A Brilliant Conflict

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

This is a highly informative documentary on the role that the US media plays in encouraging support for the Israeli government and its oppression of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories (West Bank and Gaza) and how this support influences US foreign policy in the Middle East. Through interviews with various academics, critics, journalists, religious leaders, peace activists and others, the program examines the methods that the Israeli government and its allies use to hide the truth about the harassment of Palestinians by the Israeli Defense Forces and to portray Israel's occupation and colonisation of Palestinian land as necessary and urgent self-defence. In particular, the role of American journalists and the American media organisations that employ them in disguising the truth is examined.The film's style is simple and straightforward, built as it is around a wealth of newsreel reports punctuated by excerpts of interviews with guest commentators who include academics Noam Chomsky and Robert Jensen, British journalist Robert Fisk, peace activist Hanan Ashrawi and Tikkun Magazine founder Rabbi Michael Lerner among others. There's a certain polish to the film's presentation, especially in its use of animation and tables, though it is not at all sickly slick and the narration is very sparing, limited to relaying important information to viewers, and serves to introduce interviewees who expound at further length on the topics covered. The film reveals, among other things, that the US- Israeli relationship is of mutual benefit at the Palestinians' expense: the US relies on Israel to use most of the aid it receives from the US into buying American weaponry and other military technology and to test these on unwilling Palestinian guinea pigs, and to play the local sheriff in the Middle East to protect US political and economic interests in that region.The film's structure centres around a list of strategies that the governments of Israel and the United States, their agencies and the US news media use to deceive the American public into supporting Israel. Particularly pernicious as a strategy is the US media's deliberate ignorance of individuals, groups and organisations, often Israeli and/or Jewish as well as Palestinian and/or Muslim, working to relieve the Palestinian people's suffering or calling attention to the abuses inflicted on them. This ignorance would suggest that the media in the United States (and also in many other countries including Australia) either willingly co-operates in constructing a pro-Israeli narrative about the intransigence and barbaric behaviour of Palestinian people especially if they are Muslim; or has been browbeaten, even threatened, into such co-operation by pro-Israeli lobby groups and institutions. In the US, the main lobby organisation is AIPAC (American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee) and in Australia its equivalent is AIJAC (Australia Israel Jewish Affaris Council) which is known to have intimidated the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and the Special Broadcasting Service into reporting news about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in ways favourable to Israeli interests.The other strategies discussed include the reporting of Palestinian violence in a context-less vacuum (so it appears to happen spontaneously without cause and gives the impression that Palestinians by nature are savage and Israel must always be on the alert); defining what is newsworthy (so Israeli victims of violence get more attention; this drives home the notion of Jews as eternal victims of persecution); Israel's colonisation of Palestinian territory being made invisible; the idea of the United States as an impartial and neutral referee; and the idea that any offers of peace to the Palestinians are always rejected by them (because the context in which such offers are made and the fine print within are never revealed in reports). Other ways in which Western audiences are co-opted into supporting Israel go unmentioned but deserve attention: in particular, Israel's use of the Shoah (Nazi-Jewish Holocaust) to beat European governments into coughing up money, none of which actually goes towards Shoah survivors who might be living in penury in Israel."Peace, Propaganda …" is a well-presented documentary, quite detailed in parts, and easy to follow. I recommend the film as a primer for those not familiar with the methods and strategies the Israeli government and its supporters uses to intimidate and silence politicians and media organisations around the world who have misgivings about the way Israel treats Palestinians and about the fascist, racist path that country is following in order to pursue such a policy. Media students would do well to watch the film which calls into question the nature of the relationships between the news media and governments, and which also highlights the need for the news media to tell the truth over the pressure to appear "unbiased" or "balanced" in its reporting. Ah, "fair and balanced" reporting: that doubtless is another strategy the apologists for the Israel government like to use

I usually vote but never comment on a movie as i feel it unnecessary.However i request all western viewers who spend time watching various Hollywood flicks etc, to devote just 80mins of your life for watching this documentary. I see Hollywood movies with high ratings and 100,000s of votes. It makes me sad when i saw just around some 280 odd votes on this movie here. Ironically it should be opposite because this documentary is about suffering of men,women and children who are also humans like us, isn't it? I will not make any comment or judgment on movie as i leave it to the viewers to make their own judgment.At last as you know that no movie is perfect so why i gave it a 10? Because it is my trend to give perfect score to films which are made for just cause more so when it is made for us to awake to reality of the world.

This film details what most Americans would be able to figure out on their own, if they only thought about it a little bit: Israeli violence is almost always described in the US media as "retaliation," while Palestinian violence is typically portrayed as arising with no direct cause; Israeli victims of violence are often portrayed with biographical information, which conveys the humanity of their loss; Palestinian victims of violence are almost never portrayed with humanizing background information; the fact of Israeli occupation of Palestinian and Syrian territory is often not mentioned at all; the fact of the $4-6 billion per year aid given by the US to Israel, making a state the size of a large city our largest recipient of international aid, is almost invisible in US news media; the fact that most of Israel's major weapons systems are made in the US - which most of the Arab world is acutely aware of - is unheard. And so on.I was made a little uncomfortable with the film's description of the news media's filtering process. It seemed to lean toward a suggestion that money interests call the shots on coverage of Israel, which is something that I don't think warrants mention, given the world's history of antisemitism. The real fact of the matter, from my own investigations, is that the lack of promotion of contrary views is the biggest matter. If American Muslims, for example, were as energetic in protecting the interests of Palestinians as American Zionists are in promoting Israel, I think there would be very little bias remaining.There are other aspects of media bias that were not touched on as much as I think they warrant. First and foremost, water in the Occupied Territories. Israel and its agents, both direct and indirect, have gone out of their way to hide the matter of water in the territorial dispute. However, the facts are pretty plain: most of Israel's water comes out of the territories, and the ground water resources are being over-exploited and are disappearing. THAT is most of the ground, so to speak, of the economic aspects of the dispute, and it was only briefly mentioned in this film, albeit it is only mentioned by accident in the mainstream US media.Also, I have noted a creeping tendency in the media to refer to places in the Occupied Territories as being in Israel, and to include, contrary to official US and UN policy, the occupied Golan Heights as part of Israel on maps in the news; the bias seems to be getting worse rather than getting better.

A movie made by people who ask "why" rather than just shout slogans or point fingers. It's main goal appeared to be to give equal time to the sorrows of both Israelis and Palestinians that result from this occupation. Given the asymmetry in both military and "public relations" power between the two camps, it is tough to get a balanced perspective in the mainstream US media. It highlights the incredible similarities between Israeli resource-grabbing and that of early America, both resulting in the murder of the indigenous population, and peace talks that amount to the creation of scattered non-sovereign reservations. This is not to say that if we were to have given the Palestinians the tanks and jets instead of Israel, they would not have made the same grab for power. A major point is that we cannot rely on existing media outlets to tell us the truth, because the truth will be told by whoever has the dollars and the institutional muscle, so we must dig for it and think about it ourselves. In having to dig for it, we sometimes fall into reliance on more dubious sources like the hedgehoged arguments of David Icke types, who give us a ton of speculation with a kernel of truth. If the mainstream media were to give a more intelligent assessment of the situation, rather than the catch-phrase of the day, it might actually bring some of the "leftists" more toward the center, since they could rely less on the under-funded, over-worked, obviously biased independent media.Two points on other comments. 1)Chomsky says that this is the longest *modern* military occupation of the Palestinian people, and by modern, he usually means post-industrial. He says a lot of stuff that I think can't possibly be true until I take the time to check his references and they're nearly always right on the mark2)The self-hating Jew comment is silly, as they addressed this very argument in the movie, and addressed it rather well. I could imagine that this argument would continue work from the perspective of one who closed his or her eyes to the movie at the first sign of cognitive dissonance and fell back on the standard slurs. In addition, Israelis do have a land of their own. The trouble is that they want it to be larger and larger. Where would you have the Palestinians go?