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POLITICS-US: Film on "Radical Islam" Tied to Pro-Israel Groups
By Khody Akhavi
WASHINGTON, Mar 26 (IPS) - A controversial documentary on the threat of
radical Islam, promoted by the two most-watched U.S. cable news networks,
was marketed and supported in part by self-described "pro-Israel" groups,
according to an IPS investigation.
Abbreviated versions and segments of "Obsession: Radical Islam's War
Against the West" ran on FOX News and CNN, but neither station disclosed
the film's connection to HonestReporting, a watchdog group that monitors
the media for allegedly negative portrayals of Israel.
HonestReporting marketed "Obsession" but denies it produced or funded the
project.
"We initially gave some guidance to the 'Obsession' staff," wrote Pesach
Bensen, editor of Mediabackspin.com, the organisation's weblog, in an
email response to IPS. "We're thrilled to see it succeed beyond our
wildest expectations."
When "Obsession" was released last year, news pundits and anchors on FOX
and CNN praised the independent film for its candid look at Islamic
militancy. FOX incorporated footage from the film into a one-hour special,
which aired seven times in November 2006. CNN's right-wing pundit Glen
Beck called it "one of the most important films of our time". Sean Hannity
of FOX News described it as "shocking beyond belief".
While such enthusiasm from right-wing talk show personalities comes as no
surprise, mainstream cable news programmes also appeared to accept,
without question, the premise of the film, which explicitly compares the
threat posed by radical Islam to that of Nazi Germany in the 1930s.
Consider, for example, CNN news anchor Kyra Phillips's exhortations during
an adulatory interview in December 2006 with Raphael Shore, the film's
producer: "I encourage everybody to see this movieà you definitely get an
incredible education from watching this filmà The movie left many of us
speechlessà We appreciate what you've done."
HonestReporting was founded in 2000 by British university students who
objected to what they considered anti-Israel coverage by European media in
response to the second Palestinian intifada.
There is no mention of HonestReporting's connection to "Obsession" on the
film's website, www.obsessionthemovie.com. In an online "Ask the
Filmmakers" segment on the FOX News website, Shore stated that he could
not identify the film's funders for fear of retaliation by the "radicals"
the filmmakers exposed.
Brian Gaffney, executive producer of the FOX News Documentary Unit,
declined to comment on whether HonestReporting's connection was disclosed
to the audience, or whether FOX was aware of the organisation's
ideological perspective.
"There is no mistaking that this was a film with a clear point of view,"
Gaffney wrote in an email to IPS. "Its forceful case against Radical Islam
spoke for itself."
In the case of CNN, which ran segments of the film in the context of a
joint interview with Shore and cast member Nonie Darwish, it appears that
producers were unaware of the connection.
"I was told that HonestReporting was not involved with this film," said
CNN spokeswoman Megan Mahoney.
Any relation between HonestReporting and "Obsession" is also missing on
the film's website, but the organisation's name does appear at the end of
the film's credits. In addition, a call for tax-deductible donations to
help "launch" the film appeared on HonestReporting's website, promising a
free DVD of "Obsession" upon release. Contributors of 250 dollars or more
were promised a free copy of the book "Israel: Life in the Shadow of
Terror". An entry on Mediabackspin.com, the organisation's weblog, also
describes HonestReporting as a "proud partner" of the film.
"Obsession" features interviews with Harvard law professor Alan
Dershowitz, investigative journalist Steve Emerson, Itimar Marcus of
Israel-based Palestinian Media Watch, and Daniel Pipes, a controversial
scholar of medieval Islamic history whose website campuswatch.com sparked
criticism in 2002 for its alleged McCarthyesque attacks on Middle East
studies professors.
Its production credits include the Middle East Media Research Institute,
or MEMRI, a translation service founded in 1998 by Col. Yigal Carmon, who
spent more than 20 years in Israeli intelligence and later advised two
Israeli prime ministers; and the Palestinian Media Watch, an Israeli group
founded by Marcus, that monitors Palestinian news organisations for
alleged anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic propaganda.
"Obsession", for all its fans, has engendered contentious debate on U.S.
university campuses not only for its disquieting barrage of video footage
culled from the Arab media, but also for the film's distribution network.
According to the New York Times, when a Middle East discussion group
organised a screening at New York University earlier this year,
distributors of the film required those in attendance to register at
IsraelActivism.com, the official website of the Hasbara fellowships.
The programme, also known as the Jerusalem fellowships, was started in
2001 by Aish Hatorah - an Orthodox Jewish outreach organisation and
yeshiva based in East Jerusalem - in conjunction with Israel's Ministry
of Foreign Affairs. According to its website, the group "educates and
trains university students to be effective pro-Israel activists on their
campuses" by providing its participants with "tools, resources and
confidence to return to their campuses as leaders in the fight for
Israel's image."
Aish Hatorah helped found HonestReporting. Rabbi Ephraim Shore, the
president of HonestReporting, also helped found Hasbara.
According to the St. Louis Dispatch, a summer screening of "Obsession" in
St. Louis was sponsored by the local branch of Aish Hatora and featured a
post-film discussion with Walid Shoebat, an ex-Palestine Liberation
Organisation militant who was interviewed in the film. In the summer of
2006, Shoebat, a convert to evangelical Christianity, also spoke at the
"Night to Honour Israel," a three-day event presented by Pastor John
Hagee's Christians United for Israel, a lobby group that aims to mobilise
Christian Zionists as a political force, according to the San Antonio
Express.
While watching the film, it becomes clear that the controversy surrounding
"Obsession" has less to with what it says about the threat of radical
Islam, than how it presents the information. While the film contains
disclaimers stating that "it's important to remember most Muslims are
peaceful and do not support terror," critics argue that it makes little
distinction between the religion of Islam and the political realities that
inform terrorism.
"It's all part of that industry of Muslim bashers," said Ibrahim Hooper, a
spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
"The sentiment is there, you can see in the [1995] Oklahoma City bombing
that it was originally seen as an act of Islamic terrorism," said Peter
Hart of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. "It's almost a default
position for the media, so you're going to have work like this received
uncritically."
The Oklahoma City bombing, initially attributed by the mainstream media to
Islamic terrorists, was actually perpetrated by right-wing extremists from
the U.S. midwest.
The film's director, Wayne Kopping, argues that it aims to uncover the
mixed messages propagated by radical Islamists in the Muslim world, who
moderate their voices only when they speak in Western media outlets.
"Children in the Arab world are... breastfed on a diet of hatred for the
West. Not only that - the entire culture is permeated with it," said
Kopping in a FOX interview. "The question is what are they [the
spokespeople] saying in their own language, on their own TV stations to
their own people. That's when you really hear what they think, and they
call for jihad."
(END/2007)
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