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JV: The film opens with Holocaust historian and author Elie Wiesel issuing a frightening warning about the proliferation of anti-Semitism. He states that he thought that Jew hatred had made its final exit from the annals of history after the Holocaust. While making this film, did you come to the conclusion that “Judeophobia” is endemic to the Jewish experience?There's a good reason why Ruth Wisse, the Harvard prof who wrote Jews and Power, one of the brainiest and most thought-provoking tomes of our time, is not associated with the Hartman Institute. It's because, unlike the hand-wringing iEngagers, she believes American Jews who care about Israel should vote for Romney. Baldly stated, that view would no doubt give Donniel Hartman and his fellow deep thinkers the vapours, and perhaps even induce a bout or two of apoplexy.
Gloria Greenfield: Judeophobia has nothing to do with the nature of Jews. Rather, as Ruth Wisse brilliantly articulates in her analysis of the pointed finger, Judeophobia has everything to do with the political needs of those who forged Jew-hatred as a political tool; they need this politics of accusation, grievance, and scapegoating. In my interview with Wisse in August 2010, she warned that “it is high time that people really begin to look at anti-Semitism in terms of its political function and consider the role that it plays in the politics of its users – whether they are autocrats or totalitarian oppressors, or whether they are religious radicals or secular radicals – look at the role that Jew-bating plays in their political scheme.”

It was, in fact, the Soviet Union that established the analogy, by linking the Palestinian and black South African struggles in its propaganda. Those readers who can bear to revisit UN General Assembly Resolution 3379, which equated Zionism with racism, should note the awkwardly-worded observation that,Cohen adds this zinger re others who are fixated on the "Israeli apartheid" canard:
“…the racist regime in occupied Palestine and the racist regime in Zimbabwe and South Africa have a common imperialist origin, forming a whole and having the same racist structure and being organically linked in their policy aimed at repression of the dignity and integrity of the human being.”The ANC, which always oriented itself to the Soviet bloc and still maintains a close relationship with the unapologetically Stalinist South African Communist Party, has not discarded this Soviet ideological baggage. That commitment, far more than any distinctive insights generated by the experience of living with apartheid in its South African homeland, explains why the country’s leaders are so willing to downplay the historic sufferings of their own people in order to batter Israel with the language of racism.
And it perhaps also explains why the BDS movement has failed in its bid to become a mass campaign with real impact. Instead, it has resigned itself to being a forum for assorted extreme leftists to pile moral opprobrium on Zionism and Israel. That is, when they are not paying tribute to Fidel Castro as a “revolutionary icon in the fight for freedom and equality.”If you hate Israel and love Fidel, your moral compass and worldview are both seriously out of whack.
It was painful at times, but it also added a certain intensity. Host and guest really listened to each other, rather than constantly winking to the audience. As Seth Meyers, one of Fallon’s guests, put it, it was “like watching Charlie Rose, if he had a band, and everyone was high.” I don’t know about you, but that’s a show I’d like to see.You would? Frankly, that's a show I'd avoid like the plague.