"In 1938, Chamberlain bought time to rearm. In 2013, Obama gives Iran time to go nuclear. To adapt Churchill : Never in the field of global diplomacy has so much been given away by so many for so little." -Bret Stephens "Worse than Munich" column in the Wall St. Journal
In addressing a Zionist banquet by StandWithUs in Los Angeles on Sunday, 8 December, Mr. Stephens augmented this theory, echoed by other experts. Listen to the speech audio here. Transcript for 2nd half of the speech appears here on JewTube.Info:
"Now, it will come as no surprise to anyone that I want to spend most of my time tonight talking about Iran, but I think that it is also fitting feel that I should begin by speaking about Nelson Mandela and the meaning of his legacy and its meaning for us as Americans- for us as Jews.
"In the 1980s there was a sharp debate in this country about how the United States ought best to deal with the apartheid regime in South Africa. On one side there were those who argued, this was the Regan administration, that the best way to deal with the apartheid regime was through a process of 'engagement'- critical engagement but engagement. The argument that the administration made was that sanctions will only hurt ordinary people, above all ordinary black people in South Africa, and furthermore that South Africa for all its obvious moral failings, was none the less a critical strategic partner for the United States and so that the were interests beyond morality- that there were interest of "real politik" in maintaining an alliance of sorts with that regime. On the other side of the argument there was a bi-partisan coalition that ranged from Bob Dole to Lowell Weicker, to Ted Kennedy, who thought that the best approach to the apartheid regime was also the most moral one- that is, a punitive regime(n) of economic and diplomatic sanctions that would show South Africa's white rulers that they would not be allowed to profit from their rule and that the only road to redemption was to eliminate their repressive system and let the people, all of the people, rule.
Al Jazeera America: What influence is Qatar's emir spending $500 million to effect within America? The British-accented, Al Jazeera English satellite news channel, met with limited reception by US pay-TV subscribers, will be superseded in North America by a new, American-based (but still Qatar-monarchy owned) Al Jazeera America news channel. Al Jazeera America will be ushered into American cable and satellite homes over the channel formerly known as CurrentTV beginning August 20, 2013. Tony Fox, Al Jazeera's public communications chief (formerly with Comedy Central), gives us the lowdown on how vast the news channel's American operation will be - and what independence will this channel have from the sharia-governing owner, Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Thamer Al Thani. The channel has hired familiar, chief business correspondent with CNN, Ali Velshi, to be the familiar public face to help streamline acceptance of channel-viewing into American homes. Mr. Velshi explained his perspectives on the channel's role in the American media landscape to DemoCast at the National Cable Television Association convention in Washington D.C. on June 10th. s The Qatari Emir, though also professing a hands-off approach towards editorial in Al Jazzera English, has been criticized for influencing it. In one case, it resulted in the replacement of it's long-time Director-General by a man with no background in journalism, according to the Britain's The Guardian newspaper published 30 Sept'12:
"Al-Jazeera English was set up in 2006 by the Arabic broadcaster of the same name and both are owned by the Qatari state. The network, founded in 1996, gained credibility with audiences in the region for its seemingly independent coverage in the post 9/11 period. Its English channel was launched to offer an alternative, non-western-centric worldview. However, in recent years, Qatar has taken steps to consolidate its control over the channel as the country seeks greater political influence in the Gulf. In September 2011, Wadah Khanfar, a Palestinian widely seen as independent, suddenly left as director-general after eight years in the post and was replaced by a member of the royal family, Sheikh Ahmed bin Jassim al-Thani, a man with no background in journalism. In his resignation letter, Khanfar said, after noting that the channel had been criticised by Donald Rumsfeld and hailed by Hillary Clinton, that "al-Jazeera is still independent and its integral coverage has not changed".
Makor Rishon, a right-wing newspaper which is mostly available online outside Judea and Samaria, is running a war games scenario in Thursday's editions. They have some pretty impressive participants. The premise is that the attack will take place on October 15-16, and that Obama will protest and then go silent. The scenarios include an attack downing an Israeli civilian jet liner, Israel deciding not to attack Lebanon or Gaza, despite being bombarded with missiles by Hezbullah, but the nuclear facilities are... well, all I can tell you is that there are pictures of them burning on CNN. Let's go to the videotape, which is - unfortunately for many of you - mostly in Hebrew.
Palestinian "armed-struggle" shows no sign of relenting against Israel's moral code.
Sober criticism from analysts around the world: The Infernal Choice by Melanie Philips in the Daily Mail (UK)
An obscene moral equivalence has been established by this deal between the innocent and the guilty. This equivalence is being played out in the coverage which describes the deal as a ‘prisoner swap’ or ‘prisoner exchange’ – more than 1000 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails for one Israeli prisoner held by Hamas. But Shalit was a hostage, kidnapped in an act of illegal aggression by an organisation whose aim is the destruction of Israel and which allowed him not one visit by the Red Cross during his five year incarceration.
By contrast, the released Palestinians have not just been tried and punished according to due process of law, but include among their number not just those who have committed some of the worst terrorist atrocities in Israel’s history – such as the blowing up of Sbarro’s pizza restaurant in Jerusalem, where 16 people were murdered including five members of the Schijveschuurder family -- but even worse, some of the masterminds behind such atrocities.
Gilad reunited with father Noam Shalit at Tel Nof Air Base
The equivalence being drawn in the coverage of this deal reflects in turn the morally bankrupt ‘tit-for-tat’ analysis of the Arab war against Israel employed by so many in Britain and the west. For whenever Israel points out that any military action against the Palestinians is only in response to Palestinian attacks, many in Britain claim that those Palestinian attacks were only in response to previous Israeli attacks. Thus Israel is always painted as the ultimate aggressor.
This is entirely false. From the moment Israel was re-established in 1948, it has only ever launched military operations against the Arabs in response to actual or imminent Arab attacks. Yet many in Britain refuse to acknowledge the difference between murderous aggression and the defence against it.
They refuse to acknowledge that Hamas sets out to murder as many young Israelis as possible, whereas Israel goes to great lengths (not always successfully) to avoid civilian casualties. They refuse to acknowledge that the aim of every single military operation by Israel in Gaza is to defend and protect itself against attack by a fanatically Jew-hating enemy pledged not only to destroy Israel but to wipe out every single Jew on earth.
The refusal to acknowledge this crucial moral difference has meant that many in Britain and the west view Israel as the aggressor in the conflict, and the victimisation of Israelis is largely glossed over. So just as the anguish of Israeli terror victims’ families over the Shalit deal has been minimised by the media coverage – particularly in Israel itself, which reflects the malign nature of its own left-wing media class -- so the anguish of Israel itself as a state under permanent existential siege is routinely ignored, and Israel instead grotesquely portrayed as the aggressor in the region. . . .
What too many in Britain and the west still don’t understand is that what Israel is up against is what Britain and the west are now up against – not a violent campaign by people fighting for a state of their own but an Islamist cult of death, in which the murder of innocents is a cause for exultation and mass killers are lionised as heroes and religious martyrs, not just by Hamas but by the Fatah leadership in the West Bank too.
The five-year Shalit drama and its disturbing resolution have therefore come to symbolise the toxic cocktail of ignorance, misunderstanding, naivety, malice, cowardice, cynicism, incompetence and moral muddle by the so-called civilised world – including Israel itself -- that has actually served to perpetuate the Middle East impasse.
No decent person can fail to be moved by the return of Gilad Shalit to Israel. Few eyes will have been dry at his reunion with his family. Yet it has to be said that ultimately, this deal represents a triumph of heart over head and sentimentality over realism. . . .
Israel is now trapped between Hamas, Fatah, Hezbollah, Iran, Syria, Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea – and yet is blamed for preventing peace by building apartments in the suburbs of Jerusalem. The infernal choice it was forced to make over Gilad Shalit was thus but the latest and most dramatic example of how the West has abandoned Israel to swing in the wind. Read it all
The National Review Online published this analysis by Holocaust expert, Giulio Meotti
Israelis rallied to leaders to free kidnapped Gilad Shalit
(Photo courtesy: San Francisco Sentinel 12/21/09)
Since Israel allowed the PLO and its terror armies to move their bases from Tunis to Judea, Samaria, and Gaza in 1994, nearly 2,000 Israeli families have involuntarily paid the ultimate price in the “peace process.” The Shalit deal is a moral defeat- most especially for these families of the victims of terrorism: Israel just cancelled more than 900 life sentences to embrace again one soldier. Meir Schijveschuurder, who lost his parents and three of his siblings in the suicide bombing in the Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem in 2001, yesterday declared against the deal: “We feel like a man who woke up in Germany a day after World War II.”
Terrorism is now sanctified throughout all the Palestinian areas. The streets are plastered with posters glorifying terrorists and suicide bombers. Children trade “martyr cards” the way Western children trade baseball cards. Necklaces with pictures of terrorists, many released today by Israel, are very popular. Signs on the walls of Palestinian kindergartens currently proclaim their pupils as “the martyrs of tomorrow.” Elementary-school principals commend their students for wanting to “tear their [Zionists’] bodies into little pieces and cause them more pain than they will ever know.” Unlike terrorists in other parts of the world, the Palestinian movement aspires to immortality and its violence is always “sacred.” That’s why the freed terrorists will return to kill the Jews.
The Almagor association revealed that 177 Israelis have been killed by prisoners released by Israel in previous deals. The Jews living in the settlements are afraid of a new round of killings. “Many terrorists have been allowed to return to live near our homes, it’s a shock and a disaster,” Hillel Weiss, professor of literature at Bar-Ilan University and a leader in the settlement community, tells me. The deal is a victory for terrorism, since Hamas can now justly demonstrate that killing Jews is infinitely more effective than negotiations in achieving their objectives. It will also be much easier to recruit terrorists when they are encouraged to believe that no matter how many Israelis they kill, there is every likelihood that, if apprehended, they will be released.
Releasing the terrorists meant saving Gilad’s life, but it also means that more Jews will die and more soldiers will be kidnapped. Now many Israelis ask: How many more lives are to be sacrificed before the rest of the released men — and those to be released in future exchanges — are put behind bars again? Appeasement breeds only death and destruction. Capitulating will culminate in greater disasters.
Internal contradiction at the heart of the consensus for ransoming Schalit for terrorists renders it likely that the unanimity now surrounding the deal will evaporate soon.
Gilad Schalit is home. And that is wonderful. The terrorists Israel released in exchange for the IDF soldier held hostage by Hamas for more than five years are running around Judea, Samaria and Gaza promising to return to terror. And that is a nightmare.
. . . Given the media’s unchecked power to repeatedly manipulate public opinion to adhere to its radical ideological agenda, it is essential that the government and Knesset step in and reform the media market. Broadcast licensing procedures for television and radio must be deregulated. Television and radio must be open to competition. Broadcasters should be allowed to broadcast whatever they want whenever they want, and the market should dictate who rises and who falls. This is the only way to protect the public against manipulation, and the government from blackmail.
British online commentator, Pat Condell, shatters popular shibboleths about "Palestine nationalism" and Israeli intransigence- in this bold, new video:
"Is it racist to criticize the Palestinians as the world's most tiresome cry-babies with a bogus cause, and a plight that's entirely self-inflicted? I bet it is. I wouldn't be surprised if it weren't against the law in certain European countries. But I'm going to do it anyway, because somebody has to. I realize I'll probably lose a few friends with this video. But that's okay, friends like that I can do without.
All any of us can do is tell the truth as we see it. I mean as we actually see it, and not as we think we're supposed to see it. The worst thing you can do is to see the truth and to tell a lie- and I see the Palestinian cause as a lie. A lie designed to exploit Western liberal guilt, like the lie of Islamophobia, and the lie of the mythical "religion of peace" that nobody has ever seen in action.
I used to be a lot more critical of Israel, and I used to believe there was a fairly simple, two-state solution, because I used to believe the Arabs were acting in good faith. I still want to believe that, but the evidence tells me I'd be a fool to believe it.
Because I've seen that every concession that Israel makes is met with more demands and more excuses not to negotiate. They (Palestinians) could have had peace ten-times over if they wanted it, but they don't want peace- they want victory - and they won't be happy 'til Israel is wiped from the map.
A member of Fatah's Central Committee said as much on television recently, but as he said, they keep that to themselves and tell the rest of the world a different story. And as part of that story, the bogus claim for Palestinian statehood is currently passing through the United Nations, and we're all waiting to see what plops out the other end.
Not that it really matters, because despite what the Palestinian public-relations industry, i.e., the Western media might tell you- this is not about territory - and it certainly isn't about justice or human-rights, because Arab societies don't know the meaning of those words. It's about Jew-hatred - as mandated by the Quran - and as preached by the mosques and taught to the children in Arab countries, day in and day out, generation after poisoned generation. The Arabs don't hate Jews because of Israel, they hate Israel because of Jews.
The situation in the West Bank and Gaza exists because 45-years ago, several Arab countries attacked Israel, unprovoked, with overwhelming odds, because it was the Jewish state. If it hadn't been a Jewish state, they wouldn't have attacked it. And they attacked with the intention of wiping it from the map and of committing genocide.
But they failed because the Jews had a bit more steel in their blood than the Arabs had bargained for. And who could be surprised after what they'd been through- and after seeing how the rest of the world had responded to their plight.
Large numbers of Jews could have escaped the Nazis if they had somewhere else to go, but other countries wouldn't let them in. (Please contribute for the work which disseminates this life-saving resource for you, your loved ones, and your community).
Israel's 63 Independence Day was celebrated with a pageant on television - which featured an IDF choreographed marching team which conveyed concepts and icons of cultural significance.
At Israel's Herzliya Policy Conference '09, economist Daniel Doron spoke with us to convey the history of the establishment of the modern states of the Middle East, both Arab and Jewish, with details of Israel's legitimate founding and legal rights of the territory on which Jews reside.
Daniel Doron explains his concern for the safety of Jews in Judea and Samaria, and for the threat which a Palestinian state would pose at this time to the safety of Israel's citizens.
Finally, the orthodox Jewish movement, Aish, produced this music video of Zionist pride, "Israel, Wave Your Flag!" (Video courtesy of WeJew)
Israel intercepted a ship delivering an Iranian weapons cache to Hezbollah today. The 500 tons of weapons that were being delivered for use against Israelis were 10 times more than the notorious Karine-A ship intercepted en route to deliver armaments to Palestinians 5-years ago.
"Iran is sending these weapons to terror organizations to harm Israeli cities and kill its citizens," PM Bibi Netanyahu said. "The time has come for the international community to exert real pressure on Iran to stop this criminal activity and to support Israel when it defends itself against these terrorists and their patrons." Regarding those who may doubt Iran's continual support for terrorist organizations, the prime minister said, "Whoever still needed decisive proof that Iran continues to send weapons to terrorist organizations, received it today in a very clear and unequivocal way." (JPost)
Captured Iranian arms ship 'tip-of-the-iceberg' of vast weapons sealift to Hezbollah DEBKAfile's military and intelligence sources report that a mammoth arms train has been running to Hizballah for months via Egypt. They identify the ship which offloaded the arms shipment at the Egyptian port of Damietta, where it was picked up by the Francop as the Iranian Visea, which is now on its way from the British port of Felixtowe to Hamburg, Germany. An international operation is afoot to apprehend the Iranian ship as of Wednesday, Nov. 4, when Israeli naval forces commandeered the Francop with hundreds of tons of Iranian arms bound for the Lebanese Hizballah near Cyprus. The arms were unloaded at the Israeli naval base at Ashdod port.
To disguise its vast traffic of illicit arms to Lebanon, Iran has taken to using commercial "feeder" vessels which are frequently seen on regular tours around the Mediterranean ports and arouse little attention. By this route, Hizballah has received thousands of tons of arms and ammunition in the last few months.
IDF Press Spokesman's Conference at The Muqata Despite Secy of State Hillary Clinton's praise for Israel's progress in mid-east peace negotiations, while PM Netanyahu will fly to Washington to address the UJC Convention (where US Pres. Obama will also be speaking) Mr. Obama has rejected Mr. Netanyahu's invitation to meet one another. Ron Kampeas of JTA writes
If anything, pro-Israel insiders say, the relationship between the Obama and Netanyahu teams is on a good footing and improving. Obama's officials are pleased with the restrictions Israel has lifted in the West Bank; Israel backs Obama's strategy of containing Iran through engagement backed by the threat of far-reaching sanctions.
And the Israeli army and the U.S. European Command carried out a joint exercise Tuesday witnessed by Netanyahu, who called it "an expression of the meaningful relations between Israel and the United States."
So what's behind Obama's reluctance to meet Netanyahu?
Insiders suggested that the U.S. president still feels burned by the summit he had in September at the United Nations in New York with Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas that produced no results and led to sniping between the Israeli and Palestinians sides. Obama wants the promise of substance before another meeting takes place.
In the new film "Conflict: The Power of Propaganda," director Chris Atkins goes behind the headlines and past the media bias against Israel to present a fair and realistic picture of what is happening in the Islamic conflict to conquer Israel.
The fast-paced documentary exposes rampant Palestinian propaganda and challenges viewers to recognize the calculated deception - and its ties to both extremism and terrorism on a global scale. Executive producer Joe Amaral and his filmmakers go inside the world of the Palestinian media, documenting how Palestinian propaganda seeks to rob the Jewish people of their rich history in the Land of Israel. Alarming video evidence shows how school children are taught and encouraged to aspire to kill Jews and to become suicide bombers.
Caroline Glick, global affairs analyst at the Jerusalem Post and the Center for Security Policy, discusses myths of the 'two-state solution' in the Middle East and lays out her blueprint for "Ending The Stalemate."
Interpreting today's American and Israeli post-meeting press conference, the Jerusalem Post's Editor in Chief David Horovitz doesn't find much agreement in Obama lays down the law ...
This was a meeting of unequals, a meeting in which the head of the world's most powerful nation, however battered of late, firmly asserted its primacy in the face of a supplicant ally, however feisty. ...
Netanyahu heard no deadline from Obama on the limits of engagement, just a vague presidential reference to the notion that, by year's end, the administration "should have some sense" of whether Teheran was responding to his carrots where it had ignored the Bush presidency's rhetorical sticks.
Worse, Netanyahu heard no presidential mention of the possibility of military action, not even as a last resort. Instead, Obama reached out to the Iranians, saying he sought to "persuade them that it is not in their interest to pursue a nuclear weapon and that they should change course."
And if they chose to ignore him?
"We are not foreclosing a range of steps..." said Obama - and here Netanyahu would have been waiting with bated breath, only to be disappointed - "... including much stronger international sanctions." ...
Where Netanyahu holds that there's little prospect of substantive progress with the Palestinians so long as Iran is traveling along the nuclear path and emboldening Hamas and Islamists everywhere, Obama flatly said the opposite.
"If there is a linkage between Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process," he mused, "I personally believe it actually runs the other way. To the extent that we can make peace with the Palestinians - between the Palestinians and the Israelis - then I actually think it strengthens our hand in the international community in dealing with the potential Iranian threat."
He elaborated, "Imagine how much less mischief Hizbullah or Hamas could do if, in fact, we had moved a Palestinian-Israeli track in a direction that gave the Palestinian people hope. And if Hizbullah and Hamas [are] weakened, imagine how that impacts Iran's ability to make mischief and vice versa."
Netanyahu attempted to make the best of a very bad job, beginning by praising Obama to the skies as a "great leader" and a "great friend of Israel."
NY-based, global-affairs analyst, Linda Korrow, analyzes Pres.Obama's advancing Arab plans for Israel's security in "Will Obama Try to Force Arab Two-State Plan on Israel?" published in Family Security Matters.
New York - The eyes of the world are on Washington, as two allied world leaders – Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Barack Obama – prepare to meet on Monday.
Some Arab states are already on the war path. Arab leaders are going on the record, demanding in strong language that President Obama order Israel to fall in line behind Saudi King Abdullah's two-state "Arab peace plan." The plan, which calls for a two-state solution, is supported by the 22-state Arab League. In contention is the plan's "right of return" provision, which would give millions of Arab refugees the right to live in Israel and eventually, through demographics, convert the Jewish state to an Arab country with a Jewish minority.
Many, including Middle East expert and historian Daniel Pipes, believe in the "no state" option – return the territories to Egypt and Jordan, who have peace treaties with Israel. Neither side, Dr. Pipes recently wrote, wishes for Israeli control to continue. And a Palestinian state has thus far been a "toxic brew of anarchy, ideological extremism, Jihadism and warlordism [that] led to complete Palestinian failure." Given, "the two populations' mutual antipathy, the prospect of a combined Israel-Palestine is as absurd as it seems." A shared Jordanian-Egyptian rule, he said, "worked tolerably well in the period 1948-1967."
Jordan's King Abdullah warns there will be a war in the Middle East by the end of next year if an Arab Palestinian state is not created this year. He noted in a Times of London interview, that "a third of the world does not recognize Israel." "Obama," he said, "is committed to the two-state solution now. He feels the urgency of the need to move today." The king believes President Obama will announce a peace plan after meeting with Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu. If peace efforts aren't successful, King Abdullah says, "we're going to have a war."
King Abdullah of Jordan says the world must see Israel for what it is. Israel is the first democracy in the Middle East and an ally of the United States. Yes, the Palestinian people have suffered. And so have the people of Israel proper. Israel has protected its people from murderous suicide attacks by implementing security fences, checkpoints and settlements. And it has taken the initiative for peace by withdrawing from Gaza.
After repeated rejections of peace plans during the Carter and Bush administrations, the Israelis turned over Gaza to its Israeli-Arab residents to self-rule. Gaza is no longer occupied today except, arguably, by Iran and al Qaeda. But what was the result of Israel's disengagement from Gaza? Iranian smuggling of weapons and foreign fighters into Gaza, a strengthening of the terror group Hamas, the destruction of businesses, and more rocket attacks upon Israel-proper.
The Jewish state pursued phased withdrawals, while the Palestinian Authority has failed to fulfill the security commitments agreed to in the 1993 Oslo Accords – to disarm and dismantle terrorist groups.
The Gaza experiment failed and resulted in an armed conflict – Operation Cast Lead – where Israel aimed to halt those illicit activities. The same failures should not be repeated in the West Bank. Iran and the U.S. State Department designated terror group Hamas should not be permitted to take over the West Bank. Consequently, more preparation of the territories is required for statehood, if that is the path taken.
Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu stated Israel's viewpoint on May 4th, via a satellite broadcast to over 6,500 attendees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's (AIPAC, America's pro-Israeli lobby) annual conference. He spoke of a triple track to peace, consisting of political, security, and economic initiatives:
Political – "resume peace negotiations without delay and without any preconditions; the sooner, the better"
Security – "strengthen the security apparatus of the Palestinians"
Economic – "work together to remove as many obstacles as we can, to the advancement of the Palestinian economy"
Prime Minister Netanyahu said, too, that peace can not come without security. And, "for a final peace settlement to be achieved, the Palestinians must recognize Israel as the Jewish state."
As a man seeking peace and the right to life for his country – "a future that means that there is prosperity for all" – PM Netanyahu seeks rational thought and a common sense approach to peace in the region.
The challenge to the Palestinian Arabs and the Arab League is to embrace dual Jewish and Arab states living in peace as a shared goal with Israel and support the strengthening of Palestinian institutions. Failure to do so would demonstrate a lack of sincerity in achieving peace in the region and a lack of support for the Palestinian Authority.
"We can defy the skeptics; we can surprise the world." – Benjamin Netanyahu
The inauguration of Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud-led coalition government brings a long-needed corrective lens onto the jaundiced mainstream-media view of the global Jihad. Israel's new Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, has announced the new government's strategy of putting the onus of progress on the Arabs' fulfilling their long-unfulfilled obligations toward peace - before Israel makes any further concessions.
Melanie Phillips quotes extensively from "The Two - State Solution is 87 Years Old," an article by Victor Sharpe in the American Thinker, March 29. It is a superb and important piece, as she says, detailing Britain's long record of betrayals of the Jewish people and appeasement of Arab demands -- and even now, jihadist demands grow ever more shrill, and Western politicians prepare to betray Israel yet again in another round of appeasement, with Obama and company acting as if the "two-state solution" has never yet been tried, when it is the only thing that has ever been tried.
Phillips concludes:
It is only if the true history of the Middle East is understood that certain things become inescapably clear: the scale of the monumental lie that has been so assiduously promulgated about the nature of this dispute, a lie which is now generally assumed in the west to be true and which is driving the genocidal hysteria against Israel; the fact that the fundamental cause of this tragic impasse was the repeated British appeasement of Arab terror, illegality and injustice, a policy which continues to this very day; and the immorality and absurdity therefore of believing that today's ‘two-state solution’ – which among other things means that the ‘progressives’ who support it thus support the ethnic cleansing of all Jews from the putative state of Palestine – would be anything other than a Final Solution for the Jews of Israel, not to mention an incalculable victory for the forces waging war against the free world.
In a rare moment on Al Jazeera Arabic TV, Algerian author Anwar Malek exposed those forces:
The reality of the Arabs is one of defeat, hitting rock bottom... We are defeated, politically and militarily... and economically, socially, and even psychologically. We have a discourse of conspiracy, and we blame everything on others. (Watch on MemriTV via courtesy of Israel Matsav).
In 2002, when oil prices were hovering around $21 a barrel, nearly two dozen Arab nations joined to pledge yearly contributions of $660 million to support the Palestinian Authority's annual budget.
Now, even with oil prices more than six times higher and the Palestinian Authority bordering on financial ruin, only a handful of Arab countries are sending even a small portion of the money they promised, according to data examined by The Washington Post.
Out of 22 Arab nations that made pledges, only three -- Algeria, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates -- have contributed funds this year, while oil-rich countries such as Libya, Kuwait and Qatar have sent nothing and still owe the Palestinian government more than $700 million in past-due pledges.
Many members of the Arab League that committed to make annual contributions do not have oil riches and have paid on average about 4 percent of what they pledged since 2002, according to U.S. figures. But some of the worst offenders are oil producers. Through the first half of 2008, Bahrain has paid 13 percent of its total pledges, Libya 14 percent, Oman 23 percent, Kuwait 35 percent, Algeria 73 percent and the United Arab Emirates 92 percent. Saudi Arabia has paid just shy of 100 percent, but many experts believe it should be paying four times as much, given the increase in the price of oil since 2002.
One senior U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of diplomatic sensitivities, said that Arab nations could be doing much more to support the peace process launched at a conference in Annapolis last year and that "their effort falls short in every category." He said he is puzzled by their failure to meet their pledges in a period of phenomenal oil wealth.
"The one thing I find hard to explain is why they don't contribute more financially," the official said, noting that the Palestinian government is "really operating hand-to-mouth." He added that more than 50 percent of the money goes to the Gaza Strip, which is controlled by Hamas, so even people living under Hamas rule are suffering from the Arab failure to pay pledges.
Arab diplomats, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said there is little trust that the Palestinian Authority will use their contributions wisely, even though Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad is a veteran of the International Monetary Fund and, during his time as finance minister, introduced new standards of accountability and financial management. Arab diplomats said they also resent the tight grip that Israel has maintained on the Palestinian territories during the peace talks.
Like an open wound that will not heal the Arab-Israeli conflict refuses to be resolved. Blood and Tears uncovers the truth beneath the hype and the headlines. Rosmarin and his team of Middle East experts have gone right to the source: the ministers and mullahs, the fanatics and peaceniks, the soldiers and terrorists, and the ordinary families battling extraordinary forces as they try to live a normal life.
Top officials from both sides are interviewed, from former Israeli Prime Ministers to senior Palestinian officials to the leaders of the militant extremist group Hamas. They have also interviewed experts, like renowned Mideast scholars Bernard Lewis, and the foremost Palestinian scholar Rashid Khalidi. Blood and Tears explores the origin of the confrontation itself, and challenges many of the most deep-rooted myths we all hold about this epicenter of human conflict.
In a rare self-exposure, CNN was criticized on air by editor of the Jerusalem Report, David Horovitz, who called CNN and the foreign press to task in distorting reporting of Israel vs Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization/Palestinian Authority.
According to Daniel Pipes in the Jerusalem Post, 2 recent polls indicate that given the opportunity, both Israeli Arabs and Palestinians living under the PLO/PA overwhelmingly (82%) prefer to liveunder Jewish, not Palestinian, rule.
As the title of a Globe and Mail news item puts it, "Some Palestinians prefer life in Israel: In East Jerusalem, residents say they would fight a handover to Abbas regime."
The article offers the example of Nabil Gheit, who, with two stints in Israeli prisons and posters of "the martyr Saddam Hussein" over the cash register in his store, would be expected to cheer the prospect of parts of eastern Jerusalem coming under PA control.
Not so. As mukhtar of Ras Khamis, near Shuafat, Gheit dreads the PA and says he and others would fight a handover. "If there was a referendum here, no one would vote to join the Palestinian Authority...There would be another intifada to defend ourselves from the PA."
Two polls released last week, from Keevoon Research, Strategy & Communications and the Arabic-language newspaper As-Sennara, survey representative samples of adult Israeli Arabs on the issue of joining the PA, and they corroborate what Gheit says. Asked, "Would you prefer to be a citizen of Israel or of a new Palestinian state?" 62 percent want to remain Israeli citizens and 14 percent want to join a future Palestinian state. Asked, "Do you support transferring the Triangle [an Arab-dominated area in northern Israel] to the Palestinian Authority?" 78 percent oppose the idea and 18 percent support it.
IGNORING THE don't-knows/refused, the ratios of respondents are nearly identical preferring to stay within Israel - 82 percent and 81 percent, respectively. Gheit exaggerates that "no one" wants to live in the PA, but not by much. Thousands of Palestinian residents in Jerusalem who, fearful of the PA, have applied for Israeli citizenship since Olmert's statement further corroborate his point.
Why such affection for the state that Palestinians famously revile in the media, in scholarship, classrooms, mosques, and international bodies, that they terrorize on a daily basis? Best to let them explain their motivations in direct quotations.
Financial considerations: "I don't want to have any part in the PA. I want the health insurance, the schools, all the things we get by living here," says Ranya Mohammed. "I'll go and live in Israel before I'll stay here and live under the PA, even if it means taking an Israeli passport. I have seen their suffering in the PA. We have a lot of privileges I'm not ready to give up."
Law and order: Gazans, note Israeli-Arab journalists Faiz Abbas and Muhammad Awwad, now "miss the Israelis, since Israel is more merciful than [the Palestinian gunmen] who do not even know why they are fighting and killing one another. It's like organized crime."
Raising children: "I want to live in peace and to raise my children in an orderly school," says Jamil Sanduqa. "I don't want to raise my child on throwing stones, or on Hamas."
A more predictable future: "I want to keep living here with my wife and child without having to worry about our future. That's why I want Israeli citizenship. I don't know what the future holds," says Samar Qassam, 33.
Others raise concerns about corruption, human rights, and even self-esteem ("When the Jews talk about swapping me, it's as though they are denying my right to be a person"). These earnest views do not repudiate the vicious anti-Zionism that reigns in the Middle East, but they reveal that four-fifths of those Palestinians who know Israel at first-hand understand the attractions of a decent life in a decent country, a fact with important and positive implications.
With Arabs representing 1 out of every 5 Israeli citizens, where do the press get the notion that 'Palestinians' seek to be liberated from Israel's governance?
The PLO was dreamt up by the KGB, which had a penchant for “liberation” organizations. "Abu Ammar,” (Nom de guerre for Yasser Arafat) was built into a Palestinian leader by the KGB in the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day Arab-Israeli War.
In that war, Israel humiliated two of the Soviet Union’s most important allies in the Arab world of that time, Egypt and Syria, and the Kremlin thought that Arafat could help repair the Soviet prestige. Arafat had begun his political career as leader of the Palestinian terrorist organization al-Fatah, whose fedayeen were being secretly trained in the Soviet Union. In 1969, the KGB managed to catapult him up as chairman of the PLO executive committee. Egyptian ruler Gamal Abdel Nasser, who was also a Soviet puppet, publicly proposed the appointment.
Soon after that, the KGB tasked Arafat to declare war on American “imperial-Zionism” during the first summit of the Black International, an organization that was also financed by the KGB. Arafat claimed to have coined the word “imperial-Zionism,” but in fact Moscow had invented this battle cry many years earlier, combining the traditionally Russian anti-Semitism with the new Marxist anti-Americanism.
FP: Why has the American and Israeli leadership been deceived so long about Arafat’s criminal and terrorist activities?
Pacepa: Because Arafat is a master of deceit—and I unfortunately contributed to that. In March 1978, for instance, I secretly brought Arafat to Bucharest to involve him in a long-planned Soviet/Romanian disinformation plot. Its goal was to get the United States to establish diplomatic relations with him, by having him pretend to transform the terrorist PLO into a government-in-exile that was willing to renounce terrorism. Soviet president Leonid Brezhnev believed that newly elected US president Jimmy Carter would swallow the bait. Therefore, he told the Romanian dictator that conditions were ripe for introducing Arafat into the White House. Moscow gave Ceausescu the job because by 1978 my boss had become Washington’s most favored tyrant. “The only thing people in the West care about is our leaders,” the KGB chairman said, when he enrolled me in the effort of making Arafat popular in Washington. “The more they come to love them, the better they will like us.”
“But we are a revolution,” Arafat exploded, after Ceausescu explained what the Kremlin wanted from him. “We were born as a revolution, and we should remain an unfettered revolution.” Arafat expostulated that the Palestinians lacked the tradition, unity, and discipline to become a formal state. That statehood was only something for a future generation. That all governments, even Communist ones, were limited by laws and international agreements, and he was not willing to put any laws or other obstacles in the way of the Palestinian struggle to eradicate the state of Israel.
My former boss was able to persuade Arafat into tricking President Carter only by resorting to dialectical materialism, for both were fanatical Stalinists who knew their Marxism by heart. Ceausescu sympathetically agreed that “a war of terror is your only realistic weapon,” but he also told his guest that, if he would transform the PLO into a government-in-exile and would pretend to break with terrorism, the West would shower him with money and glory. “But you have to keep on pretending, over and over,” my boss emphasized.
Ceausescu pointed out that political influence, like dialectical materialism, was built upon the same basic tenet that quantitative accumulation generates qualitative transformation. Both work like cocaine, let’s say. If you sniff it once or twice, it may not change your life. If you use it day after day, though, it will make you into an addict, a different man. That’s the qualitative transformation. And in the shadow of your government-in-exile you can keep as many terrorist groups as you want, as long as they are not publicly connected with your name.
In April 1978 I accompanied Ceausescu to Washington, where he convinced President Jimmy Carter that he could persuade Arafat to transform his PLO into a law-abiding government-in-exile, if the United States would establish official relations with him. Thereupon, President Carter publicly hailed Ceausescu as a “great national and international leader” who had “taken on a role of leadership in the entire international community.”
Three months later I was granted political asylum by the United States, and Romania’s tyrant lost his dream of getting the Nobel Peace Prize. A quarter of a century later, however, Arafat remains in place as the PLO chairman and seems to still be on track with the Kremlin’s game of deception. In 1994, Arafat was granted the Nobel Peace Prize because he agreed to transform his terrorist organization into a kind of government-in-exile (the Palestinian Authority) and pretended, over and over, that he would abolish the articles in the 1964 PLO Covenant that call for the destruction of the state of Israel and would eradicate Palestinian terrorism.
At the end of the 1998-99 Palestinian school year, however, all one hundred and fifty new schoolbooks used by Arafat’s Palestinian Authority described Israel as the “Zionist enemy” and equated Zionism with Nazism. Two years after the Oslo Accords were signed, the number of Israelis killed by Palestinian terrorists rose by 73% compared to the two year period preceding the agreement.
"American Foreign Policy in the Middle East - Dangerous Times in a Dangerous Neighborhood" Panelists: John Podhoretz, Dennis Prager and Mona Charen; moderated by Michael Medved Held December 9, 2007 Temple Emanu-El, San Francisco, Calif. Watch video here
The mood is dark in the IDF's General Staff ahead of this week's "peace" conference in Annapolis. As one senior officer directly involved in the negotiations with the Palestinians and the Americans said, "As bad as it might look from the outside, the truth is 10 times worse. This is a nightmare. The Americans have never been so hostile." Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal confers with Secy Condoleeza Rice
On Thursday a draft of the joint statement that Israeli and Palestinian negotiators are discussing ahead of the conference was leaked to the media. A reading of the document bears out the IDF's concerns.
The draft document shows that the Palestinians and the Israelis differ not only on every issue, but differ on the purpose of the document. It also shows that the US firmly backs the Palestinians against Israel.
As the leaked draft document shows, the Americans have sided with the Palestinians against Israel. Specifically, the Americans have taken for themselves the sole right to judge whether or not the Palestinians and the Israelis are abiding by their commitments and whether and at what pace the negotiations will proceed.
But the Americans have shown themselves to be unworthy of Israel’s trust. By refusing to acknowledge Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party’s direct involvement in terrorism and indeed the direct involvement of his official Fatah “security forces” in terrorism, the Americans have shown that their benchmarks for Palestinian compliance with their commitments to Israel are not necessarily based on the reality on the ground. Then too, the US demands for wide-ranging Israeli security concessions to the Palestinians even before the “peace” conference at Annapolis have shown that Israel’s security is of little concern to the State Department.
IDF sources blame the shooting murder of Ido Zoldan on Monday night by Fatah terrorists on Israel’s decision to bow to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s demand to take down 24 security roadblocks in Judea and Samaria. If it hadn’t been for US pressure, they say, it is quite possible that the 29-year-old father of two small children would be alive today.
From media watchdog, HonestReporting: Not all cases of slanted reporting are instantly clear. It's often helpful to take a step back and examine a news organization over a long-term period. Subtle elements of bias such as headline or photo selection then become clearer. In our second in-depth media analysis, we studied six months of reporting from the New York Times, one of the most popular and influential newspapers in the world.
The New York Times: April-September 2007 - Summary of Findings:
Balance: Despite an evenly balanced selection of stories on Israel and the Palestinians, the New York Times gave far more weight to Israeli military incidents in text location, headlines and photo selection than to Palestinian attacks. More than 60% of images sympathetic to one side or the other favored the Palestinians.
Consistency: Israeli and Palestinian actions were not treated consistently in choice of language. Israel or the Israel Defense Forces were the subject of strongly worded, direct headlines in 18 out of 20 cases (90%). However, in the 20 cases where the Palestinians were responsible for attacks, the language was mostly passive and the group responsible was only named in eight instances (40%).
Context and Accuracy: Inaccurate statements or important context that would give readers a fuller picture of news events was often omitted. Terms such as "militants", "occupied territory," and "illegal settlements" were used without providing a proper explanation.
Melanie Phillips' coverage of the "27 minutes of hitherto unseen footage of the ‘killing’ of Mohammed al Durah which the court had required France 2 to produce. For readers who are unfamiliar with this scandal, I wrote about it here, here and here. Suffice it to say here that the iconic image of the child Mohammed al Durah, pictured crouching with his father behind a barrel next to a concrete wall in an apparently vain attempt to shelter from the gun-battle between Israel and the Palestinians that was raging around them before he was allegedly shot dead by the Israelis, served to incite terrorist violence and atrocities around the world after it was transmitted by France 2 at the beginning of the second intifada. Yet it is clear to anyone looking at this in detail that the whole thing was staged, not least from the devastating evidence here which shows the boy raising his arm and peeping through his fingers seconds after the France 2 correspondent Charles Enderlin said he had been shot dead.
After Philippe Karsenty, founder of the French online media watchdog, Media Ratings, accused France 2 of staging the al Durah ‘killing’ and called for the resignation of both Charles Enderlin and France 2’s News Director, Arlette Chabot, France 2 and Enderlin sued Karsenty for defamation, and won. In a disgraceful piece of judicial cronyism after the gratuitous intervention of the then French President Jacques Chirac, the court decided against Karsenty and in favour of France 2 and Enderlin. Karsenty appealed; the judge ordered France 2 to produce the unscreened footage of this incident; today it did so.
Well, sort of. What it actually produced was 18 minutes out of the 27 it was required to bring forward. From this footage, which according to France 2’s Palestinian cameraman was filmed during an implausible 45 minutes of continuous shooting by Israeli soldiers, there is no evidence that anyone at all was killed or injured -- including Mohammed al Durah who by the end of the frames in which he figured seemed to be still very much alive and unmarked by any wound whatsoever.
The drama of today’s hearing was enhanced by the appearance of Enderlin himself, who until today had not graced this case with his presence. As the film was shown to a packed and overheated (in every sense) courtroom, Enderlin and Karsenty offered rival interpretations of the images on the screen. If Enderlin thought he would thus demonstrate the inadequacy of Karsenty’s case, he was very much mistaken. On the contrary, parts of his commentary were so absurd that the courtroom several times burst into incredulous laughter.
Enderlin offered only a vague, rambling and unconvincing explanation of why he had only produced 18 minutes of footage rather than the 27 he claimed to have received from his cameraman in Gaza (Enderlin himself was not in Gaza when these events occurred). After the hearing Professor Richard Landes, one of the people who had already seen the contested footage, said that two scenes had been cut out which clearly showed that the violence had been staged -- including one in which a Palestinian preparing to throw a missile is suddenly picked up and carried into an ambulance despite showing no signs of injury. This scene, said Landes, was filmed by Reuters, who actually filmed the France 2 cameraman filming it. Yet there was no sign of it today.
What struck me very forcibly about the 18 minutes overall was that, although this was supposed to have been filmed during continuous firing by the Israelis for 45 minutes, much of the footage consisted merely of a violent demonstration by stone throwing youths, many of whom who appeared to be enjoying the exercise. One child was pictured riding a bicycle through the melee. There was no evidence of any of them being killed or injured. From time to time, to be sure, youths were dragged onto stretchers and into ambulances – but there was no sign of anyone actually being shot, no-one falling under fire, no sign of any blood or injuries whatever. The nearest it got to an injury was a sequence in which a young man coyly pulled his shirt open a little to provide a glimpse of a neat red circle on his stomach, which he claimed was a (rubber?) bullet wound. But since he appeared to be in no pain whatever and was grinning throughout his turn for the camera, this seemed an eminently implausible way for someone who had just been hit by gunfire to behave.
There were many very strange things about this footage which just didn’t add up. When it came to the footage of the ‘killing’ of Mohammed al Durah, the following stood out:
* This sequence was not a continuous narrative but was repeatedly broken up and spliced onto footage of other scenes from the demonstration;
* Although the France 2 cameraman had told a German film-maker, Esther Schapira, that he had filmed six minutes of the al Durah father and son under continuous Israeli fire, the footage of them lasted for less than one minute;
* There was a camera tripod next to them;
* There was no evidence of the boy actually being hit;
* At one point, people in the crowd cried out that the boy was dead, while he was sitting up large as life clinging onto his father with his mouth wide open;
* After he was said to be dead, he moved his arm (the sequence I have already reported which has been available on the web for years).
The Appeal Court is not due to give its verdict in this case until next February. As of today, such are the fresh contradictions and questions thrown up by the showing of this footage it would seem that France 2 has painted itself into a corner from which it will find it increasingly hard to escape.
But this scandal goes far beyond France 2. Soon after it transmitted the 55 seconds which showed the ‘killing’ of Mohammed al Durah, it helpfully sent various news agencies three minutes of the footage of this incident – including the frames in which the ‘dead’ child is seen moving, but which of course it had not broadcast. For reasons which invite speculation, not one of these agencies broadcast it either. Had they done so, there would have been no ‘killing’ of Mohammed al Durah and untold numbers of subsequent deaths would have been avoided.
It is therefore not surprising, but no less shocking, that with a couple of heroic exceptions the mainstream media has until very recently ignored the evidence suggesting that a monumental and deadly fraud was perpetrated here, indicators which have been around for years. As of today, the Karsenty case has been totally ignored by the mainstream French media.
It is also deeply troubling that the Israel government ignored this evidence for seven years, that it is only very recently that its press spokesman Danny Seaman said the incident was staged, and that even now certain representatives of the Israel government are playing a most ambiguous role in defending their country against this modern, blood libel.
The ‘killing’ of Mohammed al Durah was swallowed uncritically by the western media, despite the manifold unlikeliness and contradictions which were apparent from the start, because it accorded with the murderous prejudice against Israel which is the prism through which the Middle East conflict is habitually refracted. This scandal has the most profound implications not just for the media, not just for the Middle East conflict but for the western world’s relationship to reason, which seems to grow more tenuous by the day.
Prof. Landes and Philippe Karsenty spoke outside the courtroom about the video evidence presented and omitted which confirm "the al-Dura hoax."
Boston University Professor Richard Landes, who has viewed all the original footage of the alleged shooting that day, attended France2 TV News' Charles Enderlin's subpoenaed evidence footage. Coverage from Augean Stables:
"Then we viewed the rushes with a preamble and running commentary by Enderlin, with comments by Karsenty. It was something of a circus. But it did give me an insight into how Enderlin’s mind works. He explained about Sharon’s provocative visit to the Temple Mount on the 28th, and the riots that ensued on the 29th in the West Bank, and how everyone expected the rioting to spread to Gaza the next day, “because that’s how it works.”
And sure enough, when we see the tapes, we see scene after scene of people being evacuated into ambulances. We don’t see them hit, we don’t see their injuries, but we do see them taken to ambulances, and Enderlin explains: “The Israelis are firing with rubber bullets.” Now there’s no evidence that the Israelis are firing. But because Enderlin expects violence, when he sees Palestinians evacuated in ambulances, he concludes that they have been shot by Israelis.
Most of the material was inconclusive or boring, and I patiently waited for the material I’d seen. Then, at about 15 minutes on the time code, Enderlin announces that there will be a break and we will see the final scenes. That’s when I knew he had cut the scenes. Sure enough, the screen went blank, and then began the final three minutes...
Now there are at least two scenes that I remember specifically, one of which we have documented by Reuters. One scene that wasn’t there I described as follows:
At another point, a boy faked a leg injury, but instead of drawing big kids who could pick him up and rush him past the cameramen to an ambulance, he only attracted little kids. He shooed them away, looked around, and, seeing that no one was coming to evacuate him, straightened up and walked away without a limp.
Indeed this scene provoked a snort from the Israeli cameraman working for France2 who was watching the film with me and Enderlin at the time.
When I asked him why, he said, “because it looks so fake.”
“That’s my impression as well,” I responded.
Enderlin commented, “Oh, they do that all the time. It’s their cultural style. They exaggerate.”
“But if they do it all the time, why couldn’t they have staged Al Durah?” I asked.
“Oh, they’re not good enough.”
Now ultimately, this is my (B.U. Prof. Richard Landes') word (and possibly, if they remember and have the courage to come forward, those of Denis Jeambar and Daniel Leconte), against Enderlin.
But the second piece I remember is actually documented by Reuters (video sequence).
Past photographers, among whom we find Talal abu Rahmah, with his France2 equipment.
Talal is in close, for maximum effect. Note the fellow on the far left who’s in for the ride. He’s seen smiling in the video.
And then run back right in front of the Israeli position (where he was presumably shot) and loaded on the ambulance right in front of the Israelis.
Israeli position in the background. No one is afraid of being hit by them.
Pajamas Media Parisian blogger Nidra Poller provides eyewitness commentary to fill in the blanks of Prof. Landes' participation in viewing France2 TV News' Charles Enderlin's subpoenaed 'master' b-roll video evidence presentation at the trial:
"Reading an excerpt from the cameraman’s testimony under oath—”I filmed 27 minutes of the incident that lasted 45 minutes—” the judge asks why there are only 18 minutes on the CD. The seasoned France 2 journalist gives a garbled excuse...
So how did the 27 minutes boil down to 18? Enderlin denies that anyone ever said there were 27 minutes… and then says there was some irrelevant material that he chopped off the day after the incident.
The judge presses the point, asking Rosenzweig and Landes to estimate the duration of the footage they viewed. They both attest to more than 20 minutes… Rosenzweig remembers someone mentioning 27. Karsenty’s lawyer concludes for the record: something is missing.
The raw footage was not so raw. And it was barely al Dura. If we take the cameraman’s word for it, given under oath a few days after the incident, not something but everything is missing. This is supposed to be the raw footage of the al Dura death scene. What we get is raw footage of Palestinian youths throwing stones, firebombs, and burning tires at the Israeli outpost. And provoking no reaction, except for one teargas bomb. Real provocations alternate with those familiar fake battle scenes with instantaneous ambulance evacuations...
As Charles Enderlin switched on his anchorman’s voice and stonewalled, his legal team—Maître Amblard, who has been handling the cases for the past year, reinforced by a tall dashing Maître Pierre Olivier Sur and the scowling Guillaume Weill-Raynal— stood squarely in front of Landes and Rosenzweig, blocking their view of the screen...
Finally—it’s not clear how—we get to the al Dura footage. And all we see is what you got in the original September 30, 2000 broadcast. It’s spliced. But we recognize the details. Karsenty interrupts every few seconds to point out the anomalies. No blood. The boy is holding a red kerchief to make it look like blood. The soldiers were supposed to be firing at them for 45 minutes, the wall is intact, there are a few holes. Round holes, shot head on.
Charles Enderlin and Talal Abu Rahma have consistently claimed that the Israeli position was directly opposite the targeted man and boy. It is not true. Enderlin stands in front of the judge and says everything and the opposite about the positions. He does not reply to a single objection raised by Karsenty, raised by other analysts repeatedly over the past seven years: The father’s arm is intact, he claims he was hit nine times by high power bullets, his muscles smashed, his bones crushed. No blood on his white t-shirt. Voices in Arabic shout “the boy is dead! the boy is dead!” He is sitting next to his father, eyes wide open.
Charles Enderlin standing in a French court explains: Oh, that’s something cultural. In their culture, when they say “the boy is dead” they mean he is in danger of dying, that he is in a very dangerous situation, he might die. The judges smile.
We reach the end of the scene as it figured in news reports, the point where Charles Enderlin said, “Mohamed is dead, his father is critically wounded.” We might ask what that means in his culture…because the scene continues for another three seconds in which we see the boy who is lying on his stomach with his hands over his eyes, turn, lift his elbow, shade his eyes, look at the camera, and slowly return to his prone position.
Philippe Karsenty interrupts every few seconds, leaps up, points to the screen, asks for a slow forward, backward, forward. The boy is moving. He is alive."
