Late film director Youssef Chahine declared that Israel is "built on terrorism"

Praise has been heaped by the media on Youssef Chahine, the Egyptian film director who died on July 27, aged 82. The Guardian gushed:

"Youssef Chahine was the leading voice of the Arab cinema for over half a century – and as prolific, versatile and accomplished as many a more famous western auteur – but his abiding worth, inside Egypt and out, has been in his outspoken expression of the conscience of his country. He took on imperialism and fundamentalism alike, celebrated the liberty of body and soul, and offered himself warts and all as an emblem of his nation. Egypt's modern history is etched in his life's work."

Youssef Chahine, "the conscience of his country", was no innovator in one respect: he shared the rabid anti-American and anti-Israeli sentiment of the Arab world and with his films and pronouncements he contributed to its entrenchment. Blaming America and Israel is the unfortunate way the Arab world has devised to rationalise its failures.

In his film on 9/11, Chahine showed a suicide attack in Israel, laying the blame on U.S. foreign policy. The father of the Palestinian terrorist says:

"Israel fools everyone. Bush lets them decide who the terrorists are, but imagine your house or the olive trees your ancestors planted being bulldozed."

So what do you do if your olive trees are bulldozed to prevent terrorist activity you engage in? Simple. If you are a Palestinian, you blow yourself up and in the process kill as many innocent people as possible. Your dad praises you and an acclaimed film director makes a film about you, thus explaining, if not justifying, a major terrorist attack that left 3,000 people dead.

Guysen News quotes Chahine's comments on 9/11:

"Bush had the cheeck to tell who is a terrorist. But who is he to speak? He helps Israel which is a country built on terrorism. The occupation of Palestine is violent and it necessarily triggers resistance."
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