Maiz Lulkin The UN voting record is the most disturbing proof that antisemitism is alive and faring well. Therefore the bottom line of this movie is pretty simple: The director went to the wrong places to find any antisemitism. He just meets simple ignorance. And antisemitism goes much beyond common people naiveness.Anyway, the movie is quite fun to watch (the Israeli accent is fun) and, even if it just scratches the surface of the issue, it raises some good questions about how to educate new generations about the Shoah (the holocaust) and more generally how should Jews view and identify themselves. It was the french philosopher Jean Paul Sartre who said that Jewish identity was somehow defined by antisemitism. It is true that the creation of Israel has a lot to do with antisemitism, and obviously it plays a big role in Jewish identity. But if being a Jew is reduced to this, then, as an interviewee said in the movie, "we're never going to be a normal people".But this is the most complex quest. The everlasting feeling of persecution must, at some point, end. Or else it will turn into and unjustified need of vengeance (as seen in the talks of one of the girls in the movie). But, as Elie Wiesel said, "Only the guilty are guilty. Their children are not.". Nevertheless "Never forget" is the most important teaching, not only for Jews, but for everyone. And this plays a critical role in, for instance, the Iranian atomic bomb issue.

hpipik So, Yoav Shamir wants to get to the bottom of anti-semitism. Does he go undercover with the KKK or the neo-Nazis? No. Does he examine Turkish TV dramas that promote the Blood Libel? No. Does he take undercover video of Friday night sermons in Palestinian mosques? Nope. Or examine Palestine school books or any of the Saudi funded programs in mosques all over the world? No. Or the speeches by Hamas and Hizbullah about killing Jews (not "Israelis", but "Jews")? No. Does he discuss the United Nations, which has passed more resolutions against Israeli than on any other topic, including genocide in Darfur, genocide in Tibet, mass murders in Congo, oppression of Christians and Hindus in Pakistan? No, no, no. And he is totally silent about Iran which (a) wants to "erase" Israel from the map and (b) is busily building atomic bombs with which to get the job done.Instead, our brave Yoav looks for anti-semitism in New York City, the cultural capital of Israel's only friend on earth and a city that holds more Jews than any city outside Israel itself; he looks for it among a group of Israeli teenagers on excursion to Auschwitz; and he examines his own grandmother for anti-semitism.Why do you think Yoav did not find anti-semitism?Another reviewer thinks "Defamation" is "Moore-esqe", i.e., that it has the qualities of a Michael Moore documentary. He sure got that right.

Roland E. Zwick As a Jew born and raised in Israel, filmmaker Yoav Shamir claims never to have experienced anti-Semitism firsthand. So off he goes to find some. And what he does find often surprises him – and us. Indeed, his remarkably provocative and nuanced film "Defamation" becomes more of an examination of the internecine warfare occurring amongst Jews themselves than of gentiles' attitudes towards Jews.For instance, Shamir accompanies a group of Israeli youth on a trip to Poland, the goal of which is to help open the eyes of the youngsters to the realities of the Holocaust. Yet, the kids have been so primed by their leaders to fear the worst from the local citizenry that they wind up seeing anti-Semitic attitudes where none may actually exist. And it is a testament to Shamir's commitment to the truth and his integrity as a documentarian that he allows such potentially controversial and meme-undermining scenes to remain in his film. In a similar fashion, when he interviews a rabbi in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn – a neighborhood notorious for its long-running tension between Jews and African–Americans – the religious leader, much to Shamir's amazement, actually accuses the heads of the Anti-Defamation League of having professional motives for ascribing anti-Semitism to incidents and crimes where that may not in fact be a primary factor – or a factor at all.If nothing else, Shamir provides a balanced view on his subject – though if anything he tends to give a somewhat more sympathetic hearing to the people in the Jewish community who take on organizations like the ADL for their more conservative views on anti-Semitism and the State of Israel. For instance, Shamir interviews Norman Finklestein, a highly controversial Jewish professor at the DePaul University in Chicago, who argues that a certain part of the Jewish establishment makes "cynical use of the Holocaust," and that whenever any policy or action performed by Israel is legitimately criticized, the underlying cause somehow always gets attributed to anti-Semitism – a condition he refers to as "pathological narcissism." For giving voice to this viewpoint, Finklestein has been labeled a "self-hating Jew," a "Holocaust-denier" (even though he lost his parents in concentration camps), and a "madman." He eventually lost his position at the university – due to pressure from the Jewish lobby he claims – and was denied entrance into Israel on the grounds of being a potential "security hazard.' Abraham Foxman, the National Director of the ADL who gets interviewed extensively for the film, responds by saying that actual anti-Semites use criticism of Israel as an excuse to legitimately articulate their hatred of Jews – to give that hatred a patina of social respectability as it were.Shamir lays out the conflict between the Jewish left and the Jewish right in the United States – the former calling for peace between Israel and the Palestinians and accusing the right of favoring Israel's interests over those of the United States, and the latter working to keep Israeli issues front and center in the national dialogue. And back and forth it goes.Of course, this is not to in any way suggest that anti-Semitism doesn't exist in the world today or that Shamir never finds any evidence of it in his searching. For instance, he investigates a case of rocks being thrown at a Brooklyn school bus filled with Jewish children and another instance of a knife-wielding man stabbing people in a Moscow synagogue. Yet, interestingly, even many of the Jewish people involved with that latter incident pooh-pooh the idea that anti-Semitism was the cause and even go so far as to castigate Jews in general for using anti-Semitism as a convenient scapegoat for their own failures or misfortunes in life.Although he doesn't seem to have started out with that intention, Shamir has produced an amazingly provocative and controversial work, one that is guaranteed to get tempers flaring and people talking on both sides of the issue. And it's a much-needed eye-opener for anyone regardless of viewpoint.

eyeforbeauty Thought this movie did a good job a laying out some basic issues surrounding questions of anti-Semitism, support and criticism of Israel, and the role of the pro-Israel lobby in the U.S.The movie benefited from the personal reflections of the director on the movie's subject, but on the other hand I often felt the movie relied too much on colorful depictions of individuals and groups and too little on a more "objective" and data-based examination of the question of whether and how much actual (and not just imagined) anti-Semitism results in harm to people around the world.A longer, more carefully researched film could probably have matched the depictions offered in this film with data about and the testimony of people who have been the brunt of truly injurious anti-Semitic prejudice.That said, I do feel the attitudes and beliefs illustrated by the individuals and groups depicted in this film are--as the film suggests--probably very often more at the root of concern about anti-Semitism than any real incidence of the latter.But, still, that's a very sweeping generalization and would need to be "documented"--something this documentary doesn't seem to do a great deal of.However, this was a very interesting and colorful film about a number of issues central to Jewish identity (especially the identity of "secular" Jews), and could be very valuable in sparking sharper thought and discussion about those issues. And also in encouraging more research on the actual extent, or lack thereof, of anti-Semitism around the world.