Tuesday, January 15, 2013

And Mohamed al Durah begat Mohamed Merah…

Nidra Poller
The fabricated murder of Mohamed al Dura has not lost its sting. Produced and broadcast by state-owned France 2 TV on September 30, 2000, the staged scene of the “death of a Palestinian child targeted by Israeli gunfire” has replaced “Christ killer” as a founding myth for genocidal Jew hatred.
The latest act of revenge took place in Toulouse last March when the French-Algerian jihadi, Mohamed Merah, slew a young rabbi, Jonathan Sandler, his two sons Aryeh and Gavriel, and seven year-old Miriam Monsonego. Merah, who had previously murdered three French paratroopers and critically wounded a fourth, filmed his exploits with a camera strapped to his chest. After shooting Jonathan Sandler and his sons outside the school, Merah burst into the courtyard, chased after Miriam, grabbed her by the hair, and shot her in the head. Reports of this gesture, which provoked comparisons with Nazi killers, shocked decent people in France and beyond.

Subsequently we learned that Merah had concocted a video medley of dead Palestinian children (everyone is a film maker today) that served as an introduction and justification of his deed. According to my sources, the al Dura blood libel is featured in Merha’s rogue’s gallery of Israeli (= Jewish) crimes. A YouTube posting [i] identified as a video Merah sent to al Jazeera is recognizable as the original al Dura clip. The Dura-Merah connection is discussed in countless articles, videos, and debates; some denounce the al Dura hoax for incitement to genocidal Jew-hatred, others citing it as an explanation of Merah’s distress.
Another aspiring Jew-killer, Yann Nkusa, awaiting trial in the case of the homegrown “Cannes” jihad cell dismantled in October, reportedly treasured a medley of dead Palestinian children. For all we know, it might be the same one Merah used. Global media, too, are hooked on the child-killer drug. To illustrate Israeli atrocities during the Pillars of Defense operation in Gaza they recycled dead Syrian children, victims of domestic accidents and misfired Hamas rockets, and Hamas combatants transformed into innocent babes… Yes but, reasonable people will argue, children are killed in this war. True. Palestinians deliberately put children in harm’s way, zealously teach them to seek death as shahids, and use them as weapons in an aggressive war against Israel. Israeli soldiers do not deliberately kill children. The al Dura myth was crafted to prove they do.
Does this explain why Charles Enderlin and France 2 relentlessly pursue those who point out the obvious?  The “news report” is a fake. Philippe Karsenty, who has been going through the judicial wringer since 2005, will be back in Appellate Court on the 16th of January after his 2008 acquittal was overturned by the highest court. Why this merciless pursuit of an honest citizen who, in the words of Enderlin himself, was acquitted simply on the grounds of good faith? The court did not rule that the “news report” was a fake but only that the defendant had given proof of due diligence in criticizing a document that is, in fact, subject to doubt.
As Merah’s killing spree reminds us, the al Dura myth is fuel for genocidal Jew hatred. Is that what they want? The courts that rule with cockeyed values, the French journalists lined up like wooden soldiers in defense of comrade Enderlin, the commentators worldwide who defend a crudely staged report without ever bothering to delve into the facts? Does it explain why, despite conclusive evidence that the scene was staged, the al Dura myth stands its ground and continues to do its heinous damage?
The journalists, the judges, the commentators, and the variously duped don’t have to be anti-Semites. Then, why would they cling to a tainted object that repeatedly and verifiably provokes murderous attacks—that they declare to be unacceptable—against Jews? The sole function of the al Dura myth is to establish quintessential Jewish guilt… so that, when the genocide gets under way, it will be the fault of the victims, Israelis in particular and Jews in general… and, beyond that, our Western world.
. The France 2 cameraman Talal Abu Rahma, who won a slew of prizes for his handiwork, reports that Mohamed al Dura and his father Jamal were pinned down by Israeli gunfire for 45 minutes. No crossfire. Israeli soldiers, he declares, mercilessly fired military weapons at an unarmed sitting target for 45 minutes, critically wounding the father, until they finally managed to kill the child. The incident was so crucial for what would follow—in fact, a Palestinian jihad operation peddled as an intifada—that the self-defined seasoned war reporter testified the next day under oath to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights: Israeli soldiers committed cold-blooded murder. Before his eyes.
Unfortunately he was not able to capture any of it on film.
There is nothing about the al Dura scene that isn’t grotesque, ludicrous, and slipshod. The 55-second video- shot heard round the world bears no resemblance to news: six slivers of sloppily filmed and mounted footage form the kernel of an enveloping narrative--too long and winding to be summarized here-- that collapses from the first line. The cameraman, the surviving “victim,” and the France 2 Jerusalem correspondent, Charles Enderlin, who packaged the whole thing, alternatively show, hide, swear on, withdraw and multiply details, adapting the truth to the circumstances. And the slick card sharks have been getting away with it for eleven years!
In a feat of counter-engineering, the construction is sustained by the weight of the accusation—Jews are merciless child-killers—not by any concrete evidence. This is why the impossible 45-minutes of gunfire aimed at the innocent victims is inextricably joined to the narrative and why so many commentators choose to ignore it. One single detail proves the whole thing is false. But if it is false, what else falls apart? The intifada, for example. Just this week Suha Arafat calmly explained how her late husband Yasser planned the intifada after the failure of the Camp David talks that summer. So, the “intifada” wasn’t triggered by Ariel Sharon’s “provocative” visit to the Temple Mount. But it was deliberately sparked by the staged “death” of Mohamed al Dura. Notice the resemblance with the September 11th anniversary attack on the US outpost in Benghazi. There, too, a narrative of a spontaneous popular protest against an insult to Islam was concocted to cover for a jihad operation. And look how far we have come: it is the U.S. government that peddled the narrative!
How is it possible to lie blatantly in full view of the information-flush 21st century? How can Charles Enderlin persist in accusing Israeli soldiers of concentrating their gunfire on a Palestinian boy for 45 minutes when the al Dura video has been dissected millimeter by millimeter revealing that it is full of faked sound and fury? Who sent Susan Rice network-hopping to prattle about the disgraceful anti-Islamic video that triggered the protests that degenerated into violence that led to the unfortunate demise of Ambassador Stevens? The president put it clearly: the future does not belong to those who diss’ the prophet.  Videos of the battered ambassador dragged through the streets were circulating widely as Secretary Clinton puckered her dimples and thanked the courageous Libyans who tried to rescue our ambassador.
From Netzarim Junction in the Gaza Strip to Benghazi in an Arab Springtime’d Libya we see the same stubborn determination to confuse our citizens and disguise the nature of the war being waged against us. One year after Israel was attacked by the fabricated child martyr, on 9/11/01, the United States was attacked by civilian airplanes turned into weapons.
What, then, can we expect from the French judges convened to rule, once more, on the narrow issue of defamation in the Karsenty case?  One more show trial? Or an honorable prise de conscience of their responsibility?


Nidra Poller

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