Gollywood? Gaza reveals starry-eyed plans for a studio city on its own sunset strip

Screenwriters should be lining up to option this unlikely tale. The Gaza Strip's isolated and cash-strapped Hamas rulers plan to build a $200 million media city and movie production house that will attract stars and tourists while it cements control of the territory it seized by force in June. Promoters will have to smuggle in start-up cash through underground tunnels from Egypt.

Much of the moonbat/wingnut Blogosphere already casts aspersions on "Pallywood", supposedly an organized cabal of Palestinian propagandists who stage bloody events with hirelings and circulate faked news footage aimed at gaining leftist sympathies. It's a perversion of the tiresome whining about how "the Jews own Hollywood."

Gollywood, if it ever gets off the ground, will surely be more entertaining than Pallywood, one hopes. Maybe the local directors can start off with surf flicks, after a recent donation of a dozen boards from an ageing Jewish doctor and surf enthusiast from California. Who's gonna make waves?

For action movies, there's always the IDF who can be relied on to provide special effects with the odd air strike or incursion. No need to fake a soundtrack of screams.

The Associated Press reports that

the Islamic group has raised only a tiny fraction of the money it needs for its own Hollywood, at a time when the Gaza economy has ground to a standstill and its people are struggling to feed themselves because of Israeli and international sanctions against Hamas.

Even so, Hamas envisions a glittering facility with production and graphics studios, satellite technology, gardens, water ponds, a children's entertainment area and an array of cafes and restaurants, said the Felasteen daily, a Hamas paper.

It will even feature mock towns and villages similar to those that Palestinians fled or were forced out after Israel's creation in 1948, the newspaper reported, quoting Fathi Hamad, a Hamas lawmaker and head of the project.

Hamad said the project's directors have raised $1 million, a small fraction of the $200 million price tag. He said he was confident the group could raise the rest from local donations and from Palestinians living abroad.

Hamas launched a satellite channel last year, offering bearded young men reading the news, and Islamic music layered over footage of masked militants firing rockets into Israel. Hamas loyalists also run at least five news Web sites, two newspapers and a radio station.

Some previous Hamas productions have generated unflattering headlines. In one show last year, a high-pitched Mickey Mouse lookalike called Farfour preached Islamic domination to children. After an international outcry, Hamas had the character killed off - by an actor playing an Israel security officer.
The mouse's replacement, a bee called Nahoul, was condemned by animal rights activists after the character swung cats by their tails to demonstrate how not to treat animals.

Hamas officials did not return phone calls seeking comment about the new media project.
Talal Okal, a Palestinian political writer close to Hamas, said finding the money would be difficult, but not impossible, because of Hamas' network of supporters in the Arab world.

He said the announcement was an important first step toward obtaining full control over the media. "Hamas realizes the importance of the media,'' Okal said.