The
supposed death of 12 year old Mohammed Al Dura on September 30, 2000,
captured in the famous video that showed him clinging to his father in
terror at the Netzarim junction in the Gaza Strip as Israeli soldiers
shot them both, has become the enduring image of the Second Intifada
launched by Arafat--which was in part justified by that image in the
world's media.
Unlike
many of the gray area incidents that propel world events, this one has
the clarity of an old-fashioned Western: there are white hats, black
hats and--an addition to the standard formula-- dunce caps.
Black Hats
First
in line are the Arabs who staged the fake atrocity and the Arab
cameraman working for France 2 who took the video and vouched for its
accuracy. It's hard to get too worked up about them--this is what
Arabs do. It's up to those to whom they feed this material to be wary
and if they are taken in, to correct their mistake as soon as they
discover it--and fire those who mislead them.
Much
more serious is the behavior of Charles Enderlin, the "respected"
journalist who was bureau chief for France 2 in Israel, and that of
France 2 itself, one of the three stations constituting publicly owned
France Television, meaning that the government bears ultimate
responsibility for what it broadcasts. Born in France, Enderlin moved
to Israel at the age of 22, served in the Israeli army, later taking
Israeli citizenship. He is one of those quondam Israelis whose
attachment to Israel is supposedly attested by the vigor of his
criticism of it. (His 2003 book Shattered Dreams blamed
Israel for Oslo's failure.) Enderlin, who provided the dramatic
narration for the video clip, may have been initially taken in by his
cameraman--Enderlin was in Ramallah, not on the scene--but soon enough
had to realize he was dealing with phony footage and dug in,
misrepresenting the footage and clinging to the story.
The
struggle to bring out the truth has become identified with the name of
Philippe Karsenty who has been engaged in a court battle over the story
for the last nine years. But it should be remembered that in 2005 Nidra
Poller wrote an article about the case in Commentary which
didn't even mention Karsenty, yet was already able to document major
holes in the story. Poller herself had not then seen the France 2
cameraman's raw rushes, but she had seen the outtakes of Reuters and AP
cameramen who had been filming at the same place at the same time.
Poller
writes: "Palestinian stringers sporting prestigious logos on their
vests and cameras are seen filming battle scenes staged behind the
abandoned factory, well out of range of Israeli gunfire. The 'wounded'
sail through the air like modern dancers and then suddenly collapse.
Cameramen jockey with hysterical youths who pounce on the 'casualties,'
pushing and shoving, howling Allahu akbar,
clumsily grabbing the 'injured'....Split seconds of these ludicrous
vignettes would later appear in newscasts and special reports; the raw
footage that would reveal the fakery had been removed."
In
the same article Poller wrote that France 2 had permitted three
high-power journalists to review their raw rushes, 27 minutes of them.
Two of them wrote an op-ed in Le Figaro revealing
that Enderlin was caught out in a bald-faced lie (they put it more
delicately). On October 25, 2000 Enderlin had given an interview to the
French magazine Telerama in
which he said: "I cut the images of the child's agony [death throes],
they were unbearable." The op ed pointed out the agony had not been
edited out, "it simply did not exist."
Nothing
existed to bear out the France 2 story. Enderlin's description of the
raw rushes was as much a fantasy as the staged footage for which his
cameraman would reap a slew of international awards.
But
instead of acknowledging error, France 2 circled the wagons. Indeed,
in the name of "French honor," the entire French media and political
establishment circled the wagons. While the al Dura case is customarily
referred to by its critics as a blood libel, the parallels to the
Dreyfus case are equally compelling. Then it was French military honor,
now French media honor that was at stake. The parallel to the second
trial of Dreyfus, five years after the first, is especially striking.
By that time it took the most determined willful blindness not to know
that Dreyfus had been blamed for the crimes of Esterhazy, yet Dreyfus
was again condemned. This time, with Israel in the dock, French
behavior is in some ways even worse. At least in the Dreyfus case the
French intellectual and political class split, with large numbers
rallying around Dreyfus. In the al Dura case, the establishment has
rallied so solidly behind Enderlin that most of the small minority of
Frenchmen well-informed enough to be familiar with the controversy
relegate it to a few "nutcases."
The
reaction to the 2008 court decision in Karsenty's favor is
instructive. The Paris Court of Appeal--which to France 2's dismay had
demanded to see the original raw footage--ruled that Karsenty was
within his rights to call the al Dura video a hoax, overturning a 2006
decision that had found him guilty of defaming the network and
Enderlin. The footage was key. The only shot in it relating to the al
Dura tale that had not been aired showed the boy, after being pronounced
dead, lifting his head, looking around, moving his leg and shielding
his eyes from the sun. Even without the footage, the video's
absurdities were obvious--supposedly blasted with high velocity bullets,
the bodies of father and son showed no trace of blood. (It should be
noted that the supposed "hard" evidence of al Dura's death, the body of a
boy brought that day to Shifa Hospital in Gaza, was "soft" to put it
mildly. One doctor at the hospital said he was brought in at eleven in
the morning, another at one in the afternoon. The al Dura incident
occurred at 3 p.m. Moreover photos showed this was clearly a different
boy. )
In less than a week, French journalist Anne Elizabeth Moutet reports, Le Nouvel Observateur, France's
chief left-wing newsweekly, had whipped up a petition going all out for
Enderlin and France 2. The petition called Karsenty's solidly
documented case a "seven year hate filled smear campaign" and expressed
shock at a legal ruling "granting equal credibility to a journalist
renowned for his rigorous work and to willful deniers ignorant of the
local realities and with no journalistic experience." Three hundred of
France's leading journalists signed on followed by six hundred assorted
"celebrity intellectuals."
Moutet,
who was friendly with a number of those listed on the petition, called
them up to ask why they had signed. Most were quick to hang up on her,
but of those willing to talk, none gave as their reason belief in the
validity of the al Dura video. The dominant response was a version of
"I was asked to. It was to support Charles." In other words, the guild
calls, the truth be damned. Perhaps the most remarkable answer came
from a former head of CRIF, the official umbrella representative body of
French Jews. (The current head has been supportive of Karsenty.)
Pressed as to why he signed he replied: "I haven't read this petition. I
have macular retinal degeneration. I can no longer read."
As
for the French government, clearly to signify support for the al Dura
story, in 2009 Minister of Foreign Affairs Bernard Kouchner awarded
Enderlin France's highest award, the Legion of Honor.
The
most recent court decision, earlier this year, has gone against
Karsenty. France 2 appealed the 2008 decision to the Supreme Court
which ruled the Paris Court of Appeals should not have demanded to see
the raw rushes. To get at the truth was apparently not the sort of
thing the Supreme Court thought a judge was supposed to do. Nor was
truth a defense. The Supreme Court sent the case back to be heard by a
new panel of judges where Karsenty (without benefit of the footage)
would not only have to show Enderlin and France 2 had perpetrated fraud
but also that he had the evidence to prove it when he first denounced
the video (i.e. before he had seen the raw footage which made the fraud
incontrovertible). In the ensuing trial, the Avocate Generale, an
independent figure in the French judicial system, reminded the judges
that the truth of the al Dura story was not the issue. Mr. Bumble's
remark in Oliver Twist, "The
law is a ass" is tailor made for French libel rules. And indeed the
new panel found Karsenty lacked sufficient evidence for his charge of
fraud at the time he first made it and so was guilty of defamation. The
court fined him 8000 euros ($14,000).
No
one reads the Paris court's (absurd) justification for its decision.
What matters is that France 2 and Enderlin can claim vindication since
Karsenty was found guilty of defamation. Karsenty plans to appeal, and
the case can go on indefinitely, bouncing yo-yo like from court to court
as did Jarndyce versus Jarndyce in Bleak House, a case that had gone on for so many generations Dickens tells us, that no man alive knew what it meant.
Dunce Caps
The tallest dunce cap sits squarely on the head of the Israeli government.
The
al Dura video quickly went round the world, immensely damaging Israel's
reputation. For forty five minutes according to the cameraman's story,
Israeli soldiers had shot at the terrified cowering boy and his
father. Yet Israel, rather than immediately investigate this unlikely
tale, apologized, in effect authenticating it. Israeli physicist Nahum
Shahaf smelled a rat and approached Major General Yom Tov Sarnia, the
commanding officer in the Netzarim area, who was convinced his soldiers
had not shot the boy. Sarnia put Shahaf in charge of an
investigation which reconstructed the incident and concluded that given
where the two were crouching, the bullets could not have come from the
Israeli position.
After
this, incredibly, Israel not only remained silent as the al Dura story
became the impetus for terror against Jews and Israel worldwide but also
undercut the efforts of Karsenty to bring the truth to light. Al
Dura's death scene was on posters, murals, even postage stamps. The
killers who beheaded Daniel Pearl on video had the image of al Dura and
his father displayed behind them. Streets and schools were named after
him. Bin Laden cited al Dura in a recruitment video. Palestinian TV
carried endless spots urging children to follow him to Paradise as jihad
martyrs. The story, endorsed as fact by Amnesty International and
Human Rights Watch (both of which have rarely, if ever, encountered an
anti-Israel story they did not believe), was influential in the
international campaign to delegitimize the state, starting with the UN's
Durban race conference in 2001. Post al Dura, comparison of Israel to
Nazi Germany became routine. French journalist Catherine Nay
proclaimed: "The death of Muhammad cancels out, erases that of the
Jewish child, his hands in the air from the SS in the Warsaw Ghetto."
Yet
far from supporting Karsenty's efforts, the Israel establishment
blamed him for keeping the story alive. After Karsenty's 2008 victory,
one disgusted Wall Street Journal reader
complained that Israel's main Foreign ministry site had only a few
scattered references and there was nothing on its English and French
sites on the story. Karsenty reports that following his victory the
spokesman for Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs declared in an
interview that no one had asked Karsenty to take on the issue, it was an
internal French affair and his work was counterproductive. In fact,
the strongest argument France 2 had for the validity of its story was
Israeli government silence. Enderlin kept stressing that no Israeli
authority had ever questioned the authenticity of France 2's September
30, 2000 broadcast. And his argument was persuasive even to many of
Israel's supporters--if the story was a hoax surely Israel would be the
first to vigorously press the case.
Shmuel
Katz used to rant about the failures of Israeli information policy (he
had wanted to take it over in a special ministry, but Begin backtracked
on his promise, instead turning information policy over to Moshe
Dayan's hopeless Foreign Ministry). Israel's handling of the al Dura
case reveals all the worst traits--ignorance, arrogance, stupidity--that
Katz pinpointed in those supposed to present Israel's case to the
world.
Prime
Minister Netanyahu finally set up a panel to investigate the al Dura
case in September 2012. The findings of the so-called Kuperwasser Report
were published in May 2013. Karsenty believes what made Israel act
(twelve years after the fact) was the Toulouse massacre in March of
2012 in which Mohamed Merah, seeking, so he said, to avenge the death
of "Palestinian children" at Israel's hands, murdered three children and
a rabbi (the father of two of them) at a Jewish day school. No
surprise, the Kuperwasser Report concluded the video was a hoax and the
boy was not harmed. What was interesting was the reaction of France 2
and Enderlin who demonstrated their chutzpah--and contempt for
Israel--by threatening to sue both Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon and
Strategic and Intelligence Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz (who had
overseen the investigation) if they were not given all documents
pertaining to it. France 2 and Enderlin claimed the panel had
"disregarded all basic rules of justice" in giving them no opportunity
to present their version of events.
No
doubt to the surprise of the "injured party" --as Enderlin and France 2
styled themselves-- Israel, rather than roll over, struck back. The
legal advisor to Netanyahu's office listed six requests by Israel for
input on the case from France 2, all of which had been ignored. She
wrote: "There emerges a pattern of repeatedly complaining that your
positions are not heard, while ignoring all requests made to you to
receive the materials that you say your clients are not getting the
opportunity to display."
Dunce
caps also go to the American Jewish Committee and many leading French
Jews. The American Jewish Committee, which has offices in France, and,
Karsenty says, a great deal of credibility there, seriously damaged his
efforts by supporting France 2. Jews have a prominent role in French
media and many of those "news professionals" who signed Le Nouvel Observateur's
2008 pro-Enderlin petition were Jews. Silence was a form of
complicity. It was understandable if many high profile French Jewish
intellectuals (Alain Finkielkraut was an honorable exception) did not
want to bring the wrath of the media and political establishment upon
themselves, but their silence made it easier to isolate those who took
up cudgels against the al Dura hoax, to portray them as equivalent to
Holocaust deniers and "truthers" who claim the U.S. government was
behind the destruction of the Twin Towers.
White Hats
Karsenty is Gary Cooper in this High Noon,
riding out against the black hats while most of those who benefit from
his doing so scurry for cover, and only a very few give him support.
Professor Richard Landes, an expert on millennial movements, and one of
those supportive few, says Enderlin and France 2 made their big mistake
when they took on Karsenty. As we noted earlier, he was not among the
first to publicize problems with the Dura video. We mentioned Nahum
Shahaf. German television producer Esther Schapira made a documentary
on the al Dura affair in 2002. Both Shahaf and Schapira confined
themselves to showing that Israel could not have been responsible for
the boy's death; whatever their suspicions, they had not charged al
Dura's death was made up of whole cloth. Karsenty also learned from the
experience of French film maker Pierre Rehov. Rehov brought suit
against France 2 for defamation and the suit was dismissed within
weeks. Realizing he had no "standing" to sue France 2 under French
law, Karsenty decided to make France 2 sue him. He wrote several
articles on his internet site calling the al Dura video a "media hoax"
and demanding that Enderlin and Arlette Chabot, then director of
information at France 2, be fired. They rose to the bait and sued.
To
their chagrin, when Karsenty lost the first suit in 2006, he did not go
away. He appealed. Without his dogged pursuit of the case there is
little question that Enderlin and France 2's blood libel would have
stood as fact. The case (Karsenty says he naively thought the truth
would be established in court in a matter of months) has taken over his
life. His goal, he says, is to make the French government
acknowledge the fraud. It took 12 years for Dreyfus to be
rehabilitated, his rank restored. It is already 13 years that France
has stubbornly hung on to the al Dura fraud so justice in this case
will clearly take longer. But Karsenty is sure the day will come, the
truth will out.
What are the broader lessons of al Dura?
1.
Respond, don't duck for cover. The Kuperwasser report implicitly
criticizes the Israeli government's behavior in the case. It urges that
in future inflammatory claims be investigated immediately and the
results made public.
2.
Media executives must be held to account to enforce their own
(disregarded) ethical rules to prevent dissemination of disinformation
by their journalists. Richard Landes (whose website Second Draft provides
a complete archive of the al Dura case) describes being appalled when
he first watched the raw footage of al Dura at France 2's studio in
Jerusalem in company with Enderlin in 2003. (Enderlin had assumed
Landes was on his side because he had been recommended to him by a
mutual friend). When Landes said "Everything seems staged, " Enderlin
replied "Oh they do that all the time." Landes says: "Walking out of
his office that Friday afternoon, I was in a state of shock. 'Oh my
God,' I thought, 'they do it all the time...and the Western journalists
just use the most believable seconds to run as news. It's a national
industry!'" Landes coined the term Pallywood to describe the national
Palestinian film industry that produces staged news footage for
complicit journalists.
The
media will not reform without significant outside pressure. Landes
says he went to ABC, PBS, the Boston Globe, and got nowhere. He was
told "they couldn't just do a program on this, they'd have to balance it
with something the Israelis staged." When Landes responded "And if you
can't find a case of Israeli staging?" the reply was "Then we wouldn't
do it." One person at ABC told Landes "I don't know how much appetite
there is for this." Given the extensive use of Pallywood material,
which is edited by supposedly reputable journalists to look more
plausible and then shoveled out to unknowing international audiences on
world media, the appetite within the media is small indeed.
3. There must be moral reform of intellectual elites. It is hard to disagree with the assessment of theAlgemeiner newspaper
that the French intelligentsia is in complete cognitive (and moral)
disarray. For it must be remembered that at the same time that it
buries the truth about al Dura, it celebrates some of the ugliestjihadis on the planet as heroes and martyrs, with the famed Jeu de Paume museum,
to take but one example, showcasing a photographic exhibition
portraying the murderers of Jewish children as heroic martyrs.
The
moral disarray of elites is by no means confined to France. And
obviously it's a lot harder to achieve moral regeneration than to
implement the other recommendations. But if it does not occur, no other
reforms will help.
Rael
Jean Isaac is the co-author (with Virginia Armat) of Madness in the
Streets: How Psychiatry and the Law Abandoned the Mentally Ill (The Free
Press)
·
--
Yisrael Medad
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