Opening today at Cinema Village in New York, “Defamation” is one
of the most powerful anti-Zionist film ever seen in movie theaters
in the United States, all the more remarkable for the fact that
the director Yoav Shamir is an Israeli citizen and from a
long-standing Zionist family that arrived in Palestine long before
the creation of the state of Israel. The title is very possibly a
reference to the Anti-Defamation League in the United States,
whose chief executive Abe Foxman plays a prominent role in the film.
Like Diogenes with his lamp, Shamir—who assumes a comic persona a
bit like Michael Moore or Ross McElwee while remaining
off-camera—ventures forth from Israel with his crew in order to
answer the question whether anti-Semitism exists. From the front
page coverage of major Israeli dailies, as he shows us, you would
get the impression that a Kristallnacht is about to break out at
any moment. When he asks his 91 year old grandmother in her Israel
home at the outset of the movie whether people hate the Jews, she
replies to the effect that if so, they should move to Israel.
Those who “have money” and who “don’t want to work” might turn
that invitation down, she adds. When her grandson tells her that
she sounds anti-Semitic, she shrugs her shoulders.
read full review:
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2009/11/20/defamation/
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