April 21, 2008, - 5:35 am
Meet “Qaeda Morgan”: Where in this Fantasy is Osama Bin Laden?
By Debbie Schlussel
You’ve heard of Tokyo Rose. You’ve seen Hanoi Jane. You’ve joked about Baghdad Bob.
Now meet Qaeda Morgan.
Osama Bin Laden has found in Morgan Spurlock the embodiment of all the previous enemy propagandists. Except this one has a major film production deal.
The fake-umentary maker who lied about McDonald’s in “Supersize Me,” lies about Islam, America, Israel, and Jews in “Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?” in theaters, this past weekend.
In 2005, Spurlock made a pro-Muslim episode of his F/X series, “30 Days” for which he won predictable awards and accolades from the pan-terrorist Muslim Public Affairs Council and CAIR. I was asked by Spurlock’s people to be in it, but I refused and wrote about it in the Wall Street Journal. Carefully orchestrated, Spurlock already decided his favorable conclusion about American Muslims, before he even began filming. He’s making the same case for extremist Muslims worldwide in this deceptive movie and working with the same crew of propagandist filmmakers.
In this silver screen version of slant, Spurlock presents Osama Bin Laden and other Al-Qaeda terrorists as animated baseball players on cards and in music videos, and terrorism as some sort of video game. And it is, indeed, all a game to him. His fellow left-winger, vegan chef girlfriend is pregnant with his kid, and he’s worried about his kid being born into an “unsafe world.” Therefore, feels the need to track down Bin Laden. Whatever. For the first ten minutes of the movie it’s all “me, me, me.” We watch Spurlock go through myriad stupid counterterrorism training and exercises while donning a wife-beater tank top.
And it’s all downhill from there.
In this so-called documentary, the most hostile people are not Muslims, but Israeli Orthodox Jews. The most menacing terrorist threat in Israel is . . . a bikini. Almost all Muslims love America and Americans. They only dislike our foreign policy. They are just like us with the same hopes and dreams for their children, and they almost universally deplore Bin Laden. Terrorists and terrorism are created not by Islam or Bin Laden, but by America propping up pro-American dictators, instead of letting, say, the Muslim Brotherhood take over Egypt democratically to become the latest Al-Qaeda state. Christians are not persecuted in the least in any Islamic country (except Saudi Arabia).
Oh, and America must force Israel to acquiesce to the Palestinians and give them a state (which they de facto already have) to “take away an argument” from Al-Qaeda. Plus, HAMAS doesn’t really have anything against Jews, per se, just Israel. And terrorism–as we were also told by everyone else after 9/11–that’s not Islam.
Uh-huh.
These and other fantasies and Brothers Grimm material make up the crux of Morgan Spurlock’s foray into high quality Bin Laden cinema. And although Spurlock’s deliberate selectivity and prompting of Muslims to say what they think will please Americans on film, a minor detail he forgot to edit out was very telling and subtly betrayed his message to the few who know better.
In denouncing the fence that Israel has been forced to erect to try to keep Islamic terrorists out, Spurlock shows carefully edited shots of graffiti on the fence that make the Palestinians look sympathetic. The irony of part of the graffiti he showed was lost on him. It was a picture of a young, beautiful Muslim woman in a kheffiyeh with the quote underneath: “I Am Not a Terrorist.”
Problem is, that picture, near the Ramallah checkpoint, is a photo of Leila Khaled, a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist group. The famous picture of her doesn’t include the AK-47 she actually held in the real-life portrait. Khaled, carrying grenades, hijacked TWA Flight 840 in 1969 and tried unsuccessfully to hijack El-Al Flight 219 in 1970 (also with grenades). Even though she failed to hijack the El-Al flight, her hijacking partner shot El-Al flight crew member Shlomo Vider at least five times, seriously wounding him.
As I’ve noted on this site, Khaled planned the hijacking operation in 1970, which included the successful hijacking of three other planes, and she uttered the code “go” phrase, “Labnah Sandwich,” which set off the attack. Details of the hijacking operation are well laid out in the book, “Terror in Black September,” by David Raab, which I am currently reading and which will be reviewed soon on this site. Raab was a hostage on one of the flights that was successfully hijacked by Khaled’s gant.
One of the reasons Khaled was so attractive was that she had massive plastic surgery to conceal her identity in order to carry out more Palestinian terrorist attacks. Her face has graced pro-Hezbollah rallies in Dearbornistan, and she has the dubious distinction of being the first known female Islamic terrorist.
Now, she’s “Not a Terrorist”?
That’s symbolic of the lies and fraud throughout this movie. Everywhere Spurlock goes–whether it’s Egypt or Jordan or Gaza or the Palestinian Authority or Afghanistan or Morocco or Pakistan, everyone is nice and friendly, hates Bin Laden, and loves Americans . . . again, just not our foreign policy. We are shown a HAMAS city councilman from Gaza, who apparently never read the HAMAS Charter calling for the elimination of all Jews. He claims that he and the rest of HAMAS aren’t against Jews. They just don’t like Israel. Riiiight.
The only bad places in this movie are Saudi Arabia . . . and Israel. The most hostile people Spurlock encounters in the entire Middle East are ultra-Orthodox Jews in the religious Meah Shearim section of Israel. Unlike the friendly hijab-encrusted Palestinian Muslim women and HAMASniks and even extremist Saudi Arabians (the only Muslims Spurlock portrays accurately), these men won’t talk to Spurlock. And he shows endless footage of them refusing his inquiries. Smart men. But, of course, as we know, there are plenty of Israelis who would talk to him. They just didn’t make it on film because that wouldn’t serve Spurlock’s propaganda purposes (but for an anti-Israel far left Israeli journalist, Yair Lapid, whom he briefly interviews). One of the Orthodox men shouts
Get out of here, you filth.
My sentiments on Spurlock, exactly. Great minds think alike.
Oh, and that’s after he shows a “frightening” bomb scare in Israel. After showing us the alleged damage Israelis did to Gaza and denouncing the fence bordering it, Spurlock shows us scared Israelis and a robotic team out to defuse a bomb. The “bomb” turns out to be a bikini in a plastic box. Spurlock shows lots of Israelis laughing at the “over-reaction” (to what is often actually a bomb, not a bikini, in Israel), and then starts talking to the robot, inserting C3PO sound effects. Haha, funny.
You get the point. Terrorist “attacks” against Israel are just bikinis and comedy. In contrast, the poor “Jew-loving” Palestinians are prisoners of these bikini-blower-uppers. And then, we are told by Spurlock that, even though giving the Palestinians a state won’t end terrorism, we should do it, anyway to “take away an argument” from Bin Laden. Hokay.
And in case you didn’t know–just as the Muslim propagandists and Bin Laden say–so does Spurlock. He wants you to know that Israel built the fence between it and the Palestinians, not to protect against terrorists. Nope. He wants you to know that it was
built to expand the Jewish presence in the region.
Hmmm . . . giving up the Sinai, Gaza, many Jewish settlements from which Jews were evicted from their homes in the West Bank. If that’s “expanding the Jewish presence,” someone got their addition and subtraction confused.
And don’t forget: Palestinians hate Bin Laden. Forget about the hundreds of them you saw dancing in the street on 9/11, including that lady passing out candy on the streets of Ramallah and the rest of them honking their horns in celebration of the extermination of 3,000 Americans. That wasn’t real. Because Morgan Spurlock, er . . . Qaeda Morgan, says so.
But these poor, peaceful Palestinians, despite their support for terrorism–which we don’t see a lick of in Spurlock’s whitewash, are “terrorized” by Israeli tanks patrolling the perimeter of Gaza. He implores us:
Imagine living like that and having that come near your house every day.
Um, imagine the tanks not being there and those people rushing through the fence from Gaza to brutally attack and murder Israelis. That’s what would happen. He shows a bombed out classroom in Sderot, but doesn’t seem to have a clue that the missiles that constantly hit the poor, working class Jewish suburb come from Gaza where those “awful” tanks are patrolling. Hello . . .?
Spurlock interviews Father Nabil Haddad of the pan-Islamist Greek Orthodox Church, who says, “I have no problem [being a Christian] in Jordan. We all worship Allah.” That should tell you all you need to know. Christians are particularly oppressed in Jordan, our “moderate” ally. Anyone who says otherwise on camera is living a fairy tale (or worried about living another day if he says the wrong thing). Ditto for Christians, who’ve been mass murdered and forced to flee their homes throughout the Islamic world. Figures that Spurlock chose not to interview the few Chaldeans left in Iraq, or the few remaining Christians in Afghanistan, Gaza, etc.–all of whom live in fear for their lives.
America is evil, Mid-East Scholar Spurlock tells us, because we propped up the Shah and didn’t give the Iranians democracy. Aren’t you glad they have democracy now? Spurlock doesn’t address the splendid post-Shah, Khomeini-esque consequences. And he interviews many Egyptians who are mad that we support Hosni Mubarak. Because a terrorist-ruled state would be so much better there, right? Spurlock forgot to mention that the Muslim Brotherhood–out of which HAMAS, Al-Qaeda, and Arafat all emerged–is the most popular political group there. Just as he declines to mention and inclines to gloss over so much else. That’s what a propagandist does.
This movie–1.5 hours of Al-Jazeera lite–is old hat. We’ve heard and debunked the myths that dominate this movie, for the last 6.5 years. Ditto for Spurlock’s claim that economics drives Muslims to become terrorists. How many times must we point out the rich families from which Mohammed Atta and his 18 colleagues, many Palestinian homicide bombers, and assorted others of the 72-virgin-obsessed club, emanate?
And how many times will our military contine to participate in helping anti-American propaganda films like this. It was bad enough when then-Marine Josh Rushing (who now works for Al-Jazeera) sympathized with the enemy in “Control Room” (the pro-Al-Jazeera documentary). But our soldiers in Afghanistan hang with Morgan Spurlock, risk their lives to take him on interviews with Muslims, and even let him waste a rocket-propelled grenade to see what it’s like to shoot one. Why are American tax dollars helping this guy make an anti-American movie?
In the end, Spurlock tells us his pre-conceived conclusion to which he carefully tailors this movie:
We want the same things for our family [as Muslims do]. We [America] create these demons, and we create these visions [of Islamic terrorists] that, you know, are so beyond reality. What kind of world do we want to live in? What kind of world do we want it to be?
I want it to be a world where propagandists like Qaeda Morgan aren’t funded by Hollywood film producers, and where America stops patronizing celluloid BS like his.
Ironically, Spurlock ends the movie with the Elvis Costello song, “What’s So Funny ‘Bout Peace, Love, and Understanding?”
Unfortunately, anti-American, anti-Israel, anti-Semitic propaganda isn’t funny at all.
It’s an outrage.
One more thing: Spurlock doesn’t find Bin Laden. Shocker.
I’m gagging just reading your review? Seriously, why would he do this? It’s one thing to make amreican muslims sympathetic, but to portray terror sympathiezers in a good light is jsut wrong. I guess if you make propaganda for a living, it becomes hard to see what the truth is.
mindy1 on April 21, 2008 at 6:43 am