As Europeans continue to downplay the connection betwen the press' systemic libeling of the Jewish State (deconstructed in the case of France2TV's Mohammed-al-Dura libel suit) and the climate of anti-Semitism throughout Europe, the Paris suburb of Bagneux delivers yet another pathetic proof: an anti-Semitic torture crime from the same town that Ilan Hamili was tortured to death in two years ago.
The European Jewish Press reports, "Six youths from the southern Paris suburb of Bagneux, aged 17 to 25, are accused of locking up 19-year-old Mathieu Roumi in a storage room on February 22, beating and sexually tormenting him.
Aged 17 to 25, the six youths -- who knew the victim -- had falsely accused him of stealing from them in order to lure him into a trap, judicial sources said. Once he arrived in the apartment of one of his aggressors, the young man was handcuffed on a radiator and beaten.
With a pen, the aggressors scrawled "dirty Jew" and "dirty faggot" on the face of their victim. Later they forced him to swallow down cigarette butts and to suck a condom on a stick.
The man's ordeal reportedly lasted nine and a half hours. He was later hospitalised "in a state of shock". The Jewish community of Bagneux is comprised of some 100 Jewish families."
Who created the climate for this 'special punishment' of Jews in France? Israel-vilifying at the expense of Palestinian sufferage has been the narrative in European media reporting for years. The Intifada was created by Yasser Arafat in part to publicly damn Israel by creating that image for journalists.
Though the Palestinians were presumed to be provoking these damning events (few, like, Prof. Richard Landes revealed that they were even staging them. But no one believed that the press themselves would actually demand video that was damning - to help the underdog Palestinians by turning the world against Israel (simultaneously feeding their feed their blood-lust against the Jews).
Even the French courts, upon forced examination by Charles Enderlin's libel suit against Philippe Karsenty, wish to reject the Zionists' claim of journalistic conspiracy. But famous ballistics expert, Jean-Claude Schilinger, finds that the Israeli forces could not have killed Mohammed al-Dura. He further finds that there was no evidence that Muhammad was actually even killed, nor his father injured, as reported by Enderlin on France2.
Why is exposing the press' fraud & complicity in the al-Durah case so significant? Is it just because the Palestinian blood-libel results in antipathy towards French Jewish citizens? 1) The case reveals the corruption and complicity of the trusted, objective, journalistic industry- which the public relies upon to deliver truth and reality, instead turning them into agents of propagandized blood-libel; which created a self-perpetuating, media-vilifying against Israel and it's perceived Christian supporters. Charles Enderlin may consider himself Jewish, but he marches to the 'Liberal' Media party cadence; in this case, 'sympathize with the Muslims: victims of natural, villainous, Jewish oppression. Hence, the Europeans eliminate their inherited guilt of their grandparents' having turned-in their Jewish neighbors for torture and genocide because they didn't believe in Jesus as Messiah.' Hence, the world can no longer trust its independent journalistic institutions (AP, AFP, Reuters, and the local news outlets which parrot their stories) to represent objectivity in cases involving 'imperialistic Judeo-Christian America and Israel;
2) It globally defames the Jewish nation, Israel, with a fabricated (seemingly incontrovertible) icon of hypocritical brutality and immorality; and criminalizes Jews (and their State) to justify pariah-punishment from all ethical people;
3) It mollifies the world from challenging Islamic political and social imperialism- whether manifested in:
a) the quest for the cultural and relgious Islamicization of Western societies,
b) the Muslim crusade to 'reconquer' Jerusalem by establishing "a Palestinian State," with Jerusalem as its capital; and even
c) Iran's apocalyptic Mullahs' impending triggering a global nuclear war, seeking to conquer the Islam-rejecting, America, and the State of Israel in the name of Allah the Almighty."
4) The libel verdict against fraud-exposer Philippe Karsenty represents a victory against truth and reason. This portends for ill for Jews during a period when an Islamic-Western oil-axis influences public sentiments about either not offending Muslim sensibilities (fundamentalist oil-price setters, defamation-litigating front-groups like CAIR, MPAC, and MSA or the abundance of Muslim immigrants worshipping in Muslim Brotherhood-extremism-inculcating outposts), or pleasing the West's new bosses - as politcal Islamist equity (thereby influence) permeates throughout Western economies, institutions, and society.
Consequently anti-Semitism in the US is increasingly rabid and spreading. But, as in Nazi Europe leading to World War II, it portends the decline of ethics and reason in society. Islamism is on the march. What is scapegoating for, if not to deny an inconvenient reality?
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.
The Gloria Center's Barry Rubin penned this must read expose into Reuters News Agency's editorial practices on stories involving the Jewish State of Israel:
...The World Bank annual reports are entitled "Intifada, Closures and Palestinian Economic Crisis." They make the very simple point that the intifada--an armed Palestinian war on Israel--leads to closures and thus the combination brings on a crisis. The reports are quite careful in pointing out all the factors that led to the Palestinian economic decline. They do not say the losses were strictly due to Israeli curbs on movement. On the contrary, the 2003 report for example, written at the height of the violence, says the closures and movement restrictions are pretty insignificant. (see it here).
This specific example of dishonesty matters because the approach we see here--predetermining the story, ignoring most of the factors involved, blaming Israel--sets a pattern for a whole raft-full of stories:
Why is there no peace? Israel doesn't give enough concessions. Often there is no mention of Palestinian hardline positions, behavior in not keeping commitment, terrorism as a key element in the failure to achieve peace. Most important of all, there is endless talk about what Israel can or should give for peace but far less about what the Palestinians must give: end of conflict, full recognition of Israel, return of refugees to a Palestinian state, a real end to incitement and terrorism.
Why is there suffering in Gaza? Israel's restrictions. Far less mention of Hamas hard line, openly genocidal stance, constant aid to terrorist attacks and rocket firing, refusal to meet even minimal international requirements.
Why are Palestinians, to quote the Reuters story, "Deprived of dignity"? No mention of a corrupt government and gangs of gunmen who couldn't care less about their well-being, and a strategy that starts unwinnable wars. It's all Israel's fault.
It is bad enough that this kind of coverage is shaping the way that many in the West see the Middle East. What is really horrible is that these articles are being deliberately written to do so.
These awards apply mostly to biased coverage excusing Islamist imperialism, which media-outlets or their producers/reporters typically rationalize, often by attempting to criminalize the Jewish state of Israel. Here are a couple of well-placed honors, though the entire list is worth reviewing:
Worst Film Editor: Charles Enderlin
In his legal battle over the Mohammed al-Dura video, French media analyst Philippe Karsenty forced France 2 TV to publicly screen for the first time cameraman Talal Abu Rahma's raw, unedited footage.
When the judge asked correspondent Charles Enderlin why only 18 minutes of footage were submitted – instead of an expected 27 minutes – the veteran reporter told the court that when he transferred the images to DVD for the court, he had to manipulate some footage that wasn't relevant for that day. Although a final ruling isn't due till the end of February, the development and the footage discredited the myths of Mohammed al-Dura.
Dishonest Reporter of the Year
This year's Dishonest Reporter voting marks a change for HonestReporting readers. Previous awards went to large, impersonal news services, but not so this year. One journalist made herself such a lightning rod in 2007 she easily defeated BBC and Reuters – the traditional disfavorites.
The results didn't surprise us, but the depth of anger and lingering resentment indicate that readers weren't just outraged by our winner's work; on some level, they were personally offended in a way far exceeding the rest of the MSM’s Mideast coverage this year.
Which is why the 2007 Dishonest Reporting Award goes to Christiane Amanpour, for her in-depth, but tragically flawed CNN special series, God's Warriors.
The series sought to examine Jewish, Muslim and Christian extremism. It's not our intention to address God's Warriors yet again. However, reader criticism can be boiled down to four primary charges. In a nutshell, Amanpour's series:
Equated years-old isolated cases of Jewish extremism with Islamic terror that has killed thousands of people in New York, London, Madrid, Bali, Amman, etc.
Spuriously claimed that fringe elements of world Jewry succeeded in hijacking Israeli and American government policy.
Addressed radical Islam with kid gloves.
Belittled religious belief in general.
Religious extremism is a valid news story and an accurate, honest comparson of the three major monotheistic faiths would undoubtedly have a positive impact on public debate.
Unfortunately, the sense our readers and we have is that Amanpour didn't spend a year researching religious extremism, but rather reinforcing her own world views.
Is maintaining the appearance of Israel appearing oppressive and Palestinians appearing victimized actually a patsy for Elites absconding with billions of dollars in humanitarian aid fraud? Connect the dots yourself.
For as much sympathy as it can evoke by media depictions of victimization by Israeli hostility, the Palestinian Authority is able to generate commensurate billions of dollars in humanitarian aid from Western taxpayers (through direct aid & UN programs) and some Arab monarchs (who benefit from portraying Israel as enemy-worthy).
Depicted: The last time we see Mohammed al-Durah on Talal’s videocamera: He holds his hand over his eyes, not his allegedly, deadly stomach wound. He lifts his up his arm and looks around. Enderlin had already declared him dead in an earlier scene, and (therefore?) cut this scene from his broadcast. (Courtesy: Augean Stables).
The 'news' is systematically manufactured by an permanent, Arafat-initiated, propaganda campaign ("Pally-wood" alleges Augean Stables' media expert, Prof. Richard Landes and French-based Media-Ratings.Fr director, Philippe Karsenty) with foreign media complicit for their social and business agendas. To what extent does this propaganda / hoax business benefit the Palestinian leaders and their EU donors? By evoking humanitarian aid funds from the West, which can evade accountability, i.e. kickback.
Where has the previous $10 billion in foreign aid gone and to where will future money likely go?
According to the Jerusalem Post's Caroline Glick (detailed amounts in an extensive article, "Palestinians are the new, chosen people" by Boker Tov Boulder):
"Since its establishment in 1994, the PA has received more aid per capita than any other group of people in the world has ever received - more than the victims of genocide in Sudan or Rwanda, more that the victims of the tsunami in Asia, more than the Iraqis or the Afghans - more than anyone."
In the same article it's noted that "terrorists sitting in Israeli prisons get $4 million a month," and more millions are paid to families of dead terrorists.
And weren't we talking about Muhammed Dahlan just the other day? He's been quoted as admitting that of the $10 billion in international aid that the Palestinians have received over the past 12 years, some $5 billion has gone missing.
... The Israeli government had already given them (Members of the European Parliament, "MEPS") volumes of captured Palestinian documents providing evidence that the PA was using EU funds to pay for homicide bombings, the upkeep of terrorists, weapons, and bomb-manufacturing plants; vacations, travel, scholarships and medical treatments for members of the Palestinian leadership and their families; and — not least — Chairman Arafat's personal bank accounts.
How is it possible that the International Monetary Fund, CBS, the BBC, and even the PA itself were all able to document the PA's misuse of funds while Commissioner Patten failed to acknowledge it?
Despite thousands of the PA's own documents — some signed by Yasser Arafat himself — European Union's external-relations commissioner, Christopher Patten, Hannes Swoboda (a member of the European parliament's ad hoc working group on aid to the PA), and many other MEPs not only continue to deny that European tax money has funded Palestinian terrorism, but also claim that the PA documents, authenticated by American, German, and Israeli experts — and even by the Palestinians themselves — are "forgeries produced by Israel." ...
History gives us little reason to think the PA will stop funding terrorism. Maybe it's time to hold European donors legally accountable for the return on their investment.
The AP reports that on 14 & 17 December '07 in Paris, "Palestinians ask for $5.8 billion in aid"
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will ask the international community this week to nearly double aid through 2010, for a total of $5.8 billion.
Abbas says he needs help with a huge deficit run up in years of strife, but also is promising to curb spending and spark economic growth. The Abbas government's 2008-2010 development plan, obtained by The Associated Press, will be given to officials from donor countries in Paris on Friday, ahead of a high-level donor meeting there on Dec. 17.
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."
On the eve of the annual, global broadcast media association's NewsXchange conference, a look into the international, anti-Americanist culture which influences the tone of global newsreporting vis a vis America and Israel.
The Center for New American Media Presents: "The Anti Americans- A Love/Hate Relationship". A film by Louis Alvarez, Andrew Kolker, Peter Odabashian. Linked courtesy German Ray Drake's 'David's Media Critique'
One theory presented is, like anti-Semitism, it's 'ressentiment.' Wikipedia defines 'Ressentiment' as a sense of resentment and hostility directed at that which one identifies as the cause of one's frustration, an assignation of blame for one's frustration. The sense of weakness or inferiority and perhaps jealousy in the face of the "cause" generates a rejecting/justifying value system, or morality, which attacks or denies the perceived source of one's frustration. The ego creates an enemy, to insulate itself from culpability.
Lacking enforceable penalty (social, legal, or physical) for publicly expressing such denigration, such condemnations flourish.
"KillHim.Nu" (i.e, Pres. Bush) is a jihadi-esque pop-music video from Norway which encourages Europeans to hate American culture and take-up arms.
"...In contrast to the huge focus on the so-called "Israel Lobby" in "God's Jewish Warriors," in "God's Muslim Warriors," Amanpour doesn't mention the powerful Oil Lobby operating in America and advocating for Muslim, Arab and Palestinian perspectives. She doesn't highlight any of the numerous activist Muslim/Arab organizations that lobby and propagandize to influence American public opinion and foreign policy.
Related to this is the minimal discussion or outright omission of several key factors in the rise of Islamist extremism and increased support for terror:
• Thousands of Saudi-funded mosques and schools built worldwide, including many in the U.S., that spread an extreme supremacist form of Islam. Saudi Arabia has also funded extremist training for those who want to work as Muslim chaplains in the U.S. military and the U.S. prison system.
• Saudi-funded Middle East Studies chairs and departments in universities all over the world, including the U.S. • Saudi-funded organizations whose goal is to provide American elementary, middle and high schools with slanted curricula and books about the history of the Middle East and Islam
• Saudi-funded student activists and organizations that indoctrinate and propagandize against Israel, the U.S. and for extreme Islamist causes.
• Extremist websites, online videos, and satellite TV networks that foster Muslim supremacist values and support for terrorism among Muslims across the globe.
Instead of examining any of the above reasons for the spread of Muslim extremism, Amanpour includes two highly questionable explanations: reactions to alleged Israeli brutality and feelings of hopelessness. She commendably does mention repressive Arab/Muslim governments as a factor, but doesn't note how these same governments often intentionally use propaganda to fan the flames of hatred for Israel and the West to deflect attention away from their repressive regimes."
CNN's moral equivalence runs amok. The Media Research Group's Matthew Balan writes on newsbusters.org: The AP's David Bauder wrote positively of Christiane Amanpour and the upcoming minseries in an article on Monday {1}. Bauder mentioned Amanpour's treatment of a "fundamentalist Christian group" called BattleCry in the miniseries (a preview of this can be viewed on YouTube [2]). The following excerpt is another clue which supports the theory that Amanpour and CNN have their "moral equivalence" hat on.
The segment on Christians explores BattleCry in some depth, digging at the roots of an organization that fights against some of the cruder elements of popular culture and urges teenagers to be chaste. In noting how girls at some BattleCry events are encouraged to wear long dresses, Amanpour asks the group's leader how it is different from the Taliban.
Encouraging modest dress is the same as forcing girls out of school, beating women who don't wear burkhas, and publicly-executing offenders?
Joe Scarborough: "I am upset a little bit about something right now. And I went on TV Newser and I and saw that CNN and Christiane Amanpour, they’re going to study religious extremism. She’s got this special. She’s going to be on Larry King tonight. I'm going to be watching ‘cause I'm going to be watching it because I’m going to be a little bothered if they're trying to say that there is moral relativity. They’re going to study Muslim extremism, then Christian extremism, because we know Christians have, have slaughtered thousands of people across the globe in bombings–"
Willie Geist: "Oh, yeah."
Scarborough: "–and Jewish extremism. [Willie Geist starts laughing.] I’m sorry. Come on! It is okay to say that, right now, the vast majority of religious extremists are members of one faith. That doesn’t mean that every Muslim is a terrorist. That doesn’t even mean that even 99 percent of Muslims are terrorists. But to do a three part series on Muslim extremism, Christian extremism and then, uh, Jewish extremism? Is this Rosie O'Donnell or is this Christiane Amanpour? You understand what I’m saying here, Willie? I mean, come on."
Willie Geist: "Well, there are Christian extremists. There are Jewish extremists, but it means an entirely different thing to be a Christian extremist and a Muslim extremist these days. I think the evidence proves that."
Scarborough: "Right. Yeah, exactly. If you're a Christian extremist, then when you send your daughter to school, her, her, her dress is below her ankles and it’s weighted so in case she jumps up, the dress stays down. Much different than the other type of extremism that we're talking about. So, I’m just a little bothered by it."
Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld is the Chairman of the Board of Fellows of one of Israel's leading think tanks, the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
He has devised a new project which exposes how much of the world's media present Israel and the Middle East conflict in a negative light.
His project reveals that the same filters applied to foreign reportage about any ordinary country (in this case, Holland) would create a similarly negative public impression.
Jamie Glazov interviews Dr. Gerstenfeld in Frontpage Magazine.com's "Distorting Israel."
"Trevor Asserson, (is) a leading British litigation lawyer. He has undertaken a number of well documented studies which detail the BBC’s systematic bias against Israel. This is particularly important because the BBC is probably Europe’s most influential media and as Asserson has outlined, a major distorter of information on Israel. The credibility of Asserson’s work has recently increased even further. In past months, the BBC’s manipulations have been exposed in many other fields. This forced them to suspend several employees and inter alia, to apologize both to the British Queen and Prime Minister Gordon Brown. ...
To cover the entire field of anti-Israel media bias is a mission impossible. The methods are almost infinite and vary from crude to subtle ones. There is also a cumulative effect of such distortion. Therefore paradigmatic pilot studies of systematic bias are so important.
Asserson has done that remarkably by investigating such an important media as the BBC. I understood that even better when I interviewed him for one of my books Israel and Europe: An Expanding Abyss?
Asserson listed in great detail how the BBC regularly in its reporting on Israel, broke many of the 15 legal obligations it is committed to under its monopolistic charter. These include that the media has to be fair, respect the truth, should not broadcast its own opinions on current affairs or current policy, ensure that opposing views are not misrepresented and not let the audience gauge the reporter’s personal views. He listed hundreds of examples of breaking these rules. The list is far too long to be exposed here.
To mention one, there was a huge contrast in how the BBC reported on the British soldiers in Iraq, who were described in warm and glorified terms, whereas Israeli troops were painted as faceless, ruthless and brutal killers.
There are hundreds of ways to be unfair in one’s reporting. One of the most powerful is omission of crucial facts and context of certain actions. If one starts from the false assumption that Israel, through an aggressive war, has conquered Arab territories in 1967 while omitting the genocidal statements against Jews of Palestinian Arab leaders since about 1930, the non-acceptance of the Arabs to create a second Palestinian state in addition to Jordan in 1948 and also ignores the genocidal Arab invasion of the former Palestinian Mandate territory in 1948, one has laid in a simple way the infrastructure for diabolizing Israel.
The enemy uses the media as a tool of warfare - by Dr. Joel Fishman
"On the military level, our enemies have been able to create a situation in which Israel hesitates to use its superior military force and expertise in its own defense. This was also a major strategic accomplishment.
Israel's leaders must find suitable responses to the enemies' tactics of media warfare. They must find a way to neutralize the influence of figures such as the producer-director of the scene at Kfar Kana, who wore a green helmet, and his evil collaborators in the Western media. If they don't, then Israel will suffer more miserable defeats in the media battle. Such failures in the war for public opinion carry a high military and political price. "
Dr. Joel Fishman is a Fellow of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
Harvard Professor Marvin Kalb's interview on Israel Broadcast Authority. He exposes how Hezbollah fabricates news and manipulates the global media (& public opinion) by victimizing Arabs and vilifying to create an 'inversion of reality.'
The brothers of Ahmad Darawshe forced a rusty, diaper-pin into his mouth. Watch the deft Israeli doctors endeavor to remove it from his lung and save the boy. From Channel 10 Israel News.
How the Arab world adopted Nazi techniques for inverting reality through propaganda wars - to depict Jews as persecutors and Arabs as victims - which enables Western misunderstanding of and support for Islamist movement against Israel and Jews everywhere.
"If today's Arab anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish propaganda strongly resembles that of the Third Reich, there is a good reason." So writes Joel Fishman of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs in "The Big Lie and the Media War against Israel: From Inversion of the Truth to Inversion of Reality," an insightful piece of historical research. (Courtesy Daniel Pipes).
Again, Israeli Gloom is Misplaced by Edward Luttwak in The First Post
Claims Israel failed in Lebanon are premature - just as was similar condemnation 30 years ago, Future historians will no doubt see things much more clearly, but some gross misperceptions are perfectly obvious even now.
Exposes in 'The Times' - a self-serving scenario by Anshel Pfeffer in The Jerusalem Post
For Israel to be the first country to use nuclear weapons, even limited ones, since Hiroshima and Nagasaki is almost unthinkable. Diplomatic repercussions aside, there is no guarantee that an untried and unproven technology will work as planned. And even if the operation is carried off, Iran may have dispersed enough of its nuclear materials and installations to alternative sites that it would be able to resume the program quickly. That they would definitely do, with Israel's nuclear cat already out of the bag.
There are still valid arguments for Israel going ahead with a military operation against Iran, perhaps even a non-conventional one. But the current leadership, which is still reeling from the Lebanon war and which prefers Sderot to suffer a couple of Kassams a day to getting entangled in another bloody operation in Gaza, is hardly the leadership to take Israel into a daring operation so far away.
Instead the government would prefer to rely on the vague promises of US President George W. Bush that he won't leave office in two years with the Iranian threat still intact. But since the US cooperated with the ineffectual watered-down Security Council sanctions resolution that was finally passed last month, Israeli fears have grown that the administration has lost the stomach for another front in the Middle East. Perhaps a few stories of the crazy Israelis' plans to go it themselves, and even use some of their own nukes in the process, might convince the Americans that it would be better if they did the job themselves.http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1167467682486&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
4) The libel verdict against fraud-exposer Philippe Karsenty represents a victory against truth and reason. This portends for ill for Jews during a period when an Islamic-Western oil-axis influences public sentiments about either not offending Muslim sensibilities (fundamentalist oil-price setters, defamation-litigating front-groups like CAIR, MPAC, and MSA or the abundance of Muslim immigrants worshipping in Muslim Brotherhood-extremism-inculcating outposts), or pleasing the West's new bosses - as politcal Islamist equity (thereby influence) permeates throughout Western economies, institutions, and society.
