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By Morton A. Klein and Elizabeth Berney, Esq.
(AUGUST 29, 2023 / JNS) “Sex and the City” (SATC) fans appropriately expressed outrage after SATC’s reboot “And Just Like That” (AJLT) made an offensive joke about the Holocaust on Holocaust Remembrance Day. They further charged that the show was permeated with overdone “woke-ism.”
But other deeply disturbing things about AJLT received little to no notice. First, AJLT repeatedly promoted the dangerous George Soros-funded Israel-bashing propaganda organization Human Rights Watch (HRW). This became even worse in the just-aired AJLT Season 2, which also displays giant HRW signs in numerous scenes.
The show also included a joke portraying Israel’s Mossad as random assassins; propagated the false “Muslim ban” myth; disparaged Jews’ physical appearance and behavior; and mocked concerns about kosher food. It thus compounded the negative, antisemitic portrayals of Jews and Israel in the series “Suits,” “Quantico” and too many other shows.
This is extremely harmful to Jews in an era of skyrocketing antisemitism, which is often manifested as Israel-hatred.
Elevating anti-Israel HRW
AJLT has obsessively promoted HRW. This is particularly disturbing given HRW’s unabashed hatred of Israel. Besides Soros, whose foundations gave a $100 million 10-year challenge grant to HRW, the group has also received donations from notorious anti-Israel groups like the Ford Foundation, Oxfam and the Rockefeller Bros. Foundation, which specifically contributed to HRW’s “Israel/Palestine program.” HRW has also used its anti-Israel defamation campaigns to raise funds from prominent Saudis.
HRW uses its massive funding and power to repeatedly defame Israel. An HRW website search reveals 2,185 HRW articles, so-called reports, op-eds and so on that libel Israel, including lengthy reports falsely accusing Israel of “apartheid” and “crimes against humanity,” and promoting antisemitic anti-Israel boycotts and lawfare.
Because of this extreme, unrelenting Israel-hatred, HRW’s founder and former chair Robert Bernstein disassociated himself from his own organization. Bernstein wrote that HRW has turned into a group that is “helping those who wish to turn Israel into a pariah state. … Israel, the repeated victim of aggression, faces the brunt of Human Rights Watch’s criticism.”
Yet in AJLT Season 1, Episode 10, lead character Miranda Hobbes (played by left-wing politician Cynthia Nixon) is chided for giving up what is lauded as a valuable, “highly competitive” and “impossible to get” internship with Human Rights Watch. When Miranda informs her human-rights law professor, Nya Wallace, of her plans to follow her nonbinary lover to California, the professor laments the decision:
Professor Nya: What about that internship at Human Rights Watch?
Miranda: I, I, I guess I’m gonna have to pull out, you know … for now.
Professor Nya: Are you sure about that? It’s a really competitive internship. I wrote you a glowing recommendation.
Miranda: I know, and I’m so grateful, and it is taking every ounce of strength to not change my mind.
Later in the same episode, lead character Carrie Bradshaw also chides Miranda for giving up the the internship.
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