Threat to Marlon Brando

As reported in The Jakarta Post on April 9, 1996, Marlon Brando, a famous Hollywood actor, was strongly criticized by the Jewish Defense League for denouncing Hollywood as a Jewish-run and Jewish-owned movie establishment that has exploited certain non-Jewish stereotypes for its own advantage. As an example, he pointed out that in Hollywood films one sometimes hears derogatory remarks such as "niggers" for Afro-Americans or "slit- eyed chinks" for Chinese and other orientals (and, I would add, epithets like "terrorists" or "stupid maniacs " for Arabs). On the other hand, Marlon Brando continued, one will never come across a Hollywood film in which a Jew is referred to as a "kike", a disparaging term originally used to describe lowly Jewish migrants, especially those originating from Eastern Europe.

As it turned out, however, his common sense suggestion that the Jewish-dominated Hollywood should be more considerate to the sensitivities of the other racial and ethnic groups so enraged the militant league mentioned above that it immediately accused him of being anti-Semitic and vowed to make the rest of his life "a living hell".

All this reminds me of the five letters I wrote to The Jakarta Post during the two-month polemic I had in April and May 1994 with eight or nine mostly expatriate writers regarding my call for the Indonesian government to ban Steven Spielberg's film Schindler's List. The similarity between Marlon Brando's case and mine, I think, lies in Hollywood's prejudice or lack of impartiality.

Whereas Marlon Brando charged that Hollywood is biased in allowing slighting comments about non-Jewish people while never allowing similar insults to Jews, I also complained about a similar lack of evenhandedness. I wrote that if Spielberg was really imbued with high universal values, as claimed by his admires, why did he, or Hollywood in general, make only films about the persecution of Jews (like that portrayed in Schindler's List) but never a similarly heartrending movie depicting the crimes committed by the Zionists against the Arabs?

How can a small and obsessed minority like the Jews in the United States (who constitute only 1.8 percent of the total population) terrorize anyone suspected or perceived to be its enemy with apparent impunity? Obviously, this tyranny of a minority is just as bad as the tyranny of the majority and should be eradicated anywhere in the world. In truth, this Jewish Defense League is very similar to the Zionist fanatics who simply had no compunction about killing all 254 Arabs in a Palestinian village in 1947, or massacring praying Moslems in a Hebron mosque in 1994, or even assassinating their own prime minister in 1995.

I sincerely sympathize with Marlon Brando for the threat being made on his life, particularly considering that he was only asking Hollywood to be more mindful of other people's sensitivities. I cannot help but feel that had I been famous like Marlon Brando, I would probably have been terrorized too by some crazy pro-Jewish fanatics for the many anti-Zionist statements I made in my letters two years ago.

MASLI ARMAN

Jakarta