Dani Dayan: Anti-Zionism Is Just Anti-Semitism by Another Name
The term anti-Semitism was created in the age of Enlightenment, when the pseudo-science of eugenics laid the seeds of Nazism. The unsubtle racism of neo-Nazis remains a lightning rod for mainstream outrage today, however religious and political hostilities against Jews are often unacknowledged for what they are.A son of refuseniks chronicles the slow dissolve of Russia’s Jews
The anti-Judaism of Islamic extremists both in the Middle East and migrant communities is a rising concern, as are the creeping tendencies in some European nations to restrict the rights of their remaining Jewish citizens.
However, it is the increasing acceptance and elevation of anti-Zionists across the world that is cause for particular concern. Those who deny the Jewish people, and only the Jewish people, the right to live in freedom and security in their homeland are routinely paraded as the picture of progressive politics.
When nations like Iran arm their bigotry with ballistic missile programs and powerful proxies like Hezbollah, they can expect acquiescence and appeasement from much of the world.
The inalienable right to self-determination is the one guarantee that Jews can never become victims to genocidal regimes again. Anti-Zionism is an ideology which perpetuates the political oppression of Jews, and by doing so legitimizes and encourages violence in Israel and the Diaspora.
It can be verboten in some circles to call out these activists or dictatorial regimes for their beliefs. Nevertheless, those who seek the political oppression of Jews must not be held to a lower standard of bigotry than their religious or racially motivated counterparts.
Fake News is old news to Jews. Today’s anti-Israel agenda, hailed from college classrooms to the voting chambers of the United Nations, regularly tells of a world in which Solomon’s Temple never stood, Jews were not in Israel and the Middle East for thousands of years, and that Zionists were complicit in the Holocaust.
The numbers are telling, he said. There are now about 170,000 Jews in Russia, according to Mark Tolts, a Hebrew University demographer. That’s a tenth of the community’s size in 1989, as counted in the last Soviet census. Factors like an aging population, low birthrate and increased immigration to Israel make Shrayer wonder what the country will look like in 50 years.Sundance Movie Review: ‘The Oslo Diaries’
“Jewish faces and Jewish names are starting to vanish from the Russian mainstream — from literature, the arts and the entertainment industry, but also from the achievement rolls of science, medicine and the humanities,” he writes.
Has Shrayer overcome his sense of divide with Jews who stay in Russia? As a result of his research, he is both more emotionally connected, but also, paradoxically, more disconnected.
“There’s a feeling of not quite mourning but certainly a feeling of deep sadness. It’s coming from a place that is somewhere deep inside,” he reflected.
It brings Shrayer back to the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center, whose galleries and exhibits shed light on the story of Jews in Russia.
“It’s a great museum,” he said. But in part, it’s a museum of those who stayed, for those who stayed – and for their countrymen. Among the museum’s exhibits, pictured on the jacket of his book, are life-size plaster casts of Jews in period garb — all as white as ghosts.
Shrayer learned recently that the audio recording on the No. 19 tram, as well as the sign on its stop, have been changed and riders now hear and see the full name of the museum. He’s not claiming it’s his doing — that would be extremely chutzpahdik, Shrayer said.
Nonetheless, he added, the correction suggests to him that the story of Russia’s Jews resists closure.
What this film shows, more than anything, is that the people in power on both sides of this long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict were able to come together to reach an agreement despite many obstacles. When the initial documents are signed, protests erupt, and it becomes clear that the battle is not between Israelis and Palestinians but rather between those who want peace and those who don’t, regardless of their national or religious identity. Watching Palestinians place olive branches on Israeli tanks to indicate their desire for peace is inspiring. Learning of the organization of a protest for peace is reminiscent of much of what we see today in American society: people marching for rights rather than against them. In his final interview for the film, Shimon Peres puts its best: “No war is ever finished unless it’s being replaced by peace.”
This film, sadly, is far from the end of the story. Watching Yitzhak Rabin sing the words to “Shir LaShalom” — “Song for Peace”— along with Peres just moments before he was assassinated is especially heartbreaking. Knowing that these events took place more than two decades ago and little has changed is disheartening, and this film serves more as a chronicle of history than any call to action since those involved know that there is no easy solution.
The Oslo Diaries is certainly less controversial than the last documentary filmmakers Mor Loushy and Daniel Sivan brought to Sundance. Censored Voices featured recorded testimonies of Israeli soldiers lamenting their misdeeds during the Six Day War, something that, while seemingly true, was seen as easy fodder for critics of Israel to use to denounce it is an imperialist state with an illegal military. Loushy and Sivan seem determined to continue presenting stories that might not always be warmly received, like Sivan’s recent editing of the disturbing documentary Death in the Terminal, which explores the beating and killing of an innocent Eritrean refugee mistaken for a terrorist after an explosion at a bus station. Extensively featuring Bibi Netanyahu in archive footage in The Oslo Diaries railing against Rabin and then being elected prime minister after his death is far from a subtle message that they believe his government isn’t helping the peace process.
There are many stories to tell about Israel and the conflict in which it remains eternally engulfed, and this spotlight on an unlikely early step forward is an optimistic and detailed one, presented as a meeting of two sides in a middle that for so long couldn’t have existed. It’s informative, affirming, and positive while things are going well, and a reminder that there is a way to see the other side.
Martin Kramer: "You remember the filmmakers Mor Loushy and Daniel Sivan, whose last production was “Censored Voices” (2015)? That was predicated on a lie: an allegation of Israeli military censorship. I exposed the manipulation in an internet article entitled “Who Censored the Six-Day War?” (now available, with notes, in my book “The War on Error,” pp. 225-42). Their new film, “The Oslo Diaries,” has now premiered at Sundance, and HBO just bought it. (I guess they needed something to fill the gap left by their last Israel project, a nixed film by Ari Shavit.) I haven’t seen the new offering, but the reviews make me suspect it’s something other than history. I’ll be watching." (h/t Elder of Lobby)