Reflections on Pallywood:
On the Compassionate Imperative and the Suspension of Disbelief
I’m working on some footage from Gaza that I strongly think is staged.
Those familiar with Pallywood footage tend to agree. Others, even those favorable to Israel, feel uncomfortable with the analysis and prefer I use obvious fakes to make my point. Like this one of a man cradling a small boy whose eyes are closed, presumably a father crying over his dead son. And yet, at a certain point the boy, eyes still closed, reaches out and scratches his foot.
This video has no such “smoking gun,” and therefore people are very reluctant to call it a fake. (As one of the key players in the al Durah affair said to me in 2003: “unless we have 110% proof, we dare not say it’s a fake.”)
Considering this reluctance, I think the problem comes down to the issue of the compassionate imperative which imposes upon the viewer what, in literary criticism is called “the willing suspension of disbelief.” When we go to a play, in order to follow a story that is acted out, viewers must suspend their disbelief: if you spend the whole play asking, “why is are these people acting as if something real were happening when they’re on stage,” you miss the drama. In other words, the viewer must drop the obvious questions in order to follow the story: with this willing credulity, the question of “staging” becomes literally “out of the question.”
Here we are dealing, as so often from Gaza, with footage that depicts a tragic tale of a boy killed and others wounded, a lethal narrative of the Israelis targeting children. People naturally suspend disbelief in response: who would be so heartless as not to feel for the poor lad and those in distress at his killing. After all, these Gazans are unquestionably suffering. It would be cruel not to believe them.
Thus, when you see the boy in the opening scene, you are told, that he’s wounded and so the viewer fills in the story: his movements are “waving his arms in distress” and the dark area around him as wet with blood; when he lies down, he seems to “collapse” (Evan Hill). If you don’t suspend disbelief, however, you see a boy who waves his arms energetically with no signs of his being wounded, no blood, and certainly not “cut to pieces.” The possibility that he is acting the role of a wounded child calling for help seems considerably more likely than that he is fatally wounded and will soon be dead from a blast that badly hurt no one else, even those closer to him.
The shocking, discordant, moral sensation here comes from questioning the good will, the sincerity of the people we see. The very act of doing so, seems like a betrayal. At every step of viewing the footage, we are drawn by a compassionate imperative - how can one be so cruel and heartless not to be moved, how can anyone not suspend disbelief? Who, other than a blind partisan, would be so cruel as to accuse these poor people of deliberately lying?
Among those most compelled to this compassionate imperative are of course the Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims, and all those dedicated to their cause, if only for tribal reasons: ‘these are my people being butchered.’ To doubt this footage for them would take an exceptional degree of self-criticism. But Westerners, indeed even Jews, feel the same imperative, even though accepting such a narrative not only contradicts what they believe about the Israeli army, but does terrible damage to their cause. They feel compelled by their trans-tribal, ecumenical compassion for all human beings, not to be heartless, not to even seem to be heartless.
But, should not professional journalists, trained not to run war propaganda as news even when it is for “their own side,” resist such an imperative? Is it not their job to filter our the lethal narratives of the warring parties, especially those journalists who specialize in “open-source and visual forensic techniques”?
I welcome any responses that address the issues.
There is perhaps an additional way of looking at this. Whether the particular images are real or not, we know there is in fact real suffering and tragedy. This makes it that much easier to embrace the false presentations because we know there are real images as well, just not captured. Of course, underlying reality is not necessary for people to accept the fantasy, as the Al Durah travesty demonstrates. But it makes it that much harder, as you say, to push back against the lies. In the final analysis, whether particular incidents are real or concocted, the Palestinian “struggle” and “cause” are all Pallywood, a theatrical production of the most cynical and lethal kind.
Another clue of fraud - when the bicycle man enters the frame, she lowers the camera just enough to cut him out of the video. Once he leaves the area, she pans up again. Very fake.