Beyond Paranoia: The War Against the Jews

This is a film with a specific, unrelenting point of view that does not offer a glimmer of hope that antisemitism will subside or become less virulent. Indeed, the opposite may be in the offing. It explores antisemitism and the interview format is interspersed with footage from concentration camp atrocities, propaganda films and drawings and clips of speeches by Palestinian and other Islamic leaders the content of which consists of rabid fulmination against Israel generally and Jews specifically. It portrays aspects of the Arab world not easily accessed by western audiences and these are salutary in their effect. Where the film wavers is its seeming lack of acceptance of Jewish, not to speak of non-Jewish, viewpoints other than total support of Israel and its actions: criticism of political or military actions equals antisemitism by Jews themselves. As a child a family who did (and did not) survive the Holocaust, raised with values of doing 'right', this attitude is hard to take, in fact unacceptable at the level of the individual, yet, in the sense of siege mentality, understandable. Still, one has to have hope in order to live.