How
the Jewish-Zionist Grip on American Film and Television Promotes
Bias Against Muslims
By
ABDULLAH MOHAMMAD SINDI
Abdullah
Mohammad Sindi, a native of Saudi Arabia, lives and
works in California. He received bachelor's and master's
degrees from California State University, Sacramento.
In 1978 Sindi received a doctorate in international relations
from the University of Southern California. He has also
studied at the University of Grenoble (France), the University
of Poitiers in Tours (France), the University of Liege
(Belgium), and at Indiana University (Bloomington). He
also conducted research at the United Nations Institute
for Training and Research (New York).
In
Saudi Arabia Sindi served as a professor at the Institute
of Diplomatic Studies (Jeddah), and as an assistant professor
at King Abdulaziz University. In the United States he
has taught at the University of California, Irvine, California
State University in Pomona, Cerritos Junior College, and
Fullerton Junior College.
This
essay is adapted from the first chapter of his new book,
The Arabs and the West: The Contributions and the
Inflictions (Oct. 1999).
|
Unquestionably
the most powerful molder of opinion in the world today is the American
global media, and especially the Hollywood motion picture industry.
Ever since Zionist Jews forcibly established the State of Israel
on the land of Arab Palestine in 1948 (with a great deal of American
help), and as Arabs and Israelis have struggled for control of this
land in the years since, Hollywood and the rest of American mass
media have carried out a campaign to disparage Arabs and tarnish
their image.
American
motion pictures and television - which have promoted negative images
of non-Caucasians, including Native Americans, African-Americans,
Hispanic-Americans, and Asian-Americans - since the 1950s have singled
out Arabs and Muslims, more often than any other ethnic-religious
group, as objects of hatred, contempt, and derision. (Because Arabs
are the world's most numerous Semitic group, this hostility against
them is literally anti-Semitic.)
'Villain
of Choice'
In
American television, writes Professor Shaheen, "the villain
of choice today is the Arab." He also says: "To be an
Arab in America today is to be an object of contempt and ridicule
by television under the guise of entertainment. To me this antiArab
image on entertainment manifests itself in the politics of America."l
Misconceptions
This
media campaign fosters numerous misconceptions about Arabs and their
prevailing religion, Islam. For example, although Arabs have lived
for centuries in thriving metropolitan centers such as Rabat, Algiers,
Alexandria, Cairo, Damascus, Jerusalem, Beirut, Mecca (Makkah) and
Baghdad, and have built complex, civilized societies across the
Arab world, as well as in Europe's Iberian Peninsula, many Westerners
have been persuaded to believe that Arabs are typically uncultured
normads who live in desert tents.
Similarly,
while many Americans regard OPEC - the Organization of Petroleum
Exporting Countries - as synonymous with Arabs and the Arab world,
and while the US media routinely blames Arabs whenever OPEC decides
to raise oil prices, in fact six of the 13 OPEC member states are
not Arab.
Also
typically, American television and motion pictures often depict
Arabs and Muslims, uniquely, as religious bigots, lacking any tolerance
for the religious sensibilities of others. In fact, for much of
history, Islam has been more tolerant of Christianity (and of Judaism)
than vice versa. Moreover, it was Jewish Zionists who established
Israel, in the "promised land" of Palestine, as a state
exclusively for the "chosen people."
While
the Arabic Word "Allah" is often invoked in American films
in a way designed to evoke derision and cynicism, conjuring an image
of some weird pagan deity, in fact "Allah" is simply the
Arabic word for God. Not only Arab Muslims, but Arab Christians
and even Arab Jews, use this Word as their term for God.
Although
officially classified by US government agencies as "White"
or "Caucasian," Arabs (and particularly Arab men) are
sometimes depicted in American television and movies as Negroid
blacks, reinforcing a derogatory image of Arabs as so-called "sand
niggers."
"Terrorists"
are active all over the world, in countries as diverse as Britain,
Italy, Ireland, Russia, Germany, Spain, Japan, Israel, and the United
States. (The terrorist record of the Jewish Defense League, for
example, is well documented. In 1985 the FBI named the JDL as the
second most active terrorist groups in the US.)2 However, Hollywood
has done much to encourage Americans to associate "terrorists"
with Arabs (especially Palestinians), and Muslim "militants".
Arab
Takeover?
Highly-publicized
Arab purchases of some US corporations in the 1970s and 1980s set
off hysterical cries in this country's periodical press and electronic
media about the danger of Arabs allegedly "buying up"
America. In reality, these purchases were unexceptional, no different
than numerous other cross-border investments carried out routinely
around the world over the last century. Actually, during the 1980s
Canada, Britain, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland and
Japan accounted for nearly 90 percent of direct foreign investment
in the US. Direct foreign investment from OPEC member countries,
the US Department of Commerce reported, accounted for less than
one percent of the total.3
Jewish
Power in Hollywood
Negative
images of Arabs in American motion pictures are hardly surprising
given the major role played by Jews and other supporters of Zionism
in Hollywood. In his 1988 study, An Empire of Their Own: How
the Jews Invented Hollywood, Jewish author Neal Gabler shows
that Jews established all of the major American film studios, including
Columbia, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Warner Brothers, Paramount, Universal,
and Twentieth-Century Fox. The American film industry, writes Gabler,4
was
founded... and operated by Eastern European Jews... And when sound
movies commandeered the industry, Hollywood was invaded by a battalion
of Jewish writers, mostly from the East. The most powerful talent
agencies were run by Jews. Jewish lawyers transacted most of the
industry's business and Jewish doctors ministered to the industry's
sick. Above all, Jews produced the movies... All of which led
F. Scott Fitzgerald to characterize Hollywood carpingly as "a
Jewish holiday, a gentiles [sic] tragedy."
So
rapidly did Jews come to dominate Hollywood that as early as 1921
Henry Ford's Dearborn Independent was moved to fulminate that American
motion pictures are5
Jew-controlled,
not in spots only, not 50 percent merely, but entirely; with the
natural consequence that now the world is in arms against the
trivializing and demoralizing influences of that form of entertainment
as presently managed ... As soon as the Jews gained control of
the "movies," we had a movie problem, the consequences
of which are not yet visible.
In
his detailed 1994 study, Sacred Chain: A History of the Jews,
New York University professor Norman F. Cantor, pointed out that
Hollywood film production and distribution was "almost completely
dominated in the first 50 years of its existence by immigrant Jews
and is still dominated at its top level by Jews ... The last Gentile
bastion in Hollywood, the Disney studio, came under Jewish executive
leadership in the early 1990s."6
Jewish
historian and journalist Jonathan J. Goldberg, makes a similar point
in his 1996 survey, Jewish Power: Inside the American Jewish
Establishment. He writes:7
...
Jews are represented in the media business in numbers far out
of proportion to their share of the population ... In a few key
sectors of the media, notably among Hollywood studio executives,
Jews are so numerically dominant that calling these businesses
Jewish-controlled is little more than a statistical observation.
Hollywood
at the end of the twentieth century is still an industry with
a pronounced ethnic tinge. Virtually all the senior executives
at the major studios are Jews. Writers, producers, and to a lesser
degree directors, are disproportionately Jews - one recent study
showed the figure as high as 59 percent among top-grossing films.
The
combined, weight of so many Jews in one of America's most lucrative
and important industries gives the Jews of Hollywood a great deal
of political power. They are a major source of money for Democratic
candidates. The industry's informal patriarch, MCA chairman Lew
Wasserman, wields tremendous personal clout in state and national
politics...
Hollywood's
Jewish executives greeted the founding of Israel in 1948 with ecstasy
One Jewish film executive, Robert Blumofe, later recalled the euphoric
mood of the time: "And suddenly Israel, even to the least Jewish
of us, represented status of some sort. It meant that we did have
a homeland. It meant that we did have an identity ... All of this
was terribly, terribly uplifting."8
In
the decades since, Hollywood has presented an image of Arabs that
is often cruel and barbaric. Manifesting its support for Israel,
and its opposition to the Arab and Muslim worlds, which have strongly
opposed the invasive Zionist state, Hollywood developed a cinema
genre around the Arab-Israeli conflict. In this spirit, Hollywood
has produced numerous "good guy/bad guy" films over the
last 50 years, simplistically portraying heroic and righteous Israeli
Jews prevailing against treacherous and barbaric Arabs. During the
1960s alone, at least ten such major Hollywood films were produced.9
In
such films, Israeli Jews and their American friends are frequently
played by popular and good-looking Jewish-American actors such as
Paul Newman, Tony Curtis, and Kirk Douglas, as well as handsome
non-Jewish actors such as Yul Brynner, John Wayne, Jane Fonda, Frank
Sinatra, Charlton Heston, George Peppard, Rock Hudson, Sal Mineo,
and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Arabs, predictably, are routinely portrayed
as and cruel, cynical, and ugly.
During
a publicity interview for her 1981 film "Rollover" (in
which "the Arabs" destroy the world financial system),
actress Jane Fonda, "the progressive leftist" of the 1960s,
bluntly expressed her own bigoted view of Arabs: "If we are
not afraid of the Arabs, we'd better examine our heads. They have
strategic power over us. They are unstable, they are fundamentalists,
tyrants, anti-women, anti-free press."10
It
is not possible to recount here all of Hollywood's many anti-Arab
or anti-Muslim pictures over the last several decades, but here
are some representative productions:
In
"Exodus" (1960), brutal Arabs kill an attractive 15-year-old
Jewish girl played by Jill Hayworth; in "Cast a Giant Shadow"
(1966), Arabs leer and laugh as they shoot an Israeli woman trapped
in a truck; in "Network" (1976, and winner of four Academy
Awards), a crusading television news commentator warns that Arabs,
"the medieval fanatics," are taking control of the US;
in "Black Sunday" (1977) an Israeli plays the hero, while
Arabs are the villains and terrorists who want to kill Superbowl
spectators, including the President of the United States; in "The
Delta Force" (1986), "Iron Eagle" (1986), and "Death
Before Dishonor" (1987), Hollywood shows viewers how to deal
decisively with the low-life, no-good, dirty Arab terrorists; in
the Disney studio's animated film production, "Aladdin"
(1992), the theme song brazenly refers to Arabia as barbaric ("It's
barbaric, but hey, it's home"); in "True Lies" (1994),
an Arab terrorist with nuclear weapons has to be stopped; in "Executive
Decision" (1996) yet another group of Arab militants hijacks
an American plane; and in "Kazaam" (1996), an Arab criminal
and a black genie enjoy eating a "centuries-old Arab delicacy,"
a plate of goats' eyes.
More
recent motion pictures with negative images of Arabs or Muslims
include "Not Without My Daughter" and "The Siege".
In "The Siege", Muslims wage a bombing campaign against
innocent Americans. In response, federal authorities declare martial
law and carry out mass arrests of Muslims and Arabs across the United
States.11
Television
It
is difficult to exaggerate the role played by television in shaping
the mindset and outlook of the American people. Dr. George Gerbner,
former Dean of the Annenberg School of Communications at the University
of Pennsylvania, put it this way: "Television, more than any
single institution, molds American behavioral norms and values.
And the more TV we watch, the more we tend to believe in the world
according to TV, even though much of what we see is misleading."12
Like
the US motion picture industry, American television is dominated
by Jews and supporters of Zionism. While American Jews constitute
only about two or three percent of the US population,13 Irving Pearlberg,
a Jewish-American television writer, maintains that no less than
40 percent of American television writers are Jewish.14 During the
early 1990s, notes New York University professor Norman Cantor,
"one TV network was already headed by a Jew (Laurence Tisch
at CBS), and Jews are prominent executives and producers at the
other two major networks as well."15
Ben
Stein, Jewish-American author of The View From Sunset Boulevard,
forthrightly acknowledged:16
A
distinct majority, especially of the writers of situation comedies,
is Jewish ... TV people have certain likes ... and dislikes ...
and these likes and dislikes are translated into television programming.
In turn, this problem raises the public acceptance of the favored
groups and the public dislikes of the resented groups.
Given
this reality, it is hardly surprising that one rarely, if ever,
sees a Jewish or Israeli figure portrayed as a villain on American
television. On the contrary, Israelis in particular and the Jews
in general are routinely portrayed in the American mass media as
heroic, insightful, sophisticated, witty, intelligent, compassionate,
physically attractive, confident, humane, and successful.
On
the other hand, like the Arab in Hollywood movies, the US television
Arab is often physically unappealing, wealthy, stupid, sexist, crude,
lazy, uncultured, cruel, rude, greedy, fanatical, antiAmerican,
and anti-Christian. He is often portrayed as a terrorist, a plane
hijacker, a polygamist, a sex-maniac, a hostage-taker, a murderer,
a kidnapper of young blond-haired, blue-eyed women, an as an oil
sheikh blackmailer, and oddly dressed (often in a red-checkered
kuffiyyah headdress, or in ungainly gowns or robes).
News
reporting on American television, as well as its presentations of
history and other serious subjects, routinely has a distinctly pro-Israeli
or pro-Jewish slant. This is understandable, of course, given the
prominent role of Jews in television news departments, and the many
Jews (often with obvious Zionist biases) employed as reporters,
frequently covering the Arab-Israeli conflict or the Middle East
generally.
Seldom
does America's Zionist-oriented media fairly present the Arab or
Muslim point of view, particularly on such issues as the plight
of displaced Palestinians, oil polities, or the struggle against
Western imperialism. For example, the Zionists who invaded Arab
Palestine during the 1930s and 40s, are frequently (and misleadingly)
referred to as "homeless" Jews. Similarly, Israeli military
actions against Arabs over the last 50 years are routinely justified
as acts of "retaliation" against Palestinian and Arab
aggression or terrorism.
Whereas
the Zionist-Jewish point of view is frequently presented on American
television without challenge, the Arab or Muslim point of view (when
is even adequately given) is often presented only together with
a "balancing" Zionist-Jewish perspective.
In
addition to producing films and programming that are supportive
of Israel, and distorting the views and positions of Arabs and Muslims
(especially with regard to the struggle against the Zionist occupation
of Palestine), Hollywood and the American television networks effectively
censor pro-Arab and pro-Muslim motion pictures and television programming.
During the 1970s, for example, American motion picture theaters
and television networks boycotted and "killed" a pro-Palestinian
film produced by Vanessa Redgrave, the well-known British actress
and leftist activist.
James
McCartney, a veteran American journalist, once said what many Arabs
and Muslims have thought for decades:17
It
is my personal belief that if the media as a whole in the western
world bad done an adequate job in reporting from the Middle East,
it would not have been necessary for the Palestinians to resort
to violence to draw attention to their case.
Christian
Apologists
Many
non-Jews also help promote a distorted pro-Zionist and anti-Arab
portrayal of the past and present on American television. This is
especially true of the Christian fundamentalist "televangelists"
- such as Pat Robertson, Jimmy Swaggert, Jim Bakker, Jerry Falwell,
and Oral Roberts - who have dominated America's "religious"
broadcasting. These passionate defenders of Israel and Zionism show
no sympathy for the plight of fellow Christians under Zionist rule,
but even castigate Christian and Muslim Palestinians for resisting
Zionist oppression and the Jewish subjugation of their historic
homeland. This is not only tragic, but ironic in light of the fact
that Israel treats the Christians (and Muslims) under its rule essentially
as second-class citizens.
Such
apologists for Israel often engage in gross distortions of history.
For example, some Christian televangelists cite alleged massacres
of Hebrews in ancient times (portrayed as the equivalent of modern
Israelis) at the hands of the Assyrians (who are portrayed as the
equivalent of modern-day Arab Syrians), and at the hands of the
Babylonians (portrayed as the equivalent of modern-day Arab Iraqis).
Ignored, however, is any mention of the numerous ancient Hebrew
massacres of Philistines (the ancestors of today's Palestinians),
as reported in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament). In the Sixth Chapter
of the book of Joshua, for example, we read as follows: "And
they [Hebrews] utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both
man and woman, young and old, and ox and sheep and ass, with the
edge of the sword."18
Pervasive
Negative Images
In
his detailed study, The TV Arab, Arab-American scholar Jack
G. Shaheen - professor emeritus of broadcast journalism at Southern
Illinois University - documents pervasive negative imagery of Arabs
by all American television networks, and by practically all leading
newscasters and personalities working for them. For this book, Dr.
Shaheen examined more than 100 popular television programs, totaling
nearly 200 episodes, and interviewed numerous television executives,
producers, and writers. American television, concludes Dr. Shaheen
-including popular entertainment, comedy, drama, documentaries,
news, and even sports and religious and children's broadcasting
- across the board has, at one time or another, presented distorted
and demeaning images of Arabs.
In
addition to Hollywood movies and scripted television programming,
viewers can also find "humorous" Arab bashing on live,
unscripted television broadcasting, even by prominent TV personalities.
To get a laugh from a television talk show audience, Merv Griffin
(who is not Jewish) once brazenly equated Arabs with animals: "If
you lie down with Arabs, [you] get up with fleas." Once, referring
to traditional Arab dress and fashion, Jewish television comedienne
Joan Rivers laughingly told her viewers: I can never tell if it's
the wife or the husband because they're all in bedsheets."
And Jewish comedian Alan King once disparagingly frowned when describing
the traditional clothing of Sultan Qaboos of Oman, saying: "What
the hell is he dressed up for? Oman's got eleven people and a goat."19
Even
programming aimed at children has not been free of demeaning portrayals
of Arabs. Among the popular animated cartoon characters who have
fomented derogatory or hateful images of Arabs, Dr. Shaheen shows,
have been Bugs Bunny, Yosemite Sam, Goofy, Woody Woodpecker, Popeye,
Scooby-Doo, Heckle and Jeckle, Porky Pig, Plastic Man, Richy Rich,
Pinky and the Brain, Animaniacs, and Duck Tales.
Pressing
for Explanations
In
interviews with American television executives, Dr. Shaheen pressed
for an explanation for the hypocrisy and lack of decency and self-restraint
in this pattern of Arab stereotyping on TV. Many of those questioned,
he reports, were "embarrassed," and reluctantly acknowledged
the widespread disparagement of Arabs, without, however, explaining
the reasons for such prejudiced imagery.
Donn
O'Brien, CBS vice president of broadcast standards, sheepishly admitted
to Shaheen that he had never seen a "good Arab" on American
television, and that Arabs are routinely presented as covetous desert
rulers or as warmongers. "Arabs are rarely portrayed as good
guys," acknowledged Frank Glicksman, a Jewish-American TV producer
in Los Angeles. "I've never seen them portrayed as anything
but heavies in melodrama. That, I feel, is unfair." Another
Hollywood television producer, Don Brinkley, conceded: "The
depiction of the Arab on television is generally horrendous."
And George Watson, vice president of ABC News, admitted: "Arabs
have not been seen to be as real, as close, or as tangible, either
as individuals or as a group, as the Israelis ..."20
Not
all television executives were as forthcoming, however. Jewish television
producer Meta Rosenberg, for example, bluntly responded to Shaheen's
inquiry by saying that she did not care about the Arabs, and considered
the Arab-American community - which now numbers well over three
million - to be "insignificant." Shaheen also contacted
Norman Lear, one of America's most successful and influential television
producers. Among his popular and innovative hit shows have been
"All in the Family," and "The Jefférsons." In
none of his numerous productions, Shaheen notes, has this Jewish
executive ever presented a humane Arab. Lear simply refused to meet
with Shaheen, answer any of his multiple letters, or even talk to
him by phone.21
More
than a few of those who work in the media, including some Jews,
have expressed concern over the pattern of Arab bashing in American
motion pictures and television. Journalist John Cooley, for example,
acknowledged that "no other ethnic group in America would willingly
submit to what Arabs and Muslims in general have faced in the United
States media."22 Columnist Nicholas Von Hoffman, writing in
the Washington Post, told readers that "no national,
religious or cultural group... has been so massively and consistently
vilified as the Arabs. Jewish writer Meg Greenfield, a veteran Washington
Post columnist, expressed the view that "there is a dehumanizing,
circular process at work here. The caricature dehumanizes ... [But
the caricature] is inspired and made acceptable by an earlier dehumanizing
influence, namely an absence of feeling for who the Arabs are and
where they have been." And Steve Bell of ABC News said simply:
"The Arab is no doubt a current victim of stereotyping not
only on television, but throughout the mass media in the United
States."23
High
Price of Speaking Out
Although
criticism of specific Israeli policies is permissible in the United
States, it is more or less forbidden to express fundamental criticism
of the Zionist state, of America's basic policy of support for Israel,
or of the Jewish-Zionist grip on the US media or America's political
and academic life. (Remarkably, this is in contrast to the situation
in Israel itself, where Jews and even Arab citizens of the Zionist
state have much greater freedom than Americans publicly to criticize
Zionism and Israeli policies.)
Prominent
persons who dare to violate this prohibition are immediately castigated
as "anti-Semitic" (that is, anti-Jewish), and pay a heavy
price in damage to their reputations or careers. Politicians who
publicly speak out against America's support for Zionism risk almost
certain political ruin. Among the political or governmental figures
whose careers were destroyed because they violated the powerful
taboo have been US Senators William Fulbright, Adlai Stevenson III,
and Charles Percy, Congressmen Paul McCIoskey and Paul Findley,
and Deputy Secretary of State George Ball.24
Thus,
Marlon Brando was promptly and severely chastised after criticizing
Jewish Hollywood producers and executives for promoting vicious
racist stereotyping of minorities. Even though what the well-known
actor had said during an April 1996 broadcast interview with Larry
King was demonstrably true, a short time later Brando was forced
to issue a craven apology.
Sometimes
the price for speaking out is more severe than the defaming of one's
reputation or the ruin of one's career. On October 11, 1985, Alex
Odeh, the West Coast regional director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination
Committee, was killed in a bomb blast when he entered his group's
office in Santa Ana, southern California. The previous evening the
Palestinian-born Odeh had appeared on a local news show to present
an Arab perspective on the Arab-Israeli conflict. The FBI announced
that the Jewish Defense League (JDL) was responsible for the murder
of Odeh, and at least two other terrorist incidents. The three JDL
associates who were suspected of carrying out the killing fled to
Israel to avoid punishment. No one has ever been tried for the murder
of Alex Odeh.25
Hate
Crimes
Unlike
other minority groups in the United States, Arab-Americans have
had to endure hostility not only from ignorant and prejudiced individuals,
but in addition from powerful Jewish-Zionist elements in the mass
media.
For
one thing, television and print journalists often identify Arab-Americans
or Muslim-Americans who are suspected of crimes by their ethnic
or religious origin, a practice that incites already latent public
prejudice and hatred. Thus one can find newspaper reports with headlines
such as "Arabs Battle Police" or "Muslims are Arrested."
Non-Arab criminal suspects are rarely, if ever, similarly identified
by ethnic or religious origin.
Whenever
acts of terrorism take place against the US or Israel, or the US
or Israel is involved in military conflicts with Arab countries
or groups, ordinary Arab-Americans become victims of hate.
As
a result of the US-led military action against Iraq in late 1990
and January 1991, for example, hate crimes against Arab-Americans
and Muslim-Americans, including arson, bombings, and assaults, tripled.26
Incidents of harassment and physical attacks against Arab-Americans
similarly increased across the country in the wake of the February
1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City, and of
the April 1995 Oklahoma City federal building bombing. Arab-Americans
were targeted as if they were personally responsible for these terrorist
attacks.
Immediately
following the Oklahoma City bombing, some reporters, such as CNN's
Wolf Blitzer, accused Arabs of this act of terrorism. Similarly,
CBS newswoman Connie Chung declared: "US government sources
told CBS News that [the bombing] has Middle East terrorism written
all over it."27 Even after Timothy McVeigh was arrested and
indicted for the Oklahoma City bombing, New York Times columnist
A. M. Rosenthal baldly asserted that "most other attacks against
Americans came from the Middle East."28
As
a result of such hasty and false accusations, in the wake of the
Oklahoma City bombing there were 227 reported incidents of hostility,
both violent and non-violet, against Arabs and Muslims across the
US.29 Men and women of Arab origin were insulted, threatened, cursed,
picketed, spat on, and, in a few cases, physically attacked. Vandals
broke into homes of Arab-Americans and destroyed property. Other
hoodlums vandalized Arab-American businesses and other properties,
spray-painting hateful slogans such as "Why don't you terrorists
go back to your own country," "Get out of America,"
`You're not Americans," `You dirty Arabs," `You don't
belong here," "Go back home," and `You will pay for
this."30
In
1997, reports the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Washington,
DC), there were 280 incidents of anti-Muslim violence, discrimination,
stereotyping, bias and harassment last year in the United States.
This is an increase of 18 percent in such incidents over the previous
year.31 The full scope of the and anxiety, fear and humiliation
endured by individual Arab-Americans is obviously impossible to
measure, but unquestionably many individual Arab-Americans have
suffered in their personal, social, and professional lives, particularly
if they are immigrants or first-generation citizens who (like this
writer) speak English with an accent.32
Some
Arab-Americans have chosen to endure such bigotry and prejudice
in silence. Others have responded by returning to their countries
of origin, or by denying or concealing their heritage. Quite a few
have "Americanized" or "Westernized" their first
and last names, in an effort to «pass" as southern- or eastern-Europeans.
Early in his career acclaimed motion picture actor F. Murray Abraham
(who received an "Oscar" for his role in "Amadeus"),
sought to escape prejudice by hiding his Arab identity.
Ominous
Implications
Summing
up the deplorable situation, Professor Shaheen has stated:33
Because
Arabs and Arab civilization are held in contempt by many in Hollywood,
many Americans and their political representatives have few if
any positive feelings about Arabs. Their impressions are based
in part on the clouded image of the TV screen ... Stereotyping
tends to be self-perpetuating, providing not only information
but ... "pictures in our heads." These pictures of Arabs
reinforce and sharpen viewer prejudices. Television shows are
entertainment, but they are also symbols ... A villain is needed
in [television and motion picture] conflicts that pit good against
evil. Today's villain is the Arab... depicted as the murderous
White-slaver, the dope dealer, the fanatic ... To make matters
worse ... America's TV image of the Arab is marketed throughout
the world ...
Non-Jewish
Americans are also victims of the Jewish-Zionist grip on America's
motion picture and television industries, propagandistically manipulated
by alien interests that foment artificial distrust and enmity between
peoples who, objectively, have no conflicting interests.
The
hostility and prejudice against Arabs and Muslims engendered by
Hollywood and US television infects not only tens of millions of
Americans, but also hundreds of millions of credulous viewers worldwide.
Such noxious propaganda over a period of decades inevitably has
grave long-term consequences. This flood of ethnic-religious poison
under standably produces deep resentment among hundreds of millions
of Arabs and Muslims around the globe - creating a vast and growing
reservoir of resentment and rage that one day will almost certainly
erupt with terrible fury.
Notes
1.
Jack G. Shaheen, The TVArab (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green
State Univ. Popular Press, 1984), p. ll; Quoted in: Richard H. Curtiss,
A Changing Image: American Perceptions of the Arab-Israeli Dispute
(Washington, DC: American Educational Trust, 1982), p. 153.
2. Mark Weber, The Zionist Terror Network: Background and
Operation of the Jewish Defense League and Other Criminal Zionist
Groups (Institute for Historical Review, 1993), p. 6.
3. J. G. Shaheen, The TVArab (1984), p. 13.
4. Neal Gabler, An Empire of Their Oum: How the Jews Invented
Hollywood (New York: Doubleday [and Crown], 1988), pp. 1-2.
5. Quoted in: N. Gabler, An Empire of Their Own (1988), p.
277.
6. Norman F. Cantor, Sacred Chain: A History of the Jews
(New York: HarperCollins, 1994), pp. 390, 401.
7. Jonathan J. Goldberg, Jewish Power.- Inside the American
Jewish Establishment (Addison-Wesley, 1996), pp. 280, 287-288. This
book was reviewed in the March-April 1998 Journal, pp. 37-38.
8. Quoted in: N. GablerAn Empire of Their Own (1988), p.
350.
9. Michael Parenti, Make-Believe Media: The Politics of Entertainment
(New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992), p. 30.
10. Quoted in: M. Parenti, Make-Believe Media, p. 30
11. Faisal Kutty, Bushira Yousuf, "Hollywood's View
of Arabs, Muslims," Toronto Star, Sept. 14, 1998. Reprinted
in "Other Voices" supplement to The Washington Report
on Middle East Affairs (Washington, DC), December 1998, p. S-10.
12. Quoted in:Jack G. Sliaheen, The TVArab (1984), p. 7 1997
Britannica Book of the Year (Chicago: Eneyclopaedia Britannica),
pp. 311, 739.
14. Quoted in: J. G. Shaheen, The TVArab (1984), p. 127.
15. Norman F. Cantor, Sacred Chain (cited above), p. 401.
16. Quoted in: J. G. Shaheen, The IV Arab (1984), pp. 127-8.
17. Quoted in: Richard H. Curtiss, A Changing Image: American
Perceptions of the Arab-Israeli Dispute (citied above), p. 145.
18. Joshua 6: 21-14. See also, for example, Exodus 32: 2629;
Numbers 21: 2-3, 31-35; Deuteronomy 2: 34-35, 3:6, 7: 1-5, 20: 13-17;
Joshua S: 24-29, 10: 28-40, 11: 7-8, 14, 21-23; 2 Kings 10: 17,
30. For more on this, see: Mohammad T. Mehdi, Terrorism: Why America
is the Target (New York: New World Press, 1998), p. 66.
19. Quoted in: J. G. Shaheen, The TVArab (cited above), pp.
67, 57.
20. J. G. Shaheen, The TVArab (1984), pp. 114, 70, 111.
21.J. G. Shaheen, The 7VArab (1984), pp. 127, 62.
22. Quoted in: R. H. Curtiss, A Changing Image (1982), p.
153.
23. Quoted in: J. G. Shaheen, The TV Arab (1984), pp. 122,
7, and back cover.
24. For details see: Paul Findley, They Dare to Speak Out:
People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby (Westport, Conn.:
Lawrence Hill & Co., 1985). See also: Alfred M. Lilienthal,
The Zionist Connection (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1978)
25. M. Weber, The Zionist Terror Network (1993), esp. pp.
5-6.
26. Richard Wormser, American Islam: Growing Up Muslim in
America (New York: Walker & Co., 1994) p. 121.
27. Quoted in: Terry Allen, "Professional Arab-Bashing,"
Covert Action Quarterly, No. 53, Summer 1995, p. 20.
28. Quoted in: T. Allen, "Professional Arab-Bashing,"
Covert Action Quarterly, Summer 1995, p. 21.
2.9. T. Allen, "Professional Arab-Bashing," Covert
Action Quarterly, Summer 1995, p. 21.
30. Ann Talamus, `War in the Gulf Repression at Home: FBI
Targets Arab-Americans" Covert Action Quarterly, No. 36, Spring
199 1, pp. 4-8; R. Wormser, American Islam (cited above), p. 4.
31. F. Kutty, B. Yousuf "Hollywood's View of Arabs,
Muslims," Toronto Star, Sept. 14, 1998 (cited above).
32. As an Arab I have faced ethnic-based hostility, from
both Jews and Christians, in my academic career. During the 1980s
and 1990s, when I taught at four different southern California universities
and colleges, I was denied promotion.
33. Quoted in: R. H. Curtiss, A Changing Image (cited above),
p. 153.
Renewal
From the Bottom
"When
I look back on the process of history, I see this written over every
page, that the nations are renewed from the bottom, not from the
top; that the genius which springs from the'ranks of the unknown
is the genius which renews the youth and energy of the people. The
utility, the vitality, the fruitage of life does not come from the
top to the bottom, it comes, like the natural growth of a great
tree, from the soil, up through the trunk into the branches to the
foliage and the fruit."
- Woodrow Wilson
Marlon
Brando emphasizes a point to host Larry King during his much-discussed
CNN television network interview, April 5, 1996.
"I am very angry with some of the Jews," said the 72-year-old
actor.
"They know perfectly well what their responsibilities are ...
Hollywood
is run by Jews. It is owned by Jews, and they should have a greater
sensitivity about the issue of people who are suffering." Similarly,
in
a 1979 Playboy magazine interview he said: I was mad at the Jews
in
the business because they largely founded the industry ... You've
seen
every race besmirched, but you never saw an image of the kike. Because
the Jews were ever watchful for that ..." Brando's career has
included
legendary roles in such films as "A Streetcar Named Desire","Mutiny
on the Bounty","On the Waterfront","The Ugly
American," and
"The Godfather."
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