Defamation

Byrnzie

This is a good documentary from the maker of 'Checkpoint' and 'Flipping Out'. I caught myself laughing out loud a lot of times during this film because of how farcical the issue of Anti-semitism has become.
The Anti-Defamation League really are just a bunch of fraudsters.

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJo7LhSPJaY

Torrent: http://btjunkie.org/torrent/True-Storie ... ef516c42b3




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation_%28film%29
'Defamation (Hashmatsa) is a 2009 documentary film by award-winning filmmaker Yoav Shamir. The film examines antisemitism, and in particular the way perceptions of antisemitism affect Israeli and U.S. politics. The film won Best Documentary Feature Film at the 2009 Asia Pacific Screen Awards.

The film examines whether "'anti-Semitic' has become an all purpose label for anyone who criticizes Israel and the possibility that some Jews' preoccupation with the past -- i.e., the Holocaust -- is preventing progress in the here and now. [1] Shamir decided to make this film after a critic of an earlier film accused him of antisemitism. [1]

Filmmaker Yoav Shamir states in the beginning of the film that as an Israeli he has never experienced antisemitism himself and wants to learn more about it since references to antisemitism in countries all over the world are common in the Israeli media.

The film includes interviews with Abraham Foxman, the head of the Anti-Defamation League, John J. Mearsheimer, co-author of New York Times Best Seller The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, Norman Finkelstein, a critic of Israeli government policy as well as many others. The film also follows a group of Israeli high school students on a class trip to Europe where they tour Auschwitz, as well as a number of other notable Holocaust locations.

The film notes that in 2007, the ADL reported a spike in antisemitism, claiming that there were 1,500 anti-Semitic incidents in the United States, yet when Shamir contacts the ADL they can only list minor incidents such as websites with inflammatory comments, letters from employees denied time off for a Jewish holiday, or people offended by a cop's use of the word "Jew". A case presented concerns a group of African American boys, aged between 10 and 12, who pelted a school bus with rocks, breaking two windows.

Shamir also interviews a rabbi who says that the hypervigilance of the ADL inflames relations between Jews and non-Jews in the United States. He also finds that among his interviewees there is more sensitivity to antisemitism among secular Jews than religious ones.'

Byrnzie

Norman Finkelstein in "Defamation": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcWIaYJGlOQ

Godfather.

I can't watch the vid's at work but this paragraph hits home with a lot of people in the world that let the past interrupt their future and it slows their progress, just my opinion.
"The film examines whether "'anti-Semitic' has become an all purpose label for anyone who criticizes Israel and the possibility that some Jews' preoccupation with the past -- i.e., the Holocaust -- is preventing progress in the here and now. [1] Shamir decided to make this film after a critic of an earlier film accused him of antisemitism. [1]"


Godfather.

Byrnzie

Godfather. wrote:

I can't watch the vid's at work but this paragraph hits home with a lot of people in the world that let the past interrupt their future and it slows their progress, just my opinion.
"The film examines whether "'anti-Semitic' has become an all purpose label for anyone who criticizes Israel and the possibility that some Jews' preoccupation with the past -- i.e., the Holocaust -- is preventing progress in the here and now. [1] Shamir decided to make this film after a critic of an earlier film accused him of antisemitism. [1]"


Godfather.

The documentary shows a coachload of kids from America being driven around Europe and basically brainwashed by their instructors into believing that Anti-semites are liable to attack them at all hours of the day or night, and that neo-Nazi skinheads may come knocking on their hotel doors at night or throw rocks through the window.
After they visit Auschwitz one of the girls who was earlier seen crying at the site is asked what she has learned from her visit and she says she just wants to kill the people who carried out the genocide. When told that the people who did it are now dead she says she'll kill their heirs instead. Basically, what she got from the whole experience was a feeling of vengeance and hatred and a desire to defend Israel at all costs.
The whole trip was just a cynical exercise in Brain washing and indoctrination.

yosi

I've been on such a trip when I was in high school, and for the most part I hated it. There is certainly a lot of attempts at indoctrination, but you give people too little credit. I can tell you that for most of us the trip was spent interrogating the perspectives we were being (force)fed, as much as anything else. You're also being extremely unfair to that girl. I've been to the camps, and I think that anger, even irrational anger, is a perfectly reasonable response to Auschwitz for a Jewish kid. I know I was seeing red the whole time I was in those hellholes. What a Jewish teenager says right after seeing a death camp for the first time is not really a fair measure of that person's normal opinions.

Byrnzie

yosi wrote:

I've been to the camps, and I think that anger, even irrational anger, is a perfectly reasonable response to Auschwitz for a Jewish kid. I know I was seeing red the whole time I was in those hellholes. What a Jewish teenager says right after seeing a death camp for the first time is not really a fair measure of that person's normal opinions.

Maybe, but when combined with the other stuff you see being drilled into them on these trips it makes you question what the real motivations are of the organizers.

Commy

when amnesty international was labeled anti semitic the whole think went to shit.


they have marginalized themselves for crying wolf a few too many times.