Old and denied a visa: A Norwegian Doctor Confirmed.
New hotness: A Norwegian Director Confirmed.
A week ago someone released the following clip and promoted it as a Syrian “hero” little boy rescuing a little girl all the while under sniper fire from a bunch of laughing Jihadis. I first saw it being tweeted around and felt a little ill. It wasn’t that the boy was acting as a hero which grabbed me: it was the casual way in which people were shooting at what were obviously two kids. I then wondered how long it would be till someone would re-upload it and pretend they were Palestinian kids being shot at by Israelis.
It’s now been confirmed by the Norwegian Director of the film that it was filmed last summer in Malta with little Maltese kids, a crew of dozens and with a grant from the Norwegian government! He spoke to the BBC:
Lars Klevberg, a 34-year-old film director based in Oslo, wrote a script after watching news coverage of the conflict in Syria. He says he deliberately presented the film as reality in order to generate a discussion about children in conflict zones.
“If I could make a film and pretend it was real, people would share it and react with hope,” he said. “We shot it in Malta in May this year on a set that was used for other famous movies like Troy and Gladiator,” Klevberg said. “The little boy and girl are professional actors from Malta. The voices in the background are Syrian refugees living in Malta.”
In fact the film received funding from the Norwegian Film Institute (NFI) and the Audio and Visual Fund from Arts Council Norway in October 2013. The filmmakers say their application for funding made clear they wanted to upload the film to the internet without making it obvious it was real or fiction. They also claim that those who financed it were aware of, and supported, these intentions.
This is exactly what Pallywood is: those of us who’ve been looking at what the Palestinians and their supporters produce for years recognise their method of operation. The only difference is, nobody ever owns up.
This is starting to cause a bit of a stir now that so many, and especially the Arab sources, feel they were duped. Good. They wanted to be duped and that’s the power of this kind of propaganda.
Syrians have responded with outrage to a video showing a young boy rescuing a girl while under gunfire, after it emerged on Friday that the clip had been staged by a Norwegian filmmaker who said he wanted to raise awareness about the conflict.
One of the Arab journalists I follow (because she’s usually reasonable and accurate) asked her followers their views and re-tweeted back their best ones:
https://twitter.com/AboudDandachi/status/533596436655779840
We can only hope this starts to apply to the videos people push out purporting to be Israeli indiscretions against Palestinians.
It’s also why we really try to be careful here at Israellycool: we can’t get every call right but I can assure you this, we really do try.
The famous Mohammad al Durah video was as fake and as scripted and directed as this. That’s beyond doubt. So many more video have been pushed out by the studios of Pallywood since and everyone aims to demonise the Jews and Israel. Be on your guard.
Update: Added my tweet to the director and his tweet with a link to a full statement.
https://twitter.com/LarsKlevberg/status/533385072083501056
