Defiance Movie Column - Iowa City Press-Citizen January 25, 2009

"Defiance" is simultaneously a timely movie and an important addition to the array of major motion pictures that tell the story of the Holocaust. Unlike most Holocaust movies before it, "Defiance" challenges the common view of the Jewish Holocaust victim as a weak and ineffectual person reduced to seeking out righteous gentiles for protection.

The Bielski partisans featured in "Defiance" created a Jerusalem in the forest of Belorussia. Without this Jewish partisan group, Jewish escapees from various ghettos and labor camps would have found no quarter. Anti-Semitism was common even among the enemies of the Nazis. The Bielski partisans created a refuge when no other refuge existed for Jews.

Based on the eponymous book by Nechama Tec, the movie does take some license with the facts. Like many movies, it simplifies the personalities and moral dilemmas to tell a cleaner story. In fact, the Bielski Jews were faced with far more complex personalities and more ambiguous moral dilemmas than was presented in the movie. But, the film presents the issues from the book with far greater color than is possible in print. The movie gives an idea of the character of a people who would survive the Holocaust and go on to help create the permanent refuge for Jews -- Israel. Indeed, though not noted by the movie, Tuvia and Zus Bielski sought refuge in British Palestine after World War II. Before finally settling in the U.S., they helped fight for Israeli independence.

In light of recent events, some have argued that Jews have become an inversion of this past. Reminiscent of an earlier form of anti-Semitism, these people argue that the position of Palestinian Arabs have superseded the position of the Jews. Though this argument has some superficial appeal, it only is compelling when one ignores the facts of the past and the present.

As the book notes, Tuvia Bielski "would repeat over and over that it was better to save one Jew than to kill 20 Germans." Though known for the fact that they fought, these Jews never abandoned the commitment to saving life over pursuing revenge or justice. Indeed, most of the Bielski Jews who fought already had been pressed into forced labor, witnessed mass murder, witnessed the murder of their families and knew of the Nazis' genocidal plans before they took up arms.

By contrast, the Hamas leadership in Gaza has adopted the reverse view. It operates from hospitals and fires rockets from schools. Hamas behaves generally in a manner that supports the view that it is worth the lives of more than twenty Palestinian Arab civilians to kill even a single Jew. It prefers a "martyred" child to a living one. Add that Hamas' covenant is explicitly anti-Semitic -- spewing the worst anti-Jewish rhetoric both from Christian and Islamic history -- and it is clear its intent and actions are the moral opposite of those of the Bielski Jews.

If anything, Hamas is comparable in intent and action, though not power, to the Nazis.

Perhaps even more insidious than the implication that Palestinian Arabs have supplanted the Jews is the implication that Jews have supplanted the Nazis. Such obscene comparisons are hardly worth addressing. Put simply, Israel has extended the consideration Tuvia Bielski gave to life far beyond Bielski's capabilities. Israel gives every warning and seeks every tactical adjustment possible to save the lives of Palestinian Arabs as well as Israeli Jews.

Even so, none of this diminishes the real suffering of Palestinian Arabs. They suffer tremendously. But, where the Jews were exterminated in places secured by the Germans, Palestinian Arabs suffer because they are drawn into the warfare by the militants who operate among them.

Like the Bielski Jews, Israel almost certainly errs from time-to-time when it faces ambiguous moral dilemmas. But, also like the Bielskis, Israel seeks to provide a refuge to Jews who have no other refuge. And it does so in a manner that places the value of life, Jewish or not, above other values.

Writers' Group member James Eaves-Johnson blogs often at www.press-citizen.com.