Ayoon Wa Azan (Shame On Levy Before Anyone Else)

On the 17th of this month, I wrote about the arrest made against the international director Roman Polanski in Switzerland, on charges of raping a young girl; at the end of the month, I return to this issue for the same reason that I wrote about it in the first place, which is the fact that there are people out there who are actually defending him despite the horrid nature of his crime.

What happened is that in the year 1977, when the director was forty four, he lured a thirteen year old girl and gave her drugs and champagne, then raped her in a horrible way that I cannot come to describe in our newspaper. He then fled California to Europe before being sentenced in the U.S, and remained a fugitive for 32 years until he was recently arrested.

In the recent months, I also wrote about the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy, who, along with the other Holocaust exploiters such as Elie Wiesel, launched a campaign against the Egyptian Culture Minister Farouk Hosni, the candidate for the post of the Director-General of UNESCO. Along with a gang of Israeli apologists, Levy was spreading the lie that claims that Hosni was a book burner, although the latter has never burnt a book in his life, and although it is impossible for him to ever perpetrate something of the sort. Levy had also claimed earlier in a conference that the Arabs took part in the Nazi Holocaust, in reference to Haj Amin al-Husseini whose only sin is having visited Germany in 1941, before anyone had even heard about the holocaust, and prior to the “final solution”. Al-Husseini had indeed met with Hitler, but only on the basis of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”, since he was seeking to end the British colonial rule in Palestine, which then ended with the Jews colonizing Palestine.

In any case, the roads of both Polanski and Levy have crossed, as the latter was defending the former in a manner that goes beyond the fact they are both French Jew, and is still defending him along with a number of filmmakers, thinkers, and intellectuals like him despite the repulsive nature of Polanski’s crime.

I had previously mentioned Levy’s arrogant defence of the sexual monster in my previous article, and return today to the same despicable philosopher who have outdone himself in his new article defending Polanski.

This article was entitled “For Roman Polanski”, and was published by the website of the distinguished Huntington Post on the 27th of this month, and remained posted online over a couple of days. Levy said that time is passing, while Polanski is still in prison. He then talks about the weekly visits the latter receives from his wife and two children in prison, and how his supporters are starting to lose hope about his release and started to have doubts since the French Culture Minister was convinced that he spoke too hastily in defence of Polanski. (I want to pause here to say that Minister Frederic Mitterrand had confessed in his memoirs published in 2005 that he had paid for sex with boys in Thailand, or that in other words, he is at the same moral level as Polanski’s.)

After that, Levy continues his very arrogant defence of Polanski, which I think condemns Levy further, and says that it is shameful to throw a 76-year-old man into prison for unlawful sex committed 32 years ago. But I want to ask here, why is it shameful? Such a terrible crime cannot be dropped due to lapse of time. He then says that there are those in Europe who can assault an old lady, torture and mutilate others, and still be reassured that their violent crimes will be commuted after 10 or 15 years. While I do not understand the logic behind this defence approach, I still want to use it against both the philosopher and the director: Justice in fact would require that Polanski goes into prison for years, before being pardoned for good behaviour, for instance. In any case, one crime should never justify committing another.

Levy then adds that there are those who constantly attack America, and yet, those individuals chose to remain silent when Polanski was arrested. For the record, I am one of those, as I attack a single problem in the U.S foreign policy which is its support of a fascist occupation state that murders women and children, while I support the United States against the terrorism of al-Qaeda, for instance; as such, I do not find anything wrong at all in arresting a fugitive sexual monster.

Levy began each paragraph of his article by saying shame this, and shame that, while reproaching many prominent figures and personalities around the world just because they dared demand for justice. He then retains his most heinous argument in defence of Polanski until the very end of his article, when he says that it is shameful, that we can't, when we talk about Polanski’s life, evoke his childhood in the ghetto, the death of his mother in Auschwitz, the murder of his young spouse, eviscerated along with the young child she was carrying (in reference to the Charles Manson gang’s murder of his wife, actress Sharon Tate).

Shame on Levy here before anyone else, as he insults the memory of the Holocaust by rendering it an excuse for an ugly rape whose details are appalling; if we should accept his logic, then we should give the Holocaust survivors a license to rape along with immunity from prosecution.

I ask the reader here to ponder the logic used by Levy to defend the confessed rapist Roman Polanski, because it is the same logic that he uses to defend the rapist crime state that robbed Palestine, and which has murdered and forcefully displaced its people, and still does.