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In this irreverent quest, he follows American Jewish leaders to the capitals of Europe, as they warn government officials of the growing threat of anti-Semitism, and he tacks on to a class of Israeli high school students on a pilgrimage to Auschwitz. The film questions perceptions and terminology when an event proclaimed by some as anti-Semitic is described by others as legitimate criticism of Israel's government policies. The film walks along the boundary between anti-Zionism, rejecting the notion of a Jewish State, and anti-Semitism, rejecting Jews. Is the former being used to excuse the latter? And is there a difference between today's anti-Semitism and plain old racism that is affecting all minorities?
Yoav Shamir was born in Tel-Aviv in November 1970. He graduated high school at Vitzo France, an art school. He specialized in photography. He then went on to Tel-Aviv University where he earned a B.A. in History and Philosophy. He later received an MFA in cinema and graduated with honors. Defamation is Shamir's fourth feature length documentary. Arguably, his statement at the film's website states all that Shamir perhaps needs to say about his film; but, I nonetheless welcomed the chance to sit down and discuss it with him.
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Michael Guillén: I don't know whether you're more brave for having tackled the issue of anti-Semitism in your documentary or for interacting with your audiences after they've seen the film.
Yoav Shamir: [Laughs.]
Guillén: Defamation has shown at several festivals, premiering at Berlin, going on to Tribeca, HotDocs, among others. Have you attended most of those festival screenings?
Shamir: Yes, quite a few.
Guillén: How do you prepare yourself for that confrontation with your festival audiences? You know the atmosphere will be contentious.
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Guillén: This documentary tackles a difficult, sober and serious subject but counters the heaviness of the subject with light flourishes: irreverence, graphics, comic editing, subjectivity. At Screen Daily, Howard Feinstein described Defamation as "unapologetically subjective", whereas at The Auteurs Notebook Danny Kasman has noted that you've allowed the material to "overstate itself" such that it could be argued your subjectivity has, in fact, trumped (or become?) the film's content. I, however, much appreciated Defamation's sense of humor. I laughed a lot. I'm not Jewish so I'm not sure if that colors my appreciation of the humor. Can you speak to your decision to exercise this light touch and to enfold subjective humor into your voiceover and the film's editing?
Shamir: When I started to make this film, I realized it was going to be a very touchy subject. The more I filmed, the more I realized just how touchy a subject and how passionate people were about their points of view and the ways they see the world. I don't know how many films or documentaries there have been about anti-Semitism, but I suspect most of them have been basic archival black and white footage films that feature interviews with Holocaust survivors. If I tell you I'm going to make a film about anti-Semitism, this is automatically what will come to people's minds. Either it will be a film about the Holocaust with black and white archival footage and interviews with survivors—which most of the time serves as a type of catharsis for the viewers and, many times, for the people who have made the film—or audiences will come expecting a film that says how terrible the state of anti-Semitism is in the world today, complete with statistics and examples. In wanting to make my film, I came up against these expectations.
Personally, I would not come to a theater to watch a film about anti-Semitism because, up front, I would already be thinking that this is not the kind of film I want to watch. I've already seen hundreds of them and I don't feel like watching another one like that. I wanted my film to get close to people, to reach the audience, to shake up their paradigms and their convictions. By using a lighter tone, it helped the audience to maintain interest. It helped them get away from their expectations and their beliefs. It got their attention. Humor, for me, is a great tool to reach people.
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Shamir: You know, in one of the interviews for the film conducted with a Jewish person, he told me that anti-Semitism means hating Jews more than you have to, which is a funny way of looking at the term. It's true that Semite refers to all the people who are living in the region of Israel—and, yes, Arabs are also Semites—but, eventually the term has been dominated by the Jews and has lost its 19th century definition, which related to the race of the Semites. The term has come to mean a phenomenon specifically targeted towards Jews.
Guillén: I'm interested in how you've structured the documentary to maximize the issue's polarizing potential; its main thrust being to situate the audience somewhere inbetween. As Ray Bennett wrote for The Hollywood Reporter: "The fiercest opponents turn out to be in the United States, where Prof. Norman Finkelstein, who has written about what he calls 'the Holocaust industry,' and Abraham Foxman, who is the very active National Director of the ADL [the Anti-Defamation League], are vocal enemies. Each was touched personally by the Holocaust but they hold opposing views on the nature of anti-Semitism and its impact on the world in general and Israel in particular. Their divide is profound and passionate, and Shamir takes time to allow both of them to make their case." As Ali Hazzah wrote for Eye For Film: "they come off as monomaniacal obssesionists, each obdurate in their point of view." Clearly it was your intent to stage polarity between these individuals? Can you speak to how you effected this but kept the balance?
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With Defamation, I wanted audiences to think, "Yes, that makes sense and this makes sense. Oh, there is anti-Semitism; but, oh, it's not like that." I like that audiences move along this spectrum and re-think and adjust their positions and views.
Guillén: Critic Jason Bailey considered your final voiceover a "misfire" for not acknowledging that the film, and the issues it addresses, are too inscrutable. He felt that the efficacy of the final sequence didn't require a director to come in to tell the audience what to think and that the documentary had already effectively motivated people to situate themselves towards the issue according to their own convictions. Bailey charged that your final voiceover negated that some of your audience might have reached a different conclusion than you. How do you respond to that critique?
Shamir: I don't remember exactly who it was but someone once said that a poem is never finished until it is abandoned. It's the same thing with a film. Whether the final voiceover was the right statement or not, I'm not sure; but, I stand behind the statement. The fact remains that—while for many Jewish people the issues the film revolves around are the bottom-line issues of identity and self-definition and while the film is made from an Israeli point of view—this discourse on anti-Semitism, which has been held largely here in the United States, is an existential one for Israelis.
An Israeli kid who is conscripted into the army does not have the perspective that an American Jew has. When this kid reads the reports issued by the ADL about a steep rise in anti-Semitism in the United States, he wonders, "Wow. Is there going to be another Holocaust?" The past is important to remember. We need to know about it. But maybe we need to move on and envision a future we would like for ourselves? To imagine a definition of ourselves that we would like to have? Will it be a negative one or a positive one? That might seem like a simplistic statement in the end—perhaps I could phrase it differently—but, when you make a film, you can't be so careful about everything or you can't make the film.
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Shamir: No, of course not.
Guillén: I imagine they simply reveal themselves in the filming? But I had a question about the tour itself. Is there a basic or established itinerary to the tour?
Shamir: Yes, there's an itinerary for sure. The tour runs seven days. It starts and ends up in Warsaw. The itinerary is arranged both substantively and geographically. For example, they keep Auschwitz for one of the last days after the students have already experienced certain … understandings.
Guillén: It seemed apparent that the structure of the itinerary was intended for maximum propagandic effect. The tour starts out with "lesser" camps, so to speak….
Shamir: They start with a ghetto and then move to a camp….
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Prior to Defamation's premiere at the Berlinale, head of the Forum Christoph Terhechte defended inclusion of Defamation in the program, stating it was balanced against Petr Lom's Letters to the President, a film which likewise explores the "rehearsal of victimhood, [and] the definition and identification of an entire people and religious community with being the victim", albeit from the perspective of Iranian Muslims. Both Defamation and Letters to the President address "the delicate matter of confronting the aura of the perpetual victim." Have you seen Lom's film?
Shamir: I haven't seen his film.
Guillén: During the Q&A after Defamation's SFJFF screening, you mentioned that both Abe Foxman and Norman Finkelstein hated the film once they finally saw it. Can you elaborate on what their complaints were and what they felt was wrong about the film?
Shamir: I'm not sure that Finkelstein has seen the film. We've received negative comments from him but I'm not sure he's actually seen the film. Maybe he's responding from the trailer or from what he's heard from other people? Foxman issued a press release at the ADL website addressing his reaction to the film so, perhaps, I shouldn't speak for him?
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Shamir: Yes.
Guillén: Can you recommend them?
Shamir: For sure, yeah.
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Guillén: Equally disturbing to me was the comment made by the couple working for the ADL that Israel is the "insurance policy" for American Jews. You stated on stage at your Q&A that you did not want Israel to be an insurance policy for American Jews.
Shamir: Many American Jews have a multilayered perception of the world. While making the film, this emerged as one of the most fascinating themes. Seemingly, American Jews are happy as American citizens and their lives here; but, somewhere underneath…. It was interesting to note among the ADL circles that they play a little game where they ask: name five non-Jewish friends who will hide you if something terrible happens in the U.S. They can't come up with five names, so they're asked to name three. They can't come up with three, so they're asked to name one. One of the producers of Defamation is a Jewish American woman who told me that one of her best non-Jewish friends admitted she's had nightmares about whether she would hide her "should the Nazis come." Jewish Americans live seemingly happy lives in the American community but underneath there are many layers of insecurity that dominate their thinking. They think that Israel should be there as their insurance policy, which God forbid—and they always go back to history to confirm their fears; who would have thought that anything like the Holocaust could have happened in Germany in the '30s?—so many times they have a similar conception of America. "We're okay now, but it was also okay in Berlin. So in case something terrible should happen, we want to have a strong Israel we can go to." Many of them have houses in Israel. But as an Israeli living in Israel, we pay a heavy price for being this insurance policy.
If I was an insurance agent, and you asked me how to keep your house safe for insurance matters, I would advise you to surround your house with a wall, barbed wire, three alarms and guard dogs and that would pretty much insure that no one would come in and steal your belongings, right? That would be clever advice from an insurance agent. But if you live in the house, you don't want to be surrounded by walls, barbed wire, dogs and all of that stuff because you want to live a normal life. I live in Israel. I want to live a normal life. I don't want my life to be ruled by demons belonging to somebody else who is not living in Israel. If I have a problem with my neighbor, sometimes my neighbor might be right. If I'm occupying his land, anti-Semitism doesn't have anything to do with it. I recognize the fact that occupying his land is wrong. As far as I'm concerned, we should reach a point where we're more concerned about living in a liberal, democratic, tolerant and progressive Israel, which makes its decisions on moral and realistic perspectives. But what's happening in Israel now is mainly being influenced by demons chasing people who live outside of Israel. As an Israeli, this is not a great thing.
Guillén: I admire your concession that Israeli occupation of Palestinian land is wrong and works against achieving—as you say—a progressive and tolerant Israel. But this is a contentious perspective. Where does the strength come from for you to adhere to this perspective?
Shamir: As a filmmaker and as a person, I try to see things without being affiliated to any particular paradigm, especially in the face of Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. Most American Jews have never been to the occupied territories, not as civilians and certainly not as soldiers. I've worn both those hats. I've been there as a soldier and with my own eyes have seen the injustice. Later, while filming Checkpoint, I returned as a civilian with a little bit of perspective. In both instances, it seemed wrong to me that we should do such harm against the Palestinians. For me this is a natural response. I wouldn't like people to act that way towards me. Whereas we as Jews are very sensitive to any anti-Semitism levied at us now or in the past, we are not sensitive to the injustice and harm we are causing others. As a person, I find that unfair.
Guillén: Do you have a sense of how much your opinions on this matter are shared by other Israeli Jews?
Shamir: It's hard to quote numbers. Unfortunately, the last election reflects there is less and less tolerance. This is the most right-wing government we have ever had in the history of Israel. Obviously, according to the last election, the majority has proven that Israeli occupation of Palestinian land is not a huge concern for them. But there are still enough people in Israel who would like to see the occupation end. I think most Israelis even now know that we will eventually have to give back the territories; but, for right now, it's a strange relationship with the territories. Unfortunately, many crazy evangelist Americans donate to Israel, and Israel embraces their support without weighing that these people might be religious maniacs with disturbed views on the world. Israel is happy to receive the support from these individuals even if their final goal is that all Jews will become Christians and believe in Christ. Many strange things are happening in that arena.
Guillén: My final question: you've done such a fine job with documentaries, would you ever consider filming a narrative feature?
Shamir: It's my goal to make a feature fiction film. I'm hoping it will happen someday.
Cross-published on Twitch.