Raging Against Censorship

THE Palestinian uprising in the West Bank and Gaza Strip can not merely be summed up as a conflict between Arab and Jew, Palestinian and Israeli. So, when director Jo Franklin-Trout traveled to that war-torn area to present one of those sides in her documentary "Days of Rage: The Young Palestinians," she did not hope to achieve balance. Her goal was to present a view, however one-sided, and to present it accurately.

But accuracy is barely an issue concerning her documentary. For she, as well as PBS viewers, have been notified an American screening of "Days of Rage" has once again been postponed.

WNYC, the New York station that at first had agreed to sponsor it, has now decided not to air it. And although another station has promised to show the documentary sometime in the fall, that will be nearly a year after the film's completion.

WHAT did Trout do to have it removed from the airwaves? The TV critics who have seen it say that she has documented the life stories of the young Palestinians, growing up in borrowed land, growing up as non-citizens. It is apparently a violent and less-than-pretty portrait of Israeli rule. This is a story about Palestinian victims and Israeli violence against them.

Chloe Aaron, the WNYC executive who decided to drop the program, condemns the film because it "makes no mention of how the Jews got to Israel, no mention of the Holocaust, no mention of how the Palestinians treated the Jews nor how Arabs treated the Palestinians." But Trout is not responsible for reporting what happened in the past here; she is just documenting a side of the present situation.

Aaron is throwing the intricacies of this political conflict into what is simply an expression of free speech. She calls the film a "pure propaganda piece that I'd compare to Leni Riedfenstahl's `Triumph of the Will,'" a 1930's film that attempts to glorify Adolf Hitler.

The analogy is so loaded that it makes one wonder the intentions of her censorship. It's the same political argument behind claims that any criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic, that any condemnation of that nation is comparable to Hitler's treatment of the Jews. These arguments are irrational; they trap Israel in its history, rather than allowing it to criticize itself and change.

The Palestinian uprising is now 18 months old. It is a stain on a country whose existence is grounded in protection against totalitarian abuse. If the case for "Rage" is right, then we could all learn something from the public viewing of the film.

The issue here, however, is not the Palestinian uprising. The dilemma surrounding "Rage" is about our freedoms to express and hear what indeed might be inane, might be unbalanced, might even be wrong. That we may be offended is merely the price we pay for having freedom of expression.

LESS than four months ago, students, writers and politicians stood up to terrorist tactics of censorship when the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini condemned Salman Rushdie's book The Satanic Verses. Our nation criticized publishers who bowed to the pressure to keep the book off their shelves.

And last year, many were appalled when some Christians attempted to put a boycott on The Last Temptation of Christ because it offended some fundamentalists for its depiction of Jesus.

The pressure to keep "Days of Rage" from appearing on TV may not be so overt. In fact, it is unclear that there is any direct pressure on PBS, except its apprehension that the documentary may offend potential subscribers.

If "Days of Rage" airs, Jews may be as upset by it as Muslims and Christians were by Satanic Verses and Last Temptation. That should not matter. Let "Rage" air because only then can we know what it is about and judge it.

Our defenses of freedom of expression should not be selective. We should defend the speech that offends as well as compliments, no matter the medium in which it appears.

Documentary film is vivid, emotional and personal. "Days of Rage" is no doubt going to move people; films have that tendency. But to claim that any controversial piece of expressive work is propaganda and, therefore, censorable is simply wrong.