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Protocols of Zion review
December 2, 2009 | | Leave a Comment
in the world, the hatred of the Jews, and how it rears its ugly head in
contemporary times.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Jewish-American filmmaker Marc Levin (“Slam”) traces the oldest prejudice
in the world, the hatred of the Jews, and how it rears its ugly head in
contemporary times. He starts after 9/11 and picks up on the unbelievable
statements made by the lunatic fringe, buttressed by a Turkish newspaper,
that no Jews died in the World Trade Center because four thousand of them
were warned to stay away on that fatal day. From there the filmmaker latches
onto the notorious anti-Semitic book, Protocols of the Elders of Zion,
that claims to have minutes of a secret meeting of Jews to gain control
of the world. In the 1920s it was exposed as a forged document from the
late-19th century invented by Czar Nicholas II’s secret police and released
to the world around 1905. Such prominent people in the modern world as
Henry Ford made it public by distributing copies free of charge to car
buyers, Adolf Hitler used it in his hate speeches, in recent times former
Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad referred to it when stating “Jews
rule the world by proxy,” it was made into a movie for Egyptian TV, Hamas
has it as part of its founding charter, white supremacists sell it as part
of their staple of hate literature, and militant blacks use it to stir
up their followers with hatred for the Jews.
In order to find out why there are those in the world still blaming
the Jews for everything that goes wrong, the filmmaker personalizes the
story and meets the ignorant people who are so blinded with hatred that
they believe such nonsense as The Protocols and all other lies that link
the Jews with an international cabal. This brings him into contact with
such ugly characters as street corner instigators, an Arab newspaper editor
in New Jersey who printed The Protocols, neo-Nazi organizers, and hostile
talk-radio callers on extremist Frank Weltner’s radio show (this weirdo
also runs a Web site called “Jew Watch”). Finally giving up trying to convince
such hateful people of their Jewish misconceptions, he shows off a Holocaust
survivor speaking to a group (but it’s doubtful if even his presence would
have convinced Holocaust deniers such as Mel Gibson’s dad that he was wrong–the
film also shows his son Mel defending his The Passion of the Christ film
as a return to the church’s old teachings of blaming the Jews as the Christ
killer). For further proof the earnest filmmaker then points his camera
at the Jewish graves of the many who were killed at the WTC, exposes the
falsehood that the Jews control the media as evidenced by media mogul Rupert
Murdoch (whom the bigots say must be Jewish because he’s a media mogul)
and ridicules the ignorant street notion that the “Jew York” mayor during
9/11 was none other than “Jewliani.” What can you say to such attempts
to scapegoat a people for every wrong in society?
Even though the film deals with the low-end bigots (talking only
with the misinformed, the crazies, the uneducated and the holders of outrageous
beliefs) and doesn’t say anything we didn’t already know, it’s still worthwhile
looking up close at those who spread these vile lies and make their hatred
contagious and potentially lethal. Its main problem is that it lacks focus
and tries to branch out too far afield to give its subject matter the more
incisive depth it deserves. It veers too much between tracing post-9/11
and historical anti-Semitism, never satisfactorily finishing the task it
originally intended to zero in on.
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