Israeli director Yoav Shamir embarks on a provocative - and at times irreverent - quest to answer the question, "What is anti-Semitism today?"  Does it remain a dangerous and immediate threat?  Or is it a scare tactic used by right-wing Zionists to discredit their critics?

Speaking with an array of people from across the political spectrum (including the head of the Anti-Defamation League and its fiercest critic, author Norman Finkelstein) and traveling to places like Auschwitz (alongside Israeli school kids) and Brooklyn (to explore reports of violence against Jews), Shamir discovers the realities of anti-Semitism today.

His findings are shocking, enlightening and - surprisingly - often wryly funny.

Among those he interviews are Abe Foxman, head of the Anti-Defamation League, who is adamant that anti-Semitism is rife and must be exposed; while Norman Finkelstein, author of "The Holocaust Industry: The Exploitation of Jewish Suffering," claims that anti-Semitism is being used for political gain.

Opinions differ and tempers flare but Shamir's directness and wry humour, as shown in his other films including "Checkpoint," "5 Days and Flipping Out," elevate the mood as he tackles extremely difficult questions.
 

 

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Miko Peled is the son of General Matti Peled, who was a leader in the 1967 war who also fought in the War of Independence in 1948. Like his father, Peled is an advocate for an end to the occupation of Palestine. As an Israeli, he offers an insider's perspective on just how far Israel has strayed from its democratic principles, and how it has created a society marred by racism and indifference to the suffering of others. His observations are now collected in a book, "The General's Son: The Journey of an Israeli in Palestine." In this segment, Miko Peled tells of his experiences as a young soldier in the Israeli army. He describes a confrontation with the same army on a recent visit to Israel and the West Bank.

 

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The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is, at its heart, a story of two peoples and one land. Both see history as their justification.  Which means a historian who appears to change sides inevitably becomes a figure of enormous controversy. HARDtalk speaks to Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe who says the record shows that the Jewish state is racist; born of a deliberate programme of ethnic cleansing. Not surprisingly he's widely reviled in his home country. His work has been both supported and criticized by other historians. Before he left Israel in 2008, he had been condemned in the Knesset, Israel's parliament; a minister of education had called for him to be sacked; his photograph had appeared in a newspaper at the centre of a target; and he had received several death threats.

Arguably one of the most important documentary series ever made, The Nazis: A Warning from History sets out to show that, far from being a uniquely German aberration, Nazism fed upon and was fostered by the prejudices and lemming-like inclinations of ordinary people. Although culminating with many atrocities, these programmes are equally good on the motives of otherwise perfectly normal people, who needed only the tacit encouragement of the regime to perpetrate horrors against their enemies, their neighbours, or their own family.

When confronted with evidence of their Nazi past, elderly former party members are often unable to find any other justification for their actions than simply that they could get away with it. Far from being a monolithic dictatorship which compelled the citizenry to act in rigidly prescribed ways, the Nazi state just allowed people to give their worst inclinations free reign. Hitler, it turns out, was a profoundly lazy man who rarely got out of bed before midday, and preferred to leave affairs of state to sort themselves out. He subscribed fervently to the doctrine of survival of the fittest as applied to all social and political matters, and actively encouraged in-fighting among his subordinates. The result was an organisational vacuum at the centre of state, which super-ambitious acolytes were only too eager to fill, often acting on nothing more than the Fuhrer's off-the-cuff remarks.

One small example is revealing: after reading a letter from the father of a disabled child, Hitler agreed that it would be best for the boy to die. From this single statement arose a nationwide policy of euthanasia for all disabled children, carried out willingly and without compulsion by the doctors and "carers" themselves. It needed nothing more than the Fuhrer's nod. The message is clear and shocking: it happened in Germany, it could happen anywhere.

Regardless of whether or not we want one, the government intends a National ID card.  I don’t' know what it's going to take for enough people to realize the people running this country don't give one crap what you or I think.  They are dropping a police state on the back of our necks as fast as they possibly can

We have to stop being so darned naive.  This sort of thing is meant to control US, not protect us from the mythic terrorist that is going to kill us and our family because they hate our freedoms.