THE ARAB: NO MORE MISTER BAD GUY?

O utside the Israeli Embassy in Jemal, the Arab cinches a pillow case over a guard’s head and shoots him through the gray matter. Blood and flesh fly in the vortex of the explosion and nothing can stop Garvil, the killer, and his accomplice girlfriend.

They slip into the back of the ambassador’s house, and the maid is dispatched with a gun with a silencer. The ambassador sends his young son to investigate the dishes clattering to the kitchen floor--and the girlfriend guns down the boy with an Uzi automatic.

The ambassador scurries for a gun and the Arab blasts him backward through the window .

The wife clutches their screaming little girl as they are torn up in a round of machine-gun fire that splatters blood and flesh onto herring bone china and Louis XIV furniture.

Blood mixes with wine dripping from the lily-white table cloth.

This is one grisly scene, among others, from “Death Before Dishonor,” a coming New World Pictures killer-action-adventure that pits American Marines against terrorists who are trying to take over a fictional Middle Eastern country named Jemal. Marines are taken hostage and Fred Dryer (ex-Ram, now “Hunter” TV star) has to get his buddies out.

It’s the latest in a string of Hollywood productions that imitate real-life terrorism while exploiting anti-Arab sentiment and fear of attacks and hijackings abroad--a mood heightened by the horrific assaults last weekend in Istanbul and Karachi and the kidnaping of American educator Frank Reed in Beirut.

Each new atrocity overseas and the ensuing news coverage keep sinister and violent images of Arabs fresh in the public mind. And those sinister images--much to the dismay of the 2.5 million Americans of Arab descent--are quickly transferred to the big and small screens of Hollywood.

Arab-American leaders are concerned about the images presented in the name of “entertainment” and are trying to figure out ways to stop the trend of stereotyping anybody of Arab descent.

“I have never seen a smiling Arab on the screen, a sincere smiling Arab, a loving Arab, never!” said Syrian-American film maker Moustafa Akkad.

“If he is smiling, it is only out of conniving, plotting or murderous reasons and these images have obviously affected the (American) people” by fueling their prejudice, said Akkad, who served as producer-director of “Lion of the Desert” (1981), about Libyan national hero Omar Mukhtar, and “Mohammad, Messenger of God” (1977), both of which starred Anthony Quinn and Irene Pappas. Both films were Arab-financed.

“In the film industry there used to be three baddies--the Red Indians, the Germans and the Arabs. These were always the evil, the stupid or the murderers.” The Indians have been eliminated and the Germans have gone out of vogue as bad guys and that leaves the Arabs as the only safe scapegoat, he said.

As a result, “You take any man on the street today and ask him, ‘What’s an Arab?’ and right away, of course, he says he is a terrorist,” said Akkad.

Akkad is frightened not only by the acceptability of the anti-Arab image, but also by the new genre of productions that has cropped up in Hollywood in an attempt to capitalize on the widespread public hysteria over terrorism, he said.

Some examples of productions that exploit the Arab stereotype, showing them as everything from terrorists to bumbling idiots:

“Iron Eagle” is about an angry young man who takes an F-16 jet fighter plane to rescue his father who has been captured by an Arab faction. One Arab takes an American hostage and beats him to death. Everybody but the Americans got slammed in this one, especially Arabs.

“The Delta Force,” based loosely on the TWA flight 847 hijacking, chronicles attempts by the elite Delta Force to rescue an all-star cast of innocent American hostages. Super-hero Chuck Norris comes out of retirement to take on Abdul Rafai, commander in the New World Revolutionary Cells, whose amoral Arab terrorists brutalize everyone on board in their maniacal attempt to wield revenge against the “Devil”--America. The Arabs are shown as sweaty, hairy and bearded schizophrenics, who speak in broken English and praise God for all their actions against Americans and Jews.

“Under Siege,” a TV movie, features a terrorist cell working out of the Detroit suburb of Dearborn. Although the story is fictional, the terrorist group’s name, coincidentally, is the name of a real organization. Detroit has the largest Arab population in the U.S.

“Jewel of the Nile,” starring Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner (in the sequel to “Romancing the Stone”), puts romance novelist Joan Wilder in the deserts of Morocco with bumbling, stooge-like Arabs named Tarak, Barak, Karak, Arak and Sarak. Turner and Douglas fight against Omar, a Kadafi-like bad guy.

Arab culture has always been exotic to Westerners, evoking Hollywood images of bosomy belly dancers, lustful sheiks, Arabian knights and artful saber-swingers. Recall Valentino in “The Sheik” and Omar Shariff in “Lawrence of Arabia” in 1962.

But Arab images started turning ugly after the first OPEC oil embargo in 1973: In everything from cartoons to TV shows, Arabs were caricatured as ostentatious, mega-rich hedonists being chauffeured around in new Rolls-Royces and buying up huge hunks of the Western world.

According to Abbas Amanat, an assistant history professor who teaches contemporary Middle Eastern studies at Yale, the terrorist image in Hollywood mirrors the Reagan Administration’s and Americans’ simplistic political view of complex Middle Eastern problems and culture.

“It is sheer ignorance. People in this country have a tendency not to question details about countries and nationalities beyond Europe,” said Amanat.

Arab-Americans are especially frightened by the evolution of the stereotype from stooges in sheets to violent fanatics.

They refer to it as “Arab-bashing,” and they say they’ve had all they can stand of being stereotyped as maniacal villains and crazy terrorists. They say that they’re trying to fight back.

Arab-Americans are organizing themselves, lobbying politicians, and have plans for a media blitz. The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, which now has chapters in 60 American cities and in Canada, publishes books and pamphlets listing TV shows offensive to Arabs and sends monthly newsletters urging its 15,000 members to start letter-writing campaigns to the White House and TV networks. ADC has also arranged for Arab-American spokesmen to discuss the Arab image on TV and radio talk shows.

And in recent months, the ADC has started picketting theaters showing films like “Delta Force” and NBC affiliate stations airing “Under Siege.” The ADC is even thinking of creating a documentary film on Arab stereotyping.

Prominent Arab-Americans such as “American Top 40” disc jockey Casey Kasem, a Lebanese-American, have been forced into unfamiliar roles as activists. Kasem, who has written newspaper articles in which he praises respected Arab-Americans, has appeared on a Boston talk show and has set up the seminar “Rethinking the Middle East” in Santa Monica Saturday and next Sunday for Jews and Arabs to discuss Middle East problems.

Kasem, who said he has had no previous reason to make his ethnicity an issue, finds the current Arab stereotypes not only insulting but dangerous.

“Arab-Americans have always kept a low profile,” Kasem said in a phone interview, “but now when there is a disproportionate number of bad guys, bombers and billionaires (on screen), people with my ethnic background are beginning to say, ‘Hold on here!’

“I see the crunch coming. I see Arab-Americans being threatened with their lives,” he said, citing last year’s pipe bombings at the ADC office in Boston, the burning of the ADC office in Washington and the slaying of ADC member Alex Odeh, who was killed when the Santa Ana ADC office was bombed last year.

Harvey Schechter, Western states director of the Anti-Defamation League of the B’nai B’rith, thinks Arabs should expect a negative image to result from the bad deeds of a few: “When you get a bomb on a TWA plane and a little baby is blown out, you can have the most wonderful cause in the world, but you’re not going to explain that away.”

Although Schechter is hardly a supporter of Arab causes, he acknowledges that “it is unfair to extrapolate to the whole people what some people are doing. But that’s the nature of prejudice and the real world.”

He cites this analogy: “Imagine a PR firm representing a company that is dumping toxic waste into the river. No matter how good the PR firm, you can’t hide the fact that the company is dumping the waste into the river. But it (Arab stereotyping and the battle to change it) is their problem; it’s something for them to deal with.”

Arab-Americans are not seeking the perfect Arab, but a balanced portrayal of Arabs--good guys as well as bad.

“There are 20,000 murders each year in the U.S., and yet films don’t represent Americans as all murderers. If film makers just filmed the wife abuse, child abuse and sodomy in the U.S., what would the image of America be?” said Jack Shaheen, professor of communications at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville.

Shaheen documented more than a decade of media-made negative portrayals of Arabs, as well as the more rare balanced presentations, in his book, “TV Arab.”

He said in a phone interview that he is outraged by the ridiculousness of the one-dimensional presentations of Arabs as adulterers, land sharks or oil monopolists in everything from comedies like “Benson”--where a haughty sheik, Mameed, insisted that whatever he wants he gets, including Benson’s maid--to “Saturday Night Live.” Outlandish Arabs also pop up on night-time dramas like “Dynasty,” “Cagney & Lacey” and “Trapper John, M.D.”--where an Arab redecorates a hospital room with tubby belly dancers and gives his daughter as a gift to Gonzo (Gregory Harrison).

Although video rentals keep the movie images alive, TV has a wider audience and appeal and, with re-runs and syndication, bombards people with the bad-guy image.

Television shows like Stephen Cannell Productions’ “The A-Team,” “Hunter” and “Riptide,” are high on the target list of users of Arab-looking heavies. For example, “Hunter” executive producer Roy Huggins explained how easy it is to capitalize on the Arab stereotype. In one episode of “Hunter,” a fictional country, Baraqui, was created as the setting for bad-guy Arabs to rip-off their own country because the name connoted a wealthy country, he said. “We did a little historical shorthand.”

But Cindy Hauser, publicity director for Cannell Productions, said the shows’ producers do not stereotype one particular group but instead use a “very diversified base of thugs.” The dark-looking villains aren’t meant to represent a particular ethnicity, she said.

If people are looking for something intellectual or political in “The A-Team,” it’s not there, said Hauser.

She said Cannell Productions has a responsibility to entertain, not a social responsibility to teach values. However, Hauser said that in Cannell’s shows, villains and good guys of the same race are often juxtaposed in the same episode, so that it’s clear that the individuals--not a whole race--are bad.

Shaheen acknowledges that there are some good Arabs on TV, but not enough. He suggests many new opportunities: One of the “Golden Girls” should be played by an Arab-American. Likewise “Hill Street Blues” and “St. Elsewhere.”

The shortage of Arab-American actors is no excuse for not depicting Arab-Americans positively, Shaheen said. “I don’t care if a Jewish American plays an Arab, it’s what’s in the script. It’s tunnel vision if you say it takes an Arab-American to play one,” said Shaheen. In fact, many Arab villains are played by their Semitic cousins, Jews.

The TV movies that do feature positive images of Arab-Americans ignore their ethnicity, Shaheen said, referring to a movie about Lebanese-American Candy Leitner, the founder of Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

He wants Arab children to have the same opportunity to see positive role models on TV that Bill Cosby affords to black children.

Also, script writers should consult with Arab-Americans just as they do with gays and blacks when they are concerned about portraying them fairly, said Shaheen, who once served as a script consultant at ABC. ABC didn’t always take his advice, but he is convinced that the network is responsive because it feels an injustice is being done against Arab people, he said.

On the other hand, Shaheen is very critical of NBC, which he called the most insensitive and uncooperative of the three major networks, citing the presentation of “Under Siege,” about a fictitious terrorist cell operating out of a Detroit suburb.

ADC’s national chairman sent a telegram to then-NBC chairman Grant Tinker asking the network to air a disclaimer saying that “Under Siege” was fictitious and should not reflect adversely on the Arab-American or American Muslim communities. NBC refused.

“NBC is so courageous in documenting the terrorism of other nations. Why not a story on Alex Odeh? Don’t we have writers with talent enough to make a drama about this man who was brutally assassinated for talking about peace?”

Ralph Daniels, vice president of NBC Broadcast Standards and Practices in New York, said, “I disagree with their conclusions; we try to avoid all negative stereotyping.”

In the movie industry, Arab-American interest groups have staged a particularly pointed campaign against Menahem Golan and Yorem Globus, the Israeli cousins who run the Cannon Group. When the company opened its headquarters in Los Angeles, “scores” of ADC protesters held a candlelight procession to protest their films.

Along with “Delta Force,” Cannon has made “Bolero” (in which an Arab is equally inept as Bo Derek’s lover and a terrorist), “Paradise” (which shows Arab sheiks as rapists) and “Sahara” (which features a sheik abducting and raping Brooke Shields).

“You can only use the Russians as the bad guys so long,” said Bonnie Pietila, a casting director at Cannon. Although it’s unfair and prejudiced, she says, it’s the nature of movies and TV “to find the obvious scapegoats.

“It takes a more creative director and writer to get beyond that,” she said.

Tunisian film producer Tarak Ben Ammar, who is backed financially by a Saudi industrial group, said he had a heart-to-heart with Golan and Globus to try to persuade them not to make any more films like “Delta Force.”

“I told them, ‘You’re not just a film company; you’re making money on peoples’ imagination. Moviegoers take a piece home with them. And that accumulation of bad information--that is what racism is all about.’ ”

Ben Ammar, the nephew of Tunisian President Habib Bourguiba, produced “Pirates,” which was distributed by Cannon. He said that Golan and Globus agreed to avoid the use of Arab stereotypes in the future.

After repeated calls to Cannon, Golan would only make a simple statement through a publicist: “We don’t have anything against the Arabs. We are very friendly with the Arabs.”

Ben Ammar’s introduction to the fight for better Arab images came during the filming of the Goldie Hawn movie “Protocol” at his studios in Tunisia. Scenes such as the one in which an Arab religious man is shown drunk and consorting with prostitutes in a bar came to the attention of the ADC, which was outraged that an Arab would allow such portrayals.

The ADC picketed Warner Bros., and Ben Ammar served as a “go-between” for executive producer Hawn and producer Anthea Sylbert. “We met with ADC members and listened to their objections,” Sylbert said. “In some cases, we were able to convince them that the lines or scene was not harmful and in some cases they were able to convince us.” The bar scene was rewritten, she said.

The use of stereotypes is not intentionally malicious but is “first-degree simplicity” and dangerous, Ben Ammar said. “Movie executives should not think as they sit by the pool in Beverly Hills that they are not part of the world and responsible to it,” he said.

He said they must remember that they are influencing millions of people who may know nothing about other cultures, except for what they see in films.

Many in the entertainment industry argue that the bad image of Arabs has made life easy for film makers.

“It’s shorthand; it’s automatic. Once the public has already selected a target, all we have to do is show his face,” said Loring Mandel, who wrote the screenplay for “The Little Drummer Girl,” starring Diane Keaton and based on a John le Carre novel of intrigue about both Israeli and Arab terrorism.

Mandel said that “Little Drummer Girl,” in contrast to most films, tried to explain the actions of both Israeli and Palestinian terrorists by showing them not simply as “mad dogs” but as people who fight for “compelling causes.”

Stereotyping avoids intelligent revelation about a topic, Mandel said, but long exposition loses an audience’s attention.

Akkad conceded that a realistic portrayal would likely be a commercial gamble for any studio: “The trend in the market is this topic of the terrorist and therefore you ride the bandwagon. I am even tempted to do a subject like that . . . because the mood in the nation is all so anti-Arab.”

The bad image of Arabs in America is partially a product of the political conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbors.

Arabs have always been presented as one-dimensional characters for political reasons, according to former Sen. James Abourezk (D-S.D.), the first Arab-American U.S. senator.

In 1980 he founded the ADC in response to Abscam (short for “Arab Scam”), in which government agents posed as Arabs to bribe and trap Washington politicians.

The exploitation of the bad-guy-Arab image continues in the Reagan Administration, Abourezk said in a phone interview: “Reagan has initiated a campaign of demagoguery unequaled against any other group of people. He really has made it very tough for us.”

Many Arab-American leaders say that in a climate that is extremely anti-Arab, organizing a successful Arab-American counterattack is difficult. Unfortunately, as Arab-American activism increases and their organization attempts to attain a high profile, negative attention is drawn to their causes, Abourezk said.

Getting the media’s attention for anything positive isn’t always easy, they’re finding.

For instance, the L.A. chapter of the ADC recently invited local media figures to the L.A. Press Club for a seminar designed to confront the issue of the media’s “Arab-bashing.” Since ADC only accepts membership dues and donations from fund-raising activities and, by policy, won’t accept funds from any Arab government, the event was a low-budget affair. Organizers offered home-made hors d’oevres, and had just enough funds ($75) to rent the room and to pay for two drinks per guest.

Of the more than 40 chairs set up for the media, only 15 were occupied. Even some of the guest panelists were missing.

The moderator, ADC national spokesman Faris Bouhafa, pleaded with those present: “Tell us, what can we do to change our image?”

But the media people reiterated what would seem to have been the obvious answer--stay with it, be persistent, be more organized, write all the TV stations, etc.

It ended up being something of an embarrassment for all involved.

Plans are in the works to hold another seminar in the next few months.

However, the failure of the seminar bore out Bouhafa’s belief that the media seems only interested in hearing from Arab-Americans after a terrorist attack.

It’s a Catch-22 situation, he said: News of an attack puts pressure on American-Arabs to explain and justify the act--and at the same time many want to hide their heritage.

Although many Arab-Americans aren’t activists, Bouhafa says those who would mount a defense against the images may have trouble discussing terrorism.

New immigrants are most likely to wage a defense because of their attachment to the homeland, Bouhafa said. But he feels that they may not be taken seriously by audiences on call-in radio and TV talk shows because their accents and broken English prevent them from being understood clearly.

In this way, Arab-Americans suffer the same kind of frustrations that other minority groups have faced for years, according to Steve Ross, editor of the Voice, the magazine of the National Assn. of Arab Americans. That is a Washington lobbying group that is trying to teach grass-roots organizing and public relations skills to Arab-Americans.

Arab-Americans have been slow to combat negative images, Ross says, because they are still learning public relations savvy and many have simply overassimilated. “They’ve forgotten their heritage or are apathetic to it, and aren’t used to organizing to defend it,” Ross said.

But Syrian-American film maker Moustafa Akkad thinks that even if Arab-Americans were united, little could be done to change the Arab image.

All the good done by groups like the ADC is just “a drop in the bucket,” he said. And all that good can be undone overnight: “All it takes is one news item on the air--that an Arab terrorist killed an American child somewhere.”

The bad-guy stereotyping in Hollywood was bound to emerge, according to Michael Medved, co-host of PBS’ “Sneak Previews” and president of the Pacific Jewish Center in Venice. It is “just the work of film makers lifting ideas from the news of the day and, as always, playing to people’s fears, prejudices and opinions. Wouldn’t it be strange if there weren’t Arab terrorists in movies?”

Movies and TV have always borrowed from the news. But Akkad and others suggest that the Hollywood stereotype is the result of an inherent anti-Arab bias in American newsrooms due in part to a disproportionate ratio of Jews to Arabs. “It’s no doubt, because of the influence of the Jews in the media” that Arabs are portrayed unsympathetically.

Akkad claims newspapers and TV news overplay acts of Arab terrorism while underplaying such acts as the murder of Alex Odeh. Leon Klinghoffer’s murder on the Achille Lauro cruise ship was the lead story on network news and made the front pages of major daily newspapers for days--while the murder of Odeh, also an American, was given low play (page 27 in The Times and page 13 in the New York Times), said ADC’s Bouhafa.

Lawrence Grossman, president of NBC News in New York, disagreed: “It would be hopelessly irresponsible and outrageous to weigh the fact that an individual is either Arab, black or Jewish in making news judgments.”

But Akkad said that just the presence of Jews in news and entertainment institutions--and it doesn’t have to be an organized group--is “without them being evil about it, enough to influence your fairness.

“It’s a fact of life,” he said. “It’s just that there are more of them than us.”

“We certainly have experts on the Middle East, maybe not Lawrence of Arabia, but Peter Jennings comes to mind and . . . Charlie Glass. I don’t buy it at all,” said ABC news vice president Bob Siegenthaler. “This whole thesis is a dog that won’t hunt.”

Akkad suggested that journalists should be concerned with the repercussions of their stories, but Grossman said that they cannot and should not concern themselves with the consequences.

Still, Grossman acknowledged, this attitude poses a danger for Jews and Arabs and other minorities.

NBC has been chastised for its reporting of the recent terrorist acts as well as for an interview with convicted terrorist Abul Abbas. “The fact of the matter is that NBC has had its fill of concern from Jewish groups for our reporting--saying that the fact that we even cover terrorist activities gives an unfair advantage to Arabs--so maybe it is some relief to hear from the Arabs,” he said.

But Arab-Americans feel that reporting the news gives no insight into the underlying reasons for the terrorist activities.

“I am not making excuses for any kind of terrorism. It is all inexcusable, but most shows don’t show a glimmer of insight into the underlying causes of terrorism,” Kasem said.

One show that tried to give some insight aired in February 1982. The ABC News program “20/20” presented “Under the Israeli Thumb,” a documentary of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the Palestinian viewpoint.

According to Siegenthaler, ABC News heard “a hue and cry” from Jewish groups that the program was too favorable to the Arab cause. But he said it is not unusual to have outcries over what he believes to be perfectly balanced segments. “To most groups a balanced story is one that is tipped in their favor,” he said.

“When Hollywood professionals make decisions, they make them as businessmen, not as self-conscious Jews,” said movie critic Medved. “Most people who are committed Jews and active in the media are paranoid about using their position (to favor Jews or Jewish causes), he said, citing the University of Maryland Rothman-Lichter study. The study shows the relationship between Jews in position of power and the importance of religious ties in their business.

“Look at Vanessa Redgrave, who works for Jewish producers and gets highly rated reviews from everyone in the industry. She could hardly be more anti-Israel and is, in fact, anti-Semitic. If such a cabal existed that Arab-Americans suggest, how could she enjoy the support she does from Jews in the industry?”

Akkad disagrees: “The trend for the Jewish community is that Israel comes first before America. Only in the Jewish community do you find such loyalty and attachment to the homeland. That has created a problem for them,” Akkad said.

“The Jews say, ‘Discrimination, discrimination, discrimination, in Germany, in Italy, in Spain, in the Middle East, in Latin America, everywhere discrimination.’ Now, is there anything wrong with all these nations or is there something wrong with this one community? This community is so ghettoish and clannish that they never feel they belong to where they are and they therefore create a reaction wherever they are.

“Here, they vote in a block whether or not it is in the interest of America to be anti-Arab.”

Medved said that Muslims invariably assume that Jews are always responsible for offensive depictions: “Many black-American Muslims were offended about Mohammad’s role in the Arab-made film, ‘Mohammad, Messenger of God.’ So what did they do? They attacked the B’nai B’rith headquarters in Washington (in 1977) in response to a movie that Jews didn’t touch. The charges that Arabs are getting negative stereotypes because of Jews makes as much sense as them occupying the B’nai B’rith headquarters.”

When read a list of the films cited by the Arab groups, Medved took issue with their complaints. “I don’t accept that these Arab cameos are racist. That’s like saying every time a Jewish shopkeeper with a Yiddish accent or a rich Jew appears, it’s racist. It’s not.”

Akkad argues that the notion that all Arabs are terrorists is similar to the conclusion all Jews are like Meir cqKahane--the radical founder of the Jewish Defense League. Clearly most Jews would take offense at that, Akkad said.

Arab-Americans should begin to work on images that have nothing to do with the conflict in the Middle East, Medved suggested. They need to make their ethnicity known when they do good works.

“People ignore the protest of Arab-Americans,” Medved said. “Rather than making accusations using that old canard of double loyalty--that Jews here are secret agents for Israel--they should work on projects of their own, try to show Arabs in a more positive light. They seem to be pressing for another angle of the Middle East coverage, when instead they should be taking attention away from that.”

He said they should put their efforts into financing their own movies and he praised Akkad’s savvy in making “Lion of the Desert”--a $35-million movie financed by Libya and Kadafi.

“No one went to see it, but you can’t blame the Jews for that.”

Amanat said that in order to change the image, what really matters is quality and influence: “There needs to be access to the media, for Arabs to get a fair presentation.

“To date, there is very little organization as compared to that which exists in the Jewish community. That is a drawback.”

But Amanat is convinced that the media can help solve the Middle East problem: “Naturally the media and public opinion would have some effect on the political situation and some pressure, any pressure, may result in more decisive decision making in that area.”

Shaheen suggested that an end to stereotyping shouldn’t depend on a peaceful solution in the Middle East. Every country has its share of radicals, but they should not be the only images we have of that country, he said.

He said the solution to the problem is simple: “We’ve solved it in the past. We’ve stereotyped every ethnic group conceivable. And then realized our mistakes.”

The solution has to come both from Washington and Hollywood: “The President and his assistants have to say Arab-bashing is totally wrong and TV and movie executives have to treat them like everyone else,” Shaheen said.

Kasem is also very optimistic: “Once the American people are informed . . . I think negative images in the media will change. What you don’t understand, you usually hate, and it doesn’t take much to draw ugly pictures in the brains of Americans of what they think Arabs are.”

Arab stereotypes will disappear “if there are enough stories introducing the American people to the fact that there are mainstream Arab-Americans here--letting them know that we are businessman, educators, we work on the farms and in the factories and that Arab-Americans are very much a part of the American dream,” he said.

“After a while the films will become ludicrous, and more and more reviewers will identify the films for what they really are. Then people will begin to react: ‘Why is it that they are going after Arab-Americans, and it seems to be only Arabs who are portrayed as the bad guys? Where are the good guys, the Ralph Naders, the Danny Thomases?. . . . Where are all these people who are very much a part of this great country?’ I think it is a matter of people in the media beginning to realize that it is a case of serious dehumanization.”