Defamation is a film that reveals how the Anti-Defamation League and the government of Israel stimulate irrational fear of persecution from Gentiles within the minds of the Jewish people.
Israeli filmmaker Yoav Shamir suggests such defamation of the motives and character of Gentiles (as well as “self-hating” Jewish critics of Israel) is necessary for the ADL. He says this helps generate ADL’s $70 million annual budget and also deflects blame from the government of Israel in wake of “Operation Cast Lead” in Gaza. (Watch Defamation here!)
Shamir originally intended a film about anti-Semitism, a topic he says is mentioned everywhere in Israeli media but poorly defined or understood. He brought his film proposal to ADL in New York, where national director Abe Foxman warmly promised to give him every assistance. Shamir was not only granted complete access to ADL resources and staff but also was allowed to travel with Foxman’s entourage to the Vatican, Israel and Auschwitz. There, ADL pursued its ostensible worldwide goal of ending “the new anti-Semitism.” Here are highlights:
- In New York, ADL tells Shamir that the world is experiencing a sharp spike in anti-Semitic outrages. Shamir asks for a recent U.S. example to feature in his film. ADL can’t produce one. The worst it can scrape up is an incident in the mixed-race Crown Heights district of New York: 12- and 13-year-old blacks threw several rocks into a school bus filled with Jewish children.
- Shamir joins some of the 30,000 Israeli high school students who annually visit Auschwitz and other concentration camps to appreciate the horrors of the Holocaust. He reveals that the government of Israel is pursuing a program to instill wildly exaggerated fear, indeed paranoia, of Gentiles in young Jewish minds. Government security personnel accompanying the group constantly suggest it’s dangerous to visit “anti-Semitic” European countries, where neo-Nazis roam the streets. Israeli youth are taught, the film repeatedly reveals, that only by never forgiving or forgetting Gentile persecutions, is there any hope of escaping similar atrocities today and tomorrow. By the time the Auschwitz tour ends, the anger and emotions of the kids include hate. One Jewish girl says, “I want to kill them—all of them.” “Who are they?” Shamir asks. The girl replies, “Nazis.” “But they are dead.” “No, they have heirs,” she replies.
- Shamir interviews Jewish rabbis, intellectuals and authorities from America, Israel and Russia to ask if they agree with ADL that anti-Semitism is an international scourge. Most reply that actual race-based anti-Semitism is virtually non-existent! Instead, they allege, it is largely the figment of ADL’s money-making propaganda machine. This Jewish produced film suggests that anger against Israeli injustices, even from the Arab side, is not anti-Semitism.
- ADL has organized 56 nations of Europe into its “anti-hate” confederation, The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. How did they do it? In the film, Foxman says ADL enjoys almost mythic status in the eyes of European nations as a power-broker and lobbyist in Washington, DC. ADL encourages this, promising lobbying favors if European countries give ADL what it wants: hate crime laws, Holocaust remembrance programs, opposition to Iran, etc. In the early 1930s, Stalin’s troops encircled and starved to death five million Ukrainian Kulaks who wanted to grow and sell vegetables from their own gardens rather than work for Soviet collectives. In extraordinarily rare footage, we see Foxman lay down the law to the government of Ukraine. ADL will do favors for Ukraine in Washington only if there is no comparison between what Foxman describes as “your genocide with our genocide.” The Ukrainian authorities meekly comply, promising to give national emphasis to Jewish suffering, not their own.
- Shamir also was present with ADL at Israel’s first global anti-Semitism conference in Jerusalem last spring. Every speaker present, including Foxman, agreed the “new anti-Semitism” consists of countless traditional, racist anti-Semites now masking their virulent hatred under legitimate criticism of Israel. However, one Jewish speaker, Prof. David Hirsch, dropped a bomb of dissent when he said that most current “anti-Semitism” comes from reaction to Israel’s abuse of the Palestinians. Attendees virulently disagreed, unable to see that heightening worldwide critique of Jews is resulting from Israeli brutality. This inability to be self-critical emerges from the foundational Orthodox position of modern Israel and Judaism, which exalts the Talmud and Zohar (Kabbalah) as Judaism’s highest religious and ethical authority. Here is only one of many passages in the Zohar which teaches Orthodox Jews that they are semi-divine and the “goyim” are animals: “…’living soul’ refers to Israel, who have holy living souls from above, and ‘cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth’ to the other peoples who are not ‘living soul,’ but who are as we have said.” [See footnote] With this in mind, we understand why the Talmud teaches that in any dispute the Jew must be exonerated, with blame upon the Gentile. The Jewish Encyclopedia summarizes the majority opinion of the Talmud which “declares that if a Gentile sue an Israelite, the verdict is for the defendant; if the Israelite is the plaintiff, he obtains full damages.” (the Jewish Encyclopedia, “Gentile,” page 620)
- In Poland, Foxman leads an entourage of 150 Israeli military officers, including Israel’s second-ranking IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) general, marching in honor of Jewish Holocaust dead. The least this film establishes is that ADL and Israel are closely married, not only in purpose but also in organization. What IDF does in military operations on the ground and Mossad does in intelligence, ADL does in propaganda against Israel’s ideological foes. Shamir says, “ADL has a very close relationship with the Israeli government… Israel relies on Foxman when it comes to issues of anti-Semitism.”
What can be done to curb ADL/Israel paranoia?
Shamir ends the film by gently suggesting that maybe it’s time for ADL/Israel to “live in the present and look to the future.”
In reality, ADL/Israel will never do this unassisted. How do we help free them from anti-Gentilism and addiction to the endless, vicious cycle of deceiving and being deceived — of hitting back and never forgetting?
Well founded criticism is vital. ADL’s international, anti-Christian hate laws and pro-homosexual agenda will only be restrained by widespread public identification of ADL as the ogre who has taken away free speech in countries such as Canada, Germany and Australia and who wants to do so everywhere.
Israel’s desire to drive all Arabs from Palestine and even further exploit American military might to make the Mideast safe for Israel can only be restrained by international scorn.
The best contribution anyone can make toward keeping ADL and international Zionist power from ascending to actual control of a nascent one-world federation in the coming years is widespread, factual criticism now. This is not anti-Semitism. It is righteous indignation.
Footnote:
The following is from treatise Bereshith of the Zohar, printed by Soncino Press, Ltd., London.
