Synopsis for
Defamation (2009) More at IMDbPro »Hashmatsa (original title)

Yoav Shamir tries to take a witty & satirical approach to a deadly serious issue - anti-semitism in today's world. His film & title focus almost exclusively on the unprecedented access he was given to Abe Foxman and the NY-Based Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Shamir tries to document one of the ADL-reported cases of rising anti-semitism, and this leads him to Crown Heights in Brooklyn, where he interviews black youth. He accompanies students on a March of the Living visit to Poland. He is invited to join Foxman on an ADL delegation to Europe, where he discovers that the ADL is closely aligned with the policies of the Israeli government. He then interviews two American academics who have written about this issue (Mearsheimer & Walt) and concludes that Israel's past is preventing it from moving forward. This singular focus on the US-Israeli lobby as a lense with which to view contemporary anti-semitism means that Shamir ignores more sinister forms, such as Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.