Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land (2004) (V)

User Rating:

8.6/10   

Directors:

Sut Jhally
Bathsheba Ratzkoff

Writers:

Sut Jhally (writer)
Bathsheba Ratzkoff (writer)

Genre:

Documentary

Plot:

This video shows how the foreign policy interests of American political elites-working in combination...

Plot Keywords:

Media | Middle East | Israel | Arab Israeli Conflict | Palestine

Cast

Seth Ackerman	...	Himself
Major Stav Adivi	...	Himself
Rabbi Arik Ascherman	...	Himself
Hanan Ashrawi	...	Herself
Noam Chomsky	...	Himself
Robert Fisk	...	Himself
Dr. Neve Gordon	...	Himself
Toufic Haddad	...	Himself
Sam Husseini	...	Himself
Hussein Ibish	...	Himself
Robert Jensen	...	Himself
Michael Lerner	...	Himself (as Rabbi Michael Lerner)
Karen Pfeifer	...	Herself
Alisa Solomon	...	Herself
Gila Svirsky	...	Herself

Runtime:

USA:80 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English | Arabic | French | Hebrew | Spanish

Color:

Color

Company:

Media Education Foundation

Quotes:

Noam Chomsky: When Israelis in the occupied territories now claim that they have to defend themselves, they are defending themselves in the sense that any military occupier has to defend itself against the population they are crushing... You can't defend yourself when you're militarily occupying someone else's land. That's not defense. Call it what you like, it's not defense.

Soundtrack:

Passion

A very good, pretty fair analysis

A movie made by people who ask "why" rather than just shout slogans or point fingers. It's main goal appeared to be to give equal time to the sorrows of both Israelis and Palestinians that result from this occupation. Given the asymmetry in both military and "public relations" power between the two camps, it is tough to get a balanced perspective in the mainstream US media. It highlights the incredible similarities between Israeli resource-grabbing and that of early America, both resulting in the murder of the indigenous population, and peace talks that amount to the creation of scattered non-sovereign reservations. This is not to say that if we were to have given the Palestinians the tanks and jets instead of Israel, they would not have made the same grab for power. A major point is that we cannot rely on existing media outlets to tell us the truth, because the truth will be told by whoever has the dollars and the institutional muscle, so we must dig for it and think about it ourselves. In having to dig for it, we sometimes fall into reliance on more dubious sources like the hedgehoged arguments of David Icke types, who give us a ton of speculation with a kernel of truth. If the mainstream media were to give a more intelligent assessment of the situation, rather than the catch-phrase of the day, it might actually bring some of the "leftists" more toward the center, since they could rely less on the under-funded, over-worked, obviously biased independent media.

Two points on other comments. 1)Chomsky says that this is the longest *modern* military occupation of the Palestinian people, and by modern, he usually means post-industrial. He says a lot of stuff that I think can't possibly be true until I take the time to check his references and they're nearly always right on the mark

2)The self-hating Jew comment is silly, as they addressed this very argument in the movie, and addressed it rather well. I could imagine that this argument would continue work from the perspective of one who closed his or her eyes to the movie at the first sign of cognitive dissonance and fell back on the standard slurs. In addition, Israelis do have a land of their own. The trouble is that they want it to be larger and larger. Where would you have the Palestinians go?