Below is a review of the Iranian TV series which created a stir because it dealt with the Holocaust without denying it. [How low we have sunk when a state-run TV production is praised for acknowledging the Holocaust.] The review appeared in Tel Aviv University's
Iranian Pulse, which contains updates and annalysis of Iranian affairs.
For those who don't want to work their way through the whole thing here is the author's key finding:
Although Western media outlets (such as BBC, Wall Street Journal, Der Spiegel) have lauded the series for its admission that the Holocaust took place, and interpret it as a sympathetic reversal in the Iranian attitude towards Jews, Zero Degree Turn is nevertheless laden with problematic messages regarding Jews. The series purports to reflect the events leading up to World War II, yet it is fraught with anachronistic discrepancies, and blatantly falsifies the historical realities of the era.
This is demonstrated, inter alia, by the false assertion that Zionists and Nazis collaborated in order to provoke Jewish emigration. Also, the series fails to address European anti-Semitism and the rise of the Zionist Movement; it is as if Zionism emerged in a vacuum. While Iranian state TV finally draws a distinction between Jews and Zionists, the series likens Zionism to Nazism by placing them on the same immoral plane—unmistakably an intentional message of the series.
No. 18 January 10, 2008
"A ZERO DEGREE TURN" IN POLICY: IRANIAN STATE-RUN TV PRODUCTION ON THE HOLOCAUSTRachel Kantz and Miriam Nissimov*
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad captured the world’s attention with his incendiary attacks against Israel and with his Holocaust denial. He shored up his rhetoric by sponsoring a Holocaust cartoon contest in 2006, encouraging a plethora of pseudoacademic inquiries into the genocide, and hosting prominent Holocaust deniers for what the regime claimed was a conference convened in order to check the veracity of historical claims regarding the Holocaust (December 2006).
If Ahmadinejad perpetuates the regime’s traditional attempts to undermine Israel’s right to exist by denying and/or trivializing the Holocaust, then why has Iranian state-run television launched Zero Degree Turn, a high-budget series which is ostensibly sympathetic to the fate of European Jewry during World War II?
Although Ayatollah Khomeini decisively reversed the Mohammad Reza Shah’s pro-Israel policy, he and his cohorts claimed to differentiate between Judaism and Zionism or Jews and Zionists. This, however, has proven to be a formidable task for the revolutionary regime, as Ayatollah Khomeini himself publicly breached the distinction, and state-run publications incessantly blur the two notions.
One such recent example, is the speech commemorating Jerusalem Day by former president and current Head of the Assembly of Experts, `Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani held in October 2007.
Rafsanjani stated that the Nazis’ “first objective was to free Europe from the evils of Zionism,” and that this was justifiable because “the Zionists, as a powerful faction, used to engage in many subversive activities in Europe, thanks to their large assets and propaganda empire.” He asserted that “one of the reasons that the Jews of that era received” the treatment they did was due to prevailing Jewish attitudes. As a result, “the Europeans intended to force the Zionists to leave Europe, because they were always a nuisance for European governments” (BBC Monitoring, October 5, 2007).
While many Iranian leaders blur the distinction between Jews and Zionists, Zero Degree Turn, written and directed by Hassan Fathi, not only conceptualizes the two as distinct and separate communities, but also portrays them in acute conflict with each other. A dominant theme of the series involves a fierce struggle between Jews and Zionists, both in Paris and Iran. In Iran, this struggle reaches its climax when the local Zionist “gang” murders the community’s rabbi, an ardent opponent of the group’s activities, thereby encouraging Jewish immigration to Palestine.
In Paris, a romance develops between Sarah Stark, a young Jewish student, and Habib Parsa, a Muslim Iranian and son of a diplomat. This story line is loosely based on a true story of heroism in which 'Abdul Hossein Sardari, the Iranian chargé d’affaires saved over a thousand European Jews by forging passports and securing them refuge in Iran. The theme of struggle between Judaism and Zionism manifests itself in a conflict between Sarah’s two uncles, ostensibly the prototypes of “Jew” and “Zionist.”
As such, one uncle, Shmuel Weiss, is portrayed as an honest and righteous intellectual who furiously argues with her other uncle, Theodore Stark, a deceptive Zionist, not coincidentally named after Theodore Herzl, the founding father of the Zionist movement. In a dispute with Stark, Weiss states: “following the transgression of the ancients, the faithful suffered long years of exile until they found security and tranquility in their various places, and now you come and encourage the Jewish people to end their exile? No, I’ve enjoyed many great years side by side with my compatriots, the French. It is not decent to abandon them now when they are faced with such an evil threat.”
The differentiation between Judaism and Zionism is accentuated with the addition of a story line “establishing” collusion between Zionist and Nazi forces—a familiar and commonly accepted notion in the Arab world. In order to realize Zionist aspirations, Theodore Stark collaborates with the Nazis and encourages harassment against the Jews in the aim of persuading them to flee Europe.
'Abdollah Shahbazi, the Iranian historian and author who acted as the “scientific” consultant for the series, underscores this claim in his Persian blog: “during World War II, rich Jewish families were party to a secret alliance with Hitler’s Germany,” and “played an important role in building Hitler’s power, [and in] the outbreak of World War II.”
The series’ distinction between Jews and Zionists and its allegation of Zionist-Nazi collusion are nothing new in Iranian public discourse. What is new is the crack in the state’s lack of tolerance for artistic freedom and religious digression regarding social norms in Iran.
This is one of the rare occasions since the Islamic Revolution state TV has invested so much money and effort in programming that contains elements that run counter to the regime’s conception of appropriate social behavior. These include a soap opera-like love story between a secular Muslim and a secular Jew, unveiled Muslim women, famous Iranian Muslim actors and actresses wearing expensive costumes reflecting 1940’s Western attire, and free discussion of life under the Pahlavis. Additionally, Sarah Stark and Habib Parsa’s discussion of respect for each other’s religious views and the need for dialogue between the religions is refreshingly new.
Finally, given the abundance and recent proliferation of anti-Semitic programming, from children’s shows to documentaries, any programming that evokes sympathy for Jews should be seen as an anomaly in the realm of Iranian state-run TV.
Although Western media outlets (such as BBC, Wall Street Journal, Der Spiegel) have lauded the series for its admission that the Holocaust took place, and interpret it as a sympathetic reversal in the Iranian attitude towards Jews,
Zero Degree Turn is nevertheless laden with problematic messages regarding Jews. The series purports to reflect the events leading up to World War II, yet it is fraught with anachronistic discrepancies, and blatantly falsifies the historical realities of the era.
This is demonstrated, inter alia, by the false assertion that Zionists and Nazis collaborated in order to provoke Jewish emigration. Also, the series fails to address European anti-Semitism and the rise of the Zionist Movement; it is as if Zionism emerged in a vacuum. While Iranian state TV finally draws a distinction between Jews and Zionists, the series likens Zionism to Nazism by placing them on the same immoral plane—unmistakably an intentional message of the series.
The hard-line Kayhan congratulated the series for conveying this idea: “The ground for [creating] Israel is prepared when Hitler’s army puts pressure on activist Jews. In this sense […] Nazism [is] parallel to Zionism.” (Associated Press, September 16, 2007) Here, Kayhan hits it on the mark: the ultimate goal of the series is to delegitimize the nature of the establishment of Israel, and therefore its right to exist.
A critical viewing of the series reveals that despite the new expressions of artistic freedom, Zero Degree Turn imparts common establishment messages, which are in perfect harmony with Ahmadinejad’s policy of denying the Holocaust in order to undermine Israel’s right to exist. Given that the director has mentioned that the state intends to market the series beyond Iran’s borders, the series should be seen as a sophisticated attempt to showcase the regime’s virulent anti-Israel views abroad.
• Rachel Kantz is a Research Fellow at the Center for Iranian Studies at Tel Aviv University.
• Miriam Nissimov is a Research Fellow at the Center for Iranian Studies and a PhD candidate at the Graduate School of Historical Studies at Tel Aviv University.
