Relentless: The Struggle for Peace in the Middle East

Last updated
Relentless: The Struggle for Peace in the Middle East
Relentless.png
Directed byWayne Kopping
Brian K. Spector
Written byWayne Kopping
Raphael Shore
Produced byRaphael Shore
Pael Siedman
Edited byWayne Kopping
Brian Spector
Release date
  • 2003 (2003)
CountryIsrael
LanguageEnglish

Relentless: The Struggle for Peace in the Middle East, also known as Relentless: The Struggle for Peace in Israel, is a 2003 documentary produced by the pro-Israel media watchdog group HonestReporting. [1] [2] The film explores the cause of the Second Intifada through an examination of compliance with the Declaration of Principles, otherwise known as the Oslo Accords, by Israel and the Palestinian Authority. It places the blame for the violence that ensued on the Palestinian Authority. [3] It focuses, in particular, on the failure of the Palestinian Authority to "educate for peace," citing reports by Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace on Textbooks in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, by showing footage from Palestinian TV that encourages suicide bombing and preaches hatred of Jews and Israelis.

Contents

The film includes interviews with Itamar Marcus, the director of Palestinian Media Watch, S. El-Herfi, Raanan Gissin, Caroline Glick, John Loftus, Sherri Mandel, Yariv Oppenheimer, Daniel Pipes, Tashbih Sayyed and Natan Sharansky.

The film was produced and co-written by Raphael Shore, formerly the director of outreach for Aish HaTorah International. [4] It is based on a PowerPoint presentation that Shore used as a study aid when he was teaching a political science course in Israel. [5]

Reception

Dan Pine reviewed the film in j. , the Jewish news weekly of Northern California, describing it as sincere and gripping, however despite its making a convincing case against the Palestinian behavior and strategies, he still considered it propaganda. [6]

See also

Related Research Articles

Second Intifada 2000–2005 Palestinian uprising against Israel

The Second Intifada, also known as the Al-Aqsa Intifada, was a Palestinian uprising against Israel. The general triggers for the violence were proposed as the failure of the 2000 Camp David Summit to reach final agreement on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process in July 2000. The violence started in September 2000, after Ariel Sharon made a provocative visit to the Temple Mount. The visit itself was peaceful, but, as anticipated, it sparked protests and riots which the Israeli police put down with rubber bullets and tear gas.

Road map for peace Proposal for a two-state solution in the Israeli−Palestinian peace process

The Roadmap for peace or road map for peace was a plan to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict proposed by the Quartet on the Middle East: the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations. The principles of the plan, originally drafted by U.S. Foreign Service Officer Donald Blome, were first outlined by U.S. President George W. Bush in a speech on 24 June 2002, in which he called for an independent Palestinian state living side by side with Israel in peace. A draft version from the Bush administration was published as early as 14 November 2002. The final text was released on 30 April 2003. The process reached a deadlock early in phase I and the plan was never implemented.

Media coverage of the Arab–Israeli conflict Allegations of bias in media coverage of the Arab–Israeli conflict

Media coverage of the Arab–Israeli conflict by journalists in international news media has been said to be biased by both sides and independent observers. 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.

Saeb Erekat Palestinian politician and diplomat

Saeb Muhammad Salih Erekat was a Palestinian politician and diplomat who was the secretary general of the executive committee of the PLO from 2015 until his death in 2020. He served as chief of the PLO Steering and Monitoring Committee until 12 February 2011. He participated in early negotiations with Israel and remained chief negotiator from 1995 until May 2003, when he resigned in protest from the Palestinian government. He reconciled with the party and was reappointed to the post in September 2003.

The history of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict began with the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948.

Dennis Ross American diplomat

Dennis B. Ross is an American diplomat and author. He has served as the Director of Policy Planning in the State Department under President George H. W. Bush, the special Middle East coordinator under President Bill Clinton, and was a special adviser for the Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia to the former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) is an American non-profit pro-Israel media-monitoring, research and membership organization. According to its website, CAMERA is "devoted to promoting accurate and balanced coverage of Israel and the Middle East." The group says it was founded in 1982 "to respond to The Washington Post's coverage of Israel's Lebanon incursion", and to respond to what it considers the media's "general anti-Israel bias".

Pallywood, a portmanteau of "Palestinian" and "Hollywood", is a coinage used to describe supposed media manipulation, distortion or fraud by some Palestinians putatively designed to win the public relations war with Israel. 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.

HonestReporting is a non-governmental organization that "monitors the media for bias against Israel" and has been described by several news outlets as a "pro-Israel media watchdog group". The organization is a United States 501(c)3 registered charity headquartered in New York City, with its editorial staff based in Jerusalem. It has affiliates in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, France, Brazil and Australia/New Zealand.

<i>Obsession: Radical Islams War Against the West</i> 2005 film by Raphael Shore

Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West is a 2005 documentary film about the purported threat of Islamism to Western civilization. The film shows Islamic radicals preaching hate speech and seeking to incite global jihad. It also draws parallels between World War II's Nazi movement and Islamism and the West's response to those threats.

<i>Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land</i> 2004 American film

Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land is a 2004 documentary by Sut Jhally and Bathsheba Ratzkoff which—according to the film's official website—"provides a striking comparison of U.S. and international media coverage of the crisis in the Middle East, zeroing in on how structural distortions in U.S. coverage have reinforced false perceptions of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict" and which "analyzes and explains how—through the use of language, framing and context—the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza remains hidden in the news media". The film argues that the influence of pro-Israel media watchdog groups, such as CAMERA and Honest Reporting, has led to distorted and pro-Israel media reports. It features Noam Chomsky, Robert Jensen, Hanan Ashrawi, Sam Husseini, and Robert Fisk, among others.

Caroline Glick Israeli newspaper editor

Caroline Glick is an American-born Israeli conservative columnist, journalist, and author. She writes for Israel Hayom, Breitbart News, The Jerusalem Post, and Maariv. She is adjunct senior fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs at the Washington, D. C.-based Center for Security Policy, and directs the Israeli Security Project at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. In 2019, she was a candidate on the Israeli political party New Right's list for Knesset.

Arab–Israeli conflict Geopolitical conflict in the Middle East and North Africa

The Arab–Israeli conflict is an ongoing intercommunal phenomenon involving political tension, military conflicts, and other disputes between Arab countries and Israel, which escalated during the 20th century, but had mostly faded out by the early 21st century. The roots of the Arab–Israeli conflict have been attributed to the support by Arab League member countries for the Palestinians, a fellow League member, in the ongoing Israeli–Palestinian conflict; this in turn has been attributed to the simultaneous rise of Zionism and Arab nationalism towards the end of the 19th century, though the two national movements had not clashed until the 1920s.

Bathsheba Ratzkoff is a film director, producer, and editor.

San Francisco Jewish Film Festival is the oldest Jewish film festival in the world, and currently the largest with a 2016 attendance figure of 40,000 at screenings in San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland, San Rafael, and Palo Alto. The three-week summer festival is held in San Francisco, California, usually at the Castro Theater in San Francisco and other cinemas in San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland, San Rafael, and Palo Alto, and features contemporary and classic independent Jewish film from around the world. In 2015, the organization re-branded itself as the Jewish Film Institute, retaining the name "San Francisco Jewish Film Festival" for the annual film festival.

<i>The Forgotten Refugees</i> 2005 film

The Forgotten Refugees is a 2005 documentary film directed by Michael Grynszpan and produced by The David Project and IsraTV with Ralph Avi Goldwasser as executive producer, that recounts the history of Jewish communities of the Middle East and North Africa and their demise in the face of persecutions following the creation of the modern State of Israel in 1948.

Raphael Shore is a Canadian-Israeli film writer, producer, and rabbi. He is the founder of Jerusalem U, a Jewish educational organization, and Clarion Project, whose stated mission is "exposing the dangers of Islamist extremism".

Jonathan Cook

Jonathan Cook is a British writer and a freelance journalist based in Nazareth, Israel, who writes about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. He writes a regular column for The National of Abu Dhabi and Middle East Eye.

Ali Abunimah Palestinian-American journalist

Ali Hasan Abunimah is a Palestinian-American journalist who has been described as "the leading American proponent of a one-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict." A resident of Chicago who contributes regularly to publications such as the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, he has served as the Vice-President on the Board of Directors of the Arab American Action Network, is a fellow at the Palestine Center, and is a co-founder of The Electronic Intifada website. He has appeared on many television discussion programs on CNN, MSNBC, PBS, and other networks, and in a number of documentaries about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including Collecting Stories from Exile: Chicago Palestinians Remember 1948 (1999).

2015–2016 wave of violence in Israeli–Palestinian conflict Notable increase of violence in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict

An increase of violence occurred in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict starting in the autumn of 2015 and lasting into the first half of 2016. It was called the "Intifada of the Individuals" by Israeli sources, the "Knife Intifada", "Stabbing Intifada" or "Jerusalem Intifada" by international sources because of the many stabbings in Jerusalem, or "Habba" by Palestinian sources.

References

  1. Official Website of Relentless
  2. Mission Statement - Honest Reporting
  3. Radler, Melissa (February 16, 2003). "Relentless: the Struggle for Peace in Israel". The Jerusalem Post.
  4. Kahn-Oren, Elana (May 30, 2003). "Middle East film 'Relentless' set for local screening". Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle. Archived from the original on July 16, 2011.
  5. Brand, Rachael (May 29, 2003). "Looking for Truth in Documentaries". The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles.
  6. Pine, Dan (July 11, 2003). "Intifada film leaves crowd of 200 depressed, defiant". j., Jewish News Weekly of Northern California.