Watch the film the Jewish Defense League didn't want you to see

Vanessa Redgrave's lost 1977 film "The Palestinian" resurfaces online.

A still from “The Palestinian” (1977).

Back in August I wrote an article for subscribers about leftist actress Vanessa Redgrave’s famously anti-Zionist speech at the 1978 Oscar awards ceremony.

The far-right Zionist thugs of the Jewish Defense League had put a price on Redgrave’s head and picketed the Oscars. Redgrave was a supporter of the Palestinian cause.

At the ceremony, she thanked Academy members for refusing to bow to the dictates of the “Zionist hoodlums” and award her the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.

How one actress faced down the Zionist hoodlums in Hollywood

In response, the actress was booed, denounced from the stage by one of the hosts and even blacklisted by Hollywood for many years after.

The Jewish Defense League’s bombing campaigns would go on the earn it a terrorist designation even by the standards of the FBI (who know a thing or two about terrorism, having carried it out against the Black Panthers, the American Indian Movement and other revolutionary groups in America for many years).

The immediate trigger for the JDL’s hatred of Redgrave was a film she had made in 1977, The Palestinian. While researching that article, I learned that not only did Redgrave appear in and produce that movie, but she had actually sold two houses in London in order to fund it.

Even without the JDL attacks — which included the bombing of a Los Angeles theatre which had been set to screen the film — it cannot have been much of a money spinner.

I looked all over YouTube, in vain, for a copy of the film at the time. But now, finally, it has emerged online.

You can watch it in full below. It’s a good opportunity to reflect on the history of the lost Palestinian revolution in South Lebanon.