The Anti-Semitic Intelligentsia

As you read this, I will be away from my desk. While I am gone, I will be posting a mini-retrospective of some of my previously published, copy-righted work. The articles seem to hold up. In some cases, I will introduce the piece. In most instances, I will let the piece speak for itself.

This was my first piece for Frontpage Magazine and I gave it to them only after both the New York and LA Times turned it down. A group of Israeli feminists wanted to show a film. The Swedish filmmaker absolutely refused his film to be shown in Israel. Within 48 hours of posting my article, Lukas Moodysson, the filmmaker, changed his mind and allowed his brilliant anti-trafficking film, “Lilya-4-ever” to be shown on a one-time basis at an anti-trafficking conference in Israel. Moodysson knew my work in Swedish and he wrote to me, furious that I had challenged his reputation as “prejudiced.” But he changed his mind.

I was impressed by the results and sent it to all my feminist listserv groups. The left-feminist groups refused to read the article or to hear about its results because, many said, I had dared to publish it in a “right wing rag.” Their blind intolerance motivated me to publish in Frontpage on a regular basis.

The Anti-Semitic Intelligentsia-August 21, 2003

The hit Swedish film, “Lilya 4-ever,” is a relentless and lyrical work about female sexual slavery. Professor Donna Hughes, who recently testified before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee about global trafficking, compared the film to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Lukas Moodysson’s film depicts the abandonment and betrayal of Lilya, a teenage Russian girl, by her mother and maternal aunt, leaving her vulnerable to a sweet-talking pimp who traffics her into Hell and death in Sweden. The film has been shown in many countries where trafficking, brothels, and other human rights abuses flourish: Sweden, Russia, England, Turkey, Finland, France, and the United States. Moodysson is not a woman, nor has he been prostituted. Nevertheless, as an artist, he is both able to empathize with great suffering and to distinguish the victim from the victimizer…Continued Reading >>