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Hollywood and Israel: A History
From Frank Sinatra’s early pro-Zionist rallying to Steven Spielberg’s present-day peacemaking, Hollywood has long enjoyed a “special relationship” with Israel. This book offers a groundbreaking account of this relationship, both on and off the screen. Tony Shaw and Giora Goodman investigate the many ways in which Hollywood’s moguls, directors, and actors have supported or challenged Israel for more than seven decades. They explore the complex story of Israel’s relationship with American Jewry and illuminate how media and soft power have shaped the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Shaw and Goodman draw on a vast range of archival sources to demonstrate how show business has played a pivotal role in crafting the U.S.-Israel alliance. They probe the influence of Israeli diplomacy on Hollywood’s output and lobbying activities, but also highlight the limits of ideological devotion in high-risk entertainment industries. The book details the political involvement with Israel—and Palestine—of household names such as Eddie Cantor, Kirk Douglas, Elizabeth Taylor, Barbra Streisand, Vanessa Redgrave, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Robert De Niro, and Natalie Portman. It also spotlights the role of key behind-the-scenes players like Dore Schary, Arthur Krim, Arnon Milchan, and Haim Saban.
Bringing the story up to the moment, Shaw and Goodman contend that the Hollywood-Israel relationship might now be at a turning point. Shedding new light on the political power that images and celebrity can wield, Hollywood and Israel shows the world’s entertainment capital to be an important player in international affairs.
Shaw and Goodman draw on a vast range of archival sources to demonstrate how show business has played a pivotal role in crafting the U.S.-Israel alliance. They probe the influence of Israeli diplomacy on Hollywood’s output and lobbying activities, but also highlight the limits of ideological devotion in high-risk entertainment industries. The book details the political involvement with Israel—and Palestine—of household names such as Eddie Cantor, Kirk Douglas, Elizabeth Taylor, Barbra Streisand, Vanessa Redgrave, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Robert De Niro, and Natalie Portman. It also spotlights the role of key behind-the-scenes players like Dore Schary, Arthur Krim, Arnon Milchan, and Haim Saban.
Bringing the story up to the moment, Shaw and Goodman contend that the Hollywood-Israel relationship might now be at a turning point. Shedding new light on the political power that images and celebrity can wield, Hollywood and Israel shows the world’s entertainment capital to be an important player in international affairs.
361 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 8, 2022
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July 16, 2022
Like most people, it is difficult to get Americans to care much about events beyond their borders. The one remarkable exception to this indifference towards foreign affairs is the Israel-Palestine conflict, where Americans have always had passionate views and even today are willing to drop everything and pay attention. These views have been shaped less by any rational analysis of the subject, which in this case has little direct impact on their lives, and more by what you could call the “social imaginary” of images and emotional sentiments guides their worldview. The social imaginary of 20th century Americans was shaped above all by the incredibly powerful entertainment industry that emerged in their country. Hollywood shaped the American worldview on many subjects near and far. It also took particular pains to tell them what they should feel about the conflict in the Middle East that accompanied the creation of the State of Israel.
“Hollywood and Israel: A History” is an analysis by two historians, one American and one Israeli, of the origins, growth, and political influence of American popular culture depictions of Israel in film. Following the creation of Israel, Israeli government officials and those sympathetic to the new state immediately set about looking for ways that they could depict it in a manner that would resonate with Western audiences. This was a tricky subject. Israel had a tough relationship with many Western countries at the time. Most difficult were its ties with Britain, which was then still a superpower and against whom Israeli militants had recently waged a full-blown insurgency including assassinations and bombings. The United States offered a potentially receptive audience, as it had no such conflict with Israel to its memory and was home to a large and increasingly confident Jewish diaspora that could be counted on for some support. The fact that Hollywood was born there was a happy coincidence.
The first wave of pro-Israel films in the United States in the 1950s focused less on Israel as a modern state than as the realization of a Biblical idea. Israel was depicted as existing in antiquity in films like Quo Vadis and Salome. The idea behind these films was to help generate sympathy among Christian audiences for Israel as something both familiar and foreordained. Although Israeli government officials at this stage were keen to offer what support they could to filmmakers and forthrightly talked about the need to generate positive “propaganda” (this word had not yet gained its modern pejorative connotation), what most filmmakers were interested in was making films that were marketable and the political benefit was secondary. Israel offered financial incentives and access to equipment and personnel to help incentivize filmmakers to work with them, as it would continue to do so in the decades ahead.
As Israel evolved and took on a greater role in regional politics in the 1960s, the tone of the films on the country started to change. The Israeli government began soliciting actors to visit the country and make films that would tell the story of the modern state and its origins. Some Jewish-Americans involved in the entertainment industry also started playing a role at this point helping act as liaisons between American film stars and Israeli government officials. This was the beginning of a longstanding relationship that would tie Israel and Hollywood closely together for decades. Films like the 1966 movie Cast a Giant Shadow starring Kirk Douglas, and Exodus based on a novel by Leon Uris (who blankly stated that if he wasn’t writing books and films about Israel he’d prefer to be “over there shooting Arabs”) started to be produced that depicted Israel as a glorious frontier outpost populated by brave, handsome, blond-haired, blue-eyed Americans. To the extent Arabs figured at all in these movies they were as the equivalent of Native Indians in old American Westerns: Primitive and culturally incomprehensible cannon fodder, with a few noble savages here and there.
The Israeli government and its allies wisely cultivated influential figures in American life to visit Israel, do business there, and to finally act as de facto ambassadors for the state to the American public. People like Liz Taylor, Sammy Davis Junior, and Barbara Streisand were just a few of those who became vocal promoters of Israel to an American public that could otherwise expected to be indifferent. The image of Israel depicted onscreen shifted fluidly with the tastes of Americans: from Holy Land and reward for World War II, to ally against the Soviet Union and then against Arab and Islamic terrorists. I won’t go through recounting all the films created over the years centered around these angles but suffice to say there were a lot. The Israeli filmmaker Menachem Golan helped popularize the image of the Arab terrorist and the heroic Israeli intelligence officer to the American public with his 1970 film The Delta Force, and continued refining this idea across decades of blockbuster action films. In addition to movies and TV shows there were also curious spectacles like televised birthday parties held by celebrities for Israel’s various anniversaries, including The Stars Salute Israel at 30 which was a gala event broadcast at primetime to millions of Americans. This gala is still apparently still held, though viewership has dropped off.
Arnon Milchan, a former Mossad intelligence officer who went on to become a producer for Hollywood blockbusters like 12 Years a Slave, JFK, Heat, and Fight Club, is an emblematic example of someone who connected the worlds of American entertainment and Israeli officialdom. Milchan was formerly involved in arms dealing and espionage related to Israel’s nuclear program and also helped run a PR operation for Apartheid South Africa called “Operation Hollywood” in the 1970s. Milchan then used the funds from these endeavors to launch a very successful career making films in the United States. It would not be fair to say that his main goal was propaganda for Israel, and the authors of the book don’t allege this. Like most other people, he was primarily thinking of financial success. But throughout his life he used his influence to help connect Hollywood influencers to Israel, promote positive images of the country, and to suppress criticism of its actions behind the scenes. Milchan was both an entertainment mogul and a powerful political operative. Later in life he was somewhat embittered after becoming a bete noire in Israel due to his involvement in a corruption scandal involving his close friends Benjamin and Sara Netanyahu.
It would be wrong and indeed anti-Semitic to allege that there is some sort of totalizing control of entertainment media by Israel, or, even more prejudicially, by a Jewish ethnic lobby in the United States. Leave aside that this is bigoted: its simply not true. Many Jewish-Americans have been critical of Israel over the years, but also many Israelis have made poignant films depicting the Palestinian perspective on the conflict. What is the case however is that in a free market for creating entertainment products, like that which exists in the United States, there has been a great opportunity for the Israeli government and its supporters in the entertainment to create cultural products that shape the American social imaginary in a positive way towards Israel. They have done this with vigour and have achieved great success over the past decades. But this power is also on the wane.
While Americans are more aware, thanks to films and television, of Israel’s existence, this has also been a boon to the Palestinians whose plight is likewise famous today and who have increasingly begun making films telling their own side of the story. Due to the rise of decentralized media and the internet there are simply not the same gatekeeping powers and ability to impose top-down cultural trends that there once were. It’s easy to shut down a few Arab films or push to edit out negative mentions of Israel on a fictional cable television show but you can’t really censor millions of Palestinians globally on a platform like TikTok, nor can the growing independent Palestinian film industry be stopped. Israel still has a strong relationship with Hollywood and this has been a wise one to cultivate. But in the future if it is to have a positive public image it will actually require dealing with the global public directly and trying to win them over based on the facts of life in Israel and Palestine. It’s no longer possible to simply pretend Palestinians don’t exist, or to control the images that shape how others perceive them, including Americans.
The American social imaginary is shifting, and the previous hold that Hollywood had is getting perceptibly weaker. Its not clear what the future yet will hold but I suspect it will be a cultural landscape that is more equitable between Palestinians and Israelis. Until the open wound of this conflict is healed, with the leadership of wise politicians on both sides, I expect this conflict to continue to be a proxy cultural battleground fought in the United States.
“Hollywood and Israel: A History” is an analysis by two historians, one American and one Israeli, of the origins, growth, and political influence of American popular culture depictions of Israel in film. Following the creation of Israel, Israeli government officials and those sympathetic to the new state immediately set about looking for ways that they could depict it in a manner that would resonate with Western audiences. This was a tricky subject. Israel had a tough relationship with many Western countries at the time. Most difficult were its ties with Britain, which was then still a superpower and against whom Israeli militants had recently waged a full-blown insurgency including assassinations and bombings. The United States offered a potentially receptive audience, as it had no such conflict with Israel to its memory and was home to a large and increasingly confident Jewish diaspora that could be counted on for some support. The fact that Hollywood was born there was a happy coincidence.
The first wave of pro-Israel films in the United States in the 1950s focused less on Israel as a modern state than as the realization of a Biblical idea. Israel was depicted as existing in antiquity in films like Quo Vadis and Salome. The idea behind these films was to help generate sympathy among Christian audiences for Israel as something both familiar and foreordained. Although Israeli government officials at this stage were keen to offer what support they could to filmmakers and forthrightly talked about the need to generate positive “propaganda” (this word had not yet gained its modern pejorative connotation), what most filmmakers were interested in was making films that were marketable and the political benefit was secondary. Israel offered financial incentives and access to equipment and personnel to help incentivize filmmakers to work with them, as it would continue to do so in the decades ahead.
As Israel evolved and took on a greater role in regional politics in the 1960s, the tone of the films on the country started to change. The Israeli government began soliciting actors to visit the country and make films that would tell the story of the modern state and its origins. Some Jewish-Americans involved in the entertainment industry also started playing a role at this point helping act as liaisons between American film stars and Israeli government officials. This was the beginning of a longstanding relationship that would tie Israel and Hollywood closely together for decades. Films like the 1966 movie Cast a Giant Shadow starring Kirk Douglas, and Exodus based on a novel by Leon Uris (who blankly stated that if he wasn’t writing books and films about Israel he’d prefer to be “over there shooting Arabs”) started to be produced that depicted Israel as a glorious frontier outpost populated by brave, handsome, blond-haired, blue-eyed Americans. To the extent Arabs figured at all in these movies they were as the equivalent of Native Indians in old American Westerns: Primitive and culturally incomprehensible cannon fodder, with a few noble savages here and there.
The Israeli government and its allies wisely cultivated influential figures in American life to visit Israel, do business there, and to finally act as de facto ambassadors for the state to the American public. People like Liz Taylor, Sammy Davis Junior, and Barbara Streisand were just a few of those who became vocal promoters of Israel to an American public that could otherwise expected to be indifferent. The image of Israel depicted onscreen shifted fluidly with the tastes of Americans: from Holy Land and reward for World War II, to ally against the Soviet Union and then against Arab and Islamic terrorists. I won’t go through recounting all the films created over the years centered around these angles but suffice to say there were a lot. The Israeli filmmaker Menachem Golan helped popularize the image of the Arab terrorist and the heroic Israeli intelligence officer to the American public with his 1970 film The Delta Force, and continued refining this idea across decades of blockbuster action films. In addition to movies and TV shows there were also curious spectacles like televised birthday parties held by celebrities for Israel’s various anniversaries, including The Stars Salute Israel at 30 which was a gala event broadcast at primetime to millions of Americans. This gala is still apparently still held, though viewership has dropped off.
Arnon Milchan, a former Mossad intelligence officer who went on to become a producer for Hollywood blockbusters like 12 Years a Slave, JFK, Heat, and Fight Club, is an emblematic example of someone who connected the worlds of American entertainment and Israeli officialdom. Milchan was formerly involved in arms dealing and espionage related to Israel’s nuclear program and also helped run a PR operation for Apartheid South Africa called “Operation Hollywood” in the 1970s. Milchan then used the funds from these endeavors to launch a very successful career making films in the United States. It would not be fair to say that his main goal was propaganda for Israel, and the authors of the book don’t allege this. Like most other people, he was primarily thinking of financial success. But throughout his life he used his influence to help connect Hollywood influencers to Israel, promote positive images of the country, and to suppress criticism of its actions behind the scenes. Milchan was both an entertainment mogul and a powerful political operative. Later in life he was somewhat embittered after becoming a bete noire in Israel due to his involvement in a corruption scandal involving his close friends Benjamin and Sara Netanyahu.
It would be wrong and indeed anti-Semitic to allege that there is some sort of totalizing control of entertainment media by Israel, or, even more prejudicially, by a Jewish ethnic lobby in the United States. Leave aside that this is bigoted: its simply not true. Many Jewish-Americans have been critical of Israel over the years, but also many Israelis have made poignant films depicting the Palestinian perspective on the conflict. What is the case however is that in a free market for creating entertainment products, like that which exists in the United States, there has been a great opportunity for the Israeli government and its supporters in the entertainment to create cultural products that shape the American social imaginary in a positive way towards Israel. They have done this with vigour and have achieved great success over the past decades. But this power is also on the wane.
While Americans are more aware, thanks to films and television, of Israel’s existence, this has also been a boon to the Palestinians whose plight is likewise famous today and who have increasingly begun making films telling their own side of the story. Due to the rise of decentralized media and the internet there are simply not the same gatekeeping powers and ability to impose top-down cultural trends that there once were. It’s easy to shut down a few Arab films or push to edit out negative mentions of Israel on a fictional cable television show but you can’t really censor millions of Palestinians globally on a platform like TikTok, nor can the growing independent Palestinian film industry be stopped. Israel still has a strong relationship with Hollywood and this has been a wise one to cultivate. But in the future if it is to have a positive public image it will actually require dealing with the global public directly and trying to win them over based on the facts of life in Israel and Palestine. It’s no longer possible to simply pretend Palestinians don’t exist, or to control the images that shape how others perceive them, including Americans.
The American social imaginary is shifting, and the previous hold that Hollywood had is getting perceptibly weaker. Its not clear what the future yet will hold but I suspect it will be a cultural landscape that is more equitable between Palestinians and Israelis. Until the open wound of this conflict is healed, with the leadership of wise politicians on both sides, I expect this conflict to continue to be a proxy cultural battleground fought in the United States.
January 9, 2023
This book is documentary. As such it can be a dry read, but it is valuable in laying out the long history of a propaganda project that has been successful.
Israel, like the United States, exists on land taken in infamy. Both countries came into their territory by either force or theft or some combination of the two. Because early Americans were fleeing persecution in England and because Jews had been the victims of the holocaust are not justifications for going to a foreign land and taking it from the natives. Manifest Destiny and Zionism have much in common raising self-righteousness to the point of blindness.
With the United States, propaganda had a role but it was brute force from start to finish that obtained the land. With Israel, propaganda along with networking among the rich and powerful have been vital tools for taking the land. This book takes the reader step by step through the decades as Hollywood stars, studio moguls and Israelis stir the propaganda pot to sway the American people into ignoring the native Arabs of Palestine in favor of white Europeans who could be portrayed as "just like us" with Paul Newman, John Wayne and a host of other big names lending a hand.
Though the studio moguls placed profit first and were reluctant to use Israel for movie production when other places were cheaper, or thought scripts about Israel might have little appeal in the U.S., they did jump in from time to time, first with Biblical epics in the 1950's and then scoring a big win with the movie, Exodus as slanted a story and as lavishly produced as Hollywood could make.
Any reader familiar with the plight of the Palestinians through the entire lifetime of Zionism, will see in this book how history can be manipulated, one side ignored and a story presented that makes heroes, builds self-righteousness to a fever pitch, presents a conqueror as victim and wins support through a carefully and continually promoted story successfully swaying the views of a nation of hundreds of millions in the interest of a country of a few million.
Starting with the founding of Israel and ending its account at about 2018 with Israeli Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman, the reader will find every big name in Hollywood singing the praises of Israel and only a very few risking all (seeing a career abruptly end and be called an anti-semite) to say something for the Palestinians. Only with Spielberg's Munich did a major production begin to admit another side was involved.
As with a spoiled child, Israel has gone from bad to worse, moving ever further to the right due to unstinting support from the United States so that today the Israeli government contains fanatics who claim openly that all of the occupied territory taken by force in 1967 belongs to Jews only. Illegal settlements expand and thrive. Palestinian farmers are beaten and their olive trees destroyed by rampaging settlers. But it is modest homemade videos, not Hollywood, that are getting the truth out.
Whereas Hollywood has almost without exception told "the story of Israel" as Israel would have it told, with Israeli officials often reviewing scripts and films for acceptability before release, many smartphone cameras are now getting the truth out offering the possibility that justice may be done for a people who have for too long been invisible or maligned on the silver screen.
Israel, like the United States, exists on land taken in infamy. Both countries came into their territory by either force or theft or some combination of the two. Because early Americans were fleeing persecution in England and because Jews had been the victims of the holocaust are not justifications for going to a foreign land and taking it from the natives. Manifest Destiny and Zionism have much in common raising self-righteousness to the point of blindness.
With the United States, propaganda had a role but it was brute force from start to finish that obtained the land. With Israel, propaganda along with networking among the rich and powerful have been vital tools for taking the land. This book takes the reader step by step through the decades as Hollywood stars, studio moguls and Israelis stir the propaganda pot to sway the American people into ignoring the native Arabs of Palestine in favor of white Europeans who could be portrayed as "just like us" with Paul Newman, John Wayne and a host of other big names lending a hand.
Though the studio moguls placed profit first and were reluctant to use Israel for movie production when other places were cheaper, or thought scripts about Israel might have little appeal in the U.S., they did jump in from time to time, first with Biblical epics in the 1950's and then scoring a big win with the movie, Exodus as slanted a story and as lavishly produced as Hollywood could make.
Any reader familiar with the plight of the Palestinians through the entire lifetime of Zionism, will see in this book how history can be manipulated, one side ignored and a story presented that makes heroes, builds self-righteousness to a fever pitch, presents a conqueror as victim and wins support through a carefully and continually promoted story successfully swaying the views of a nation of hundreds of millions in the interest of a country of a few million.
Starting with the founding of Israel and ending its account at about 2018 with Israeli Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman, the reader will find every big name in Hollywood singing the praises of Israel and only a very few risking all (seeing a career abruptly end and be called an anti-semite) to say something for the Palestinians. Only with Spielberg's Munich did a major production begin to admit another side was involved.
As with a spoiled child, Israel has gone from bad to worse, moving ever further to the right due to unstinting support from the United States so that today the Israeli government contains fanatics who claim openly that all of the occupied territory taken by force in 1967 belongs to Jews only. Illegal settlements expand and thrive. Palestinian farmers are beaten and their olive trees destroyed by rampaging settlers. But it is modest homemade videos, not Hollywood, that are getting the truth out.
Whereas Hollywood has almost without exception told "the story of Israel" as Israel would have it told, with Israeli officials often reviewing scripts and films for acceptability before release, many smartphone cameras are now getting the truth out offering the possibility that justice may be done for a people who have for too long been invisible or maligned on the silver screen.
April 28, 2025
If you've ever wondered why Arabs are always portrayed as "terrorists" in the movies but murderous thugs like Avraham Stern and Menachem Begin never appear on the screen, read this book.
March 16, 2022
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Hollywood and Israel: A History by Tony Shaw and Giora Goodman accounts for the relationship of Tinseltown with the Jewish state. Mr. Shaw is a professor of contemporary history at the University of Hertfordshire. Mr. Goodman is the chair of the Department of Multidisciplinary Studies at Kinneret College on the Sea of Galilee.
This book is well researched, as well as informative and entertaining. Ideology aside, the authors were mostly concerned with recording history. There is a noticeable attempt to be as fair-minded as possible.
I think most can agree that history is nuanced, Hollywood and Israel: A History by Tony Shaw and Giora Goodman takes great effort to drive that point home. The authors, however, don’t spend much time on trivialities, but try to keep the reader informed about politics interweaving with the entertainment industry.
The book does not shy away from flat out labeling many of the talked about movies as propaganda. Exodus, The Juggler, Salah Shabati, and Judith are prime examples of such lionization.
Palestine movies, or those that at least present a sober view point are also presented. Paradise Now, a Palestinian movie, for example, or Israeli series Fauda which attempts, and I believe succeeds, in presenting the no-win nuances of both sides of the conflict.
Along the way, the authors tell us of how the who’s who of Hollywood, then and now helped the young country. From obvious Jewish celebrities such as Barbara Streisand, Kirk Douglas, Billy Crystal, Elizabeth Taylor, and Sammy Davis Jr. to moguls such as Louis B. Mayer, David O. Selznick, and Samuel Goldwyn who have seen their role as contributing to the Jewish state after suffering the Nazi atrocities.
Other non-Jewish celebrities are also mentioned such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Frank Sinatra, Robert DeNiro, Paul Newman, and Jane Fonda among many others. While, of course, there are the Israelis who “made it big” Lior Raz, Gal Gadot, Chaim Saban, Topol, and Arnon Milchin.
To counterpoint the narrative, Vanessa Redgrave, Casey Kasem and others also get several pages in this short book for the Palestinian narrative. While Israel managed to make, and keep friends in Hollywood, one can certainly argue that they are losing the war for public opinion in the on-line world.
Even though the entertainment industry supported Israel, they’re first and foremost a business and have been, since the beginning, put profits over ideology many times over and over again. I loved that the authors included You Don’t Mass with the Zohan which, not for nothing, does represent both Israelis and Palestinians in a light and positive manner
Hollywood and Israel: A History by Tony Shaw and Giora Goodman accounts for the relationship of Tinseltown with the Jewish state. Mr. Shaw is a professor of contemporary history at the University of Hertfordshire. Mr. Goodman is the chair of the Department of Multidisciplinary Studies at Kinneret College on the Sea of Galilee.
This book is well researched, as well as informative and entertaining. Ideology aside, the authors were mostly concerned with recording history. There is a noticeable attempt to be as fair-minded as possible.
I think most can agree that history is nuanced, Hollywood and Israel: A History by Tony Shaw and Giora Goodman takes great effort to drive that point home. The authors, however, don’t spend much time on trivialities, but try to keep the reader informed about politics interweaving with the entertainment industry.
The book does not shy away from flat out labeling many of the talked about movies as propaganda. Exodus, The Juggler, Salah Shabati, and Judith are prime examples of such lionization.
Palestine movies, or those that at least present a sober view point are also presented. Paradise Now, a Palestinian movie, for example, or Israeli series Fauda which attempts, and I believe succeeds, in presenting the no-win nuances of both sides of the conflict.
Along the way, the authors tell us of how the who’s who of Hollywood, then and now helped the young country. From obvious Jewish celebrities such as Barbara Streisand, Kirk Douglas, Billy Crystal, Elizabeth Taylor, and Sammy Davis Jr. to moguls such as Louis B. Mayer, David O. Selznick, and Samuel Goldwyn who have seen their role as contributing to the Jewish state after suffering the Nazi atrocities.
Other non-Jewish celebrities are also mentioned such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Frank Sinatra, Robert DeNiro, Paul Newman, and Jane Fonda among many others. While, of course, there are the Israelis who “made it big” Lior Raz, Gal Gadot, Chaim Saban, Topol, and Arnon Milchin.
To counterpoint the narrative, Vanessa Redgrave, Casey Kasem and others also get several pages in this short book for the Palestinian narrative. While Israel managed to make, and keep friends in Hollywood, one can certainly argue that they are losing the war for public opinion in the on-line world.
Even though the entertainment industry supported Israel, they’re first and foremost a business and have been, since the beginning, put profits over ideology many times over and over again. I loved that the authors included You Don’t Mass with the Zohan which, not for nothing, does represent both Israelis and Palestinians in a light and positive manner
July 13, 2025
The book Shalom Goldman's wanted to be--deeply researched (the list of archival sources is LONG), comprehensive, complex in its sense of the relations/negotiations/frustrations between Israel and Hollywood, comprehensive. The books cover a lot of the same material, which also crops up in Amy Kaplan's, so to some degree you're on familiar territory. The bonus here is the inside-baseball material, particularly that from the Israeli propaganda apparatus (the studios, not surprisingly, put profit over ideology--one of them remarks that he's Jewish only on Saturdays--though by the same token, as they note in the closing comparison of the celebration of Israel's 70th birthday with its star-studded 30th, co-sponsored by sitting VP Walter Mondale, what other nation-state would even enjoy such a celebration in the first place?), which was always fighting a battle between pragmatism (the brute economic needs that a major production could satisfy) and idealism (outside of Exodus, it's not clear that any movies have painted Israel in exactly the colors desired). The combination of anti-terrorist fears and the aftermath of Munich in the 70s seems to have come closest, in that the entertainment pitted heroic Israeli commandos against brutish fanatics.
There are parts where their judgments could be articulated more distinctly--it's clear that the move to censor any assertions of Palestinian selfhood or experience as inherently attacks on Israel started early, and the scales remain wildly unbalanced. (In fact, the strongest denunciations of Israeli policy have come from Israelis themselves.) The authors don't particularly consider where the line actually could/should be drawn between advocacy and fanaticism--they seem to criticize Vanessa Redgrave for too vigorously trying to convert people rather than for anything she actually said, for instance--and the final section, on support for Israel in the age of social media, counts five different shades of pro-Israel celebrity and one pro-Palestinian without exploring what that imbalance might mean. (Also, just found out that Mayim Bialik is a distant relation of famed Yiddish poet Hayyim Nachman Bialik, author of the powerful protest poem "In the City of Slaughter.") They're extremely circumspect in describing the impacts of Lebanon in 1982 and the first Intifada and never clearly state that these things were, you know, bad, the ultimate implication being that this is really all about manners and perspectives rather than rational reactions to actual conduct.
Still, as a means of conveying the mix of very real idealism and hard-edged pragmatism powering the long-term project on both sides of the world that celebrated Israel is the site of dreams redeemed, no matter the reality (DEFINITELY think the authors could have done more with the rise of Christian Zionism, which Kaplan's book handles brilliantly), this does the trick.
There are parts where their judgments could be articulated more distinctly--it's clear that the move to censor any assertions of Palestinian selfhood or experience as inherently attacks on Israel started early, and the scales remain wildly unbalanced. (In fact, the strongest denunciations of Israeli policy have come from Israelis themselves.) The authors don't particularly consider where the line actually could/should be drawn between advocacy and fanaticism--they seem to criticize Vanessa Redgrave for too vigorously trying to convert people rather than for anything she actually said, for instance--and the final section, on support for Israel in the age of social media, counts five different shades of pro-Israel celebrity and one pro-Palestinian without exploring what that imbalance might mean. (Also, just found out that Mayim Bialik is a distant relation of famed Yiddish poet Hayyim Nachman Bialik, author of the powerful protest poem "In the City of Slaughter.") They're extremely circumspect in describing the impacts of Lebanon in 1982 and the first Intifada and never clearly state that these things were, you know, bad, the ultimate implication being that this is really all about manners and perspectives rather than rational reactions to actual conduct.
Still, as a means of conveying the mix of very real idealism and hard-edged pragmatism powering the long-term project on both sides of the world that celebrated Israel is the site of dreams redeemed, no matter the reality (DEFINITELY think the authors could have done more with the rise of Christian Zionism, which Kaplan's book handles brilliantly), this does the trick.
November 3, 2021
Hollywood and Israel: A History, by Tony Shaw and Giora Goodman, is a well-researched and quite readable account of the relationship(s) between these two entities.
I think what made the book particularly good, from my perspective, is that it is first and foremost a history. There is a concerted effort to be fair and present this nuanced history in a manner that will interest and inform readers no matter what they may think about the mingling of politics and entertainment.
Because of the depth of the research this will appeal to those interested in history in a broad sense as well as those interested in film history. The relationship is brought up to the present so this will also help readers form better informed opinions about current affairs.
While academic in the sense that it is detailed and well documented it is also a very accessible and readable book. If any aspect of this story appeals to you I think you will enjoy the book.
Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.
I think what made the book particularly good, from my perspective, is that it is first and foremost a history. There is a concerted effort to be fair and present this nuanced history in a manner that will interest and inform readers no matter what they may think about the mingling of politics and entertainment.
Because of the depth of the research this will appeal to those interested in history in a broad sense as well as those interested in film history. The relationship is brought up to the present so this will also help readers form better informed opinions about current affairs.
While academic in the sense that it is detailed and well documented it is also a very accessible and readable book. If any aspect of this story appeals to you I think you will enjoy the book.
Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.
June 4, 2024
Fascinating and exhaustive, and it does a great job of unpacking bias and propaganda when it's needed. It's a bit academic, but also full of terrific pictures and anecdotes. It gives a full picture of Israel's journey from underdog to superpower and its endlessly changing relationship with the movie industry.
March 10, 2023
Well-researched and quite interesting.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews