Institute for Historical Review
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v17/v17n5p-2_Sindi.html#sindi
How the Jewish-Zionist Grip on American Film and Television Promotes Bias Against Arabs and Muslims
by Abdullah Mohammad Sindi
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 anti-Arab image on entertainment manifests itself in the politics of America.” 1
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 nomads 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.”
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