USA: A new documentary exploring anti-Semitism, especially after 9/11, tries to encourage more public dialogue on the subject

A new documentary to be released soon seeks to examine the resurgence of anti-semitism in the wake of 9/11. Filmmaker Marc Levin draws inspiration for the film from an encounter he had in a New York cab soon after 9/11, in which his driver, an Egyptian immigrant, made the claim that the Jews had been warned not to go to work at the World Trade Center on the day of the attack. The cab driver said that "it's all written in the book," referring to "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," a document purportedly created 100 years ago that outlines the Jews' master plan to rule the world. Discredited as being fake, "The Protocols" were supposed to have had a crucial influence on Hitler. "The 100th anniversary of the Protocols of the elders of Zion is an appropriate time to remind people - this thing is a fraud, it has been proven over and over again to be a fraud, and just the idea, it's like a cartoon you know that twelve Jews somewhere in a cave or graveyard you know meet and you know we're going to have an assassination on Monday, then we'll start a World War on Tuesday, then Wednesday we'll cause a depression'" said Levin, referring to one of the motivations behind directing the film. "I mean it's such an infantile regressive kind of vision of how the world really works." Disturbed by the popularity of the Protocols, even in North America, Levin, a Jew himself, embarks on a personal odyssey to learn more. He finds that they are sold on Amazon and until recently at Wal-Mart; that they were just removed from the official web site of the Palestinian Authority and that they have also been adapted for television dramatizations aired during the the month of Ramadan in the Middle East, including countries such as Egypt, Syria and Lebanon. Armed with his camera and appearing on screen along with his subjects, Levin engages in a free-for-all dialogue with Arab Americans, African American nationalists, Christian evangelists, white supremacists, Kabbalist rabbis, holocaust survivors, and the founder of a popular Jew watch web site. Levin told Reuters TV that he was surprised by several radical opinions that he encountered while making the documentary, including one belief that no Jews died in the 9/11 World Trade Center attack. "I mean how could anybody say there were no Jewish funerals or memorials. How could anybody in their right mind believe no Jews died?" asked Levin. "The fact is hundreds of Jews died on 9/11, so that anybody could believe that, I found incredible." In his anti-Semitism exploration, Levin includes a clip of the Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed's address to a 2003 Islamic Conference when he said "..today Jews rule the world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them." Levin said he is taken aback by the fact that so-called "intelligent" people too bite the anti-Semitism bait. Levin said, "There are a lot of intelligent people that kind of believe some of these things. Take the Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mahathir, who in his famous speech you know to the world Islamic conference gave you know, kind of repeated some of the elements that the Jews secretly run the world, and they control the United States, and they control Europe. So, I was surprised, yes, that this isn't just ignorance. There are intelligent people, this is religion, it's faith, it's history, it's so many other things." Levin is keen to encourage debate on anti-semitism and doesn't want references to the Protocols to be hushed up. He said that some people in the Jewish community were upset that in the documentary, he gave young Arabs the mike and the opportunity to air even their militant opinions. But Levin emphasized that if New Yorkers can't have open debate on sensitive issues, then how can one expect such discussions in other parts of the world. He said, "If in New York City, in Brooklyn, on Sixth Avenue, if we can't talk about this, yes - we disagree, yes - let's be passionate, let's argue, let's get the poison out of the way and these are all serious issues. And why can't we talk about them the way we would talk about sports, or music, or fashion? In other words, where it's not experts, it's just this is how I feel. If we can't do that here, in this city, how do we expect in Baghdad - the Shiites and the Sunnis and the Kurds to work it out, or the warlords in Afghanistan?" The documentary encouraging the conversation that Levin desires is released on Friday (October 21st).

ITN Source | October 26, 2005

Tags:. .ignorance. .depression. .brooklyn. .fraud. .disturbed