Israel Matzav

The al-Dura trial is about much more than France 2

Writing in the Spectator this morning, British columnist Melanie Phillips does a good job of putting the al-Dura fraud into its proper perspective. The implications go far beyond France 2:

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.

This scandal goes far beyond the staged photos by Green Helmet Guy in Lebanon in the summer of 2006. Thousands of people have lost their lives in revenge attacks relating to Muhammed al-Dura. And no one in the mainstream media seems to care. They apparently believe that falsifying reports is an acceptable thing to do so long as the falsifications make Jews look bad and Muslims look like victims. Were it not for the al-Dura scandal being kept alive by the blogosphere for the last seven years (Karsenty is a blogger at the end of the day), this fraud would have gone undiscovered.

There are two hopes here. First, that more people will get their news from the blogosphere and other alternative sources as the sheer volume of outlets ensures that frauds are much more difficult to perpetrate. And second, that the mainstream media does some soul-searching and self-examination and decides to report the news more fairly - at least in Western countries where the press is free to report whatever it wants to report. But the only hope for the mainstream media doing some soul-searching and self-examination is if the French appeals court throws out Karsenty's conviction and enters judgment against France 2. Otherwise, things will just stay the same.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:15 PM