Under siege: Hollywood, mainstream press incite Arab anger
by Ben Corbett
9/27/01
Vandals spray-painted several University of Colorado buildings Sept. 19 with anti-Arab racial hate such as: "We're gonna fucking nuke you sandniggers." From reports of violent motorists chasing down people who fit the stereotypical Arab description, to bomb-threats and arson of mosques, right down to those low-pitched curses, the popular reaction over recent acts of terror and discrimination leveled against American Muslims and Arab-Americans has been numb indifference, perhaps a moment of pity, and nothing more.
Both racially biased entertainment and irresponsible news media are the primary fuels for the hatred, say activists, and they're taking steps to reverse the negative trend. Sept. 20, members of the Colorado Campaign for Middle East Peace demonstrated peacefully against Denver news agencies, demanding fair reporting and media accountability. Channels 9, 4, and Fox 31 were the targets of the 150 marchers.
"The most blatant, right after the tragedy, was the footage of the Palestinians celebrating, presented without any context," says demonstrator Bob Choflet, citing an example of corporate media bias. "What is that designed to do if not to whip people into this anti-Arab fervor? That's just one example."
Reflecting the sentiments of the status quo, 27 percent responded yes in a recent Rocky Mountain News/News 4 poll which asked if Middle Easterners who are not U.S. citizens should be immediately deported, while eight percent responded that yes, the Muslim religion should be banned in the United States.
"Where is all this coming from?" asks Choflet. "We feel it's the corporate media."
On the same day as the Denver demonstration, the FBI informed major Hollywood film studios that their lots were targets of possible terrorist retribution, should the United States launch an attack against Afghanistan. Much like the Colombian-American community, always stereotyped as cutthroat cocaine smugglers in film, Arab-Americans and American Muslims have forever been at odds with Hollywood for portraying them-with the exception of 1999's The Thirteenth Warrior and Three Kings-as unshaven terrorist hijackers out to murder innocent people. Death Before Dishonor, Executive Decision, Hostage, Navy SEALS, True Lies, Iron Eagle, are just the few of the estimated 400 films released since the 1920s that have been cited as Arab-demonizing films. According to the Washington-based Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), the vilifying Hollywood treatment of Arabs is the fundamental source of the popular culture's anti-Arab backlash and hate crimes each time U.S. relations explode in the Middle East.
"We can trace quite a bit of this back to Hollywood's absolutely reckless and irresponsible defamation of Arabs and Muslims over the past 30 years," says Hussein Ibish, the ADC's director of communications. "One of the key indicators is the rash of attacks against Sikhs," a religious sect from India.
In the past two weeks, there has been one Sikh man shot, and according to the ADC, there have been reports of more than 200 violent incidents against their community.
"Sikh men wear their hair in a turban," continues Ibish, "and they wear beards and are fairly dark-complexioned. This is not the description of an Arab. The problem is that it does sound like a description of the TV Arab. So when there's a rash of violence against Sikh men, you can ask people where they got the impression that these people are Arabs, and the answer is they saw it in the movies."
Two of the most recent Hollywood productions that evoked instant denouncement of the Arab-American community were The Siege, a fictitious Arab terrorist film starring Denzel Washington, and Paramount's 2000 release, Rules of Engagement, starring Samuel Jackson and Tommy Lee Jones. In the film, Jackson is court-martialed for allegedly ordering the massacre of 83 riled protesters at the American embassy in Yemen. Jones, Jackson's lawyer, discovers secret videotapes of a Bin Laden-type character urging people to murder all Americans. At the film's surprise ending, it turns out that all 83 protesters had been packing assault weapons, including the innocent and little Yemen girl on crutches-justifying the massacre.
"It's an outrage," says Ibish. "Every single Arab character in that movie is a villain. The crucial thing to note about all of this is that the principal images of the Arab-bashing of Hollywood are classic anti-Semitism. These are the anti-Semitic tropes. The Oil Sheik is the Jewish Banker reborn. It has just been transferred from one group of Semites to another. It's very disturbing. We have been telling the entertainment industry for years now that if they insisted on refusing to show positive Arab characters, this could lead to a rash of hate crimes. And here we are."
Ibish, like the Denver demonstrators, believes that running the repetitive image of cheering Palestinians in the New York aftermath should have been counter-balanced with the candlelight peace vigils being held across Palestine. Slanted media in this regard also results in profiling, another ill-effect incited by the Hollywood spell. Last week, pilots of two major airlines refused to taxi until passengers fitting Middle Eastern description were rudely thrown off separate planes. While understandable, considering the hype, stereotypes, and heightened fear in America, incidents like these are nothing new for Arab-Americans. Deana Ahmad, an American-born Palestinian and one of the demonstrators in Thursday's Denver media accountability march, says that long before the Sept. 11 tragedy, nearly every time she traveled by air, customs agents and security stations would spend much more time examining her bags and documents while whiter-complexioned passengers were shuffled through quickly.
"When this all happened on Tuesday, I was in a state of extreme anxiety," says Deana. "As an eighth-grader during Desert Storm, I had been physically assaulted. During Oklahoma I had my car windows smashed in and received very violent calls. A small minority is taking action against anybody they seem to think fits the physical profile, and that's not acceptable. That small minority of people are the ones who are going to continue to make it difficult for people like my family and me."
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