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12, AMERICAN
FREE PRESS * March 19, 2014
* Issue 20 *
AMERICANFREEPRESS.NET * BEHIND THE SCENES
Hollywood
Is
‘Owned’
by
the Arabs
MAJOR INTERNET MYTH BUSTED
New book by well-known Jewish writer exposes
secret story behind popular mainstream legend
and who first put the myth into circulation . . .
By Michael Collins
Piper
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. In recent years Internet icon Alex Jones rocked the world of independent media when he proclaimed his judgment that “Hollywood is owned by the Arabs.” In fact — many doubts about Jones’s declaration notwithstanding — this was not the first time a big media voice put this theme before the American public.
 As far back as 1976, the premise that “the Arabs” were grabbing control of the American media was central to the plot of a popular Hollywood motion picture called “Network.” This was the legendary film in which a fictional television news anchor, Howard Beale, went mad while live on the air and famously told his audience to shout out their windows the now-famous war-whoop: “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!” Among Beales’s complaints was that the Arabs were taking over the American economy and the broadcast media in particular.
The film was a box-office blockbuster, widely touted by the mass media, and it captured 10 Academy Award nominations, winning four, including the award for best actor, given posthumously to the late Peter Finch who starred as Beale, the so-called “mad prophet of the airwaves.”
But here’s the big secret about “Network,” and this won’t surprise the more savvy among AFP’s readers: The veteran screenwriter responsible for putting forth this thesis — that “Hollywood is owned by the Arabs” — was a fervent, long-time and quite publicly vocal American Jewish devotee of Israel, Sidney Aaron “Paddy” Chayefsky who, at one juncture, was actually writing — on an unpaid, volunteer basis — over-the-top, anti-Arab propaganda for the Anti-Defamation League, one of the leading focal points of the pro-Israel lobby in America.
Chayefsky was best known prior to “Network” for having won Academy Awards for two classic films, “Marty” in 1956 and “The Hospital” in 1972. What is interesting, however, about Chayefsky’s production for the screenplay “Network” is that it came at a time when Chayefsky, who seldom focused on particular political causes, was nonetheless a hardline Zionist.
These as well as other little known details about Chayefsky appear in the pages of a new book by Jewish writer Dave Itzkoff, a media writer for The New York Times. Itzkoff’s book, Mad As Hell, is both a biography of Chayefsky and the fascinating inside story of the making of “Network.” Within the pages of the book Itzkoff describes Chayefsky’s political focus. He writes of “a growing fixation on the affairs of Israel (that was) becoming increasingly apparent in Chayefsky’s public remarks, revealing a more aggressive and admittedly paranoid streak.”
In one interview Chayefsky claimed that all of the Jews in the world were, as Itzkoff put it, “in danger of imminent genocide” in 1971. This pro-Israel obsession resulted in Chayefsky’s work as a pro-Israel propagandist.
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According to Itzkoff, “Privately, Chayefsky channeled his fervor into uncredited advertisements for the Anti-Defamation League, such as an announcement, published at the height of the 1973 oil crisis that warned ‘These Arabs would like you to believe that if we give in to their blackmail and change our Mideast policy that everything will be just like it used to be.’”
Prior to doing “Network,” among Chayefsky’s intended projects included “The Rabbi Mystery Show,” featuring a character described by the screenwriter as “a retired and revered old rabbi,” who solved crimes alongside his police officer son.
Chayefsky also struggled over a screenplay for a never-produced film based in Palestine at the time of Israel’s founding in which a young Jewish militant declares: “I’ll tell you about your civilized world. . . . For 2,000 years, Jews have been crucified, burnt at the stake, thrown to the lions, into the ovens, into the gas chambers, crushed into ghettos, forcibly converted, exiled, deported, slaughtered by Cossacks and peasants, Greeks, Romans, Spaniards, Frenchmen, Englishmen, anybody and everybody, popes and Protestants and every mad minister from Haman to Hitler—and I’m tired of it. . . .We’re an endangered species, so we don’t trust the civilized world anymore. We’ll take care of our own survival. Don’t come to me with your bloody Christian hands and scold me about killing. . . .We kill to survive. We kill so that we and our descendants shall live.”
Chayefsky’s proposed film ended with a squad of British police officers being gunned down by the heroine of the story.
The film “Network” is really where Chayefsky made his mark putting Zionist propaganda before the world. In his preparatory notes for the screenplay, Chayefsky wrote, “The basic joke is that the networks are so powerful that they can make true what isn’t true and never even existed.” Clearly, Chayefsky understood the power of the media and that became evident when he rose to fame.
According to Chayefsky’s biographer, Itzkoff, “Network” incorporated “all the angst, anxiety and paranoia” that Chayefsky had ever felt. One of Chayefsky’s concerns was what Itzkoff described as “the creeping influence of foreign powers — Arab powers — in the American economy.” And Chayefsky felt this supposedly growing influence was being ignored. |
If there is any doubt about Chayefsky’s political and religious orientation, Itzkoff notes that when “Network” director Sidney Lumet suggested actress Vanessa Redgrave for a starring role in the film, Chayefsky objected saying that Ms. Redgrave was a supporter of the Palestine Liberation Organization. When Lumet responded “Paddy, that’s blacklisting,” Chayefsky replied, “Not when a Jew does it to a Gentile.”
So the inside story of “Network” and the propaganda value that it has had for the Zionist cause has clearly now been revealed in this new biography of Chayefsky.
Perhaps commentators might want to read the book before once again making the ridiculous claim that “Hollywood is owned by the Arabs."
. . ..Michael Collins Piper is the author of Final
Judgment, the controversial
“underground bestseller” documenting
the collaboration of Israeli intelligence in
the assassination of John F. Kennedy. He is
also the author of The New Babylon, The
High Priests of War, The
New Jerusalem: Zionist Power in America , The
Judas Goats: The Enemy Within, Dirty
Secrets: Crime, Conspiracy & Cover-Up in
the 20th Century, The
GOLEM: Israel's Hell Bomb,
and Target:
Traficant. These works can
be found at America
First Books and FIRST AMENDMENT BOOKS:
1-888-699-NEWS. He has lectured
on suppressed topics in places as diverse as
Malaysia, Japan, Canada, Russia and Abu Dhabi. |
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(Issue Number 20; March 19, 2014, AMERICAN
FREE PRESS) |
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