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October 27, 2005
Pallywood
With thanks to Byron, here's an interesting short documentary from The Second Draft on the burgeoning film industry in the Palestinian territories. Highlights of its productions include a "corpse" that climbs back onto a funeral bier after being dropped, a brave Palestinian guerilla whose gunfire turns out to be directed into an empty room, a hospital that managed to sustain a dozen blasts from Israeli tanks without significant damage, and a man forced by the Israeli army to deliver his wife's baby while driving a car (the doctor who really did deliver the baby was filmed coaching him on how to tell the story).
War zone or movie set? It isn't easy to tell from watching the evening news — especially when the most informative parts of the raw footage end up on the cutting room floor. A few "hallmarks of Pallywood" can help clue you in that what you are watching is staged. Next time your TV set shows you ragtag Palestinians being put upon by Israelis, look for the following:
- Casualties that behave like football players hamming it up for the refs.
- Ambulances that appear instantly the moment someone is "wounded."
- Rough evacuations of "victims" that would be very harmful to people who really were injured.
- Onlookers nonchalantly enjoying the show while a few feet away, the stars of the performance frantically dodge phantom Israeli bullets.
Arabs don't fare well in fair fights, so they have had to rely on war by other means — namely terrorism and propaganda. Fortunately for them, they can count on willful credulity, if not overt editorial assistance, from their allies in the Western media.
Posted by Van Helsing at October 27, 2005 6:44 AM
Comments
OT: Via Are these the faces of concerned citizens, acknowledging the grim milestone of 2000 deaths (TM) ... or a bunch of giddy, self-satisfied hippies joyfully celebrating the grim milestone (TM) of 2000 deaths?LGF
Posted by: V the K at October 27, 2005 7:23 AM
And who was actively complicit in presenting the al-Durra incident as a child-killing even though in the totally manufactured non-occurrence there's actually footage showing the boy was never even shot?
France 2, that's who.
Sorry...al-France 2.
Posted by: LC TripleNeckSteel at October 27, 2005 12:22 PM
I suspect that not only in Palestine, but worldwide, that media crews stagemanage shots to get the effect they want. Many AP and Reuters photos coming out of Iraq are so staged a monkey could find the inconsistancies, especially when a number of photos of the same event are compared to each other.
My favorite was the one of a young Iraqi boy running past an exploding car. There were about 5 published pics of the kid; in one he had a bag, in another he was empty handed, in others the car was at distinctly different stages either exploding or burning or almost burned out.
AP, in my opinion, is public enemy number one. Most news agencies depend on AP for foreign material, and it is purchased and spewed out at face value without any cross-checking.
For instance: Supposed "journalists (Mohamad What'dmacall'm and Sally) take pictures in Gaza; then they sell the pics and story to AP who says that the two are somehow certified AP pros; then news agencies around the world purchase either the pics or story or both; they print or telecast the story exactly as AP did so that they don't breach AP rules. There is no accountability or way of cross checking. And, everyone from CNN to FOX swallow this shit wholesale.
Posted by: Debris Trail at October 27, 2005 12:22 PM
For real coverage, read Michael Yon's blog.
http://michaelyon.blogspot.com/
Posted by: Improbulus Maximus at October 28, 2005 9:14 AM
