Israeli documentary filmmaker Yoav Shamir was drawn to the oldest hatred, anti-Semitism, precisely because he had never personally experienced it.
Filmmaker Yoav Shamir
“We live in a Jewish place, and anti-Semitism is not part of our lives,” said Shamir, whose film, Defamation, was screened at the recent Hot Docs festival in Toronto. “Yet anti-Semitism makes headlines and we read about it constantly. So, yes, I was curious.”
In an interview, Shamir, 38, said that since he knew little about anti-Semitism when he started his project, he approached Abe Foxman, the director of the Anti-Defamation League, which is headquartered in New York City.
“They’re the biggest organization in the world fighting anti-Semitism. So they seemed like a logical choice.”
According to Shamir, Foxman, a Holocaust survivor, liked the film. “He thought it was fair. They’re OK with it.”
Defamation, an anecdotal survey of anti-Semitism, starts with an unconventional scene of a Greek American taxi driver negotiating his vehicle through traffic in New York.
As he talks, he professes not to understand the meaning of the phrase anti-Semitism, scoffs at the thought that Jews are persecuted and claims that they control the world.
“He hadn’t met too many Jews in his life,” said Shamir by way of explaining the driver’s ignorance and prejudice.
As Defamation picks up a head of steam, Shamir’s cynical grandmother mischievously spouts anti-Semitic notions, Israeli students visiting Poland detect whiffs of anti-Semitism, an Israeli newspaper editor maintains that all European nations are anti-Semitic, and a young African-American man living in a chassidic enclave in New York City portrays The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as a blueprint of the truth.
Chugging along, Defamation makes a number of additional points through interviews with a wide variety of individuals.
A Russian Jew downplays the persistence of anti-Semitism. A rabbi in Kiev claims that only secular Jews are concerned by anti-Semitism. The controversial anti-Zionist American academic, Norman Finkelstein, observes that Jews in the United States need not worry about the “new anti-Semitism.”
Further on, Uri Avneri, the left-wing Israeli magazine editor and a refugee from Nazi Germany, minimizes anti-Semitism, saying you’d need a magnifying glass to find anti-Semites.
As the film winds down, an American Jew on an Anti-Defamation League information trip in Europe says he regards Israel as an “insurance policy,” while a Jewish academic says that Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians should be a source of concern for Jews in Israel and everywhere else.
Shamir, whose 2003 film Checkpoint critically dealt with Israel’s system of checkpoints in the West Bank, said he did not make Defamation with the intention of probing anti-Semitism’s origins or explaining its appeal.
“That would be the subject of another film,” noted Shamir, who lives in Tel Aviv.
He added, “Anti-Semitism concerns me as much as racism and homophobia.”
What also worries him is the prevalence of racism in Israel. “It’s a very serious problem. It’s almost impossible for an Israeli Arab to rent an apartment in Tel Aviv.”
Shamir believes that Israel has “a very complicated and tricky” relationship with Jews in the Diaspora. When Israel’s policies are denounced, Jews living outside Israel may well be targeted, he suggested.
Although he finds Finkelstein interesting, he describes him as “a traumatized, wounded man who expresses his ideas in an extreme way.”
In conclusion, Shamir thinks that Jews should live in the present, look to the future and shake off their preoccupation with the past.
The lesson of the Holocaust is that Israel needs to be strong. “But we have no right to abuse other people,” he said in an oblique reference to Israeli Arabs and the Palestinians.