It shows on PBS tonight (Monday, January 8, 2007) at 10pm EST/9PM CST.
ANTI-SEMITISM IN THE 21st CENTURY:
THE RESURGENCE
Premieres on PBS, Monday, January 8, 2007
10:00-11:00PM EST (check local listings)
New York, December 12, 2006 - Today, many parts of the world are experiencing a massive resurgence of anti-Semitism - from hate propaganda, to vandalism, to violent attacks on Jews themselves. Worldwide, since the year 2000, major violent acts against Jews and Jewish institutions have nearly doubled from 1990s levels. People are asking: Why is this happening? What real threats does it pose? And what roles do Israel and the Arab-Israeli conflict really play? The answers will surprise almost everyone. Hosted and narrated by veteran broadcast journalist Judy Woodruff, Anti-Semitism in the 21st Century: The Resurgence explores the roots of anti-Semitism and examines how and why it continues to flourish today. The 60-minute documentary was written, produced and directed by Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Andrew Goldberg in association with Oregon Public Broadcasting. Goldberg is also the producer of the recent PBS film The Armenian Genocide.
In June 2006, a poll by The Pew Charitable Trusts revealed that over 97 percent of Egyptians and Jordanians hold "unfavorable opinions of Jews." Among scholars, journalists and experts, there is little disagreement that anti-Semitism is on the rise. Throughout the Arab and Islamic world, overt hatred of Jews has become commonplace in mainstream media. Across the Middle East, a recent 30-part mini-series depicts Jews murdering a Christian child to make Matzo with his blood; anti-Semitic commentaries and cartoons appear regularly in newspapers.
"I think it is dangerous to underestimate the importance of propaganda and rhetoric in terms of harming people," explains Salameh Nematt, Washington D.C. Bureau Chief, Al Hayat Newspaper. "This anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish attitude is victimizing a huge number of people."
Says host Judy Woodruff, "We live in a time of growing intolerance, especially religious intolerance, and it is unsettling to see anti-Semitism on the rise once again. As a journalist, I am proud to be associated with this documentary, which sheds light on a particularly troubling form of hateful behavior."
Filmed in Syria, Egypt, Israel, the West Bank, France and the US, Anti-Semitism in the 21st Century: The Resurgence includes interviews with David Ignatius of the Washington Post; Israeli Knesset Member Natan Sharanksy; Columbia University Professor Rashid Khalidi; New York Times best-selling author and NYU Professor Tony Judt; Professor Hisham Ahmed of Birzeit University, Ramallah; Hassam Hamed, Head of Egyptian State Television and others.
more...A review:
January 8, 2007
TV Review | 'Anti-Semitism in the 21st Century: The Resurgence'
The Libeling of a People Surges With a Vengeance
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY
Diatribes against the Jews are shockingly crude in Arab television programs and newspapers. They are also shockingly commonplace, “the elevator music for the Arab world,” as David Ignatius, an international affairs columnist for The Washington Post, puts it in “Anti-Semitism in the 21st Century: The Resurgence,” a PBS documentary that is broadcast tonight. And that background noise has become more strident and pervasive over the last few years, spread by satellite television and the Internet throughout the Middle East and North Africa, with echoes reverberating deep into immigrant groups in Europe.
“Anti-Semitism in the 21st Century” tries to explain the origins of that hate as well as its surge. Whatever its roots, anti-Semitism in the Muslim world is linked inexorably to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and keeps getting worse. And no topic is more sensitive or incendiary. So not surprisingly, the script is cautious and elliptical, more comfortable exploring the past than the present.
The film begins with a vitriol sampler, clips of various Islamic clerics culled by the Middle East Media Research Institute, a Washington monitoring group founded by Yigal Carmon, a former counterintelligence adviser to the Israeli government. In 2004 on Al-Manar TV in Lebanon, for example, Sheikh Taha al-Sabonji said, “Those responsible for all civil strife and other problems throughout history were the Jews.” (Muslim extremists are not the only ones to express such sentiments, of course. Mel Gibson expressed a similar idea when he was arrested for drunk driving.)
A history lesson follows. Various experts explain that Jews did not have equal rights in the Muslim-ruled world, but were relatively tolerated until the 19th century, when the crumbling of the Ottoman empire and the rise of the Zionist movement dramatically changed the landscape. Jewish refugees escaping persecution in Europe arrived in Palestine en masse. “The Arab reaction was a refusal of Jewish presence,” says Zeev Sternhell, an Israeli historian. “It was not anti-Semitism.”
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