Film Review: Defamation

I urge every person on this planet to watch Yoav Shamir’s Defamation, a documentary about anti Semitism.

To watch the entire film (UK only):

Or here

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/defamation/4od – 3022029

To watch some selected highlights (around the world):

The film is an astonishing exposure of the morbid conditions that entangle contemporary Jewish secular identity. It explores and ridicules the current notion of anti Semitism and the lobbies that are engaged in disseminating such a fear. It also exposes those Jewish ethnic campaigners who, for some reason, insist on shaping their identity around the phantasmic idea of being ‘racially’ chased, defamed or hated.

Being an Israeli, Yoav Shamir, the man behind the film,  has managed to infiltrate into Abe Foxman’s ADL. He even managed to join  Foxman’s ‘international mission’. Shamir also followed an Israeli high school expedition to Auschwitz. He provides us with some intimate footage of Israeli youth being indoctrinated into collective anxiety and total neurosis just before they join the IDF.

The general image we are left with is no less than  grotesque. The film elaborates on the aggressive vulgar  orchestrated amplification of fear amongst Israelis and Zionist Jews. “We are raised to believe that we are hated” says an Israeli high school girl on her way to a concentration camp. “ADL provide us with a platform to be Jewish”, says an American elder Jewish woman.

Shamir provides us with an opportunity to see how badly young Israelis behave once in Poland. You watch their contempt to the local population and disrespect to Polish people and institutes. You can also watch Israelis project their hatred onto others. For some reason they are convinced that everyone out there is as merciless as they happen to be.   The Israeli youngsters are saturated with fear, yet, they are having a good time, you can watch them having a party dancing in a bus all the way to a Auschwitz. You can see them munching  crisps while watching a Muscleman* prisoners drinking his watered-down soup.

Dancing all the way to Auschwitz

Shamir provides us with some unusual pictures of Abe Foxman mixing with world leaders. Proudly the ADL leader is insisting on selling his favourite product. Shamir presents the ADL’s deal in some very plain words. “We (the ADL) will be your allies in the American Congress, all we need in return is you fighting anti Semitism along with us”. Shamir realises that if Foxman and the ADL can guarantee a free pass to the American corridors of power, then the ‘anti Semitic’ message explored by the ‘Protocols of the Elders Of Zion’ is rather relevant and should be discussed in the open.

We can see Foxman and his international mission talking to the Ukrainian President assuring him that the ADL could easily help him in America as long as he doesn’t “link the Holocaust and the Holodomor (the Ukrainian Holocaust)”.  “It will be counter effective” if you make such a link” Foxman tells the Ukrainian leader.

One may wonder how come Foxman who makes a living out of Jewish disasters is so reluctant to allow the Ukrainians to reflect on their past or to share it with others?

Good question indeed, I believe that primarily it is Jewish choseness that is coming into play here. Foxman doesn’t like his raison d’être i.e. the Holocaust, to be in competition, eclipsed or even being challenged by any other genocide. But it goes further, as Harvard Professor Yuri Slezkine’s confirms in his master piece The Jewish Century, Jews were actually “Stalin’s willing executioners”. Bolshevik Jews were largely involved in the genocidal crime against the Ukranian people and others. In case one wants to read about ‘Stalin’s Jews’ in an Israeli Zionist paper. Ynet’s Sever Plocker is a good place to start. “We mustn’t forget that some of the greatest murderers of modern times were Jewish” says Zionist Plocker. Abe Foxman must know it all.  He insists that the Ukrainians should  not link their horrifying past to the Shoa because he knows that too many of his people are directly involved in the crimes against the Ukrainian people.

Interestingly enough, in the film, it is the orthodox Jews who defy the cry for anti Semitism. It is a Rabbi who argues that Abe Foxman creates anti Semitism “because he needs a job”. Another Rabbi argues that unlike orthodox Jews who intrinsically associate their Jewishness with Judaism, the cry for anti Semitism is a Jewish secular phenomenon that satisfies the secular Jew’s craving for identity. This indeed makes a lot of sense, once you take Judaism from the Jew all you are left with is ‘chicken soup’ and ‘anti Semitism’. Foxman had to choose whether to open a kosher delicatessen or chasing anti Semites. He clearly has chosen the latter.  He and his crypto Zionists within the left and the media are making a career amplifying the fear of being chased.  

Unlike Uri Avneri and Norman Finkelstein who appear in the film and argue that anti Semitism is exaggerated, I actually believe that resentment towards Jewish politics is rising rapidly and constantly. However, I do differentiate between the Judeo centric notion of anti Semitism and political resentment towards Jewish ideology. I do not regard anti Jewish activity as a form of anti-Semitism or racial hatred for Jews are neither Semites nor do they form a racial continuum whatsoever.

The rise of hatred towards any form of Jewish politics and Jewish lobbies is a reaction towards a tribal, chauvinist and supremacist ideology. If political Jews whether Zionist or ‘Jewish anti Zionists’ are concerned with themselves losing popularity, all they need to do, is to learn to look in the mirror. Self-reflection is liberation as long as one is courageous enough to face the truth

* A physically exhausted prisoner in a  Nazi concentration camp.