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A Jewish lawyer's award-winning documentary argues that Palestinians, by encouraging suicide bombing, are abusing their own children's rights.
Not many public events at Yeshiva University's Cardozo Law School require extra security. Even fewer are sold out. And none, by most accounts, cause the kind of raucous display of ire that attended a recent screening of the film "The Making of A Martyr."
The documentary, produced and directed by former Cardozo law student Brooke Goldstein, concerns the calculated decision by the Palestinian Authority, militant groups and state-run television to train child suicide bombers.
While Goldstein looks for distributors, the film has slowly been garnering awards, such as the Audience Choice Award for Best Film at the United Nations Documentary Film Festival last spring. Meanwhile, public intellectuals like Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz have called the film "brilliant," while others - like Hamid Dabashi, a professor of Iranian studies at Columbia - have called it disingenuous.
At a recent screening of the film at Cardozo's Moot Court Room, which seats nearly 300, both Dabashi and Dershowitz were invited to discuss the film as part of a post-screening panel, which also included the filmmaker.
Before any of the panelists could make their points, an elderly man in the front row jumped out of his seat. "This is a piece of propaganda against the Palestinians!" he shouted. A woman next to him pleaded for him to stay and let the guests speak. He did, but the mood was set.
Then it was Goldstein's turn. She...