Incredible. A harsh review in the New York Times by Nicole Herrington of a documentary called Unmasked Judeophobia, about “the escalation of threats against Jews worldwide,” makes the clear distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. So anti-Zionism gains legitimacy even in the New York Times, as well it should. Herrington:
But the film loses ground toward the middle, when it calls out individuals (often just by showing their images) and organizations for their passiveness or criticism of Israeli policies without giving a full account of the facts. The roster is long: the United Nations, feminists, the European news media, Alice Walker, human rights groups and American academics.
In the end the issues of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are conflated, weakening the filmmaker’s argument. Ultimately the varying points are way too much to take on in one film.
The review also points to images (many lacking context) and that it calls out individuals (often just by showing their images): unsubstantiated associations. In other words: the film is smearing.
“feminists, the European news media, Alice Walker”
They really have the US by the nuts, don’t they ?
Be nice if NYT would review the (as they would see it) legitimate reasons (if any) for people to be anti-Zionists. Also, why they think that anti-Zionism (or anti-Israeli-occupation) is different from anti-Jewishism (aka anti-Semitism). And, as always, we’d like to hear them explain why this matter should be widely discussed — and not swept under the rug.
BTW, how long does this arts critic have a job at NYT?
Latin proverb says “ars longa, vita brevis”, usually understood that what you produce by art has longer duration than your life. But perhaps what you produce by art can make your life more brevis? Somehow, the review by Nicole Herrington is very short, so perhaps she will stay long.
She basically wrote that the film is a torture to watch (feels like a maraton) and unconvincing without addressing the issue if it is misleading or not.
israel’s control of the narrative went *poof* a while ago (last nail in the coffin was Mearsheimer and Walt) … but they keep at it
one by one the major media outlets are getting back to facts on I/P
Don’t conflate anti-Semitism with irrational behavior.
Rational anti-Semites hire Zionist lobbyist etc. Usually they support Israel (if Jewish conspiracy rules the world, you need to make best of the situation).
Here is the director talking about the film in Hebron
link to youtube.com
or at some rally where she mentions “taking back the media..the campuses…that are filling our children with propaganda”…’we must take back our legal systems” “we must stand up and challenge the UN…the Hague”
link to youtube.com
While its “good” the film got a bad review, its terrible it was treated as if it was some sort of “documentary” and not dismissed for the propaganda it is.
There is the director on the record saying we must “take back the media” and now we are supposed to treat her film as honestly trying to document some aspect of reality? No. Its not even veild propaganda and Nicole Herrington is more of a coward for not mentioning that than she is a hero for critiquing …”But the film loses ground toward the middle..”
@ iamuglow:
Thanks a lot for the links. This woman is really creepy.
While its “good” the film got a bad review, its terrible it was treated as if it was some sort of “documentary” and not dismissed for the propaganda it is.
I totally agree.
In the end the issues of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are conflated, weakening the filmmaker’s argument.
An explanation about the difference would have been nice. Just mentioning that there is a difference is not sufficient to convince the ignorant.
God, Hebron as “the home of vibrant Zionism”. Like a tribute to bull connor as a shining light of racial tolerance. Hebron is hell.
And she says the key of the film is “to wake people up” . Surely she wants everyone to go back to sleep.
This is Zionism’s core problem. Nobody who isn’t part of the tribe has any real interest in the Jewish Sparta. Poor old Byzantium fell over this sort of issue .
Qom is a vibrant center of Shia scholarship, they even have decent websites.
I actually fail to understand the Sparta/Byzantium connection. It could be easier to connect the fate of Israel to the fate of Sparta that was defeated and cut to a much smaller size by Epaminondas. As Sparta grew successful they started to exploit their allies and the support became unenthusiastic. Athens failed because of the same problem earlier. Byzantine history had several zig-zags, so I am not sure which you have in mind.
I was thinking about the fall of Constantinople. Maybe if they had been Western Christian they might have stayed in the tent. Constantinople was a bit like Israel- away from what became the core. It worked as long as the cashflows came in. Israel is geographically isolated but also culturally separate. Even if all the Jews in Israel were as deluded as the filmmaker it wouldn’t be enough to shift public opinion in Bristol or Valladolid.
You would probably need 80 million people or so to shift the dynamics on youtube comments, for example. They just can’t do it in an open system. There are simply not enough of them to drive Western opinion indefinitely.
By waking people up it means, Jews under 30 have to be more supportive of Israel. They can’t just look at birthright as a free vacation, they really have to live it.
It won’t work because we come from a different generation. I think growing up outside of the Cold War era puts people my age in a very different mindset than our parents. I think my mom really believes very deeply in a suitcase nuclear weapon from Iran. My intense dislike over Israel and my brothers disinterest in the topic freak older generations out.
That generational gap often drives change. I think it was what drove the Protestants in Northern Ireland to end the war there.
link to youtube.com
But there is no sign of a more thoughtful and less ideologically rigid younger generation emerging in Israel. Maybe it is linked to what is happening with the Orthodox and their demographic impact as well as the completeness of the thought capture that goes with IDF induction.
the European news media
I wish!
As far as the German media are concerned, they are not as Zionist as the US media, but still far from being anti-Zionist.
Bild is desperate.
oh heavens. that video of her being interview is a kick.
‘have you received any death threats?’
‘not yet’.
a tad delusioned with self importance if i do say so myself. and the title of the video says
“Gloria Greenfield, Director of UNMASKED: Judeophobia and the Threat to Civilization “
Does anyone know why the New York Times permits comments on some articles and not on others? Is there a clear pattern or declared editorial policy?
“Does anyone know why the New York Times permits comments on some articles and not on others?”
I don’t know, but I haven’t seen any clear pattern. Sometimes they allow comments on articles on this subject and sometimes not. Also, when they do allow comments there’s no clear pattern to the general slant. I never know which way it will go, though lately my vague impression it’s been more from the pro-Israel side. A few days ago there was a Palestinian writing about the Nakba (I think it was only online, not in the dead tree version) and there were a lot of pro-Israel types repeating the usual discredited (to us) lines about what REALLY happened in 1948, complete with factual distortions and rationalizations.
Other times, though, the comments have people who sound rather critical of Israel. Maybe it’s just a matter of whose side happens to link to a particular article.
I just went and found the Nakba piece I was talking about. There are 52 comments there now, so the slant may be different from what I saw a couple of days ago.
the nakba then and now
Who is supporting and promoting this film:
so it’s getting fast tracked into Middle East Studies classrooms. how illuminating. i hope it’s included in university media/propaganda studies too.
I’d be very interested to see how much money this film makes on general release. It seems to be very specialist orientated.
Gloria Greenfield quote:
By her own admission she is a Likud Zionist, a Revisionist Zionist, with all that implies.
It would be interesting to see a list of all the people who funded this film and who are associated with Doc Emet Productions.
Maybe she will do a programme on how the Stern Gang were peace-loving hippies, the Irgun sat around camp fires singing Kumbaya and roasting marshmallows and Menachem Begin only wanted to be Father Christmas.
A similar programme was done by Barbara Walters with a segment on how Palestinian prisoners love their prison guards. Walter’s propaganda was given journalistic credos but let’s face it a lot of establishment “journalism” is propaganda.
This film sounds very confused.
But this…
“The film starts with a striking statement from Elie Wiesel, the Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor: “Since 1945 I was not as afraid as I am now.” Then with breakneck speed we get a history of the ways that anti-Semitism has manifested itself — the hostility of early Christians, the Holocaust, mounting attacks on Jews by Muslims in France, and the call by Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, for Israel to be “wiped off the map.”
…..is pure fear mongering.
““Since 1945 I was not as afraid as I am now.”……oh brother, how wild.
But let’s say he actually believes that …then grab your passport Elie and head for that safe haven of Israel the zios claim is necessary for the Jews survival and safety. That would be about as rational as 2012 being 1945…… for anyone but Persians and Arabs that is.
Israel is threatened by Iran, and the French residence by mentally disturbed Arabs (majority is very sane, but it takes one). In D.C. area you have burglaries. In England you have Respect (and you get no respect).
Mind you, if you are 80 or older then various things are much more threatening. Even a slippery sidewalk can lead to a broken hip or worse.
It’s old people reflecting time. They reach a certain age and start worrying about what the world will be like without them. It’s a fear about losing control of the narrative. Once Eli Wiesel and the other survivors die, then who will live to tell the tale and well all be forgotten… Blah blah blah.
Yea I understand the old people mental thing and how they get more fearful in general.
But still you don’t let them run naked and screaming about their fear into traffic and cause a interstate pile up of injured.
““A serious and sometimes terrifying analysis of how antisemitism, often masked as anti-Zionism has permeated modern life and discourse worldwide.”
LOL…oh stuff it. Israeli Zionism is inhumane and bad in practice and a constant trouble maker for the world and particularly the US, and we don’t like and you can’t make us…so there. You’re the ones using the Jews as human shields against the world revulsion to Israel’s crimes so quit pretending you haven’t propagandized the public for decades on how Jews are Israel and public resentment of the Jewish state isn’t rational but old anti semitism.
We’re way ahead of you, so quit yer whining…it ain’t gonna work.
Poetry in prose, American @4:24. Thank you.
And 2012 is the worst ever for antisemitism, is it? Israel has signed international treaties concerning its obligations towards the Palestinians and bringing this up is worse than Der Sturmer, is it?
Beyond chutzpah.
If all Jews were active promoters of Israel’s lawlessness — as they are not — it might make sense to say that anti-Zionism was also anti-Semitism. But what if 99% of Jews were active promoters of Israel’s lawlessness (and not merely passive or uninvolved or unknowing), then what? And what of the charming claim that various people have been “unwitting dupes” of an “ism” (McCarthy and the “unwitting dupes of international communism”)? Might uninvolved Jews be unwitting dupes of Zionism? But, then, what about the vast number of uninvolved non-Jews?
Is one “allowed” (especially by the strict laws against anti-Semitism) to be vocally upset by a huge number of unwitting-dupe fellow-traveler uninvolved Jews who daily squander their lives in inactivity when they might somehow act?
I get so ticked off, sometimes by the (as it seems to me) un-ethical uninvolvement of most American Jews in this matter that I slide towards blaming them. They have no right, the message in my head says, not to be involved and, indeed, not to be involved in the service of the rule of International Law and Human Rights, in short, BDS and other pro-Palestinian efforts.
Although the Jewish religion seems to impose a duty on every Jew to repair the world (Tikkun Olam) — “repairing the world” (or “healing and restoring the world”) which suggests humanity’s shared responsibility (with the Creator) “to heal, repair and transform the world [wiki]“– most “Jews” are (like me) not religious, don’t know about any such supposed duty, and don’t in any case feel it as a duty.
And then I cool off and realize that most people are just watching TV, watching their homes go “under water”, waiting to see how “global warming” will manifest itself (if at all, in their view) during their own lives, voting for repeatedly-advertised slick talkers at election time (if they bother to vote at all), and generally doing what ordinary people do — and being Jewish implies no greater duty to act ethically in the world than does being Christian (for example) or than merely being alive.
And then I notice I’ve been holding my breath. And then I breathe out.
Some forms of anti-Semitism are more baffling then terrifying. A latest example:
The U.S. firm [Facebook] agreed to apply French law and remove offensive messages it is alerted to, said a lawyer for the UEJF union. Such tweets have been proliferating in France in recent days with the hashtag #unbonjuif (#AGoodJew).
The hashtag, which in English means “a good Jew”, has been one of the top trending words on French-language tweets and is often followed by offensive comments such as: “A good Jew can pump up your tyre with his nose.”
Wait if its a hashtag then it’s twitter nt Facebook. Either way it’s the Barbara Streisand effect. By throwing such a large hissy fit trying to conceal an issue brings about greater attention to the topic itself. Hashtag might have gone away in a day or two (like all hashtags do) but now that it’s being censored, it becomes a popular form of resisting censorship and being provacative
The movie Defamation exposed the non-issue of anti-semitism and how it’s used to bond the large secular Jewish community together these days.
This just sounds like tired old propaganda.