Lebanon’s authorities have ordered a ban on the movie “The Post” because of director Steven Spielberg’s associations with Israel, amid an intensifying climate of censorship in what has historically been one of the Arab world’s freer countries.
The General Security Directorate’s censorship committee decided to ban the film, which was due to open in Lebanon on January 18, in accordance with laws obliging Lebanon to enforce the Arab League’s boycott of Israel, directorate spokesman General Nabil Hanoun said on Monday.
Spielberg, who is Jewish, was placed on the Arab League blacklist of sanctioned individuals after his foundation gave a $1M donation to relief efforts in Israel during its 2006 war with Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement. Most of Spielberg’s subsequent films have, however, been shown in Lebanon without problems — though his name was blacked out from the poster advertising “The Adventures of Tintin”.
Free-speech advocates in Lebanon noted the irony of banning a movie whose plot promotes press freedoms. “The Post,” starring Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks, tells the story of the then-Washington Post Publisher Katharine Graham’s decision to defy attempts by the U.S. government to suppress reporting of the Pentagon Papers.
“Why is The Post on the chopping block?” Gino Raidy of the March advocacy group asked. “Is it because it idolises journalists who stand up to the powers that be when they do wrong, and choose truth and justice over government bullying?
This latest prohibition illustrates what appears to be a growing appetite on the part of the Lebanese authorities for implementing the country’s often arbitrary censorship laws, and especially those pertaining to Israel.
The action movie “Wonder Woman ” was refused permission to be shown last year because the lead actress, Gal Gadot, is an Israeli citizen who had served in the Israeli army. In the past week the country has been gripped by the outcry directed toward world-renowned Lebanese fashion designer Elie Saab after she posted a photograph on her Instagram account showing Gadot wearing one of her dresses. Saab has since deleted the photo.
Lebanon is one of the few countries in the Arab world still vigorously boycotting Israel, Raidy said. “Lebanon is the only one doing it,” he wrote, “and not even close to consistently, calling to question the point of these pointless bans, and their negative effects on the state of arts and culture in the tiny country.”
