When you’re a serial violator of human rights and international law, it becomes imperative to try and cover up your atrocities as much as possible. This is especially the case when a cornerstone of your propaganda strategy revolves around projecting an image of morality and civilization.
In the light of the spread of smart phones and the ability of any bystander to document the systemic abuse of Israeli forces, Hasbara efforts had to similarly evolve to counter this new form of evidence. In the past, it was easier to dispel accusations by simply denying them, claiming that Palestinians were incapable of being objective, and that these accusations only aimed to delegitimize Israel. This was even the mainstream view of the Nakba, where the Palestinian narrative was dismissed in the West only to be indisputably confirmed by declassified Israeli war archives [You can read more about this here].
Following a similar logic, advocates of Israel developed the incredibly racist concept of “Pallywood” to shed doubt on any photographic or video evidence of Israeli violations. According to this talking point, Palestinians produce fake media to demonize Israel. This could range from hiring crisis actors, to doctoring footage and editing it in a dishonest way that misrepresents reality.
The appeal of this to Israelis is clear, not only does it clear Israel from any wrong-doing that is caught on camera, it also frames Palestinians as untrustworthy schemers without integrity, hell-bent on making Israel look bad at any cost. This means that any photographic or video evidence, no matter how clear or concise, could ever be proof of Israeli violations.
This concept became popular among defenders of Israel in the second Intifada. Perhaps the most emblematic usage of this smear was in response to the murder of Muhammad al Durra, who was killed by Israeli gunfire during clashes between Palestinian resistance fighters and the IDF. Although many Palestinian children died during this week, what separated the case of Muhammad al Durra was that he died in his father’s arms, and more importantly, that it was caught on camera.
Naturally, the first reactions from Israel was to claim that either the child is not dead, and that he was merely a crisis actor, or that if he died, he was actually killed by Palestinian gunfire to make Israel look bad. The video has been dissected and studied to exhaustion, with known conspiracy theorists such as Nahum Shahaf, coming up with “evidence” that debunks the video. Some of the ridiculously insulting “evidence” is the allegation that Al-Durra did not bleed when shot, but was holding a red piece of cloth to make it look like blood for the cameras. Needless to say, that the child was buried and his father is still traumatized to this day are inconvenient truths that are not addressed.
But as usual, the goal of propaganda is never to reach the truth. The goal of this talking point is to contest any kind of evidence against Israeli violations. That’s all it needs. Because in the minds of many, if a case is contested then it is not settled. It doesn’t even matter if this contestation is illogical or implausible, all it needs to do is exist for them to discard the whole case and pretend that Israel was vindicated. This has been the go-to approach of Israeli hasbara whenever an inconvenient video or photo surfaces.
However, no matter how you look at it, these claims about Al-Durra are quite ridiculous. Either the former child is alive in hiding, with absolutely no evidence at all for the last 20 years, with his entire family still living the charade, not to mention the buried body. Or the other implication, is that Palestinians killed one of their own children just to make Israel look bad. Both of these scenarios are incredibly absurd and racist.
To suggest that Palestinians would murder an innocent child of their own just so that they could have some incriminating footage on Israel is immensely dehumanizing. Yet, this view is not so fringe in Israel. During Israel’s bloody 2014 assault on Gaza, Netanyahu addressed those raising concerns about the high number of murdered innocent civilians by claiming that:
“They want to pile up as many civilian dead as they can. They use telegenically dead Palestinians for their cause. They want the more dead, the better.”
Telegenically dead.
That’s all Palestinians were good for. In typical colonist fashion, they cannot even begin to comprehend the humanity of the colonized. Even in their death, the center of attention must remain on the settlers. To the settlers, the colonized do not have dreams or ambitions, they have no loved ones or family. They exist only as an undifferentiated monolith solely to make their lives more difficult.
Another case which demonstrates the intellectual dishonesty of this talking point is the case of Nadeem Nuwarra. In 2014, and during the annual Nakba day protests marking the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, Nadim Nuwarra and Mohammad Salameh were both shot and killed by Israeli forces in front of the Ofer military prison in Beitunia.
They were unarmed and far away from anything that could possibly be constituted as a risk to the soldiers, they were killed with live ammunition, and one of them was even shot in the back while walking away from the soldiers. They were standing over 90 meters away from the soldiers, for reference, that’s close to the length of a professional football field.
What followed, was the typical song and dance that the IDF performed every time it is accused of war crimes and human rights violations against Palestinians.
First, they denied that there was any use of live ammunition. The soldiers were only supposed to be firing rubber bullets. This was “corroborated” by an internal “investigation” that concurred that no live ammunition was used. Second, they claimed that these two teenagers were shot by the soldiers in self-defense, as they were partaking in violent attacks against the soldiers who felt threatened. But before that, the idea was floated that they were actually killed by Palestinians who were firing at the IDF and killed them by mistake. The IDF changing its story multiple times is a staple of its damage control modus operandi.
Then the videos began to surface. Taken from multiple CCTV cameras in the vicinity, they showed that the teens were standing far away and were shot while they indisputably could not have been posing any threat, debunking the entire defense the IDF had been running with prior.
Naturally, this is where the smear of “Pallywood” reared its ugly head once again. The videos, they alleged, were faked and doctored. They were simply created to defame Israel and its army. As a matter of fact, Micahel Oren, former Israeli diplomat, claimed that the shot teens were actually Palestinian crisis actors, and baselessly claimed that nobody even died in the first place.
“That film was edited and does not reflect the reality of the day in question, the violence,”
claimed Major Arye Shalicar, an IDF spokesperson. Moshe Ya’lon, even though he admit that he had not watched the film yet, was sure it was edited:
“but I’ve seen lots of films that were edited [to distort what had happened]. This film I’ve not yet seen, but I know the system.”
Israeli Channel 2’s military correspondent Roni Daniel claimed that the film was a fake. To try and prove this, he quibbled about the position of hands of the teens being shot, and how it did not appear consistent with being shot.
Pro-Israel media “watchdog” Camera also claimed that something was amiss with the Palestinian story about what happened. Johnathan Tobin even claimed it was a blood libel akin to the case of Mohammed al Durra. In a Facebook post, Danny Ayalon also claimed that the video was fabricated.
These accusations and more were hurled at the victims. Shortly after, the spent bloody bullet was found in Nuwarra’s backpack, it had landed there after it exited his body. Of course, Israel claimed it was planted there and not real. To challenge this, the family exhumed the body of their murdered child and had an autopsy confirm that indeed, the bullet wounds were consistent with this kind of live ammunition. However, the final nail in the coffin of Israeli lies, was when new footage from CNN surfaced, showing the soldier clearly shooting in the direction of Nuwarra at the same time of death.
Of course, none of these sources ever apologized for the disgusting dehumanization of the victims, or their claims of manufactured Palestinian suffering.
The false accusations of doctored footage are also quite a clear case of projection on the part of Israel. For example, Razan al Najjar was a volunteer nurse who was shot tending to the wounded during the Gaza protests of 2018, even though she posed no danger. The IDF began its usual mantra of denials, and even released an edited video to try and defame Al-Najjar and make it seem that she was being used as a human shield. This backfired when the full video was released that made no such claim. The whole issue was buried under the IDF’s “internal investigation” to this day.
Time and time again, these smears are shown to be false. There was even an attempt to frame a “die-in” protest in Cairo as a case of Palestinians in Gaza faking being dead. Is this not exactly what advocates of Israel claim Pallywood is? However, once again, it doesn’t matter. Because as I said, as far as propaganda goes, for many it’s enough to contest a video to discard it completely. Then they can go back to believing in the myth of the righteous Israeli state that never does wrong as opposed to the lying, bloodthirsty, backwards Palestinian who would do anything to harm it.
There will never be a form of evidence put forward by Palestinians, or any other group, that will not be defamed and attacked. This is not a uniquely Israeli trait. Oppressive systems have always accused the oppressed of exaggerating or lying about their lived experience.
In these particularly egregious cases, what propagandists are asking of you is to believe them over your own eyes, hearts, minds and historical precedents.
- Aouragh, Miriyam. “Hasbara 2.0: Israel’s public diplomacy in the digital age.” Middle East Critique 25.3, 2016: 271-297.
- Wang, Kuan-Yun. “Illegally Blonde: The Racialisation of Blondness and Visual Representations of Palestinian Activist Ahed Tamimi in American and Canadian Media.” Journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies 19.1, 2020: 15-36.
- Roth-Rowland, Natasha. Why the ‘Pallywood’ myth endures. +972 Magazine. October 15th, 2020.
- Herman, Edward S., and Noam Chomsky. Manufacturing consent: The political economy of the mass media. Random House, 2010.