The director of Oscar-nominated documentary The Gatekeepers says he believes American Jews hold Israel on too high of a pedestal - something he believes could prove detrimental to the crisis-torn Middle Eastern country.
Israeli filmmaker Dror Moreh told The Huff Post that the Jewish community in the United States view Israel as a "safe haven" nearly seven decades after the Holocaust and that American Jews are willing to support Israel despite the potential of becoming what he called an Apartheid state.
Moreh's acclaimed non-fiction feature spotlights six retired directors of Israel's domestic spy agency, Shin Bet, exposing the organization's targeted killings behind the Jewish state's ongoing occupation of the Palestinian territories. The film has caused waves in both the Israel and the U.S. about the spy agency's tactics.
"There is something that I felt while I am here in America, that most of the majority of the Jewish population here are cherishing Israel," Moreh told the Huff Post, adding that that strict adherence has lead many in the U.S. to the "wrong conclusion that they have to support Israel no matter what." He said that orthodoxy is in fact, "damaging to the state of Israel."
"They don't understand that we are going towards an Apartheid country," said Moreh. "By not criticizing it, by accepting everything Israel does politically and especially towards the conflict, they are damaging their own goal, to protect the state of Israel as a safe haven for them."
Sony Pictures Classics opens The Gatekeepers in the U.S. beginning Friday, February 1st.
[Source: Huffington Post]