The Depp-Heard trial is comparable to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where Amber Heard represents the “poor, helpless” Palestinians while Johnny Depp is the “aggressor and bully,” an American-Israeli journalist claimed Thursday in an exclusive interview with Breitbart.
According to Berlin-based Orit Arfa, Heard borrowed from the Palestinian playbook throughout the trial, playing the victim card in the Virginia courthouse in the way Palestinians do in the international court of opinion. Heard, like the Palestinian leadership, was much more interested in earning people’s sympathy than in sticking to the facts, Arfa said.
“She wanted to create a perception of truth, not tell the actual truth,” Arfa said. “She assumed that a left-wing media that was the driving force behind the #MeToo movement would automatically back her up. But she miscalculated.”
Arfa noted however, that some publications, including the Washington Post — which originally published the infamous oped that was the subject of the defamation trial — still chose to toe the #Metoo party line and believe Heard “simply because she is a woman.”
Comparing it to the “woke media” who always sides with the Palestinians no matter what, Arfa said: “The media does a lot of damage to the Palestinians by excusing their violent tantrums.”
“The media and leftwing NGOs fuel the #FreePalestine movement just like they do with the #MeToo movement,” she continued.
The carefully curated narrative of abuse that Heard and her lawyers attempted to convey was not unlike the David and Goliath story of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Arfa noted.
“Pro-Palestinian activists complain that Israel is strong and powerful. They have an army and the Palestinians just have rocks and low-grade rockets,” she said. “They try to tear Israel down by defaming it, for there is really no other way to take Israel down. It is a war of public opinion.”
Arfa went on to note that there “was an element of mutual abuse in Heard-Depp’s relationship.”
“At some point it allegedly became a ‘cycle of violence,’ which is the phrase often used to describe the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But I believe that Heard was the one that instigated the abuse against Depp, and he retaliated,” she said.
“While Israel’s handling of the Palestinians certainly can be faulted, overall, its actions are retaliatory against Palestinian attacks and terrorism,” she continued.
“The Palestinians don’t think of it that way, of course, because they see themselves as the weak ‘damsel in distress’ to the strong, patriarchal Israel,” she added.
Heard also tried to “bait” the media, much like the Palestinians do in the West Bank, Arfa claimed.
“She practically posed for the media, eager to portray herself as a victim of abuse,” Arfa said.
TMZ was famously tipped off about Heard’s court hearing to obtain a restraining order against Depp and arranged to snap pictures of the actress as she “stopped and turned and displayed her bruise,” a former employee of the gossip outlet testified during the trial.
Heard was caught lying about a back injury and about wearing non-existent makeup to cover bruises. Arfa compared Heard’s “theatrics” to “Pallywood,” a portmanteau of “Palestinian” and “Hollywood” that has come to refer to the media manipulation employed by Palestinians.
“Heard’s tactics were exactly those used by Palestinians who bait Israeli soldiers into compromising positions, invent fake injuries, or who doctor footage to make it look like the army is abusing the ‘poor Palestinians,'” she said.
“In the end, the court ruled that Depp was no more an abuser than Israel is an apartheid state. Depp’s other victory in this trial was breaking the media’s stronghold on false narratives,” she said. “Let’s hope Israel is taking notes.”
Prior to moving to Berlin, Arfa lived in a Jewish settlement in the West Bank to research her novels, The Settler and Underskin, which explore cross-political romantic relationships.