Hamas' Cinematic Charade: Unraveling the 'Pallywood' Propaganda

In the Academy Awards, no one has ever heard of an award recipient standing before a jubilant and envious audience and saying, “No, thank you, I really didn’t make this film, and I do not deserve your recognition. I am rescinding this honor you have bestowed upon me.” Of course not. People who don’t win an Oscar, the most prestigious award in the Hollywood film industry, repeatedly claim that it’s just an honoree to be nominated. They’d never return the coveted award. It sounds absurd even to think of it.  

Unlike Miss Universe and other such beauty pageants, where a second-place winner is selected in the event that Miss Universe is not able to complete her job, nobody has ever declined an Oscar or returned one for any reason. Not even after the 2022 brouhaha when Will Smith assaulted Chris Rock and then received the Best Actor award. Even accused sex offenders Roman Polanski and Woody Allen have been feted by the Academy, despite allegations against them.

There were three people in all the Academy Awards history to decline to receive their Oscar, but these were more in protest of the commercialization of the Academy and a strike in Hollywood than because they did anything particularly righteous or, conversely, wrong.

Today, there’s an up-and-coming new Oscar competing for recognition in infamy. Let’s call it the Ahmed. It’s the competition for best performance in what’s commonly known as Pallywood: the fake film industry coming from Palestinian Arab terror groups and aspiring individual propagandists to portray visually and graphically the most vile and vulgar aspects of their false narrative. The competition is fierce.

Pallywood productions are received, celebrated, and shared around the world today, and people accept them as if it’s video and historical gospel rather than the fake productions they are.

Recently, Pallywood was at its finest, starting with Hamas’ Islamic terrorists making videos from their own phones, GoPros, from the phones of their victims, and corroborated by CCTV and first responder videos, documenting the horrors of the massacre of more than 1200 people, injuring thousands, and kidnapping of hundreds more, on October 7.

Shockingly, despite their own documentation of the slaughter that they inflicted, and that it was all done entirely premeditatedly to the wild celebration of their “heroism,” much of the world is in denial that the massacres ever took place or that if they did, the carnage was as bad as it was. They blame Israel for perpetrating “lies” and accuse Israel of doctoring these images, which the terrorists filmed themselves as being “fake” and even generated by AI. It is classic and obscene, blaming the victim, and something surely not unique in Jewish history as there is no shortage of people who today deny the Holocaust even took place or that 6 million Jews were slaughtered.

While millions in the world deny that the slaughter took place on October 7, Hamas is using this just as another way to inflict psychological terror. It’s as if they filmed it all representing the “best Pallywood cinematography” but then denied doing it.

This vulgarity (a friend called pornography) displayed itself again this week as Hamas manipulated the reality of the kidnapping and holding hostage of 250 people. As videos have emerged of Israeli and other hostages being released from captivity, a careful observer will note that the hostages are accompanied by armed and masked terrorists.

It is depraved inhumanity. Hitler’s propagandist filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl would be proud. You see armed masked terrorists escorting their captives.  You see the masked terrorists holding their captives’ hands as if loving parents walking them down the aisle. But for many of the captives, their parents, children, spouses, and other loved ones were massacred by the same Hamas terrorists.

You see the terrorists waving and instructing their captives, “Keep waving.”  The only thing not heard is someone shouting from off camera, “Cut!” or “Take thirty-four” when their captives didn’t get their part right.

You hear masked terrorists sending them off, “Bye-bye now.”  As they enter the waiting vehicles, “Welcome, welcome” alongside people who appear to be Red Cross staff, accomplices, and supporting actors in the Hamas’ staged propaganda.

If the masked terrorists were humanitarians, why would they be masked? Why would they have captives in the first place? Why would they be instructing their captives to wave and smile for the camera? They want the world to believe that they are the humanitarian rescuers, but they are, in fact, the depraved inhuman captors.

It is Pallywood at its worst. The terrorists continue to inflict trauma on their captives and the world.

It is clear to anyone watching the charade about what was happening, but I never would have expected us to be so cruel and manipulative as to take the outtakes of all of this and splice it together as in one “best of Hamas terrorist kidnapping” film.

The terribly sad and crazy thing in all of this is that there are people around the world who are watching these terrorist depictions and coming away with the impression that somehow Hamas is the humanitarian organization and element behind the release of the host. “Cool. Pass the popcorn.”

If Hamas hadn’t brutally attacked Israel in humanely massacred more than 1200 people and taken hundreds of hostages, there would never be a situation in which they would have to “return” hostages home. Until, and unless, they make the sequel: “The Jamaican Bobsled Team Did It.”

They are not humanitarians. They are Islamic terrorists. They use all media at their disposal to take credit for and celebrate their evil at one moment, then deny that they ever committed these crimes. And then take credit again, as if their humanitarian gesture for the return of a fraction of the hostages that they took should be celebrated.

For the category of Best Supporting Act in a Film Disingenuously Made by Depraved Terrorists, the winner is Hamas.

To help free ALL the hostages, please sign the petition lending your voice here.

Photo Commentary: ©Getty Images/Amir Levy / Stringer

The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Christian Headlines.

The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of CrosswalkHeadlines.

 Jonathan Feldstein was born and educated in the U.S. and immigrated to Israel in 2004. He is married and the father of six. Throughout his life and career, he has been blessed by the calling to fellowship with Christian supporters of Israel and shares experiences of living as an Orthodox Jew in Israel. He writes regularly for a variety of prominent Christian and conservative websites and is the host of Inspiration from Zion, a popular webinar series and podcast. He can be reached at firstpersonisrael@gmail.com.