Anti-israel Films Produced by the PLO Are Flooding the U.S.

Anti-Israel films produced by the PLO — some of them using themes and footage from Nazi anti-Semitic films — are flooding college campuses, private clubs and church groups across the United States, a leading Israeli expert on propaganda said Tuesday.

More than 400 of the films, offered as documentaries and entertainment, have been produced and distributed by the PLO since 1972, reported Baruch Gitlis, director of the Harry Karren Institute for Propaganda Analysis and senior lecturer in the psychology of propaganda at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel.

Gitlis showed and analyzed a number of PLO films and excerpts from others at public seminars here at the conclusion of a six-city tour sponsored by the Zionist Organization of America. The seminars — at Cleveland State University, the Sheraton Hotel in Beachwood and at Case Western Reserve University — are designed to teach participants how to counter anti-Israel, anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist propaganda.

The PLO films, which run from five to 45 minutes, include some that incorporate Nazi-produced footage. One, for example, makes use of clips from “The Eternal Jew,” an infamous anti-Semitic film made during the Hitler era. Gitlis recently conducted a four-day international conference on Nazi propaganda films at Bar-Ilan University, and is showing excerpts from some of them on his current tour.

SOME FILMS USE NAZI CLIPS

The U.S. seminars include showings of the 1982 “Memories and Fire,” a catchy five-minute salute to the PLO made expressly for American audiences, and “The Making of a Revolutionary,” which runs 11 minutes and consists only of music and image, thus eliminating the need for multi-language narration or subtitles.

“The PLO films are sophisticated and of good technical quality,” Gitlis said, “and they are extremely effective among audiences that don’t know the true historical facts.” Although some films use Nazi film clips, the propaganda line employed by the PLO is a product of the Kremlin.”

CRITICAL OF AMERICAN TV COVERAGE OF ISRAEL

At the ZOA seminars, Gitlis also discussed the image of Israel projected by American TV networks. He declared:

“Most Americans form their opinions about nations, people, issues and events from what they see and hear on television, so it is not surprising that millions of U.S. citizens consider Israel a belligerent, racist, cruel and oppressive state. This distorted and unwarranted view is largely the result of the presentation of Israel, in words and pictures, that viewers derive from watching the major networks.”

Gitlis observed that the view of Israel as a “swaggering tough guy with little concern for the rights and feelings of Arabs living under its thumb” has been especially evident since the war in Lebanon. He says, however, that the anti-Israel picture projected by the networks began nearly 20 years ago, “when TV stepped up its coverage of the Middle East and decided that it would give ‘both sides of the story'”