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How does Hollywood help whitewash Israel’s ‘image problem’?

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    Only a handful of American
    movie stars speak up for Palestine,
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    and those few are made to pay
    the price for their public sport.
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    Why is it so important for the
    movie industry to silence those voices?
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    Israeli historian Giora Goodman says.
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    So I was surprised
    again and again to find just
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    how much effort
    and care and thought
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    had been put in by
    Israeli government officials
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    by Israeli IDF officers into
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    bringing over to Israel's cause
    what is the global entertainment capital.
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    So Hollywood matters
    to Israel because it is influential.
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    But why does Israel matter to Hollywood?
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    It is difficult to ask that question,
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    let alone answer it without
    attracting charges of anti-Semitism.
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    Mr. Cartman, you're on dangerous
    freaking ground here, buddy.
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    I'm sorry, why is it so offensive
    to say who runs Hollywood?
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    People like Hollywood.
    Hollywood's cute.
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    The Jews should be
    honored to be in charge of it.
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    It is true that widespread
    anti-Semitism conspiracy theories about
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    Jews running Hollywood exist
    and fuel a dangerous mentality.
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    But making the whole topic
    taboo to talk about is not the answer.
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    Israeli historian Giora Goodman
    and British historian Tony Shaw
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    co-authored a book
    called Israel and Hollywood.
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    The authors told
    the University of Southern California that
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    Hollywood bosses such
    as Barney Balaban in the 1950s,
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    Arthur Crim in the 1960s
    and Haim Saban in the 21st century
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    have also sought to use their
    political influence in the White House
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    and with U.S. decision makers to promote
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    the goals of Israeli
    diplomacy in war and peace.
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    It is undeniable that Hollywood
    has a very real influence on
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    U.S.-Israel relations,
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    and that influence is linked to Hollywood's Jewish roots.
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    For a people so small in number,
    our impact is staggering.
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    Dozens of Emmy and Golden Globe winners
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    and almost 40% of Oscar-winning directors
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    are members of the tribe.
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    That is Israel's very own
    Genesis Price Foundation.
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    It is a widely known fact that.
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    modern America first saw
    light on a Hollywood screen.
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    It was largely the product of 6 movie
    studios established in the 1920s.
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    And run for over 30 years
    by a group of Jewish immigrants.
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    They had strikingly similar backgrounds.
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    These five or six Jewish
    immigrants ended up
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    building all the first major studios
    that created Hollywood from scratch.
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    All of these men who founded Hollywood
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    were born within a 500
    mile radius of one another,
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    and all of them wound up roughly within
    15 miles of one another In Los Angeles,
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    the influence Hollywood
    and its movie stars
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    had in the US would soon be utilized
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    to garner support from American Jews
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    and Gentiles alike
    for the Zionist project.
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    This kind of movie going was religious
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    because it had to do with worship.
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    It had to do with the screen
    being larger than you were
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    and you being in awe
    of what you were looking at.
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    The Jewish production studio heads
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    organized fundraisers
    with their movie stars
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    and wealthy influential connections
    and collected 10s of millions of dollars
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    for a massive emigration of Jews
    to Palestine under the British Mandate.
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    One of these men, Barney Belaban,
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    head of Paramount Pictures
    from the 1930s to the 60s,
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    would even help found the most
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    influential Israeli lobby group in America,
    APEC.
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    But money and political connections
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    were only secondary to their main efforts
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    which was to tell a
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    romanticized story
    about the creation of Israel.
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    The first feature length Zionist film
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    made by Hollywood was
    secretly funded in large part
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    by the controversial Jewish National Fund.
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    JNF, established in 1901
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    is the financial arm
    of the Zionist organization.
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    The film did not do well
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    but the partnership
    between Israel and Hollywood
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    was not going to fizzle out that easily.
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    They made film after film
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    until they hit the jackpot
    with the 1960 movie Exodus.
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    Exodus was based on a racist novel
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    by the same name that the
    Israeli Foreign Minister Golda Meir
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    at the time said was more influential than
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    60 years of Zionists
    and Israeli propaganda.
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    As a film, Exodus went
    even further than the book
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    the Nakba, in totally erasing
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    the massive ethnic
    cleansing and displacement of
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    750,000 Palestinians in 1948.
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    The Jewish hero of the story, Ben Canaan
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    begs the Arabs to stay in their homes
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    and become an equal part of the state
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    but they refuse and leave.
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    After the 1960s,
    Hollywood moved on from completely
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    ignoring the Palestinians
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    To portraying Arabs and
    Muslims as irrational, evil terrorists
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    who often had no
    real motivation beyond
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    they hate our freedoms.
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    Arab enemies were dehumanized
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    while telling the story of
    Jewish victims of the Holocaust
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    helped melt American hearts
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    A 1978 TV miniseries called Holocaust
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    featuring Meryl Streep was
    watched by nearly 100 million Americans.
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    It told the story of the Holocaust
    in four episodes over 9 1/2 hours
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    and ended with Jewish orphans
    being smuggled into Palestine illegally.
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    It was not until Israel's
    invasion of Lebanon in 1982,
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    when Israel killed thousands of civilians
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    that tides started
    turning and public opinion
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    that Israel was the underdog
    started to change in the US
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    in the 1980s with the first Lebanon war
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    and then the first Zindifadan.
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    The moral doubts
    about Israel's use of force
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    and the direction of its government
    and that is the younger
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    the younger liberals, they are more ambivalent about Israel
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    while the old generation,
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    such as Kirk Douglas,
    would support Israel.
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    According to a 2004 report
    by the American Jewish Committee,
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    a younger Netanyahu met
    with Hollywood executives in 2001.
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    And challenge them to do
    something about Israel's image problem.
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    Netanyahu has long enjoyed close
    relations with his buddies in Hollywood.
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    One of the most shocking Hollywood
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    stories is that of his pal,
    producer Arnon Milken.
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    Milken is behind massively
    successful commercial films like
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    Pretty Woman, Fight Club, 12 Years a Slave
    Little Woman, and many more
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    During his time as an
    Israeli spy and arms dealer,
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    one of Milken's jobs was to
    acquire uranium from South Africa
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    for Israel's nuclear program
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    and in exchange, he ran this
    massive pro apartheid campaign
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    in Hollywood on behalf of South Africa.
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    In the end, one of
    the most important things
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    Hollywood did to rally
    American support for Israel
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    was to tell the story of the Holocaust
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    and connect it to the establishment of Israel
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    while completely
    disregarding and erasing the suffering
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    and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
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    Countless films, TV shows, and fictional characters
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    work to make often
    white-looking Israeli heroes
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    relatable to white people in the US
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    and to paint Muslims and Arabs as the violent
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    and savage enemy of the unified
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    peace-loving Judeo-Christian people.
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    What do you think?
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    Do Hollywood films and celebrities still
    hold influence over what people think of
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    Israel and Palestine?
Title:
How does Hollywood help whitewash Israel’s ‘image problem’?
Description:

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Video Language:
English
Duration:
07:17

English subtitles

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