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Admirable film.

Absolutely Fantastic

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

The UN voting record is the most disturbing proof that antisemitism is alive and faring well. Therefore the bottom line of this movie is pretty simple: The director went to the wrong places to find any antisemitism. He just meets simple ignorance. And antisemitism goes much beyond common people naiveness.Anyway, the movie is quite fun to watch (the Israeli accent is fun) and, even if it just scratches the surface of the issue, it raises some good questions about how to educate new generations about the Shoah (the holocaust) and more generally how should Jews view and identify themselves. It was the french philosopher Jean Paul Sartre who said that Jewish identity was somehow defined by antisemitism. It is true that the creation of Israel has a lot to do with antisemitism, and obviously it plays a big role in Jewish identity. But if being a Jew is reduced to this, then, as an interviewee said in the movie, "we're never going to be a normal people".But this is the most complex quest. The everlasting feeling of persecution must, at some point, end. Or else it will turn into and unjustified need of vengeance (as seen in the talks of one of the girls in the movie). But, as Elie Wiesel said, "Only the guilty are guilty. Their children are not.". Nevertheless "Never forget" is the most important teaching, not only for Jews, but for everyone. And this plays a critical role in, for instance, the Iranian atomic bomb issue.

So, Yoav Shamir wants to get to the bottom of anti-semitism. Does he go undercover with the KKK or the neo-Nazis? No. Does he examine Turkish TV dramas that promote the Blood Libel? No. Does he take undercover video of Friday night sermons in Palestinian mosques? Nope. Or examine Palestine school books or any of the Saudi funded programs in mosques all over the world? No. Or the speeches by Hamas and Hizbullah about killing Jews (not "Israelis", but "Jews")? No. Does he discuss the United Nations, which has passed more resolutions against Israeli than on any other topic, including genocide in Darfur, genocide in Tibet, mass murders in Congo, oppression of Christians and Hindus in Pakistan? No, no, no. And he is totally silent about Iran which (a) wants to "erase" Israel from the map and (b) is busily building atomic bombs with which to get the job done.Instead, our brave Yoav looks for anti-semitism in New York City, the cultural capital of Israel's only friend on earth and a city that holds more Jews than any city outside Israel itself; he looks for it among a group of Israeli teenagers on excursion to Auschwitz; and he examines his own grandmother for anti-semitism.Why do you think Yoav did not find anti-semitism?Another reviewer thinks "Defamation" is "Moore-esqe", i.e., that it has the qualities of a Michael Moore documentary. He sure got that right.

'Hashmatsa' ('Defamation') by Israeli director Yoav Shamir dares to attack one of the sacred cows of Israel and of the Jewish people thinking - how it reacts to antisemitism around the world, how it looks at the evil of the Holocaust, and how young generations are being educated in Israel with respect to these painful and fundamental issues.The result is mixed I must say. Without emulating completely the Moore style (he appears seldom on screen for example) Shamir uses the same approach - picks a number of characters and interviews them longly until they lower guard and reveal their weaknesses, which then are used as part of the demonstration of the thesis.There are actually two slightly different themes in the film, although they are related and interleaved in the presentation. The first deals with the definition of antisemitism and the question whether real antisemitism exists in the world today at the scale claimed by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and some of the Israeli and Jewish press. Here the director presents two leading characters, one on each side of the dispute - Abraham Foxman, one of the leaders of the ADL and Norman Finkelstein, Jewish thinker, author of a book that argues against the exaggerated usage of the Holocaust on political purposes by Israel and Jewish people. None of the two get a very clean image in the film, both have arguments that sound valid at some point, but show weaknesses and ideological bias in other moments. The weakest part of the argumentation is however the one that tries to argue that antisemitism does not exist, and the method used by the film is flawn, as the issue of antisemitism is not acute at all in the US where the director investigated most of the time, but has deep and specific aspects in many countries in Europe for example.I did like more the approach being taken by the film relative to the education in Israel of the young generations about the Holocaust, about antisemitism and how to cope with these phenomena. Here the film does succeed to raise valid questions and the success of this part is due mainly to the fact that he lets the images and situations on screen speak more for themselves. The questions asked in the final sequence of the film - 'does this type of auto-victimization, of fear and lack of trust for anything that is foreign educate well the younger generations, or even give them the right approach to address real antisemitism and to cope with the horror of the Holocaust?' 'is this type of education better fit for the past or for the present and future?'- these are indeed valid questions which I would love to see being addressed in a public debate at prime time, not at late hours as the ones this documentary was broadcast by Israeli Channel 2 yesterday.

Thought this movie did a good job a laying out some basic issues surrounding questions of anti-Semitism, support and criticism of Israel, and the role of the pro-Israel lobby in the U.S.The movie benefited from the personal reflections of the director on the movie's subject, but on the other hand I often felt the movie relied too much on colorful depictions of individuals and groups and too little on a more "objective" and data-based examination of the question of whether and how much actual (and not just imagined) anti-Semitism results in harm to people around the world.A longer, more carefully researched film could probably have matched the depictions offered in this film with data about and the testimony of people who have been the brunt of truly injurious anti-Semitic prejudice.That said, I do feel the attitudes and beliefs illustrated by the individuals and groups depicted in this film are--as the film suggests--probably very often more at the root of concern about anti-Semitism than any real incidence of the latter.But, still, that's a very sweeping generalization and would need to be "documented"--something this documentary doesn't seem to do a great deal of.However, this was a very interesting and colorful film about a number of issues central to Jewish identity (especially the identity of "secular" Jews), and could be very valuable in sparking sharper thought and discussion about those issues. And also in encouraging more research on the actual extent, or lack thereof, of anti-Semitism around the world.