BEIRUT — Militants carrying assault weapons clear the area around a street, shouting in Arabic for people to get out of the way. A jeep pulls up: The world’s No. 1 jihadi has arrived for a meeting with top Hezbollah commanders. On rooftops, U.S. snipers crouch unseen, the kingpin in their crosshairs at last.
The scene, from a recent episode of the hit U.S. Showtime series “Homeland,” is supposed to be Beirut. But it really is in Israel, a country similar enough in some areas to stand in for Lebanon, yet a world away in most other respects.
The show about Arab terrorists and American turncoats inadvertently has become a tale of two cities. Some Beirutis are angry because the depiction of their city as swarming with militiamen is misleading and because they see Israel as the enemy. And in Israel, some are peeved that Haifa and even Tel Aviv — a self-styled nightlife capital and high-tech hub — apparently appear, to outsiders at least, to be Middle Eastern after all.
Lebanese Tourism Minister Fadi Abboud told The Associated Press on Thursday that he’s so upset about the portrayal of Beirut that he’s considering a lawsuit.
“The information minister is studying media laws to see what can be done,” he said.
Mr. Abboud pointed to the scene with the snipers. Hamra Street in West Beirut is portrayed as a hotbed of violence, but it actually is a lively neighborhood packed with cafes, book shops and pubs.
“It showed Hamra Street with militia roaming in it. This does not reflect reality,” he said. “It was not filmed in Beirut and does not portray the real image of Beirut.”
Twentieth Century Fox Television refused to comment.
Several Lebanese interviewed by the AP said they have never heard of the show. When a reporter described the plot and said it was shot in Israel, the reactions ranged from anger to blithe acceptance that filmmaking is an imperfect art.
But Ghada Jaber, a 60-year-old housewife, said Israel should never stand in for Lebanon.
“It is very insulting,” she said as she walked along Hamra Street. “Israel destroyed our country. Israel invaded and occupied our country.”
“Homeland,” based on the Israeli series “Prisoners of War,” is about a U.S. Marine named Nick Brody who was a POW for years in the Middle East. The federal government and the public see Brody as a war hero, but a CIA operative played by Claire Danes believes he was turned by the enemy and is now a threat to the U.S.
The second season began last month, and some of the urban scenes are shot in Tel Aviv, the Israeli metropolis about 150 miles south of Beirut. Jaffa, a popular mixed Jewish and Arab neighborhood of Tel Aviv, was an Arab town before Israel gained independence in 1948, and its Levantine architecture, mosques and minarets, situated along the Mediterranean, allowed the creators of “Homeland” to present a plausible version of Beirut.
To the average viewer, the Beirut scenes may appear authentic. To the discerning viewer, however, hints of Israel are everywhere: cars with blurred yellow Israeli license plates, red-and-white curbs that designate no-parking zones, an Israeli-style traffic circle, and a well-known minaret and clock tower in Jaffa.
The reactions to the show in Lebanon and Israel reflect the tremendous divergence of narratives between the two peoples — each seeing the other as aggressor, each seeing itself as a victim.
Many Lebanese cannot forget the massive destruction Israel inflicted on Beirut during a 1982 invasion when it succeeded in routing the Palestine Liberation Organization from the country. They resent the 18-year occupation of south Lebanon that followed.
But to Israel, Lebanon has been a perennial staging ground for missile strikes and other attacks on Israel, more than justifying the massive Israeli operations there that have occurred in every decade since the 1970s.
Nir Rubinstein, an Israeli Internet developer who fought in Beirut as a young soldier 30 years ago, said he understood the Lebanese anger, but also how Israelis might be insulted as well.
“This sort of diminishes Tel Aviv and Jaffa, which are more modern than Beirut,” said Mr. Rubinstein, speaking for a generation of Tel Aviv residents who are aggressively proud of their city — a densely populated urban area of some 2.5 million people with a standard of living that rivals most places in Europe, a world-class tech industry and a raucous nightlife.
Beirut itself has developed impressively in the two decades since its 15-year civil war ended, and its growing renown as a party city in its own right — the most liberal and fun-loving of major Arab cities — is a source of some fascination to Israelis who are barred from going there.
But the portrayal of Lebanon as swarming with guns is hardly unreasonable nonetheless.
The country has dozens of armed militias that still flourish, and many private individuals have weapons in their homes, including hunting rifles, guns and even rocket-propelled grenade launchers.
• AP writer Lauren E. Bohn in Tel Aviv contributed to this report.
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