|
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
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