"Paradise Now"

"Paradise Now" was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film this morning. The film which "humanizes" the lives of two Palestinian suicide bombers about to engage in a terrorist attack in Israel opened to glowing reviews (see reviews). The New York Times said it “accomplishes the tricky feat of humanising the suicide bombers depicted in the film.” The paper dubbed the film "a taut, ingeniously calculated thriller."

It recently won the Golden Globe award for Best Foreign Language Film. The award was presented to its Palestinian director by actress Sarah Jessica Parker (who, like her husband, actor Matthew Broderick, has a Jewish mother and a non-Jewish father).

This morning the film was nominated for an Oscar in the same category. Also nominated for an Oscar for best picture was, of course, "Munich." That makes two Oscar nominated films that sympathetically portray terrorists. Am I missing something here? How would we react to a film that attempted to "humanize" the lives of the 9/11 terrorists? With Golden Globes? Oscars?

Think I'll put my money on "Brokeback Mountain" although I happen to think that the best movie of last year was "Crash" which also received an Oscar nomination for Best Picture.