The case is as follows: the Polish-French director Roman Polanski raped the 13 year girl Samantha Geimer, after luring her to the house of his friend Jack Nicholson in Los Angeles, by pretending that he wanted to photograph her for a fashion show. However, he gave her champagne and drugs, then brutally raped her, which ultimately led to Polanski's guilty plea bargain with the prosecution in 1978. However, the judge rejected the deal whereby he would have been imprisoned for 90 days, which he had already served while in detention. In other words, he would have left the court to his home; but the judge felt that the crime was heinous enough to deserve a life sentence, prompting Polanski to flee to Europe, and to remain there till now. The above account is indisputable, even by Polanski himself. I shall continue with similar information, and say that Polanski was arrested last September, at the request of the U.S judiciary, when he was on his way to a ceremony honouring him in Switzerland. He later moved into a chalet that he owns in the luxurious Gstaad resort, while his lawyers were trying to convince the Swiss judiciary not to extradite him to the United States. A friend of mine was arrested as he changed planes at the airport in Frankfurt in Jul 2009, at the request of the U.S Department of Justice, for charges related to the oil for food program in Iraq, and more specifically, on counts of bribery or violations involving 50 thousand dollars and 150 thousand dollars respectively. I did not write about this friend at the time, and opted to leave the matter in the hands of the court. However, after Polanski's arrest in Switzerland, I raised the subject again to compare the two cases. My friend was arrested on counts of a small bribery in a country where an official report by the U.S Congress said that 18 billion dollar allocated by the Bush administration for the reconstruction of Iraq were stolen or have disappeared, and that no real projects were executed. I personally add to this that what was executed instead is the continuation of the destruction of Iraq and the murder of its children. No one expressed their solidarity with my friend. Even I thought that this was a personal matter and remained silent. As such, I never invoked his case, except for the purposes of comparison with the director, who raped a young girl and faced six different charges related to this crime. Yet, half of the world despicably expressed their solidarity with him. At the time, I mentioned the philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy, who wrote in defence of Polanski in a manner that defies all logic and philosophy. However, I will not talk about this again now, and just want to say that Levy is still defending him arrogantly even today. When Polanski recently issued a sordid statement defending himself, which was then published by a French magazine, Levy promoted it, as if there is no crime committed and as if only a prejudicial campaign against him in the media took place, as the director claims. Defending Polanski by Levy and his likes is like defending Israel's crimes, occupation, and murder of women and children. - Prominent names in Hollywood, including Woody Allen and Martin Scorsese signed a letter demanding his release, because he had committed a misdemeanour, not a terrible offense. - There were some who justified his crime by saying that he witnessed the Nazi Holocaust, or that his wife Sharon Tate was killed when she was pregnant. - His wife, the French singer and actress Emmanuelle Seigner, said that the reason he committed his crime is the crazy seventies' atmosphere. However, millions of us lived in the seventies and did not go to the extent of raping a child. - There were those who demanded that the case be dropped to protect the victim from being raped again, which is a void and invalid claim that hides bad intentions, because dropping personal charges does not negate the right of public order. - Levy claimed that in its desire for revenge, the press is trampling on the victims. My personal opinion is that Levy is a despicable man, who is a known Israeli apologist. However, the reader can consult the internet and will find that many prominent intellectuals, academics and philosophers attack Levy in harsher terms than the ones I use. Polanski's lawyer then asked that a sealed testimony from the case in California be opened, to prove that the deputy prosecutor at the time, Roger Gunson, wanted to disqualify Judge Laurence Rittenband, because of misconduct (his superiors however, refused this). This lawyer's request was also refused. Even if Polanski's lawyer is right, it does not change anything about their client's crime, since the dispute between the prosecution and the judge is known. This is because the prosecution settled the case with Polanski, which means he would have evaded punishment. However, the judge refused the plea bargain, because of the severity of the crime, as I mentioned in the beginning of this article. Polanski is seventy-six, and he probably cannot rape again even if he wanted to. However, his history shows that after the rape in California, he copulated with actress Nastasia Kinski when she was fifteen, i.e. below the legal age of consent. Now, the British actress Charlotte Lewis is accusing Polanski of molesting her while filming ‘Pirates' in 1986, when she was 16...which means that he is a perverted sexual predator. Yet, Levy and his ilk continue to defend Polanski. But they do not exonerate him when they do that, but condemn themselves in the process instead. [email protected]
