Finally, how does it possibly help the candidacy of Obama, a man who has missed no opportunity all year to assert his support for Israel and his disdain for Islamist terrorists, to claim that giving a documentary about Islamism a wide audience is hurtful to his cause? Can it be that some of his supporters believe that, contrary to his campaign statements, their candidate doesn’t really share the concerns the film raises?
Seven years after 9/11, many Americans seem to have forgotten that indifference to the threat of radical Islamists led directly to that attack. Apparently, some prefer to ignore the grim truth and cling to the illusion that right-wingers are making up all the fuss about Islamism to scare everyone unnecessarily.
As Sir Martin Gilbert, one of the greatest historians of our generation and the leading biographer of Winston Churchill, points out in “Obsession,” just as today many laugh at Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, 70 years ago many in the West were unwilling to face up to the danger of Nazism, dismissing the murderous threats of Adolf Hitler as clownish bombast and the brainwashing of a generation of German children by the Nazis as unimportant.
Just like then, those who ignore similar evidence about radical Islam today “don’t connect the dots,” Gilbert asserts.
The message of “Obsession” could not be timelier.