop TIFF’s City to City spotlight on Tel Aviv amount to political censorship. I am against it.” David Cronenberg, Filmmaker.

“Empowered groups of people, deciding whose stories can, and cannot be told, does nothing but remind us of oppression that has no place in film-making.” Minnie Driver, Actor.

“The recent attack on Israeli films at TIFF is an attempt to politicize art. It has been demonstrated that in Israel, artists are free to create work, which often is critical of their own society. “Waltz with Bashir” was nominated for an Academy Award last year, despite its criticism of Israeli government policy. This recent attempt at political censorship smacks of anti-Semitic bigotry. Let’s keep political hatred out of the artistic community. Artists should treat each other with respect and support regardless of religion, colour, or nationality. You can have a great career and become a Hollywood legend – but there’s a spirit of humanity and caring for others – that we are honouring tonight and we thank you for coming to Toronto.” Norman Jewison, Filmaker.

“Israel is the only country in the Middle East where films are made without censorship of any sort. Films that are critical of the country, or some aspect of Israeli society, even the Israel Defense Forces, are made freely, without interference and with the State’s financial support. Witness last year’s Academy Award nominated Waltz With Bashir, which, despite its ferocious criticism of Israel, was largely funded by the Israel Film fund, a government agency. The attack on TIFF is a vile attempt by a gang of fashionable bigots to use coercive tactics to stifle voices they don’t like. These are not crusaders for justice. If they were, they would be alarmed by films from countries like Malaysia (where a woman gets lashes for wearing trousers), China and Iran where civil liberties are in short supply. But these vigilantes have no stomach for standing up to ruthless totalitarian regimes. They prefer to wage their crusade against a tried and tested target: Jews. Today, Jewish filmmakers from Tel Aviv get their turn. Their brand of political censorship is at odds with the most cherished values of Canadian society: Freedom of expression and freedom of choice. Bigotry like theirs has no place at the Toronto International Film Festival.” Robert Lantos, Filmmaker.

“Film is essentially about telling global stories – of exploring the complexities and contradictions of the human condition. Any attempt to silence that conversation – to hijack the festival for any political agenda in the end, only serves to silence artistic voices.” Ivan Reitman, Filmmaker.

“Back in the early 1970’s when I was performing at the newly founded Theatre Passe Muraille, Toronto Free Theatre and Factory Lab Theatre, Toronto police had what was called a “Morality Squad” to protect the population from unseemly material. I remember an early production by playwright Hrant Alianak was seen by the squad and deemed unworthy of public performance. They threatened that if the show wasn’t closed immediately, the next night anyone onstage could be arrested and charged – and so over fifty well-known Toronto artists like Pierre Berton sat on the stage the next night and dared the police to arrest them. That night effectively ended the power of Toronto’s Morality Squad. Censorship has reared its ugly head now and again, against all kinds of art, for all kinds of reasons. The reasons invariably suit only the agenda of the one doing the censoring – as if the same specious logic couldn’t be turned on them one day.” Saul Rubinek, Actor and Director.

“The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) has been hijacked by a group of so-called activists bent on furthering their agenda – to demonize Jews and to marginalize Israel, in order to bring about the destruction of the Jewish State. Clearly, they do not support a two state solution. By objecting to a “spotlight” on Tel Aviv they are saying that no place in Israel is legitimate. From their twisted perspective, everything that Israel does is – by definition – illegitimate and everything that the enemies of Israel do is – by definition – legitimate. This is anti-Semitism in its crudest form. Furthermore, they have chosen to align themselves with Gaza’s Hamas regime that stands for terrorism, fundamentalism and totalitarianism. It is a Holocaust denying organization that is against Jews, Christians, gays and women. There is no worse regime in the world and yet Naomi Klein, John Greyson and company have chosen to identify themselves with it. You can tell a person by their friends.” Simcha Jacobovici, Filmmaker.

Created here (found thanks to The ShadowLands)

Background here.