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Toronto Star | 04Mar2016 | Orest Slepokura
http://www.thestar.com/opinion/letters_to_the_editors/2016/03/04/mural-critique-misguided.html

Mural critique misguided

Re: Movie producer Lantos criticizes York U over Palestinian artwork , Feb. 26, 2016

Robert Lantos flexing his rhetorical muscles in a letter to the president of York University decrying an allegedly anti-Semitic mural displayed in the student centre is a bit rich, like watching Elmer Gantry denounce the perils of vice.

This from the film producer whose movie Eastern Promises, to cite but one example, is a graphic depiction of vile intrigue by Russian mobsters, whose Russian-ness is relentlessly underscored throughout -- and seems intimately tied to their knee-jerk criminal impulses.

In any case, Lantos did not serve his side of the debate well by echoing film executive Paul Bronfman’s call to remove the controversial mural. All he managed to do is to re-ignite this old controversy and highlight the provocative content of the mural once more.

Those for whom the cause of Palestine matters can’t have been too displeased by the attendant publicity that was again generated.

Orest Slepokura, Strathmore, Alta.