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Pallywood is a term ironically used to describe the alleged practice by Palestinian activists to stage events that Palestinian cameramen and video teams, often using equipment from Western news agencies, send on to those agencies as if it were authentic footage. The newsmakers in the USA and Europe often take the most believable sight-bytes and, stringing them together, present them to the public as news.

This phenomenon reflects the importance of winning the "media war" by providing journalists with imagery that presents one side of the conflict. Examples of such allegations include:

• Riots and unrest that did not start until the press arrived
• Falsification of the death of Muhammad al-Durrah in September, 2000
• Staged photographs following the battle of Jenin in 2002
• Staged funeral processions and casualties

The extent of Pallywood fakes in the raw footage that Palestinian cameramen send on to news agencies, and the degree to which it passes through to the viewers is unknown, and will remain so until the news media investigate. The impact of Pallywood's success of the broader public's perception, in particular on their readiness to accept casualty figures from Palestinian sources with a long history of exaggeration, has significant implications for the ways in which we think about the Middle East conflict. Although it seems to benefit of the Palestinian cause, it really servess the cause of a leadership that favors war at any cost, and that consistently make decisions that harm the long-term interests of the Palestinian people. Evidence suggests that Pallywood goes back at least to the war in Lebanon in 1982.

It is also the name of a film produced by Richard Landes discussing this topic.

External links

• Second Draft.org
• Second Draft.org video reports about Pallywood in general and about Muhammad al-Dura

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