BACKGROUND CONGREGATION BETH ACHIM and THE DETROIT FRIENDS OF BAR-ILAN UNIVERSITY cordially invite you to attend our SHADDAT DINNER honoring RONALD S. HARRIS Immediate Past President of Congregation Beth Achim on Friday, September 15, 1989, 7 P.M. Adults Children (under 12) $22.00 $12.00 The celebration will also include our Weekend Scholar: PROFESSOR GERSHON WINER Rena Costa Professor of Yiddish Language and Literature, Bar-Han University Professor Winer will speak at the following times: Friday Evening: "TEACHING YIDDISH AND YIDDISHKEIT IN THE SOVIET UNION" Shabbat Sermon "THE ZIONIST DREAM AND ISRAEL REALTY" Shabbat Luncheon "THE HUMOR OF SHOLEM ALEICHEM AS A VEHICLE FOR A JEWISH WORLD OUTLOOK" Adults Children (under 12) $7.00 $3.50 PLEASE RESPOND TO THE SYNAGOGUE OFFICE BY SEPTEMBER 8TH AT 352-8670 Congregation Beth Achim 21100 West 12 Mile Road, Southfield ABRAHAM GAMER President Congregation Beth Achim DOREEN HERMELIN BERNARD STOLLMAN Chairmen Detroit Friends of Dor ion University THIS COUPON ENTITLES YOU TO A FREE WEEK ON OUR MOST POPULAR QUICK WEIGHT LOSS PROGRAM. LOSE FIVE POUNDS ON US. NO STRINGS ATTACHED. ni int-Stadts MEDICAL CENTER 16311 MIDDLEBELT ROAD • LIVONIA 422.8040 Michigan's Only Medical Center Board Certified in Weight Reduction Medicine. L CLIP THIS COUPON FOR VALUABLE SAVINGS! 36 FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 1989 Waliwattettts A Palestinian youth protesting in Days of Rage. Days Of Misguided Propaganda ARTHUR J. MAGIDA Special to The Jewish News T here is good propagan- da and there is bad propaganda. By this, I am not referring to the specific issue or ideology that a piece of propaganda may be shilling. Rather, I am referr- ing to the artfulness which informs a work of propagan- da. A good piece of propagan- da, an altogether crafty piece of propaganda is disarming, persuasive, compelling, riveting. It may not be jour- nalism (which prides itself on a modicum of "balance"), but it can be art. Into this category comes the work of Sergei Eisenstein, whose films glorified Russian history, the World War II documentaries of John Huston, and even Leni Rienfenstahl's Triumph of the Will, the film Hitler ordered to celebrate, to almost sanc- tify, his Third Reich. There is a power to these films that transcends their political messages. Regardless of a viewer's ideology, one is almost compelled to watch them. One is pulled toward them as one is pulled toward a sumptuous meal: Hungry or not, on Weight Watchers or not, the banquet appeals more to the senses than to common sense. Eat, eat, and let gluttony (or, in the case of Triumph of the Will, un- mitigated evil) be damned. Days of Rage: The Young Palestinians, which will be broadcast Wednesday at 9 p.m. on Maryland Public Television (channels 67 and 22) is not such a film. The 90-minute film is the cor- nerstone — and also the raison d'etre — of a special two-and-a-half PBS- show, "In- tifada: The Palestinians and Israel." Hosted by journalist Hodding Carter, the other components_ of "Intifada" are two brief films about Israel's reaction to the human rights dilemma posed by the in- tifada and many Israelis' con- tention that the West Bank and Gaza are indispensable for national security. The three films are follow- ed by a 40-minute discussion about them and the Israeli- Palestinian situation. Panel members include Seymour Reich, president of the B'Nai B'rith International, James Zogby, executive director, Arab-American Institute, and Richard Murphy, a retired U.S. career diplomat and senior fellow for Middle East studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. There is little that is com- pelling about Days of Rage and little that is new. The film is a potpourri of Palesti- nian grievances and gripes often heard before. Not that this makes Days of Rage any less of a valid political state- ment. Palestinians, like Israelis or Peruvians or the French or anyone else, are certainly entitled to their own perspectives and their own ef- forts to persuade others of the. rightfulness of their cause. But the sheer predictability of Days of Rage, its avoidance of the subtleties of the Middle East, its distortion of history, its skirting of important realities make the film tendentious and tiresome. This is regrettable. It is im- portant for Americans to hear the story of the Palestinians, just as it important they they hear the story of the Israelis. Resolving the Middle East quagmire is impossible without complete testimony and a full set of honest facts. Or, at least, what passes for facts in that most contentious of regions. But there is little that is honest about Days of Rage. It presents the Israelis as un- mitigated monsters who derfve psychopathic satisfac- tion from beating Palestinian youngsters and bulldozing homes in the West Bank and Gaza of suspected par- ticipants in the intifada. It doesn't avow the key role of Palestinian kids in the in- tifada, how they pester and provoke and stone Israeli soldiers, how they are, in ef- fect, the shock troops of the insurrection. The closest the film comes to even acknowledging what the kids are up to comes when one leader of the intifada, his face swathed in a kaffiyeh so he won't be recognized by Israeli authorities, says young Palestinians entice Israeli soldiers into an area and then stone them. But as one participant in the panel discussion, Alan Keyes, a former Assistant Secretary of State, says in reference to such stoning, "What? Stone them to death? That says that what we have here is not what it presents itself to be. Is this [the in- tifada] a manipulated phenomenon? Is this a spon- taneous phenomenon? None of this is explained. It is a piece of work that does a disservice to the viewer." More than the viewer gets short shrift from Days of Rage. The film does the same with history. The film devotes about 1/90th of its 90 minutes to the historical roots to the Arab-Israeli conflict. These are not only among the more superficial ever given a con- troversy which has been the subject of thousands of books, they are also among the more