Tel-Chai Nation

Nadav Lapid is an Israeli moviemaker who's now caused an entirely unnecessary outrage after he attacked an Indian film about the history of the jihadists who caused tragedy in Kashmir around 1989:

Few films have raised a storm as strong as The Kashmir Files in recent times. A film made nearly thirty years after the original events that unfolded in Kashmir since 1989 has gained attention of everyone alike for its provocative, bold and in your face portrayal of the plight of Kashmiri Hindus. India’s youngsters have been shocked by the film with many resorting to the Internet to check if the gory details are indeed true, only to learn that all this took place with real people in real time in the place known as heaven on earth — Kashmir.

While we have a large section of people who want to know and understand how an entire community was tortured, raped and threatened to leave the Valley because of their religion with just three choices facing them — Ralib, Galib, Chalib (Convert, Die or Leave) — we have a huge army of Left-Islamists who are even going to the extent of calling this film a piece of propaganda. The latest one to do this is an Israeli filmmaker, Nadav Lapid who used the platform of IFFI, a film festival organised by the government of India to call this movie a “vulgar propaganda”.

The ambassador of Israel to India immediately got into a firefighting mode by posting a Twitter thread slamming Lapid’s views but the filmmaker remained unapologetic. He is rather proud of calling a film made on the plight of Kashmiri Hindus as propagandistic. In his defence, he said that the film justifies the policy of the Indian government in Kashmir and has “fascist features”. This is the first time in the history of a genocide being documented that a film is being called fascist!

What exactly are the compulsions of Nadav Lapid and his fellow leftists and Islamists to declare this film as propaganda? Well, the Kashmir conflict is a long drawn one where this tribe of Left-Islamists masquerading as intellectuals typically picks the Indian state as the perpetrator and the Muslim-majority population of Kashmir as the victim. In their hustle to call the Indian state as fascist and a budding Hindutva project, they forget that the Valley had a Muslim majority before 1989 as well and the state’s iron-fisted response was to the militancy that arose in Kashmir and not to the average Kashmiri people. The militancy which actually was an elaborate terror conspiracy made the Kashmiri Hindus its first victim. The Islamists with clear logistical support from the Pakistani deep state terrorised an entire population that was living in Kashmir for many centuries and forced them to leave the Valley.

What Lapid did was despicable, and is also an insult to the Jews who were massacred in Hebron in the early 1920s. By the twisted logic he follows, anybody who dares to make a film about that historical tragedy is an Islamophobic criminal as well. He should be absolutely ashamed of himself, and nobody should watch his film productions after the damage he's caused.

This columnist says:

While both Israel and India are working to further their common interests in the fight against international terrorism, Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid’s words could have created a rift between the two countries.

[...] It all came to a head when India’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting invited Paris-based Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid to be chair of the jury at the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in Goa.

It is here that Lapid lashed out at an award-winning box office hit in India, The Kashmir Files, which is the story of the expulsion of nearly 500,000 Hindus from their aboriginal homeland of Kashmir by Pakistan-armed terrorist jihadis who had been withdrawn from war-torn Afghanistan and were on the loose in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and northern Pakistan.

As if the expulsion from their ancestral homeland was not tragic enough, in stepped 47-year-old Lapid, who made a scathing attack on the film produced by director Vivek Agnihotri, who began his research work four years before the film was screened in March 2022.

Lapid slammed The Kashmir Files during his closing speech at the International Film Festival of India in Goa. As the jury head for this year’s IFFI edition, he questioned the screening of the film in the competition. Not stopping there, he called it “disturbing” and “vulgar.” He even called it “propaganda.”

Producer Agnihotri’s film was made after research that included interviews with 700 people from the Hindu community hailing from Kashmir, living across India and across the world.

The Hindustan Times quoted Lapid in a report: “All of us (the jurists) were disturbed and shocked by the The Kashmir Files.”

Lapid’s remarks were immediately repudiated by Israel’s ambassador in New Delhi, who asked the woke film critic to apologize to his hosts and be ashamed of himself.

[...] Recalling the tragedy of the 1990s that was mocked by Lapid, Tikkoo told me:

“I was a 12 years old when we, Kashmiri Pandits, were targeted by Pakistan-sponsored Islamist terrorists in Kashmir in 1990. I remember family members talking about Pakistani, Afghan and other foreign mercenaries infiltrating Kashmir. But already in 1989, I saw Kalashnikov carrying Kashmiri Muslim men on the streets of Kashmir, attacking civilians and Indian security forces. The Islamists selectively killed our relatives, friends and acquaintances, destroyed our livelihood and asked us to leave our homes and land. Most of the community was poor and middle class. So most of us fled to Jammu, the Hindu-dominated southern part of Jammu & Kashmir. Part of my family lived in a refugee camp set up by the clueless government in New Delhi, and part of my family lived in rented hovels in poor neighbourhoods. We struggled to survive for over a decade. Many died in destitution and displacement.”

The fact the Muslim majority in Kashmir expelled nearly half a million Kashmiri Hindus should serve as a notice to the entire world that there is more to it than meets the eye when we tolerate the hidden agenda of some under cover of ‘multiculturalism,’ or when we cower as cowards at the threat of being labelled ‘Islamophobic.’

What happened over 3 decades ago was repulsive, and again, Lapid should apologize for his assault on the movie when he didn't have to say anything, period. The embarrassment he's caused is bound to cause a ripple effect we could all do without.

Labels: Afghanistan, dhimmitude, India, islam, Israel, jihad, misogyny, Moonbattery, pakistan, sexual violence, showbiz, terrorism