Israeli director Yoav Shamir has won the Best Documentary prize at the London Film Festival for Defamation, a film about the use of political use of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust.


From the Defamation website:

“I first had the idea to make a film about anti-Semitism when my earlier work Checkpoint was released. In one of that film’s many reviews, I was called ‘the Israeli Mel Gibson,’ not because of my good looks, but because the views I had expressed, critical of Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians, indicated that I was anti-Semitic. The author of that review was Jewish himself.

At first I thought it was amusing. Being called an anti-Semite by an American Jewish reporter seemed completely farfetched. How could someone who chooses to live outside of Israel, who did not do military service like me, who did not lose a grandfather in the war like me, have the nerve to call me an anti-Semite?

Until then I had never considered the central role that anti-Semitism plays in our lives. Upon reflection I realized that it is a constant buzz, always in the background, always annoying. After a while, you simply get used to it. How often are we really disturbed by the hum of an electric fixture or the drone of passing cars? Anti-Semitism may follow us like a shadow, but then again, who really notices his shadow on a daily basis?

Once I did start noticing it, I realized that anti Semitism is actually a very popular topic in the Israeli discourse. Not a day goes by without at least one article in the newspaper mentioning ‘Nazis,’ ‘the Holocaust,’ or ‘anti-Semitism.’ Having never experienced anti-Semitism myself—the closest I came was being compared to Mel Gibson—I decided to learn something about the subject.”

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