Panel 4 Questions and Answers
Delinda Hanley: Thank you. So here is a question for you: how can
we get that movie into all the TV networks, to theaters; how can we
get that out there?
Catherine Jordan: We’ve been turned down by HBO, Showtime and PBS.
We’ve been trying to get the film distributed by all the big
networks. A one-hour version of the film was run on 30 or 40 PBS
stations, but—it’s a boring distinction but an important one—it
wasn’t an official PBS film. It was provided by a third party as
content for PBS stations to run it if they chose. The results of
that was that plenty of people ran it but it had zero marketing.
When there’s zero marketing you might as well not even run the film,
because no one knows it’s coming and no one makes the time to see
it. So that had a tiny little ripple of an effect. So we’re still
seeking wide distribution in this country anyway.
Delinda Hanley: Thank you. And one more question for you before we
go to the next questions. Was the Sundance Independent Film Festival
contacted, and what was their reaction to the film?
Catherine Jordan: Yes. We sent the film to Sundance with their
encouragement. One of our colleagues who was a consultant on the
film has a big position at the Sundance Film Festival, and she said
she’d talk to her friends. The reviewer who looked at it actually
emailed us on the QT and said she thought it was a fantastic film
and it was one of the better films that she had seen, and that it
was too political for Sundance. Of course, we did not get in.
Delinda Hanley: This question is, I think, for Rula. A lot of these
questions are for Rula here. I asked an L.A. Times reporter
how can he participate in the distortion of the news. He said, “If I
can get them to leave 10 percent of my copy uncensored, it is
worthwhile to continue.” Please comment. Maybe that goes for all of
you. Do you want it, Philip? Do you want to start?
Philip Weiss: So the L.A. Times reporter made that
statement that if he can get his editors to leave—
Delinda Hanley: Leave 10 percent of it uncensored, it’s worthwhile
to continue. Did you find censorship?
Philip Weiss: That’s a good ratio. I mean, censorship,
self-censorship, it’s part of media life. If we could get away with
10 percent on this issue, we’d revolutionize America. I mean right
now, it’s a 90 percent censorship ratio. So give it to me, 10
percent, I love it. I just want to reflect, when I was at The
New York Times Magazine, I did a cover story on the gun lobby.
I wrote a very long article sending up the NRA and talking about
their sexual fetishization of guns and everything else. You’ve never
seen an article in The New York Times Magazine about the
Israel lobby with one-tenth of that kind of free speech involved.
Rula Jebreal: There is a cozy relationship. I mean, one of the
reasons that made me actually in 2014 do what I did on MSNBC
was—these Israeli officials would be [on?] like 99 percent of the
time and they would never be challenged, as the documentary
represented. They would never be asked about the occupation or the
siege. I remember I almost choked on my coffee one morning when I
was watching Schiffer interviewing Bibi Netanyahu. At the end of the
interview, obviously it was softball questions. Like, oh, Mr. Prime
Minister, how do you feel? Is it safe in Tel Aviv? He was bombarding
and pounding Gaza. He said, well, like the former prime minister of
Israel said, we will never forgive the Arabs for forcing us to kill
their children. I looked at the television and I said—sorry for my
language—is this a f---ing joke? I mean, I was horrified.
And then I went to my network, and that morning one of our
journalists, one of the best ones we ever had, a reporter who
covered the Gaza War in 2012, was Ayman Mohyeldin. He just filmed
three kids killed on a beach. He just filmed it. I was in the TV
station and I saw the panic. Because suddenly there is one story,
and it’s a major story that was filmed on camera, where you see the
missiles striking. The first one killing the first two, and then the
second missile and this kid is running after—they were actually
playing football on the beach. And the third kid, a 6-year-old,
running, and the second missile came and strikes him. And you
couldn’t explain that. There’s no justification for this. The
telephones started ringing. And the justification that there was a
missile there, and the producers kept calling Ayman Mohyeldin, are
you sure there wasn’t another missile in the area? He said, “No.
Every journalist was there. We watched it. We filmed it. It’s on
film.” You had three or four cameras there.
That story was taken from him, and given to another one who wasn’t
even in Gaza. He was in Tel Aviv. He just arrived. He [Mohyeldin]
was actually called out of Gaza because he witnessed that moment. I
went on air and I was with Ronan Farrow. I said, our coverage is not
only disgustingly biased; it’s a disgrace. We are betraying the
American people, because we are basically not telling them the whole
story. We’re lying blindly to them. My every show was canceled, and
I left the building knowing that I will never come back. Leaving the
building, I remember some of the producers stopping me. They said,
well, you don’t understand the bullying and harassment and
attention.
Recently somebody from—I will not mention the name—from The
Washington Post was telling me that every article they write, they
have to answer to lobbyists and organizations like CAMERA. I said,
you know, I don’t care what kind of harassment. You just stand up to
it. Basically you stand up to it. So when I submit an article and
they tell me [applause]—and, look, supposedly an Arab Muslim black
woman telling these nice white guys in these networks, you can’t
handle a little bit of bullying? You’re in the wrong job. Probably
not only in the wrong job, if you can’t stand up to these thugs,
then they will get away with it. They will get away over and again.
I am so grateful and thankful that independent organizations exist
like Mondoweiss and Alternet [applause] and the Washington Report
and this kind of documentary. What I’m asking all of you, and
forgive me if I am shameless about it, we need to support these
organizations. These are independent organizations that live on
donations. Whatever philanthropy you are doing, this is the ultimate
battleground. Whatever you’re doing—I will be like Sanders, $7 or
whatever that is, give it to Mondoweiss, to Alternet, to Catherine
to promote her movie, because this will change America forever. It
will change the public opinion.
You know what? When Rupert Murdoch wanted to buy Reuters the first
time, the legal system was clear in the U.K. The first thing he
said—and he retracted what he said—he said, “I don’t buy
newspapers.” That was a lie, obviously. He said that he used to buy
journalists. Guess what? We can actually shift the public opinion.
If they put $100 million on one end to manipulate the public
opinion, you can put much less because one footage like that can
really shift the public opinion. Thank you. [Applause]
Delinda Hanley: Thank you. We have time for maybe one more question,
or should we close the door here? This was more about what you
started out talking about. The e-mail exchange, do you want to talk
more about that? That was uncovered, by the way, in a FOIA request
made by Grant Smith. He found it accidentally, and that’s the kind
of thing that, it appalled us when we read it. Would you like to
talk a little bit more about that?
Rula Jebreal: Again, I’m really grateful that we exposed this
disgusting misogyny. And again, I love when white men lecture me or
lecture others about how we go in the Middle East and we invade
certain countries to liberate women and women’s choices. And then
CNN put against me somebody like Rabbi Shmuley, and forgive me if
I’m about to throw up. He is telling me that an Arab woman like
myself would never—he’s patronizing me about my rights.
Basically, they look down at the Middle East, at Arabs. When I wrote
my New York [ital?] column about minority rights or minority life in
Israel, the only way we are described as Arab Muslim women or brown,
as either a terrorist or a Bedouin without a nationality. In
American media, every question starts like, how do you feel? As if
my job is to feel. My job is to analyze phenomena. Sorry, my
description, whether I’m tall or short, whether I’m big or small—it
does not matter. Whether I look like this or had some plastic
surgery to look like this, it doesn’t matter. Ultimately, it’s about
the argument.
Since I started working, everything we predicted about the
trajectory of the war on terror, the Iraqi war, if you listen to
whatever any Arab analyst has told you about the war on terror,
about invading Iraq, how it will create mass radicalization, it will
destabilize the entire region and will basically bring—we had only
200 jihadists after 9/11. Only 200. According to the FBI, there were
only 200. Today, we have hundreds of thousands. If that is a
success, then what is failure? So every Arab analyst has been saying
the same thing.
What is their weapon to throw against people like me? Yeah, her
looks. Give me a break. I mean, you know what? It didn’t hit me, but
it explained, I think, to the public a mindset of these thugs and
bullies. I’m used to it because I had that in Italy. I’m exorcised
because I had ministers in Italy refusing to answer questions
because I was a Muslim or I was brown or some kind of thing.
I remember interviewing Berlusconi in 2005 the first time. Usually,
it’s hard for me to lose—I have no comment on the kind of—if you
think Berlusconi was bad, imagine when Donald Trump will come up
there and will start dealing with journalists. He’s already saying,
oh, these disgusting people, I hate them or whatever. I mean, with
the kind of attitude that I’ve seen under Berlusconi for 10 years
was this kind of thing, where people, basically women and men who
worked for him, would call us and threaten us. Threats, real
threats. In a country that killed journalists, actually, these
threats can happen. I believe that when you somehow use violent
words, this can easily translate into real violence and killing. It
can easily translate into that.
That’s why, again, forgive me for repeating the same thing. We need
to create an ecosystem that collaborates much more with each other,
and that reinforces each other. We have to create a glue, a cultural
glue, that reinforces an issue, that reinforce and push back harder.
Because, I’m sorry, we’re not pushing back hard enough, because
these thugs are bullies and will throw everything they have—from
threats to bullying to harassment to even beating of some
journalist. But we live in an era where democracy, luckily still
functions. So before it collapses, let’s hold it together. Thank
you.
Delinda Hanley: Thank you. I’d like to remind you that Rula will be
signing her book at the reception afterwards. I’m also going to have
a comment from Ralph Nader, who said that he’d sure like this
audience to know that Al Arabiya News was not allowed to cover
AIPAC’s convention. They denied Al Arabiya access to AIPAC.
Rula Jebreal: I think they denied Philip Weiss, if I’m not wrong.
And I’m sure they will deny 80 percent of the people sitting here.
It’s not the dialogue. I mean, what’s happening at AIPAC on Monday
will not be a dialogue. It will be a monologue. Obviously, I have a
Catholic daughter, so I go to church with her sometimes and I see
how—the way they pray. I feel like when all of these politicians go
to pray to AIPAC, it’s just like genuflection and please kill me
more or give me whatever, what you want.
It’s painful for somebody who believes in a democratic system and
travels around the world and sees millions of people standing in the
street, from Cairo to Algeria to Tunisia—people willing to die for
the principle of democracy and equality, because they feel like they
were born as free men and women. This is the kind of model they look
up to.
