Stuart Jeffries, a feature writer for The Guardian, recently reviewed One Day in October, a disturbing documentary about the Hamas massacre at Kibbutz Be’eri. He gave it four out of five stars, not a bad rating at all. And – who knows – he might have given it five had it not been for one minor quibble.
You see, Jeffries feels that the documentary – which includes footage from the day of the massacre, including shots of terrorists live streaming their depraved acts – demonizes the terrorists.
Go figure.
I guess Jeffries didn’t consider that One Day in October “does a good job of demonising Gazans, first as testosterone-crazed Hamas killers, later as shameless civilian looters” because their own actions, as accurately portrayed in the documentary including by their very own footage, show them to be exactly this.
Just like Jeffries own piece makes him comes across as a morally depraved cretin.
Perhaps someone needs to explain to Jeffries the idea behind documentaries as representing true events and not as a cinematic experience; that it was not possible to hire the likes of Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt to depict Hamas “freedom fighters” in a way perhaps more to his liking.
I mean, can you imagine a reviewer criticizing a documentary about Nazi Germany on the basis that it demonized the Nazis?
If this wasn’t all bad enough, Jeffries also manages to use Hamas’ Health Ministry of Gaza when quoting the number of Gazans supposedly killed. Needless to say, he doesn’t distinguish between civilians (including ‘shameless civilian looters’) and ‘testosterone-crazed Hamas killers.’
Since the understandable backlash to this review, the Guardian have not apologized, but simply removed it “pending review”:
One hopes the review is done more professionally than Jeffries.’