Pallywood

The controversial allegation that some media organizations and Palestinian groups employ “Hollywood” techniques of manipulation and fabrication to present Israel in a negative light.

Discussing France 2’s televised coverage of the 2009 Gaza conflict, Fox Newsquoted Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, president and founder of The Israel Project in Washington:

In a report maintaining people are starving in Gaza, Mizrahi said, France 2 showed a Gaza resident in a food store saying: “Apparently, there is nothing, as you can see. There are no natural products for the kids. There is no milk. There is nothing here.” But, upon closer inspection, shelves filled with food can be seen in the reflection of a refrigerator door.

“France 2 has taken a line that is very anti-Israel and they are using what some call ‘Pal-lywood‘ – the Palestinian use of Hollywood techniques to create what didn’t happen,” Mizrahi said, adding that there are two different wars happening in Gaza. ”Both are life and death, but one involves military personnel and operatives and the other is a media war waged to win hearts and minds.”

Writing in The Spectator, Melanie Phillips took an equally uncompromising line against Hamas:

In war, accurate figures are of course very hard to come by. In general, the Israelis tell the truth. They may not tell the whole truth; and on occasion they provide information which is later shown to be wrong. But in general, experience shows that their default position is honesty. By contrast, Hamas have been shown time and again to tell bare-faced lies, fabricating not just casualty figures but staging “Pallywood“-style “atrocities” to hoodwink the media – not to mention their Nazi-style libels about the Jewish people. Yet the media choose to believe Hamas and disbelieve the Israelis. Why?

(Similar allegations were made during Israel’s 2006 war with Lebanon: the term then used was “Hezbollywood.”)