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Movie Review: Attacks Palestinians

By VVAW

Not all movies are just simple entertainment. Some not only entertain and make big bucks for its producers, but also mold public opinion with their political content. Such were the "gung Ho" John Wayne movies in their time, and such is he recent release, "Black Sunday". Black Sunday is a well done thriller; an international good guys vs. Bad guys, where the good guys are tough and brave and the bad guys are fanatically evil. But behind all of the suspense, the movie is a slanderous attack on, and serves to misrepresent, the struggle of the Palestinian people for the restoration of their homeland.

The story deals with a Palestinian woman, Dahlia Iyad ( played b Marthe Keller), who as a member of the Black September terrorist organization plans to kill 80,000 people at the Superbowl football game, (Steelers vs Cowboys), and the President of the UA who is there too.

Her accomplice is Michael Lander (Bruce Dern, everybody's favorite maniac), an ex-POW of the Vietnam war and now a pilot on the Good Year blimp. They intend to hijack the blimp, then detonate a fragmentation bomb over the stadium made of plastic explosives and 220,000 fleshette darts.

The Israelis are the "good guys"--in the form of Major David Kabakov (Robert Shaw) who gradually gets wind of the plan ( at one point with the aid of the Egyptian government) and before the movie ends displays some super-heroics that would make Superman jealous.

The sum total of the information given about the just struggle of the Palestinian people is through the members of this Black September group. The message is clear--theirs is no just struggle; they are all fanatics bent on terrorizing the world into submitting to their "cause." They don't care who they kill, everyone is their enemy. Early in the movie, Iyad records a message that reads in part, "...The American people have remained deaf and silent to the Palestinians. From now on you will share our suffering...We have begun a year of bloodshed..We want to be your brothers, the choice is yours."

Dahlia, we are told, was born in Palestinian refugee camp, her father and brother were killed by the Israelis in one of the Arab-Israeli wars, her sister was raped and killed and her mother is dead. She has dedicated her life to the "cause" and her body to serve the sexual needs of whichever comrade she happens to be with. Although never said in so many works, the impression we get is that she is "revolutionary" out of personal revenge.

On the other hand, the movie glorifies the Israelis. They are tough, serious, ready and willing to do anything to protect the world from these and terrorists. They are seen crossing the border into Lebanon and attacking a terrorist headquarters, as in the recent Entebbe raid. They beat and threaten to kill in order to obtain information, (whereas the US FBI is shown as being sincerely concerned with the due process of law and the civil rights of citizens!) ALL the actions of the Israelis are justified...after all they are the "protectors", the underdogs, representatives of a "tough but peace-loving" little country which is just trying to defend its god-given, 2,000 year old right to a homeland in the Middle East.

The movie totally obscures the fact that the very existence of the Zionist Israelis state was created by Zionists, a movement of some East European Jews, headed by capitalist forced and the aid of the imperialist powers of the US and Great Britian. Israel is an artificial state, a Western settler-colony forcibly implanted at the middle of the Arab world. For the state of Israel to come into being, Palestine, an Arab country, was erased from the map in 1948. And for the Zionsts to realize their dream of gathering Jews dispersed throughout the world together in a Zionist-ruled state, a million and a half Palestinians(who had occupied the land continuously for 2,000 years) were forcibly driven from their homes and pushed into refugee camps in the surrounding Arab countries.

Everytime the Palestinians resist their oppression they are attacked as fanatic terrorists. But terrorism has long been a weapon of the Zionists. In February of 1973, Israeli pilots, flying in four US built Phantom jets, shot down an unarmed, civilian Libyan airliner over the Israeli occupied Sinai Peninsula. The plane had strayed off course in bad weather and was headed out of the area when it was shot down. One hundred and six people were murdered in this act of terrorism.

And as insurance if the viewer isn't ready to believe this motive of being a necessary "crusader" against evil for Israel, the movie offers the safe theory of "there's no sense to it all" given by Kabakov, as he lays in a hospital bed recuperating from wounds and sys, "I am tired...I have been fighting the same war for thirty years, have the same enemies, the same friends, both my sons are dead,...there's no sends to all this."

Another predictable slander in Black Sunday is the character Michael Lander. He is a decorated Vietnam war pilot ( total of 12 ribbons, including the Silver Star and Purple Heart with Cluster,) who was shot down over north Vietnam while bombing a civilian hospital and kept in solitary confinement in a 4* 4 cell for six years as a POW. In a film ( released by Vietnam) he says that he has shown the suffering that he caused and that now he is sorry for what he has done. Also that the DRV didn't punish him, that they have no animosity toward the American people, only toward the "war-mongers who are responsible." But during the early scenes in the movie we can see that this man is obviously a lunatic and the reason must be that he was kept in solitary confinement in a 4*4 cell and tortured for six years in Vietnam. When Lander returned home he resigned his commission, his wife divorces him and he is not allowed to see his kids. His reasons for wanting to blow up the Superbowl is apolitical, demented revenge; "I'm giving the whole son-off-a-bitchin' country something to remember me by..they made me suffer, made my life a hell...if they can do it to me, why can't I do it to them... I'm doing it for Margeret and the kids...I'm giving them something they won't forget for 5,000 years."

So Black Sunday serves up a suspense thriller that hasn't been equaled in quite some time--a movie that slanders the just struggle of the Palestinian people, glorifies Zionist aggression, paints the FBI as shackled to "justice" and abiding to the laws, and continues a now stereotyped slander of Vietnam veterans as crazy nuts.

About the only thing the movie has going for it is some exciting scenes that would make Sam Peckinpah proud. Other that that it could be used as an army training film to psych up recruits to go fight to the death in the Middle East.