so last night my roommate and i decided to watch a flick, and being as we're both pretty interested in conspiracy theories (doesn't mean we believe them all), we decided on the documentary entitled, the protocols of zion.

immediately the flick got my attention because the filmmaker, marc levin, asserts that a good chunk of people support the claim that jews were secretly behind 9/11. i'd never heard that theory before, and as much as i found it utterly absurd, i had to know more about it.

i wanted to see how marc would refute the claim. unfortunately this didn't happen. he went out and interviewed people on both sides of the fence, and people caught in the middle so you'd think there would be a good picture being painted here, except that when he interviewed jews, he interviewed respected jews in their community, people with long-standing reputations and education and age and knowledge and wisdom. when he interviewed people who believed very strongly in this conspiracy theory, he interviewed cracked out street screamers. when he interviewed members of the arab community? he interviewed a bunch of 20-something kids hanging out in the streets of new york! an arab man in a suit, an older man, walked up to this interview with arab kids as it took place and crapped all over marc levin because he wasn't interviewing the right people. why doesn't he interview someone who'd been through school, someone who held a job, who's opinions were based more in fact than emotion, like these young arab-americans. marc didn't take his advice.

one of the claims from these conspiracy theorists was that 4000 jews were saved on september 11th. they were told beforehand that an attack would happen and not to go to work. they claim that no jewish bodies were recovered, that there was no coverage of jewish memorial services, and thus there had been no jews killed on 9/11. now this, i figured, was a total gimme. easy to refute, go find a coroner involved, rescue workers involved and find out if they saw any jews. and this is new york city for shit's sake, of course jews died in 9/11. all you have to do is find the readily available evidence that will take this whole absurd conspiracy theory and make it a joke. but marc couldn't do that. he even had a friend, a jewish friend, who worked identifying the remains of the victims of 9/11. he spoke only of one jew who died, a friend of his. one. levin didn't offer any statistics, not even an idea of how many jews actually died. he only told us about one. and then, as though it would solidify things, he interviewed the deceased jewish man's wife about the man's judaism. i think he thought that the audience would question whether or not this one single man was jewish, when what's really going on in the audience's mind, is, "just tell us how many jews died on 9/11!!". seemed pretty basic to me. but marc... ahem... missed the mark.

this movie was shit and all it is, is a bunch of people running around whining with no particular organization, order, reasoning, or factual evidence. it's pretty much just randomly spliced together footage of new yorkers being assholes to each other.

so, does anyone know how many jews really did die in 9/11? cause i find it hard to believe there was only one.

technorati tags:protocols, of, zion, 9/11, september, 11th, jewish, conspiracy, marc, levin