Image of Aladdin from the live action Disney movie “Aladdin.” Screenshot from the official trailer on Walt Disney Studios‘ YouTube channel. Fair use. This article was written by Zizi Shusha, and was originally published in Raseef22 on January 29, 2024. An edited version is republished on Global Voices as part of a content-sharing agreement. The ongoing Israeli war on Gaza has brought to light a number of complex questions that are likely to persist for years. Among these is the imagined image of the East and of the Arab people in the Western mind. In his Time Magazine article “Gaza and the End of Western Fantasy,” Bruno Maçães, former Secretary of State for European Affairs in Portugal, analyzes the war on Gazans through a political and cultural lens. He ultimately dismantles the Western fantasy of Arabs and the East, concluding that it is over. What is this Western fantasy, and what dangers does it pose to Arabs? To answer this question, we must explore the idea of the “Other.” Before the formation of the European continent, the idea of the Other did not exist in the way we now commonly understand it. According to Palestinian thinker Edward Said in his book “Orientalism,” Western thinkers believed that Western culture would gain more power and identity clarity by positioning itself in opposition to Arabs and the East. The Arab as the Other was particularly singled out in this regard. If Western power is derived from confrontation with the Other, then it is in Western interest to weaken, colonize, distort, and falsify the history and beliefs of the Other, ultimately stripping it of its humanity. Western fantasy has played a crucial role in distorting and falsifying the Arab individual and Arab culture. Hollywood has played the most dangerous role in cementing a horrific image of Arabs. Here, we explore the various images of Arabs in American cinema to reveal the many ways Arabs have been dehumanized by Western fantasy. Jack Shaheen was Arab American writer and lecturer specializing in addressing racial and ethnic stereotypes. Screenshot from “Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People Documentary” on Abe Berry's YouTube channel. Fair use. Jack Shaheen (1935—2017), a film critic of Arab origin from the United States, received a grant that enabled him to live in over 15 Arab cities in the 1980 and 1990s. On his way back to the US, he spoke of the terrible injustice towards the Arab people. He wondered how American cinema distorted these kind, peaceful people into savages? This is where the idea for his encyclopedic project about the evil image of Arabs in American cinema took shape in the book “Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People.” The Arabic translation was published in two parts by the National Center for Translation in Cairo. Shaheen spent many years of his life completing the book, in which he critiqued and analyzed over 900 American films from the silent cinema era to the age of films relying on sophisticated technologies. Out of all the films he reviewed, Shaheen was only able to reference twelve films that depicted Arab characters positively, while the overwhelming majority portrayed an extremely negative, barbaric, and aggressive image, considering the Arab individual as a source of threat. Hence, the Arab character warrants being killed without pity or mercy. According to Jack Shaheen, throughout history, film directors have labeled Arabs as hostile, savage, barbaric, and as religious fanatics obsessed with money. Culturally, Arabs represent the Other, responsible for terrorizing civilized Westerners, especially Christians and Jews. Despite the wars, the rises and falls of entire countries, and the cultural achievements related to freedoms and human rights that have taken place since 1986, according to Shaheen, “Hollywood’s caricature of the Arab has prowled the silver screen in search of prey. He is there to this day—repulsive and unrepresentative as ever.” The critic suggests that American directors did not create the stereotypical image of the Arab themselves, but rather inherited it from Europeans, who were the first to spread such caricatures of Arabs. Shaheen explains: In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, European artists and writers helped reduce the region to a colony. They presented images of desolate deserts, corrupt palaces, and slimy souks inhabited by the cultural other—the lazy, bearded heathen Arab Muslim. The writers’ stereotypical tales were inhabited with cheating vendors and exotic concubines held hostage in slave markets. Such portrayals of foreigners and barbarians oppressing and “subjugating harem maidens” were received by audiences as the truth, until the stereotypes became engraved in the Western mind and rooted in European popular culture.