Arts &Lrater ai me t
A member of the Jewish community
looks at a swastika painted on a
headstone in a Jewish cemetery in
Herrlisheim, eastern France.
Dramatic Resurgence from page 35
in the 12th century, was the notorious
blood libels, whereby Jews were accused of
kidnapping and killing Christian children
and draining their blood for the making of
matzah.
The most heinous of these myths was
the one propagated by the fraudulent
Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which
purported a secret meeting of world
Jewish leaders conspiring to take over the
world. In the year following the establish-
ment of the State of Israel, the Protocols
grew in popularity in the Arab world.
From the 1970s and '80s through the
present, the Protocols found legitimacy
at the highest levels of government in the
Arab states, with public endorsements
from Arab leaders. Today, the Protocols are
printed and reprinted in every Arab coun-
try in the Islamic world.
The abhorrent document has even infil-
trated the Arab media.
Horsemen Without A Horse, pro-
duced by Egyptian television in 2002, and
Al Shatatt (The Diaspora), created by
Syrian television in 2003, are multimillion-
dollar series that focused on the theme of a
Jewish conspiracy. Both were aired during
the month of Ramadan, a time when Arab
and Muslim families sit together and watch
a great deal of television.
In a leading segment of Horsemen,
Jewish leaders are shown discussing a plan
of how they will force the world to bend
under their control through money and
bullets. Hassan Hamed, executive director
of Egyptian State Television, refutes accu-
sations of anti-Jewish propaganda with the
specious claim that the program is talking
Behind
The
Camera
Meet 38-year-old
filmmaker Andrew
Goldberg.
Curt Schleier
Special to the Jewish News
T
he filmmaker behind Anti-
Semitism in the 21st Century:
The Resurgence didn't set out
to make films.
Andrew Goldberg was born and raised
in Chicago, the product of "a very tra-
ditional Yiddish, Ashkenazi family." His
38
January 4 • 2007
about history and has nothing to do with
the present situation of the Jews.
But Salemeh Nematt, Washington, D.C.,
bureau chief of Al Hayat, an independent
Arabic-language daily newspaper published
in London, says such films are dangerous,
masquerading as historical documents
when they are not. Nematt acknowledges
that anti-Semitism in Arab and Islamic
media has risen in recent years.
One of the most volatile and graphically
violent scenes in the Syrian film Al Shatatt
depicts a classic blood libel as a contempo-
rary event. It made this writer shudder.
The prevalence of anti-Semitism is noth-
ing new. What is new and dangerous and
problematic is how modern-day technol-
ogy is proliferating anti-Semitism through-
out the world like wildfire.
"We live in a new world of technology,"
says David Harris, executive director of the
American Jewish Committee. "Any group
anywhere in the world has access to cyber-
space and technology, and with very little
money, they can send their message around
the world, which is very worrisome today"
Israeli Knesset member Natan Sharansky
corroborates how "this classical anti-
Semitism, put in the newspapers, on TV
screens and amplified by the modern tech-
nology, by satellites and cables, is sent to tens
of millions of households ... every day."
Arab newspapers are filled with anti-
Semitic cartoons several times a week. In
one cartoon, a Jew and a devil are depicted
standing behind the war in Iraq.
The documentary also features on-
the-spot live interviews, with an Arab in
east Jerusalem and another in Cairo, that
ancestors immigrated to the U.S. early
in the last century.
According to family lore, Goldberg's
great-grandfather was a cantor who
married more than 8,000 couples
— allegedly a Chicago record. "When I
was younger, I used to run into couples
that were married by him," Goldberg
remembers.
Goldberg earned an MBA from
Northwestern University, fully intend-
ing to enter the world of business. He
moved to New York City, where he land-
ed a job in advertising. But, he said, he
looked up the ladder and didn't like what
he saw there.
So he went to work for a new cable
network — that folded in six months.
But not before he'd gotten experience
conceiving, writing and shooting com-
mercials.
He parlayed that into a job with TV's
Inside Edition and a series of freelance
gigs with CNN Headline News, MSNBC
and ABC News, while continuing to do
demonstrate how each believes what the
Protocols purport is true.
A 2006 Pew Research Center Poll shows
that 98 percent of Jordanians and 97 per-
cent of Egyptians hold unfavorable opin-
ions of Jews.
One of the most depressing vignettes
involves an interview with a little Arab girl,
no more than 4 or 5 years of age, already
brainwashed in anti-Semitic prejudice.
The interview goes as follows:
"Are you familiar with the Jews?"
"Yes."
"Do you like them?"
"No:"
"Why don't you like them?"
"Because they are apes and pigs."
"Who said so?"
"Our God."
Woodruff notes that some critics argue
that while much of the language and
rhetoric in the media is anti-Semitic, what
it reflects is an intense rage toward Israel
due to its occupation of the West Bank and
the Golan Heights, as well as the conflict in
Lebanon.
The prickly settlement issue not only
fuels anti-Semitism, but blurs the line
between Israel and Jews. Most people make
little, if any, distinction between the two.
Professor Hishan Ahmed of Birzeit
University in Ramallah says the Israeli
occupation has created hatred among
Palestinians for Israelis. The only image of
a Jew a Palestinian sees, he adds, is a heav-
ily armed soldier who kills men, women
and children and destroys their homes.
While some say hatred of Israel is caused
by Israeli occupation, others note that calls
by Arab leaders for the destruction of the
Jewish state were well in existence before
occupation. Present-day Hamas calls for
the destruction of Israel in its charter.
With fewer Jews living in Islamic coun-
tries, says Woodruff, scholars point to the
rise of anti-Semitism in Europe, where
advertising projects "because they paid
better."
His move into documentaries seemed
a natural outgrowth of his news expe-
rience. The first was The Armenian
Americans (1999), followed by A Yiddish
World Remembered (2002), which won
an Emmy, Proud to Serve (2004), The
Armenian Genocide (2006) and now,
much a function of [my background],
too. It's the story of a way of life that is
dying. It still exists today, but the people
[who lived it] are aging. And we remem-
ber it the wrong way. We just remember
it through shtick and cliche, and that's
not the way it was before the war.
Anti-Semitism.
JN: On the surface, anyway, it appears
that your Jewish background has influ-
enced your work. Do you agree?
AG: There's no question that my
upbringing informs the topics I choose.
The Armenian genocide shares many,
many parallels with the Holocaust, but it
has not been treated by many — if not
most — similarly to the Holocaust. Most
people — except for the kooks — don't
deny that the Holocaust took place. Yet
there are governments that deny the
Armenian genocide.
A Yiddish World Remembered is very
JN: How did the anti-Semitism docu-
mentary come about?
AG: After I did Yiddish World, a guy,
Dr. Arnold Richards, said, "You just did
a movie about a way of life that was
destroyed by anti-Semitism. Now you
need to do this film about anti-Semitism
itself." I realized he was right and start-
ed it the next day.
JN: As you say yourself in the film,
anti-Semitism has been around for
a while. Was there anything in your
research that surprised you?
AG: The one thing I really didn't know
was the way anti-Semitism got to the
Middle East. Europeans came during