Valentino's Ghost
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Valentino’s Ghost Valentino’s Ghost (2012) claims to document how American foreign policy has molded Hollywood’s negative stereotypes of Arabs/Muslims. While the tendency to generalize about a whole group based on its most prominent or infamous public figures can be problematic, this film does not provide the corrective. The film itself rarely rises above propaganda. As a New York Times review observed, “Make no mistake, this documentary has an agenda.” The film distorts history and recycles factual errors to denounce American foreign policy, discredit American media, demonize Israel, and justify Arab terrorism against the West. A review of some of the film’s funders underscores the biased agenda driving the film. Sponsors include the Olayan Group, a Saudi-Arabian funded enterprise,[1] and the Firedoll Foundation, a major contributor to anti-Israel groups such as the Palestine Solidarity Project and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP).[2] Other groups sponsoring local screenings of the film, such as The One Democratic State[3] and the North Texas BDS, are affiliated with the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.[4] The film concludes by urging viewers to watch the pan-Arabic broadcast network Al-Jazeera (coming to the U.S. in 2013) to get an image of the “true” Arab. According to many sources, Al-Jazeera has “a troubling record of providing a platform to all manner of virulent anti-Israel and even anti-Semitic extremists and of serving as a propaganda tool against the State of Israel.”[5] Though articles about the film frequently cite PBS as a funder and distributor, PBS officials deny any knowledge or connection to the film, which is being distributed by NETA. “A List” film festivals in the United States have refused to screen the film, including Seattle, which outright rejected it.1 A sample of the film’s most egregious flaws: 1. The film uses unreliable, extremist sources with no input from other, more mainstream sources. Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss, a leader of Neturi Karta, is used as the source for Israeli and Zionist history, despite being denounced by the Jewish community across the religious spectrum. He leads a fringe ultra-orthodox group, which actively opposes Israel’s existence as a Jewish state and has even collaborated with anti-Semites and enemies of Israel, such as Louis Farrakhan and Iran.2 Using this rabbi to posit on Zionism is like asking a leader of the Klu Klux Klan to opine on the civil rights movement. Academic John Mearsheimer, notorious for his unscholarly books against Israel, is used as an expert on the Middle East, Israel, and U.S. foreign policy. Yet Mearsheimer is the co- writer of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, a book lambasted by critics for being devoid of factual basis and academic integrity,3 “a classical conspiratorial anti-Semitic analysis invoking the canards of Jewish power and Jewish control.”4 The film offers no countervailing voices to those of Mearsheimer and like-thinkers. Anti-Israel columnist Robert Fisk, who discourses in the film, has often been accused by media critics of unethical and un-factual reporting.5 He is known for regularly degrading Israel and distorting facts about its self-defense measures.6 George Habash is shown in glowing footage, without any context. Habash founded the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). He was the mastermind of specular Palestinian terrorism in the 1970s, including numerous hijackings and bombings of Western airliners, leadings to the deaths of scores of Westerners and Israelis.7 2. The film distorts history to portray Arabs/Muslims solely as victims, ignoring Arab aggression and wider historical events. Valentino’s Ghost implies that European expansion into the Middle East in the late 19th and early 20th century disrupted peaceful, independent Arab states that existed before the arrival of European colonialism. This ignores the Muslim Ottoman Empire, a colonial powerhouse that invaded southeastern Europe until it was checked at the Gates of Vienna in the 17th century, and that aggressively conquered, subjugated and ruled vast territories extending from Greece and the Balkans through the Middle East during the course of six hundred years (1299-1924), before and after Europeans arrived.8 The film’s map of the early 20th century, marked with today’s borders and nations, ignores that Middle Eastern nations, such as Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and others, did not exist until the demise of the Ottoman Empire, when the League of Nations carved out previously non-existent nations. The film claims that 1979 set a “new moral geography” with the Middle East now portrayed as “fanatical.” This minimizes or even ignores the shock of radical Islamists taking over Iran, holding Americans hostage, and declaring the West—particularly the U.S. and Israel—their enemy. The film ignores how Arab/Muslim terrorists purposely craft historical events, which then shape Hollywood’s perceptions. Much of Arab and Muslim terrorism of recent decades has been staged theatrically precisely to capture media attention. 3. The film demonizes Israel through historical distortions and standard anti-Israel propaganda. The film implies a Palestinian nation existed before the British arrival after World War. Yet before British governance, “Palestine” was under Ottoman control. An independent Palestinian Arab state has never existed. The 1947 United Nations Partition Plan—creating both a Jewish and Arab state—was the first time the international community recommended creating such a state, but Arab and Palestinian leaders rejected the offer; Israel accepted it, creating a Jewish state under international law. Currently, Israel and the Palestinians are in negotiations to create what would be the first Palestinian Arab state in history. The film denies Jews’ historical claim to the land of Israel. The film suggests that Jews invaded Palestinian land and took it over from hapless Arabs when they arrived as Holocaust refugees in the late 1940s. The film equates Jews in Israel with 12th century Crusaders invading the Holy Land. This turns history on its head given that Jews are the indigenous people of Israel, with a 3,000 year unbroken historical tie to the land, maintained a continuous presence for millennia, again became the majority in Jerusalem in the mid-19th century, and formed one-third of the population in the Mandate before World War II. The film implies that the Jewish state was created solely because of the Holocaust. To visually underscore this, the film shows parallel images of Jewish Holocaust refugees arriving and Palestinian refugees leaving, inferring cause-and-effect. In fact, Jews had been returning to their homeland for 2000 years, again became the majority in Jerusalem in the mid-19th century, created modern Zionism in 1897, and the Palestine Mandate was established and recognized as the Jewish homeland after World War I, not World War II. The film presents as fact the canard that the Jews ethnically cleansed Palestine during the 1948 War. In fact, Israel invited all Arabs within its borders to become equal citizens and 160,000 did. Palestinians became refugees because Arab leaders launched the 1948 War, and most Palestinian Arabs fled to avoid the fighting or at the urging of their leaders. The film distorts Israeli leaders’ comments to prove that the country was intent on ethnic cleansing. The film quotes the first Israeli Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion, as stating, “We must expel the Arabs! Drive them out!” even though this quote is a total fabrication.9 The original text shows that Ben-Gurion actually stated the opposite, “We do not want to and we do not have to expel the Arabs and take their place …”10 No context is given for the 1967 War, leaving the impression that Israel was the aggressor. In fact, as even the UN acknowledged at the time, this was a defensive war that Israel was forced to fight. 11 The film blames Israel (through Mearsheimer) for the lack of peace, ignoring Israel’s repeated willingness to accept or offer territorial compromise and peace—in 1947, 1967, 1979, 2000, and 2008. 4. The film invokes the canard about the power of the “Israel Lobby” and its impact on American and Arab/Muslim terrorism. Mearsheimer states, “Our relationship with Israel is one of the main reasons that we have a terrorist problem. And the Israel lobby does not want that message to get out to the American people.” 5. The film excuses or justifies Arab/Muslim terrorism, such as 9/11, by blaming it on Israel or American foreign policy, and implying that Arabs/Muslims have no alternatives. The film claims that 9/11 was morally justified because Americans “are identified as the oppressors;” America “humiliates and frightens them.” “Whatever injustice 9-11 might have been…there was a notion in Cairo that the injustice that is such a part of the landscape in the Middle East, that Americans had finally glimpsed the same injustice that I think a lot of Arabs felt for a generation or even more….” The film blames terrorism on the “occupation,” stating, “It is the occupation that is causing terrorism, not terrorism that is causing the occupation.” This ignores that terrorism against Israel began in 1920, and continued after the state was established, long before the 1967 War when Israel entered the territories. The film even improbably inverts cause and effect, insinuating that Arab terrorism is a self- fulfilling prophecy. America portrays Arabs as terrorists, thereby creating the Arab terrorist. 6. The film tries to draw a parallel between modern Arab terrorists and early Zionists who fought against British control after World War II. The film paints Israel’s founders, such as Menachem Begin, as terrorists, no different from modern-day Arab terrorists.