Arab Stereotypes in Films by Israeli Filmmaker Menahem Golan

More than a perception exploited by global media that often equates to something like "All Arabs are terrorists and all terrorists are arabs" Golan picks real events of plane hijacking as narrative subject and uses his films as a means of propaganda to the israeli issue.
First commercial sucess in israeli film production rises in the 1960ies with production of films belonging to the so called BOUREKAS genre. This also GEFILTE-FISH-FILM labeled genre reaches his zenith between 1967 and 1977. The genre builds its plots on existing tensions between european and oriental jews in israel and relies heavily on ethnic stereotype elements. After 1977 the genre experiences a shift from folkloristic ethnic cinema to softporn. Important directors of this genre are KISHON and GOLAN.

The israeli victory in the six days war of 1967 was followed by an atmosphere of national arrogance and the perception of military power as a means of solution for political problems. The ISRAELI DEFENSE FORCES became objects of popular fascination. While pre 1967 films offered a quasi-humanistic approach of enlightment, in post 1967 films war became a virtual protagonist. After a short exposition of the challenge the narrative energy focused on the fact wether the IDF would suceed or not.
One of the first films of the post 1967 genre was Golans THE GREAT ESCAPE showing the sucessful rescue of israeli prisoners of war from a syrian prison called AL MUZIR. Golan achieved precision in military details with support from the IDF which supplied syrian tanks and arms. On the other hand Golan donated the profit of the film premiere to the IDF.
Golans filmic fantasy in THE GREAT ESCAPE becomes a real reference with the 1977 produced film OPERATION THUNDERBOLT. This film is based on a true story: in june 1976 pro-palestinian terrorists hijack an AIR FRANCE flight and redirect the plane to ENTEBBE in UGANDA. They release 150 of their non-jewish hostages. Israeli special forces rescue the remaining 100 hostages. Golan adapts this story and his MIVTZA YONATHAN surpasses two hollywood versions of the story: a few of the real hostages, serveral members of the israeli special forces and primeminister RABIN and minister of defense PEREZ act as themselves, german actor KLAUS KINSKI takes the part of the terrorist. For Golan this event has more qualities of a tragedy than an action-movie. In interviews he draws a picture of ENTEBBE as repetition of the situation which made the holocaust possible.
A sideeffect of these three Entebbe movies was censorship by terrorism: several film theatres showing these films became focus of bombings. OPERATION THUNDERBOLT was nominated for academy award for best foreign film.
Golan and his cousin YORAM GLOBUS founded the production company GOLAN GLOBUS and emigrated to Hollywood shortly after the realisation of OPERATION THUNDERBOLT. There in hollywood they bought the production company CANNON FILMS. With CANNON they specialised on the production of low budget films with estimated production costs of five million US-dollar per film. Their effort was sucessful in the first half of the 1980ies and they became the most powerful independent producers and distributors worldwide. Personal and financial difficulties stoped the rise of CANNON in the end of this decade.

The function of stereotypes and the role of media

Stereotypes are oversimplified virtual pictures of a category of people which is shared in his essential characteristics by a large group of people. The paradoxum relies in the fact, that stereotypes represent groups and are used to describe, interprete and forecast actions of individuals. On the other hand will individual actions or persons be used as reference because extrem actions and people are easier to store than average examples. Stereotypes tend to spread under following circumstances: the need to understand complex and most of the time unpleasant events in global society, the need to justify planed or executed actions against alien groups and the need to make a positive distinction between the own group and alien groups. Stereotypes are spreaded by means of stories, poems, reports, songs and pictures. In addition to traditional ways of storytelling by fairy-tales and lullaby-stories mass media became an important way of transmission for stereotypes.
In modern industrialized societies the greatest part of leisure time is used to consume mass media. Mass media became an almost emanzipated means of education compared to parents and school and transfer social guiding principles. Other functions of mass media is control and observation of events taking place in the world followed by the socialisation of individuals in their cultural surrounding.
Audiovisual mass media achieve publicity by creating the impression of eye-witnessing an event. The credibility of film and television is related to the power of the moving image. More than their influence on youth culture, films obtain the position of an visual enzyclopedia of culture: if you ask how does a roman CENTURIO or a WAFFEN-SS officer look like most people will quote GLADIATOR or SCHINDLERS LIST than refering to a book. Visual articulated stereotypes will only gain more outline if they appear identic or similar in structure in a greater number of films.

The Delta Force

Regarding these aspects the point of main emphasis of this speech lecture is the breakdown of the 1986 by GOLAN GLOBUS produced film THE DELTA FORCE directed by Golan. Similar to OPERATION THUNDERBOLT this film starring CHUCK NORRIS, LEE MARVIN and german actress HANNAH SCHYGULLA is based on the TWA hijack in june 1985.
Europeans and Americans define themselves in opposition to the constructed difference of the orient. Colonization tended to systemize distorted images to legitimate europe ruling the orient. Also today after end of colonization this tradition is still followed by western cultural industry. Aside to working with fears belonging to the middle age there is a direct alliation between the USA and Israel. This matter of course can be found in a short dialogue between US-Colonel Alexander and an officer of the israeli secret service MOSSAD in the following scene:

Colonel Alexander: Thank you for your help.
Israeli Secret Service: I wish I could join you.
Colonel Alexander: You have done it before, now it is our turn.
Israeli Secret Service: Good Luck!

USA and Israel are fighting for a good cause in tradition of the old conflict between east and west. The film takes advantage of an ABC-scheme known by propagandists: A stands for APPEAL and is the part of message which will awake public interest. An actual event like plane hijacking suits best for this purpose. B stands for BOND and is the link between APPEAL and COMMODITY (C). This link should be short and simple like a reduced message WE are fighting THEM. COMMODITY is the value system of western societies propagated by the filmmaker. The mentioned attack on western societies value system culminates in leveling the plane hijackers with german national-socialists. This is also a basic propaganda technique which reduces the matter of the antagonist by means of selective perception to something not honorable and uncivilized. Short time after the hijacking begins the most meaningful sequence of the film: the crew is forced to collect the passengers passports in order to seperate the jewish from the non-jewish passengers.
The film makes use of a technique of identification named TRANSFER AND TESTIMONIAL: it transfers the knowing about the holocaust into the airplane and emphasizes the fate of the hostages. Passenger BENJAMIN KAPLAN serves as living testimony reminding the terror of nationalsocialism. After all Passport been collected commanding terrorist ABDUL orders chiefs of cabin crew INGRID to seperate passports with jewish names.
The effective past in israeli politics declares itself in the so called HOLOCAUST-SYNDROM. This term labels the historical delivered feeling of the jewish people being pursuited by others all the time and serves as political argument. Palestinian Lib. Organisation has often been leveled with nationalsocialists. Golan states the threat of civilisation and suggests without asking for the reason of the conflict that there can't be a diplomatic solution for the hijacking. Derived from the HOLOCAUST-SYNDROM is the feeling of Loneliness which is also rooted in the political geography of israel. This feeling utters also in israeli popular culture like for example the popular song of the 1960ies THE WHOLE WORLD IS AGAINST US.
Golan builds authencity of eye-witnessing by often using a documentary style handheld camera and an analogy of known and fictious pictures. The shot which shows terrorist MUSTAFA threating the pilot with his gun during an improvised press conference at beirut airport shows hardly any difference to the real picture known from television and press coverage in 1985.
From the moment of their first appearence in the film at athens airport the two hijackers represent visually and by behaviour their status of strangers to the western world. Not only their physiognomy but their behaviour reduces to SOMETHING beastial and brute supported by low camera angles and mustafas heavy breathing sounds while beating up the US-soldier. This depiction of menace is visually increased by showing terrorist wearing black hoods with eye slits. With this anonymized depiction the terrorists are no longer criminal members of human society but representants of evil and dehumanized forces. This interpretation is also based on the fact that most of the terrorists are nameless and only ABDUL, MUSTAFA, JAFFAR and SHAMIL are known by their first name. We also find this fact reflected in the end credits of the film.

The influence of film on international relations

By providing social, psychological and political messages, films present much more than pure entertainment. Each produced film is determined by the interests of the producer. In the realm of foreign policy and international relations there is a special need to combine and canalise a great amount of information. Films are "political actors" and have influence on public opinion by picking some of this information and redirect the attention of their spectators. Repetition and spreading of stereotyped depiction has influence on perception in society and this depiction becomes its own reality. This reality is fundamental for individual or national decisions. A steady stream of negative images influences the public opinion and consequently also US-foreign policy.
I would like to take a short glance on the cultural and political surroundings of the reagan era: after the failed hostage rescue in teheran reagan administration manifested itself through a devotion to power and a gnostic view of world divided into good and evil. Symbolic violence of fictious pictures has a important function of katharsis for a frustrated american public, which wasn't able to doom their enemies. The film critic Roger Ebert puts it like this: "The film feeds our national revenge fantasies - in Delta Force the hijacking ends the way we wished it would."
The anti-arab thrusting of the israeli movies is transfered and enlarged in Delta Force. It leads to a hysteric use of stereotypes which would be unthinkable in israeli cinema. Delta Force establishes the genre and takes advantage of arabs as representants of threat to western values. In an analysis of 42 related films the stereotype of the inhabitants of the region middle east as "terrorists" becomes established in the mind of the spectator. This ignorance shows its expression in the terms "arab terrorist" and "arab terrorism". Similar to terms like ISLAM or FUNDAMENTALISM there is no differentiation. I want to remark, that the problem is not showing an arab terrorist but establishing the image of arabs as terrorists.
The long term consequence of stereotyped depiction of arabs as terrorist shows its effect on society until today: short after the oklahoma bombing eye witnesses described suspects as MIDDLE EASTENERS WITH DARK HAIR AND BEARD. As we know today the bombing was planed and executed by extreme-right wing white US-citizens. There a not only effects on US-foreign policy: arab immigration started in 1875 und in 1967 the number of US-citizens with arab roots was 3 Million which suddenly became terrorists. Stereotypes establish the xenophic paranoia of arabs infiltrating and suicide bombing in the heartland of america. Domestic film production in israel decreased and as a result there is almost no screening of israeli films in the countries 286 film theaters. A figure taken from The Hollywood Reporter shows US-american films have a market share of 80% in israel (1999). Adding this information to the fact Menahem Golan has a quasi-monopolic position as distributor of Hollywood films in israel danger of manipulation becames fundamental.
Culture is based on a system of symbols and it is the duty of the producer the interpret symbols, to compare them to national culture and to explain the resulting differences to the viewers. Again: it is not relevant that these differences exist but the way they are expressed. Appeal to the responsibility of producers will only provide a short term solution and the main target group of producers are children and young people. They are confronted with stereotypes in a period they establish values and patterns of behaviour for the rest of their lifes. Therefore school and parents should provide sufficient and balanced information about islam and the west. This path of solution presupposes quarrel from the part of parents with the media consumption of their children.

To satisfie the human need for idenfication films tend to appeal to basic needs and simplifications and we should not forget, that despite this discussion stereotypes belong to the conditions for comic elements. The problem relies in the fact of worldwide stereotype distribution. Film is the most powerful weapon and for better or worse it is the commentator who was the last word: film not only depicts history but forms history by the way the story is told.