SFJFF 29: Defamation

Defamation is a brilliant and irreverent documentary film which should receive a lot of critical attention and distribution - but probably won't. Israeli filmmaker Yoav Shamir's fifth documentary focuses on the politically radioactive issue of anti-semitism and how it is understood today by Jews in Israel, Europe and the US. His seemingly unlimited access to ADL director Abe Foxman alone is worth the price of admission, but his enquiry ranges from New York to Auschwitz to Jerusalem to Moscow, as he interviews controversial heavyweights from both sides of the debate, including veteran Israeli peace-activist Uri Avnery, recently defrocked scholar Norman Finkelstein, anti-AIPAC crusaders Walt and Mearsheimer, Israeli Minister in Charge of Anti-Semitic Affairs Isaac Herzog, and British professor David Hirsch as well as rabbis in Moscow and Kiev, Israeli high school kids on their first trip outside Israel - to Auschwitz, and his grandmother in Jerusalem, whose comical opinions about non-Israeli Jews are the most stereotypically anti-semitic of the entire film. What is so extraordinary about all these interviews is the accomplished way in which Shamir draws his subjects out; with his combination of compassion, friendly irreverence, and a willingness to listen, knowing when to speak and when to shut up, he completely disarms everybody he meets, which for the armed personnel of this issue may prove discomfiting. Even background music, which is the sort of carefree jingle we associate with America's Funniest Videos or March of the Penguins works effortlessly behind the scenes to puncture every doom-laden thought bubble before it can get off the ground, and for this subject, taking in as it does centuries of persecution, the horrors of Auschwitz and Birkenau, sixty years of traumatized recollection and the grim determination to never forget, that is no mean feat. What Shamir manages to do is to insert a grain of yeast into the unleavened bread which is his ethnic legacy - not to belittle his people's suffering, but to question its continuing sinister effects on the Jewish psyche and body politic.

Foxman comes over as something of a buffoon, but he is not demolished, and there is no malice in the portrait; similarly with his various accolites and affiliates, like ADL members Harvey and Suzanne Prince, who are at worst presented as somewhat misguided but well-meaning aunts and uncles. There are revealing interviews with other members on a trip to the Babi Yar memorial site in Russia, who speak of Israel as their insurance policy. Without Israel, one woman opines, there isn't a safe Jew in the world. Such fears seem exaggerated in light of earlier scenes in which Shamir has combed ADL records for evidence of recent anti-semitic acts in the US and come up with nothing more alarming than a handful of complaints about insensitivity to Jewish holidays on the part of employers.

More poignant is the coverage of the high school students on their trip to Auschwitz, youngsters who feel guilty for not having any feelings about the site; who lay stranded in their hotel rooms after dinner because they have been instructed by secret service agents in attendance on the dangers awaiting Jews in the streets of Warsaw - in 2008. In one revealing episode, a teacher wonders if the death industry that is Jewish education in the horrors of its past has gone too far: we perpetuate death, he says, and that's why we will never become a normal people - we live too much in it. At which serendipitous juncture, a guide interrupts the interview to deliver a short reprimand about sitting on a memorial where 20 people died. By the time the children experience their first feelings of shock and horror, we wonder with Shamir what is served by this education in hate and how far the students have been manipulated. One girl spoke of a desire to kill. Perhaps it is a legitimate response - but what purpose does it serve?

The film veers into the political rapids with its coverage of Finkelstein, the de Paul University professor whose career has been derailed by determined opponents. Finkelstein's views run counter to the ADL position and are sharply critical of Israel; his book The Holocaust Industry is a blistering indictment of Israel's cynical misuse of the holocaust to further its own ends which, as the son of holocaust survivors himself, he bitterly condemns. He is thus positioned as Foxman's opposite number, and the terms of the debate are defined. Either charges of anti-semitism are cynically deployed against legitimate criticism of the Israeli state (Finkelstein), or criticism of Israel is a cover for the new anti-semitism (Foxman). Scholars Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, who have been accused of anti-semitism since the publication of their book The Israel Lobby, enter the fray at an oblique angle, claiming that the efforts of the lobby in Washington to steer policy decisions are ultimately harmful to Israel, which is becoming an armed camp hysterical with issues of security, as well as harmful to Americans. David Hirsch is the only speaker at the ADL annual conference to mention the occupation of Palestine, the longest illegal occupation in history at 40+ years and counting, for which he is roundly condemned by all present, and compared to a battered woman, and, finally, Uri Avnery weighs in with his view that fears of anti-semitism are bullshit, that American Jews are scared of their own shadows, poking around like Sherlock Holmes with a magnifying glass, looking for anti-semites behind every tree.

This is pretty bracing stuff, and it is clear where Shamir's sympathies lie - which is to say, they are with his people, but not with those who wish his people to be forever conditioned by the horrors of the past. That he manages to communicate this with humor and compassion is a small miracle. His delightful personality brings with it much needed light and air to dark and forbidding territory, and if there are ears to hear it, his message is one of hope, for normalcy, for a future Jewish identity unconditioned by the legacy of exceptionalism, vigilance, and fear. It will be interesting to see how this film fares in our cutthroat world of media-control and special interests.