More Garbage from Golan-Globus

By Robert G. Hazo

Golan-Globus, an Israeli film production company specializing in the glorification of violence and the slander of Arabs, has released its film Delta Force for broadcast on cable television.

Made in 1986 with an eye to America's frustration with Middle East-related terrorism, Delta Force is a thinly-veiled retelling of the hijacking of TWA flight 847 in June 1985. Flight 847, hijacked by Lebanese Shiites after Israel rounded up hundreds of Shiites in south Lebanon and imprisoned them in Israeli detention centers, initially shuttled between Algeria and Beirut, and finally came to rest on the tarmac of Beirut's international airport, in full view of a gathering horde of reporters for a variety of international print and electronic media. The hijacking of Flight 847, the negotiations, and the appearances of the hostages and their captors in Beirut restaurants became an international drama. However, Delta Force, directed personally by Menachem Golan, does not shrink from re-writing the facts; indeed, the film even advertises itself as a hijacking with a "different ending." In Delta Force the hostages are saved not through international negotiations—as they were in real-life case of Flight 847—but by the heroics of America's special swat team, the army's Delta Forces. Using Israel as a take-off base, the Deltas successfully raid all the places where the hostages are sequestered, rescue them all uninjured, and suffer only one fatality while wiping out scores of Arab guerrillas.

Tired Plot Line

The film, which stars Lee Marvin and Chuck Norris and features cameo appearances by Martin Balsam, Robert Vaughan and others, is all but entirely predictable:

• The plane's passengers include survivors of the Holocaust.

• The Arabs are depicted as hysterical and ruthless.

•The American and Israeli forces work in perfect harmony (in contrast to the often acrimonious encounters between US Marines and Israeli soldiers in Beirut in 1982).

• The Arabs are depicted as representing a world revolutionary force that threatens Western civilization.

• And, of course, there is no attempt to explain the motivations of the hijackers.

Director Golan introduces a few notable new twists to an old and hateful plot line. Dialogue such as "Praise be to Allah" is used to suggest that all Arabs are Muslims. In point of fact, the Arab world, which numbers nearly 140 million, includes at least 15 million Christians.

Golan casts his villains not merely as Muslims, but Christian-hating Muslims. One Arab watching a burial says something about another funeral taking place. His commander corrects him, observing that he should have said that it was just another Christian death. When the priest at the burial comes under the Commander's scrutiny, he says, "I don't trust the Christian." To make sure we know who the Christian is, Golan has "Greek Orthodox" in large letters painted on the priest's van.

Delta Force Slanders Greek Orthodox Church

The Orthodox priest is later identified as Israel's most reliable spy in Lebanon. Upon tracking the priest to his church, the commander and his men discover him radioing the Israelis from his confessional, and they hurl the priest to his death from the balcony of his church.

For starters, there are no confessionals in Orthodox churches. But Golan's is not a simple factual inaccuracy: he has insulted the entire Orthodox church, which is pro-Arab in its political orientation. Greek Orthodoxy is the religion of a nation. Greece has not recognized the state of Israel. Greece is one of two countries in which large demonstrations against the Israeli invasion of Lebanon took place. Greeks so strongly support the Palestinians that there were many offers to adopt Palestinian orphans, and a considerable number of Greeks volunteered to go to Lebanon in 1982 to fight the Israelis.

Why bother to analyze such garbage? First because it is objectionable even as fiction and certainly as the kind of pseudo-history so often found in popular entertainment. Second, Golan's clumsy and hateful misrepresentations serve a particular political agenda: they contend that Arabs are violent and depraved, and that America's only reliable ally in the Middle East is Israel. Israelis are portrayed as humane, selfless, and dependable—values which Americans hold in high esteem. In films like Delta Force and its kindred ideological soulmates, the Israelis always pull Uncle Sam's chestnuts out of the fire. Rare indeed would be a film asking how Uncle Sam got into such trouble in the Middle East in the first place.

Robert Hazo is chairman of the Middle East Policy Association. He has lived and studied in the area and lectured extensively on the Middle East both here and abroad.