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| Version | User | Scope of changes |
|---|---|---|
| Oct 31 2007, 5:38 PM EDT (current) | HamadAltourah | 1 photo added |
| Oct 31 2007, 9:04 AM EDT | HamadAltourah | 21 words added |
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The October 26 release of the documentary, “Jimmy Carter: Man From Plains”, has aroused sizeable opinion against Carter’s stances in the original book, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,” that inspired the film. Both showcase Carter’s dissenting views, evident even in the title of the book, towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and American support for Israel. His thesis revolves largely around the accusation that the security fence in Israel is an oppressive apartheid wall put up by in order to imprison Palestinians. This contestable political position is debunked by a press more likely to call into question Carter’s own sanity. Secondly, newspapers like The New York Times choose to bypass discussion of Carter’s opinions by instead perpetuating already rampant charges of anti-Semitism laid against him. This climate in the mainstream press suggests that papers like The New York Times themselves fear being charged with anti-Semitism should a public debate on the issue be encouraged by their reviews.
In his article, “Jews, Arabs and Jimmy Carter”, Ehtan Bronner dwells on Carter’s failure to consider the rise of radical Islam in the Middle East. Rather than focus on the issues regarding land administration and the living conditions of Palestinians, as Carter did, Bronner shifts focus onto what he thinks is Carter’s irrationality. “All would be well today, he[Carter] suggests, if his advice then had been followed. Forget Al Qaeda (the name does not appear in this book), the nuclear ambitions of Iran and the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan.” Bronner breaks down the credibility of Carter’s assertions by dually questioning his character alongside a general disregard of Carter’s arguments.
Nine months later, The New York Times posted a follow-up on the film reviewed by Manohla Dargis titled, “On The Road To Legacy With An Ex-President.” Dargis solidifies the previous stance by opening with, “Jimmy Carter isn’t a real saint, but he plays one in a new documentary.” She characterizes the directors relationship with Carter as “gaga” and a “disengagement from Mr. Carter’s critics.” The reviewer even goes on to cite an article concerning “anti-anti-zionism” in which its author, Ellen Willis, charges that “the left has focused on Israeli acts of domination and human rights violations with an intense and consistent outrage that it fails to direct comparable or worse abuses elsewhere, certainly toward the unvarnished tyrannies in the Middle East.” True to Dargis’s charge of “disengagement,” The New York Times writers have both effectively disengaged with the more succinct political and humanitarian concerns that Carter dwells on in the book and documentary. A general failure to truly engage with the film is supported by Stephen Grove, a Director of Publicity for Sony Pictures Classics(the distributor of the film), who adds that, “Participant Productions[the film’s production company] seeks to compel social change and consciousness. So, we were expecting a lot of controversy to surround the film going into this…we even placed ads that cited a lot of the more controversial statements of the film alongside Anti-Defamation Ads that were accusing Carter of anti-Semitism.” Grove’s statements suggest a disappointing furor or air of debate supported by the content of the film’s review in The New York Times. Further, his reference to the Anti-Defamation League also brings up the issue and power of pressure groups in bringing upon claims to affect the way that people speak about the film.
The New York Times articles show that not only have the September 11 attacks materialized a growing fear of Islamic Fascism, whose roots stretch as far back as the Iranian hostage crisis that muddled public support of Jimmy Carter’s presidency(Jordan 62), but they also compounded several stereotypes about the Arab/Muslim(or Arab-Muslim) that continually fuel these fears. Jack Chahine pinpoints these characterizations of the Arab/Muslim as, “brutal, heartless, uncivilized religious fanatics and money mad cultural ‘others’ bent on terrorizing civilized Westerners, especially Christians and Jews”(Shaheen 172). This creates a civilized (Christian, Jewish) / uncivilized (Muslim) dichotomy that helps strengthen a filter that identifies a potentially visible threat and charges anyone who supports this opponent as anti-American. At the time that Chomsky wrote his Manufacturing Consent, this would have been the “Anti-Communism As Control Mechanism Filter.” Today, “Anti-Semitism” has come to take place of “Anti-Communism”.
Several reviews and recollections of the film in daily newspapers continue a string of narratives that characterize the two sides necessary to make “anti-Communist” or “anti-Semitic” charges. What has already been seen in the times reviews of the book and the critiques are substantiated by journalists like those at the Boston Globe who say, in conflict with Carter’s charges against Israel that, “apartheid doesn’t exist in the Middle East. In some Arab and Muslim countries, harsh discrimination against non-Muslims, women or homosexuals is enshrined in law. But rather than explore the all-too-real apartheid,” Carter ‘instead denounce the freest nation in the Middle East.’” Here, articles irrevocably link claims against Israel with anti-American claims.
As with the anti-Communist claims that Chomsky spoke of, the anti-Semitic claim is threatening because a threat against a seemingly Democratic Israel is, “the specter haunting property owners, as it threatens the very root of their class position and superior status” afforded by the two nations’ related systems of governing. Speaking to the Scottish Palestinian Solidarity Campaign in 2002, Chomsky concurs the muffle that anti-Semitism has placed on the public forum, saying that “anti-semitism is becoming an issue. Not because of the threat of anti-Semitism; they want to make sure there’s no critical look at the policies the U.S. support in the Middle East.” Furthermore, he argues alongside Carter that the anti-Semitic charge is irrelevant because critics of Israeli policy are more likely anti-Zionist, or against a political arm of Judaism separate from it, but “ the main task of Israel statesmen is to make clear to the world that theres no difference between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.” Laila Al-Qatami is the Communications Director for the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee. In addition to sourcing the Anti Defamation League to the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, she says that “It comes that any critics of Israel are Anti-Semitic, and we are saying that it is actually good to take issue with a states policies just like American’s take issue with American policies - it doesn’t mean you’re anti-American.”
Sources
Chomsky, Noam and Herman S. Edwards. Manufacturing Consent: the Political Economy of the Mass Media. New York: Pantheon Books, 1988.
Jordan, Chris. Movie and the Reagan Presidency. London:Praeger, 2003.
Shaheen, Jack. Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Villifies a People. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social cience, Vol. 588, Islam: Enduring Myths and Changing Realities. (Jul.,2003), pp. 171-193.
