The Morbid Conditions of Jewish Secular Identity

“Defamation” – a must-see documentary |

By Gilad Atzmon |

16 January 2010 |

Israeli-born musician and writer Gilad Atzmon reviews Yoav Shamir's documentary, "Defamation", which explores the notion of contemporary "anti-Semitism" and seeks to establish whether it is a real and continuous danger that requires eternal vigilance or a tactic used by right-wing Zionists to discredit and cow their critics.


First shown on Britain’s More4 TV channel on 12 January 2010 and repeated the following day, the documentary can be also viewed online here.

The film is an astonishing exposure of the morbid conditions that entangle contemporary Jewish secular identity. It explores and ridicules the current notion of anti-Semitism and the lobbies that are engaged in disseminating fear of anti-Semitism. It also exposes those Jewish ethnic campaigners who insist on shaping their identity around the phantasmic idea of being “racially” persecuted, defamed or hated.

As an Israeli, Yoav Shamir, the man behind the film, managed to infiltrate Abe Foxman’s Anti-Defamation League (ADL). He even managed to join Foxman’s “international mission”. Shamir also followed an Israeli high school expedition to Auschwitz. He provides us with some intimate footage of Israeli youths being indoctrinated into collective anxiety and total neurosis just before they join the IDF [Israel Defence Forces].

The general image we are left with is no less than grotesque. The film elaborates on the aggressive, vulgar and orchestrated amplification of fear among Israelis and Zionist Jews. “We are raised to believe that we are hated,” says an Israeli high school girl on her way to the former concentration camp. “ADL provide us with a platform to be Jewish,” says an elderly American Jewish woman.

Shamir provides us with an opportunity to see how badly young Israelis behave once in Poland. You watch their contempt for the local population and their disrespect for Polish people and institutions. You can also watch Israelis project their hatred onto others. For some reason they are convinced that everyone out there is as merciless as they happen to be. The Israeli youngsters are saturated with fear; yet, they are having a good time. You can watch them having a party, dancing in a bus all the way to Auschwitz. You can see them munching crisps while watching images of a musleman – physically exhausted prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp – drinking his watered-down soup.

Dancing all the way to Auschwitz
Shamir provides us with some unusual pictures of Abe Foxman mixing with world leaders. Proudly, the ADL leader insists on selling his favourite product. Shamir presents the ADL’s deal in some very plain words. “We [the ADL] will be your allies in the American Congress. All we need in return is you fighting anti-Semitism along with us.” Shamir realizes that if Foxman and the ADL can guarantee a free pass to the American corridors of power, then the “anti-Semitic message explored by the “Protocols of the Elders Of Zion” is rather relevant and should be discussed in the open.

We can see Foxman and his international mission talking to the Ukrainian president, assuring him that the ADL could easily help him in America as long as he doesn’t “link the Holocaust and the Holodomor [the Ukrainian Holocaust]”. “It will be counter-effective” if you make such a link,” Foxman tells the Ukrainian leader.

One may wonder why Foxman, who makes a living out of Jewish disasters, is so reluctant to allow the Ukrainians to reflect on their past or to share it with others?

Good question indeed! I believe that primarily it is Jewish “choseness” that is coming into play here. Foxman doesn’t want his raison d'être i.e. the Holocaust, to be in competition with, or be eclipsed or even challenged by, any other genocide.

But it goes further. As Harvard Professor Yuri Slezkine's confirms in his masterpiece, The Jewish Century, Jews were actually “Stalin's willing executioners”. Bolshevik Jews were largely involved in the genocidal crimes against the Ukranian people and others. In case one wants to read about “Stalin's Jews” in an Israeli Zionist paper, Ynet’s Sever Plocker is a good place to start. “We mustn't forget that some of the greatest murderers of modern times were Jewish,” says the Zionist Plocker. Abe Foxman must know it all. He insists that the Ukrainians must not link their horrifying past to the Shoa [Holocaust] because he knows that too many of his people are directly involved in the crimes against the Ukrainian people.

Interestingly enough, in the film it is the orthodox Jews who defy the cry for anti-Semitism. It is a rabbi who argues that Abe Foxman creates anti-Semitism “because he needs a job”. Another rabbi argues that, unlike orthodox Jews who intrinsically associate their Jewishness with Judaism, the cry for anti-Semitism is a Jewish secular phenomenon that satisfies the secular Jew’s craving for identity.

This indeed makes a lot of sense: once you take Judaism from the Jew all you are left with is “chicken soup” and “anti-Semitism”. Foxman had to choose whether to open a kosher delicatessen or chase anti-Semites. He clearly has chosen the latter. He and his crypto Zionists within the left and the media are making a career out of amplifying the fear of being persecuted.

Uri Avnery and Norman Finkelstein, both of whom appear in the film, argue that anti-Semitism is exaggerated. I, on the other hand, believe that resentment towards Jewish politics is rising rapidly and constantly, but I differentiate between the Judeo-centric notion of anti-Semitism and political resentment towards Jewish ideology. I do not regard anti-Jewish activity as a form of anti-Semitism or racial hatred, for Jews are neither Semites nor do they form a racial continuum whatsoever.

The rise of hatred towards any form of Jewish politics and Jewish lobbies is a reaction to a tribal, chauvinist and supremacist ideology. If political Jews, whether Zionist or “Jewish anti-Zionists”, are worried about losing popularity, all they need to do is learn to look in the mirror. Self-reflection is liberation as long as one is courageous enough to face the truth.