The 'Arab Terrorist' on American TV

One of the ideological assumptions found in the motion-picture-made-for-television genre is that an Arab is a terrorist. Although this has become a tired cliché, and the influence of any single film is limited there is a dangerous, cumulative effect in repeated stereotyping. Fixed images, left unchallenged, inform or ‘disinform’ the values and perceptions of individual citizens, even those in government service, for negative stereotypes do not exist in a vacuum. Viewers need to ask themselves who benefits when an entire culture is characterized as violent, cruel, blood-thirsty, and anti-American?

The growing diversity among American television networks during the 1980s was not translated into a diversity of Arab portraits and scenarios. Whether the product is Hostage Flight (NBC, 1985), Sword of Gideon (HBO, 1986), Under Siege (NBC, 1986), The Taking of Flight 847 (NBC, 1988), or Terrorist on Trial: The United States vs. Salim Ajami (CBS, 1988), the results are similar. Arabs are depicted in the images of Hitler’s SS and Attila’s hordes. The Arab lurks in the shadows with AK-47, bomb, or dagger in hand to seduce, beat, rape, and murder innocents. Summing up these diabolical others, a passenger in Hostage Flight says, "These bastards shot those people in cold blood. They think it's open season on Americans."

The message to American viewers on whom to love and whom to hate is hardly subtle. There can be only one reaction when viewers witness Muslim fanatics blowing up the White House and slaughtering Americans in Under Siege. There can be only one reaction when in Terrorist on Trial Ajami, a Palestinian Arab captured in Lebanon by an elite American military unit and brought to trial in the U.S., boasts of ordering the deaths of American women and children abroad. Sitting in the witness chair, Ajami states that if he possessed nuclear weapons, he would use them: "We will strike at them in their home country as well as overseas. Long live Palestine!"

To government officials, American soldiers, and the average citizen, Ajami is the symbol of the heartless fanatic opposed to peace. One of the protagonists in Terrorist on Trial explains that Palestinian Arabs prefer "to walk up to unarmed people and shoot them." An enraged American Marine slaps Ajami around in his cell because, "You don’t kill kids."

George Engund, the producer of Terrorist on Trial, has defended his work by saying, “In court (Ajami) is given his say - the first time a Palestinian has had such a forum on TV." Despite this assertion, the net effect of Terrorist on Trial is to perpetuate the tradition of dehumanized Arabs, particularly Palestinians opposing Israel, as grasping, greedy terrorists with severe mental problems. A journalist in the film feeds the myth by asserting that Arabs are more violent and more primitive than other people: "They are very clever; first thing they do is corrupt the language. They appeal to our sympathy by calling themselves guerrillas or freedom fighters. They’re not." Ajami's own defense attorney asks the jury to view him as "someone who might as well have been from another planet."

The film also includes scenes of shabby Arab-Americans who demonstrate in favor of Ajami, leaving viewers with the impression that the Arab-American community sympathizes with terrorists. A government official is outraged: "They’re marching for a man that murdered at least 20 or 30 people." These Arab-Americans are so hapless and un-educated that not one of them is capable of defending Ajami in court. That task falls to a liberal Jew who is a supporter of Israel but will defend the terrorist because, as a champion of civil rights he supports the "rule of law." A justice department official underscores the supposed lack of Arab-American legal talent by saying, "A fact is a fact. There are no qualified American-Arab attorneys to defend Ajami."

Under Siege had spread the mud on Arab-Americans even thicker. It focused on an Arab terrorist cell working out of the Detroit suburb, Dearborn, where in fact some 20,000 Americans of Arab descent lived at the time of its production, including a number of Lebanese Shi'ites. The story is pure fiction, the setting and the name of the terrorist group are not. This fact/fiction blur can only suggest that such cells may truly exist, and suspicion of such political activity may feed the assaults, bombings, and killings that have already afflicted various Arab-American communities and organizations.

The thrust of Under Siege is what it would be like if Arab terrorists, aided by their Arab-American brethren, launched attacks in the United States. The film begins with a stolen military truck being blown up in the middle of squads of young soldiers - more than 200 are killed. A White House oracle says, "They're Shi'ite terrorists... we all knew they would hit us at home." There follow sequences in which the terrorists, led by Abu Ladeen, strike at innocents throughout the country: on street corners, in restaurants, at airports and throughout the Capitol area. The FBI official charged with locating the terrorists orders his men to check out "every Middle East community... he’s got to have a safe home. There's a large Shi'ite community in the Detroit area." Super-imposed on the screen: Dearborn, Michigan, followed by shots of stores with Arabic names and signs with Arabic lettering.

Throughout Under Siege Iranians are interchangeable with Arabs, and the dialogue is racist. The U.S. Secretary of State tells Iran's ambassador, "People in your country are barbarians." The FBI director goes one better by telling an associate, "Those people"- Arabs - "are different from us. It's a whole different ball game. I mean the East and Middle East. These people have their own mentality. They have their own notion of what's right and what's wrong, what's worth living for and dying for. But we insist on dealing with them as if they're the same as us. We'd better wake up." Co-written by Pulitzer Prize-winner Bob Woodward, Under Siege conveys the warning that the Arabs are coming to terrorize the United States and Arab-Americans are going to help them.

What is so disquieting about such films is that they effectively portray Arabs and Arab-Americans as being at war with the United States. Nicholas Kadi, an Iraqi actor who has made his living playing terrorists, is uneasy about his work. As an Arab terrorist in The Last Precinct, Kadi says, he did "little talking and a lot of threatening looks, threatening gestures, threatening actors. Every time we'd spit. There are other kinds of Arabs in the world besides terrorists. I'd like to think that someday there will be an Arab role out there for me that would be an honest portrayal."

Clearly there are Arab terrorists and certainly terrorism is a legitimate theme for films. One could argue, however, that for all the television time spent on the subject, the theme of terrorism has never been seriously addressed, only exploited. No TV film remotely approaches the complexity of the terrorist bombings depicted in The Battle of Algiers or the kidnapping-execution in State of Siege. Moreover, the TV images are monochromatic. Viewers see Arabs only as perpetrators of violence, never as victims, especially not of the kind of state terrorism seen on the West Bank. There are no images of Arab arms being broken, Arab homes being blown up, Arab demonstrators shot dead. Nor are there many apolitical images. Viewers do not see the Arab mother singing to her child. They do not see an Arab doctor tending the ill, an Arab teacher giving a lesson in algebra, an Arab programmer working with a computer. An Arab man never embraces his wife. Families do not gather to go to mosque or church.

The sins of omission and commission in spite of network broadcast standards and executives charged with monitoring programs for images that denigrate entire communities. CBS-TV's Alice Henderson says, "There is no intent by CBS... to unfavorably stereotype individuals of any ethnic origin." ABC TV's Tom Kersey insists that, "One of the most sincere promises this department can make is the inclusion of minorities in positive portrayals in all of our programming." NBC-TV's Broadcast Standards manual states, "Television programs should reflect a wide range of roles for all people... and should endeavor to depict men, women, and children in a positive manner, keeping in mind the importance of dignity in every human being." As of 1988, when this article was written, network practice has yet to follow stated network policy.

Some individual professionals are keenly aware of the unfairness of the Arab image on American television and have worked for change. Producer Alan Rafkin has written, "When I see a Jew portrayed a Shylock, I want to cry. So I know how an Arab feels when he is described as a killer." Howard Rosenberg, Pulitzer Prize winning critic of the Los Angeles Times, has written, "One day there will be an American TV drama viewing Arabs through the eyes of Arabs. One day in the very distant future, probably - for Hollywood is a stubborn child clutching a Linus blanket when it comes to relinquishing such ragged stereotypes as the Arab who is bloodthirsty."

In a letter published in the newsletters of the Writer's Guild and Screen Actor's Guild, writer-producer Ted Flicker, identifying himself as an American Jew, wrote, "Arabs are portrayed as crazy billionaires, terrorists, devious voluptuaries, barbaric white slavers, etc., ad nauseam. Dear fellow writers, on behalf of my Arab cousins, I say to you, think before you write that Arab...  I think honor requires that we, the makers of our nation's myths, consider the plight of these people... and help get rid of the Arab stereotypes." Way back in 1951 comedian Milton Berle, at the height of his fame, said it very simply when he told fellow comedian Danny Thomas, "There is no room in this business for prejudice." No room, indeed.

[This essay was written by Jack Shaheen and originally published in Cineaste (Vol. 17, No. 1, 1989, pp. 10-12). It has been slightly edited for reprinting here. The images above are from the same article. Shaheen has gone on to become an internationally acclaimed media critic. He is the author of Reel Bad Arabs (2009) and is featured in the documentary film of the same name, which is available for viewing on YouTube. You can also watch a recent lecture featuring Shaheen speaking on a similar topic.]