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Franklin-Trout's Postponed "Days of Rage" Will Have Its Day on PBS
"By all means show her film, and let it stir argument. There's nothing fake about the problem depicted. Every foreign journalist who visits the West Bank hears variations of the same stories: homes blown up to punish whole families, rubber bullets that main on impact, a criminal justice system that can jail without rudimentary safeguards, the shuttered schools and curfewed houses that abet extremism."
Karl Meyer,
New York Times, Aug. 4, 1989
In almost any other field, heavy-handed attempts at television censorship generally backfire. But not when it comes to depictions of the plight of the Palestinians or questioning of Israel. Then, nine times out of ten, attempts at suppression have succeeded. They range from withdrawing funding before the script is written or the first frame shot, to cancelling a scheduled showing of a completed program, as happened June 5 to Washington producer Jo Franklin-Trout's "Days of Rage: The Young Palestinians."
Perhaps, however, the odds on the censors are changing to something like fort out of five, which means the chances of an American viewer seeing a film fitting into either of the categories above has doubted in the past 12 months. Notable examples within that time period were CBS "Sixty Minutes" segments on the Israel lobby's campaign to unseat Senator John Chafee (R-RI) and on Israeli lawyer Lea Tsemel, who defends West Bank and Gaza Palestinians in Israeli military occupation courts.
Ms....