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

Only a handful of American
movie stars speak up for Palestine,

and those few are made to pay
the price for their public sport.

Why is it so important for the
movie industry to silence those voices?

Israeli historian Giora Goodman says.

So I was surprised
again and again to find just

how much effort
and care and thought

had been put in by
Israeli government officials

by Israeli IDF officers into

bringing over to Israel's cause
what is the global entertainment capital.

So Hollywood matters
to Israel because it is influential.

But why does Israel matter to Hollywood?

It is difficult to ask that question,

let alone answer it without
attracting charges of anti-Semitism.

Mr. Cartman, you're on dangerous
freaking ground here, buddy.

I'm sorry, why is it so offensive
to say who runs Hollywood?

People like Hollywood.
Hollywood's cute.

The Jews should be
honored to be in charge of it.

It is true that widespread
anti-Semitism conspiracy theories about

Jews running Hollywood exist
and fuel a dangerous mentality.

But making the whole topic
taboo to talk about is not the answer.

Israeli historian Giora Goodman
and British historian Tony Shaw

co-authored a book
called Israel and Hollywood.

The authors told
the University of Southern California that

Hollywood bosses such
as Barney Balaban in the 1950s,

Arthur Crim in the 1960s
and Haim Saban in the 21st century

have also sought to use their
political influence in the White House

and with U.S. decision makers to promote

the goals of Israeli
diplomacy in war and peace.

It is undeniable that Hollywood
has a very real influence on

U.S.-Israel relations,

and that influence is linked to Hollywood's Jewish roots.

For a people so small in number,
our impact is staggering.

Dozens of Emmy and Golden Globe winners

and almost 40% of Oscar-winning directors

are members of the tribe.

That is Israel's very own
Genesis Price Foundation.

It is a widely known fact that.

modern America first saw
light on a Hollywood screen.

It was largely the product of 6 movie
studios established in the 1920s.

And run for over 30 years
by a group of Jewish immigrants.

They had strikingly similar backgrounds.

These five or six Jewish
immigrants ended up

building all the first major studios
that created Hollywood from scratch.

All of these men who founded Hollywood

were born within a 500
mile radius of one another,

and all of them wound up roughly within
15 miles of one another In Los Angeles,

the influence Hollywood
and its movie stars

had in the US would soon be utilized

to garner support from American Jews

and Gentiles alike
for the Zionist project.

This kind of movie going was religious

because it had to do with worship.

It had to do with the screen
being larger than you were

and you being in awe
of what you were looking at.

The Jewish production studio heads

organized fundraisers
with their movie stars

and wealthy influential connections
and collected 10s of millions of dollars

for a massive emigration of Jews
to Palestine under the British Mandate.

One of these men, Barney Belaban,

head of Paramount Pictures
from the 1930s to the 60s,

would even help found the most

influential Israeli lobby group in America,
APEC.

But money and political connections

were only secondary to their main efforts

which was to tell a

romanticized story
about the creation of Israel.

The first feature length Zionist film

made by Hollywood was
secretly funded in large part

by the controversial Jewish National Fund.

JNF, established in 1901

is the financial arm
of the Zionist organization.

The film did not do well

but the partnership
between Israel and Hollywood

was not going to fizzle out that easily.

They made film after film

until they hit the jackpot
with the 1960 movie Exodus.

Exodus was based on a racist novel

by the same name that the
Israeli Foreign Minister Golda Meir

at the time said was more influential than

60 years of Zionists
and Israeli propaganda.

As a film, Exodus went
even further than the book

the Nakba, in totally erasing

the massive ethnic
cleansing and displacement of

750,000 Palestinians in 1948.

The Jewish hero of the story, Ben Canaan

begs the Arabs to stay in their homes

and become an equal part of the state

but they refuse and leave.

After the 1960s,
Hollywood moved on from completely

ignoring the Palestinians

To portraying Arabs and
Muslims as irrational, evil terrorists

who often had no
real motivation beyond

they hate our freedoms.

Arab enemies were dehumanized

while telling the story of
Jewish victims of the Holocaust

helped melt American hearts

A 1978 TV miniseries called Holocaust

featuring Meryl Streep was
watched by nearly 100 million Americans.

It told the story of the Holocaust
in four episodes over 9 1/2 hours

and ended with Jewish orphans
being smuggled into Palestine illegally.

It was not until Israel's
invasion of Lebanon in 1982,

when Israel killed thousands of civilians

that tides started
turning and public opinion

that Israel was the underdog
started to change in the US

in the 1980s with the first Lebanon war

and then the first Zindifadan.

The moral doubts
about Israel's use of force

and the direction of its government
and that is the younger

the younger liberals, they are more ambivalent about Israel

while the old generation,

such as Kirk Douglas,
would support Israel.

According to a 2004 report
by the American Jewish Committee,

a younger Netanyahu met
with Hollywood executives in 2001.

And challenge them to do
something about Israel's image problem.

Netanyahu has long enjoyed close
relations with his buddies in Hollywood.

One of the most shocking Hollywood

stories is that of his pal,
producer Arnon Milken.

Milken is behind massively
successful commercial films like

Pretty Woman, Fight Club, 12 Years a Slave
Little Woman, and many more

During his time as an
Israeli spy and arms dealer,

one of Milken's jobs was to
acquire uranium from South Africa

for Israel's nuclear program

and in exchange, he ran this
massive pro apartheid campaign

in Hollywood on behalf of South Africa.

In the end, one of
the most important things

Hollywood did to rally
American support for Israel

was to tell the story of the Holocaust

and connect it to the establishment of Israel

while completely
disregarding and erasing the suffering

and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

Countless films, TV shows, and fictional characters

work to make often
white-looking Israeli heroes

relatable to white people in the US

and to paint Muslims and Arabs as the violent

and savage enemy of the unified

peace-loving Judeo-Christian people.

What do you think?

Do Hollywood films and celebrities still
hold influence over what people think of

Israel and Palestine?