...There was, for example, some “unpleasantness” when Jewish immigration began to swell the population of the Jewish communities that had lived continuously in Palestine since it was ruled by the Jewish people during biblical times. Arabs, by the film’s account, still unsullied by the taint of European anti-Semitism, seem to have figured out how to massacre the Jews of Hebron, they also invented quaint pastimes such as burning synagogues and they diverted themselves by destroying Jewish property of all kinds. They did a great many other exceedingly unpleasant things in “The Holy Land” during the teens, twenties and thirties of the last century, including forming a formal and enthusiastic alliance with Hitler and the Nazis. Oh, but that, according to Anti-Semitism in the 21st Century: The Resurgence, was nothing more than a by-product of their “understandable” resentment of the influx of Jewish settlers who were changing life in the area.

When was the last time a PBS program advanced the idea that anti-immigration groups in the American southwest aren’t racist but are simply expressing an “understandable” regret in regard to the change in the local ethnic balance and life style that are caused by illegal Hispanic immigration. Did any commentator on PBS ever speculate that the white people of South Boston, Little Rock, Alabama or Mississippi were not really racist when they resisted school integration? Was there ever a film on PBS that theorized that school segregation, redlining and blockbusting were artifacts of simple, innocent resistance to change?...