Pallywood...

Boston University History Professor Richard Landes is starting a new media watch-dog project to discuss the rise of anti-semitism and Pallywood. Here's an excerpt from an interview.

Solomon: Tell me a little about your new web project, 21st Century Media Group.

Landes: We hope to be a media oversight venue for discussing how the media processes the information they gather and how they present it to the public as news. We'll take significant news events and present them as dossiers to the public for discussion, using for grist as much primary source material as possible, starting with the Pallywood discussion.

S: What is Pallywood?

L: It's a play on the expression Bollywood, the designation of India's film industry, based in Bombay. It identifies a practice among Palestinian journalists to turn staged drama into news. This fictional news industry then feeds Western news reporting, who don't seem to suspect they're being duped.

The expression acknowledges that the active, if still young, film industry of Palestinian culture, especially since the advent of cultural autonomy with the Oslo Accords in 1993, has already made a distinctive contribution to global culture.

S: Isn't the expression disrespectful...mocking?

L: On one level, not at all. Most national film industries would love to have the success in the larger world media that Pallywood has achieved. Pallywood is a distinctive and powerful national product. But on the other hand, because it identifies Pallywood as part of a campaign of disinformation and propaganda, why should we respect that, rather than criticize it? As for mocking, at a basic level Pallywood is a joke played by the Palestinians on the West, and one can see it in the smiles on the faces of by-standers as they walk away from these staged scenes.

S: So you'll be posting raw footage for visitors to view for themselves? Visitors to the site can see the "rushes" from which their news was prepared?

L: Yes. We'll post the raw footage from Palestinian cameramen working for major Western news agencies at Netzarim Junction on Sept. 30, 2000 and possibly the next day. The visitor can view these videos for themselves and start to form their own impressions, then they can hop in and start reading our analysis and participating in the ongoing discussion. They'll have the chance to form their own impressions first.

It'll be like having a look behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz.

S: When is the site going up?

L: Early September. Starting at the end of September, we'd like to follow the Intifada in real time five years later. Ideally, we'd present the raw material, then show you how that was reported in the media's product -- in the headlines. For example, the footage from September 30th was supposedly taken on a day when the Gaza strip exploded in violence over Sharon's visit to the Haram al Sharif (Temple Mount) and the casualties on the West Bank from the previous day. Nothing of the sort is visible in the crowds milling around right in front of the Israelis, smoking, talking on cell phones, laughing, while others put "wounded victims of Israeli gunfire" into ambulances. We'll also try to include material from various web logs and online diaries that were being kept at the time. So once you understand Pallywood, once you understand how the media was systematically duped by a propaganda machine...

S: Were they duped, or did they play along with it? Were they willing participants?

L: We want the web site to raise these questions and let people make their own judgments. Now, we think we have some answers, but we're post-modern enough to think there isn't only one answer. So for instance, in answer to your question, if we were to take a pie and slice it up, there would be a slice of journalists just out to make their living by providing their bosses in the West with action footage, another slice of people harboring some sort of bad faith or resentment -- some kind of strong anti-Jewish feelings -- then you've got another chunk of it who are people who really believe they are helping the Palestinians by recycling their propaganda. There's this great line by Bob Simon [of 60 Minutes], 'In the Middle East, one image can be worth 1000 weapons.' I think that there's a prevalent view in the press that since the Israelis have most of the weapons, the media can "level the playing field" by giving the Palestinians the media victory.

In fact what they're doing is they're prolonging everyone's misery. They're prolonging the conflict. It's not pro-Palestinian to run this propaganda, it's pro-Palestinian leadership which is systematically exploiting its own people's suffering to pursue a vendetta and the media is essentially backing the nastiest people in the conflict and telling themselves that they're somehow siding with 'the Palestinians.' It's as if the press in the US were willingly to run material about WMDs in Iraq in the thought that by supporting an American government bent on war they were somehow helping the American people. Now no one on the Left would support that -- that's the point of Michael Moore's movie -- but when it comes to perceived victims not only is this kind of misinformation okay, but let me help. Our "liberal" and "progressives" seem to have a curiously hard time identifying the Arab and Palestinian leadership -- secular and religious -- as victimizers of their people. Strange -- it's a standard Marxist perspective that elites exploit their masses, but somehow our "radicals" have dropped the ball here.

Now, again on your question as to whether it's on purpose, or are they really duped -- to some extent the web site will act as a litmus test. If you're being duped and you come to the web site and you walk away and say, 'I don't want to hear it,' then I'd say at some level you've shown that you're just not equipped to confront your own darker side. But if you come to the web site and you say, 'Oh my God, I had no idea, I really have to re-think this,' then you're one of the people who's been honestly duped.

We'll let you know when the site is up and running.