| Origin/etymology | Portmanteau of "Palestine" and "Hollywood" |
|---|---|
| Meaning | Derogatory label used to describe supposed media manipulation by Palestinians |
| Context | Used in discussions related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict |
| Coined by | Richard Landes |
Pallywood, a portmanteau of "Palestine" and "Hollywood", is a derogatory label used to describe supposed media manipulation, distortion or fraud to win the public relations war with Israel. [1] [2] [3] [4] The term came into currency following the killing of Muhammad al-Durrah in 2000 during the Second Intifada, involving a challenge to the veracity of photographic evidence. [5] Israeli pundits have used the term to dismiss videos showing Israeli violence or Palestinian suffering. [2] During the Israel–Hamas war, it has been used to dismiss Palestinian suffering, [6] [1] and is regarded by some news sources as a conspiracy theory. [1] [6] [7]
The term was coined and publicized in part by Richard Landes, as a result of a 2005 online documentary video he produced called Pallywood: According to Palestinian Sources, alleging specific instances of media manipulation. [8] [9] Journalist Ruthie Blum describes "Pallywood" as a term coined by Landes to refer to "productions staged by the Palestinians, in front of (and often with cooperation from) Western camera crews, for the purpose of promoting anti-Israel propaganda by disguising it as news." Landes himself describes Pallywood as "a term I coined... to describe staged material disguised as news."
In Pallywood: According to Palestinian Sources, [10] Landes focuses in particular on the widely publicized killing of Muhammad al-Durrah, a 12-year-old Palestinian boy killed by gunfire (widely reported to have been Israeli gunfire) in the Gaza Strip on September 30, 2000 at the beginning of the Second Intifada. [1] His death was filmed by a Palestinian freelance cameraman and aired on the France 2 television channel. Landes questions the authenticity of the footage and disputes whether al-Durrah was killed at all, arguing that the entire incident was staged by the Palestinians. [9] Landes and pro-Israel advocates argue that the Israeli government is insufficiently robust in countering Palestinian accounts of events in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. [5]
Besides the killing of al-Durrah, Landes cites the Gaza beach blast and Hamas's alleged exploitation of electricity shortages during the 2007–2008 Israel–Gaza conflict, as incidents of Pallywood. [11]
David Frum alleged that pictures, taking during the 2014 Gaza War, showing two brothers, weeping and with the bloodied T-shirts after carrying the body of their dead father had been faked. The pictures, which were published by Reuters, The New York Times , and Associated Press, had been targeted for criticism by a pro-Israeli blogger. [12] Frum backtracked from his accusation, and apologized to NYT photographer Sergey Ponomarev, after extensive debunking by Michael Shaw, but justified his "skepticism", describing other "Pallywood" claims. [13]
After the death of two Palestinian teenagers in Beitunia, Michael Oren and an Israeli army spokesman argued the video from a security camera was manipulated and the teenagers had only pretended to be hit, a Pallywood view contradicted by both the videos themselves[ opinion ] and the official investigation which discovered misconduct by a Border Police officer, who was put on trial for his actions. [14] [15] [16]
Anat Berko, a research fellow with the conservative Israeli think-tank, International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism, and Edna Erez, head of the criminal justice department of the University of Illinois at Chicago, said that "the phenomenon of manufacturing documentation about the conflict has been referred to as "Pallywood" (Palestinian Authority Hollywood)." [17] [ non-primary source needed ] The Mackenzie Institute, a conservative Canadian defense and security think tank, [18] has argued that given "a long history of posing for the cameras... the cynical 'Pallywood' nickname from once-deceived journalists for [Palestinian Authority] news services becomes understandable." [19] [ non-primary source needed ]
During the Israel–Hamas war, conspiracy theories involving online influencers mocking victims and claiming that Palestinians are using "crisis actors" went viral on social media, often citing the "Pallywood" term. [1] [20] Israel's official Twitter account accused Gazans of placing live people in body bags before deleting the Tweet, while AIPAC promoted similar content. [1] Many of the most viral videos used to "prove" that crisis actors exist have been disproven. [1] The term often results in anti-Muslim hate speech and was especially popular after Israel announced plans to increase aerial bombardment of Gaza. [1]
In November 2023, Israeli diplomat Ofir Gendelman circulated a clip from a Lebanese short film, claiming that it was proof that Palestinians were faking videos and calling it an example of "Pallywood". [21] [22]
Ruthie Blum says that Richard Landes's claims, which are considered quite severe, have led to him being labeled as a right-wing conspiracy theorist in certain circles. [11] Critics argue that Landes's language, which seemingly favors Israel, displays characteristics commonly associated with conspiracy theories. [7]
In 2014, Larry Derfner described Pallywood in +972 Magazine as "a particularly ugly ethnic slur". [23] In 2018, Eyal Weizman, whose work with Forensic Architecture has been called "Pallywood" in Israel, replied that "The bastards' last line of defence is to call it 'fake news'. The minute they revert to this argument is when they've lost all the others." [24] In an article published by Mondoweiss , Jonathan Cook argued that "Pallywood" was a convenient excuse used by Israelis to dismiss filmed evidence of brutality by their soldiers. [25]
The Gaza Strip, or simply Gaza, is a small, densely populated territory located on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. It is the smaller of the two Palestinian territories. Gaza is bordered by Egypt on the southwest and Israel on the east and north.
Hamas, an acronym of its official name, Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya, is a Palestinian Sunni Islamist political and military movement governing parts of the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip since 2007.
The Israeli–Palestinian conflict is an ongoing military and political conflict about land and self-determination within the territory of the former Mandatory Palestine. Key aspects of the conflict include the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the status of Jerusalem, Israeli settlements, borders, security, water rights, the permit regime, Palestinian freedom of movement, and the Palestinian right of return.
Media coverage of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict has been said, by both sides and independent observers, to be biased. This coverage includes news, academic discussion, film, and social media. These perceptions of bias, possibly exacerbated by the hostile media effect, have generated more complaints of partisan reporting than any other news topic and have led to a proliferation of media watchdog groups.
On 30 September 2000, the second day of the Second Intifada, 12-year-old Muhammad al-Durrah was killed in the Gaza Strip during widespread protests and riots across the Palestinian territories against Israeli military occupation. Jamal al-Durrah and his son Muhammad were filmed by Talal Abu Rahma, a Palestinian television cameraman freelancing for France 2, as they were caught in crossfire between the Israeli military and Palestinian security forces. Footage shows them crouching behind a concrete cylinder, the boy crying and the father waving, then a burst of gunfire and dust. Muhammad is shown slumping as he is mortally wounded by gunfire, dying soon after.
Richard Allen Landes is an American historian and author who specializes in medieval millennial thinking. Until 2015 he taught at Boston University, and then began working at Bar-Ilan University. He has defended the politics of Israel in the light of what he calls media manipulation by Palestinians.
Rabbi Menachem Froman was an Israeli Orthodox rabbi, and a peacemaker and negotiator with close ties to Palestinian religious leaders. A founding member of Gush Emunim, he served as the chief rabbi of Tekoa in the West Bank. He was well known for promoting and leading interfaith dialogue between Jews, Christians and Muslims, focusing on using religion as a tool and source for recognizing the humanity and dignity of all people. Together with a Palestinian journalist close to Hamas, Rabbi Froman drafted a ceasefire agreement between Israel and the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip, known as the Froman-Amayreh Agreement. The agreement was endorsed by Hamas government, but it did not receive any official response from the Israeli government.
The Gaza–Israel conflict is a localized part of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict beginning in 1948, when 200,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes, settling in the Gaza Strip as refugees. Since then, Israel has fought 15 wars against the Gaza Strip. The number of Gazans reportedly killed in the most recent 2023–2024 war — 37,000 — is higher than the death toll of all other wars of the Arab–Israeli conflict.
The Free Gaza Movement (FGM) is a coalition of human rights activists and pro-Palestinian groups formed to break Egypt and Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip and publicise the situation of the Palestinians there. FGM has challenged the Israeli–Egyptian blockade by sailing humanitarian aid ships to Gaza. The group has more than 70 endorsers, including the late Desmond Tutu and Noam Chomsky.
Roof knocking or "knock on the roof" is a term used by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to describe its practice of dropping non-explosive or low-yield devices on the roofs of targeted civilian homes in the Palestinian territories as a prior warning of imminent bombing attacks to give the inhabitants time to flee the attack. The practice was employed by the IDF during the 2008–2009 Gaza War, the 2012 Israeli operation in the Gaza Strip, and the 2014 Gaza War to target the homes of police officers or Hamas political or military leaders.
Al-Shifa Hospital was the largest medical complex and central hospital in the Gaza Strip, located in the neighborhood of northern Rimal in Gaza City.
Greta K. Berlin is an American Anti-Zionist activist. She has been a spokesperson for the Free Gaza Movement (FGM), which she co-founded in 2006.
Ofir Gendelman is an Israeli diplomat and current spokesperson to the Arab media in the Israel Prime Minister's Office, a position he has held since April 2010, prior to which he served in the same role at the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Gendelman has been a regular fixture on various Arab media outlets since 2001.
In November 2012, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) launched Operation Pillar of Defense, which was an eight-day campaign in the Hamas-governed Gaza Strip, beginning on 14 November 2012 with the killing of Ahmed Jabari, chief of the Gaza military wing of Hamas, by an Israeli airstrike.
The Beitunia killings refers to the consecutive killings of two Palestinian teenagers which took place on the occasion of the annual Nakba Day protests on May 15, 2014, near the Israeli Ofer Prison outside Beitunia in the occupied West Bank. Israel described the protest as a riot in which a crowd refused to disperse, and initially denied responsibility, saying the cause of the deaths was unknown, the deaths were faked, that video clips of the killings either failed to capture the violence of the scene shortly before or might have been manipulated, that soldiers had been provoked, and that only rubber bullets had been fired.
The 2014 Gaza War, also known as Operation Protective Edge, and Battle of the Withered Grain, was a military operation launched by Israel on 8 July 2014 in the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian territory that has been governed by Hamas since 2007. Following the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank by Hamas-affiliated Palestinian militants, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) initiated Operation Brother's Keeper, in which it killed 10 Palestinians, injured 130 and imprisoned more than 600. Hamas subsequently fired a greater number of rockets into Israel from the Gaza Strip, triggering a seven-week-long conflict between the two sides. It was one of the deadliest outbreaks of open conflict between Israel and the Palestinians in decades. The combination of Palestinian rocket attacks and Israeli airstrikes resulted in over two thousand deaths, the vast majority of which were Gazan Palestinians. This includes a total of six Israeli civilians who were killed as a result of the conflict.
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Misinformation involving the distribution of false, inaccurate or otherwise misleading information has been a prominent and ubiquitous feature of the Israel–Hamas war.
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I've been writing for years against the "Pallywood" theory – the right-wing notion that videos showing Palestinians getting killed by Israelis are really elaborate fakes meant to blacken Israel's name. Yet it's only this morning I realized that the term "Pallywood," which was coined by Boston University Prof. Richard Landes, is an ethnic slur, and a particularly ugly one.
In the early 2000s, at the dawn of the social media revolution, Israelis used to dismiss filmed evidence of brutality by their soldiers as fakery. It was what they called "Pallywood" – a conflation of Palestinian and Hollywood. In truth, however, it was the Israeli military, not the Palestinians, that needed to manufacture a more convenient version of reality. ... It emerged that a government minister, Michael Oren, had even set up a secret committee to try to prove that Ahed and her family were really paid actors, not Palestinians, there to "make Israel look bad". The Pallywood delusion had gone into overdrive.
