David Hirsh resents being made the ‘hero’ of a new film looking at antisemitism, as he explains in a post at CiF.
Shamir makes me into the hero of the film. Normally I would enjoy being the hero but in this case he constructs my heroic status by misrepresenting what I do and what I say.
I am shown making criticisms of the Israeli oppression of the Palestinians as though this was something controversial. I am shown arguing that contemporary antisemitism is in part a mystification of the real conflict, transformed by racist language and grotesque narratives. I actually said more that day than the one-sided soundbite that Shamir wanted to hear.
Mark Gardner of the CST has another concern. He objects to the way the film has been characteristed in the TV schedules:
The film was itself was many things. It was most certainly not, however, an analysis of “anti-Semitism today”, as implied by Channel 4. It was a two hour long attack upon Israel and its supposed supporters, claiming that they defame non-Jews with the accusation of antisemitism. To call this an examination of “what is anti-Semitism today” is itself a defamation: a defamation of the many Jews throughout the world who have fallen victim to physical antisemitic attack in recent years, and a defamation of those, including CST, who have sought to reverse the current near-global phenomenon of escalating antisemitsm.
