I'm old enough to be their father (and then some), but I'd like to introduce you to some of the people who get me the information that makes a lot of the posts on this blog possible. This is the IDF's new media division.
It’s not clear who’s running the Qassam
Brigade’s twitter feed, but in Israel, the IDF’s social media operation
is run by a 26-year-old immigrant from Belgium named Sacha Dratwa. In
the past two years, Dratwa
has taken a small operation initially created during Operation Cast
Lead to streamline the IDF’s YouTube and Facebook presence and turned it
into the most globally visible arm of the Israeli military. In the past
year, the new media desk has rapidly expanded into new terrain, from
commissioning content designed for viral sharing to creating a
Foursquare-style game
for the IDF blog that rewards frequent visitors to the site with
badges. The IDF is also posting video of its drone strikes, starting
with the Jabari assassination, as well as of Israelis taking cover
during air raids and of Iron Dome units successfully thwarting rockets
launched from Gaza.
...
The goal, as Dratwa explained it, is twofold: to get Israel’s
narrative out in real time, as people read about red alerts in Tel Aviv
and rocket landings in Gaza on Twitter, and to cut out the middleman of
“old media” in communicating with pro-Israel activists. “What we try to
do is to be fast and get information out before the old media,” Dratwa
told me. “We believe people are getting information from social media
platforms and we don’t want them to get it from other sources—we are the
ones on the scene, and the old media are not on the scene as are the
IDF.”
...
The IDF’s new media presence was originally the brainchild of Aliza Landes (the American-born daughter of the historian
Richard Landes), who was herself only 25 when, as an officer on the
IDF’s North American press desk, she piloted the IDF’s first forays into
virtual warfare during Operation Cast Lead in the winter of 2008-2009.
“In Israel, Facebook had only just opened up, and it was considered a
toy for kids,” Landes said. “YouTube was the same. They didn’t think of
it as a dissemination tool that could be effective—it was just a way for
people to waste time in the office.”
Landes had already written position papers trying to excite her
commanders in the spokesman’s office about the possibilities of a more
aggressive social media strategy, but it wasn’t until videos she posted
on YouTube
began to tally up impressive views that they paid attention.
Originally, she told me late last week, she had used YouTube as a way to
transfer video files to foreign journalists, who were prevented by the
Israeli military from entering Gaza during Cast Lead and were in many
instances forced to rely on IDF footage. “It wasn’t for public
consumption,” Landes said. She soon began posting routine information
updates, like statistics on the number of rockets fired, to an IDF blog
and, by the time Cast Lead concluded in January, had moved to
commissioning original videos from the military film department. “It was
sort of my pet project on top of everything else I was supposed to be
doing,” Landes said.
In August 2009, Landes succeeded in convincing her superiors to give
her a dedicated budget for a new media operation. The first big test
came in January 2010, not for a war but after the massive earthquake in
Haiti, when Israel dispatched emergency medical staff to the Caribbean
island. “People were sending us requests for assistance based on
Twitter,” Landes said. “So, it wasn’t just a PR tool, it became a
practical rescue tool too.” That summer, Landes was responsible for
sending out footage from the controversial Mavi Marmara commando raid and convinced her superiors to give her near real-time access to video.
By the time Landes left later that year, she had a staff of 10 people
devoted to putting out polished material in concert with other
government ministries–some of which, particularly videos from the widely
scrutinized Mavi Marmara episode, wound up giving ammunition to
Israel’s critics. “It’s important to be in the conversation,” Landes
said. “If you just say, ‘I’m going to cut this out entirely,’ you’re not
doing yourself any favors, and in fact you’re doing yourself a
disservice.”
The fact that the IDF has even allowed this article to be published shows that they've come a long way. Originally, everything about it was supposed to be super secret. The Marmara was a big turning point. Even though they took way too long to release the footage, they saw what an impact it had when people were able to take material posted by the IDF and make it go viral.
We have nothing to hide and nothing about which we should be ashamed. The IDF is doing a great job of getting its message out there. And today, that's an important part of fighting a war.
Here's a preview of CBS's 60 Minutes' report on Silwan to be aired on Sunday night.
Let's go to the videotape.
The show airs at 7:00 pm Eastern and Pacific time in the US. Other time zones, check your local listings.
The New York Times lede blog has a write-up of the show, which quotes three Israeli bloggers, two of whom I know quite well (okay, Richard Landes is based in the US again, so we can't call him Israeli right now).
Yet Lenny Ben-David, an Israeli blogger who was a lobbyist for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, suggested on his blog that whoever photographed and videotaped the incident were to blame for encouraging or even possibly staging the confrontation:
The film clip showing an Israeli car hitting two Arab children in Silwan on Friday was horrifying. No one can sit quietly and indifferently while children — any children — are hurt before your eyes. Thank God the children survived and were not seriously injured.
Then came the subtext: The children were part of a gang attacking the driver with rocks, and rocks can most definitely kill. The boys, emboldened by some militant organizer, covered their faces to avoid identification and arrest. There’s no doubt of their intention and premeditation…. I’ve now watched the clip scene-by-scene and in some parts frame-by-frame, and there’s a deeper, even sinister, subtext….
Reviewing the clip, it’s evident that there were as many photographers as there were rock-throwers. Who invited them and coordinated the time and place? Who recruited the boys? Did they plan to ambush dafka David Be’eri’s car? Was it an attempt to reenact the iconic death of Muhammad al-Dura, the boy allegedly killed by Israeli soldiers in 2000 in what we now know was a fake propaganda stage show?
People who follow the conflict in the Middle East on television or through video clips like this one posted on YouTube know that it is not unusual for several photographers and journalists as well as activists with video cameras to attend even small Palestinian protests. But Mr. Ben-David’s skepticism was echoed by an Israeli video blogger who posted the clip YouTube with the following commentary:
From what I can tell, there are more cameramen than kids throwing rocks, and if I didn’t know any better, I’d say the cameramen were encouraging the kids to do some action.
The man in the car did stop, but quickly took off, as the other kids didn’t seem to care about their wounded friends, and kept on throwing rocks at the car.
In the end, I think the kid was more traumatized by the people trying to help him (shoving him into a car) than by getting ran over. I think, that every bystander that didn’t try to stop the rock throwers, should be jailed.
Mr. Ben-David’s point of reference for the allegation that such video might be staged was the long debate over footage of the death of a 12-year-old Palestinian boy named Muhammad al-Dura during clashes in Gaza in 2000. The boy’s horrifying last moments were captured on tape and broadcast around the world, sparking a fierce debate about the authenticity of the footage and detailed Israeli investigations into the unresolved question of whether he had been killed by shots fired by Israelis or Palestinians.
A blogger named Richard Landes even developed an elaborate theory that the whole thing might have been fake. According to Mr. Landes, the video of Muhammad al-Dura’s death, which was shot by a Palestinian cameraman working for French television, was a symptom of a wider phenomenon. He told The International Herald Tribune in 2005, “Palestinian cameramen, especially when there are no Westerners around, engage in the systematic staging of action scenes,” to create the type of dramatic news footage he calls “Pallywood cinema.”
Yes, I believe that Be'eri was ambushed.
What's nearly as curious is what the Times doesn't tell you about Lenny and Richard. Lenny writes in an email that I received that he was never a lobbyist and that he left AIPAC in 1982 to open their Israel office. He has also served in Israel's diplomatic corps.
Richard is actually a Professor of History at Boston University (he was here last semester on Sabbatical) and probably did more than anyone other than Phillipe Karsenty (and maybe even as much) to expose the al-Dura hoax (and yes, it's pretty clear it was a hoax).
By the way, for those bloggers who are wondering, a link from the Lede blog is nice (I've gotten at least one that I recall), but it does a lot less for your hit count than a link from Glenn Reynolds or Allahpundit.
In case you're wondering how I get all my stuff from the IDF, meet Aliza Landes:
At first it seemed the Israel Defense Forces wasn't too keen on enlisting the recent immigrant from America. At 24 she was much older than most other recruits, and the army bureaucrats told her they didn't know Latin, forcing her to get certified translations of her university diploma, first into English and then into Hebrew. Today, three and half years later, first lieutenant Aliza Landes holds what is one of the IDF's increasingly important positions. As head of the new media desk at the spokesperson's office, the now 27-year-old plays a crucial role in Israel's ongoing struggle to present its point of view to the public.
"I'm a huge believer in making information available to people, as much information as possible," Landes told Anglo File this week in her Jerusalem office. The young officer started her service at the North American desk of the spokesperson's foreign press branch, where she saw how much information was available but not accessible for millions of non-journalists.
In addition to her regular duties, she made it her business to send material to what she says was the previously neglected community of bloggers. "I think they're an up and coming class of information disseminators and opinion-makers, and so I was a very strong advocate of providing them with the same basic information we provide journalists with," says Landes, the daughter of renowned U.S. historian and pro-Israel advocate Richard Landes.
The California native says she initiated the launch of an IDF blog, Twitter account and YouTube channel, in concert with other soldiers. As of yesterday, YouTube ranked the IDF channel, which has 31,960 subscribers, as its 15th most popular in the world this month. "The army had a website when I arrived but they still weren't active on any sort of online platforms," recalls Landes, who had noted the rapidly increasing importance of new media while studying political science and Middle Eastern studies at Montreal's McGill University.
She says the importance of the IDF's PR machine became especially clear after the May 31 flotilla incident, when TV audiences around the world learned of the capture of the six Gaza-bound ships and the killing of nine activists aboard the Mavi Marmara. It took the army's spokesperson about 10 hours to release footage showing soldiers being attacked. These hours without visual evidence for Israel's version of the story caused the world to regard Israel as the sole aggressor, many local pundits complained.
"There was a lot of criticism and I can completely understand why the public felt that way," Landes says. "I also understand that they don't see it from the inside perspective." She uploaded the clips from the boat around 5:30 P.M., the moment the army's higher-ups gave her green light, says Landes, who has four soldiers under her command. "What I don't think people appreciate is the logistics that are involved in getting material out," she adds. "You can't really expect us to send out a helicopter just to get footage in the middle of an operation. Operational considerations come first, always." She adds the time lag was an improvement over Operation Cast Lead a year and a half ago.
Aliza deserves all the credit for the fact that we have managed to put before the world what really happened on the flotilla of fools and make the case that the Turks really were looking for violence. With each IDF action, she makes the IDF get better at getting information out quickly.
Here's a video of Aliza that I found online. Let's go to the videotape.
L'Express was out with a summary of the French court's judgment in the al-Durah case within two hours of its release and Richard Landes at the Augean Stables has already fisked it. Some highlights (L'Express is blockquoted; Landes is not):
The image of a Palestinian child felled by bullets, diffused by the French station France2 in 2000, and become the symbol of the Palestinian Intifada, cannot be considered a montage or a staged scene, the correctional tribunal of Paris judged.
Against the advice of the floor [i.e., the Procureur] who recommended dropping the charges, the judges condemned Philippe Karsenty, the animator of the websit Media Ratings (www.M-R.fr) for “public defamation” of Charles Enderlin and France2.
Philippe Karsenty is also condemned to pay one symbolic Euro of damages to each of the plaintiffs, as well as 3000 Euros of court costs. He announced to the journalists that he intended to appeal the process and promised that he will present the “proofs” of his claims would be up at his website in the coming days.
...
in an exchange of fire between Tsahal and Palestinian combatants. According to the journalist, the fire came from the Israeli position.
The thesis of a simulation of the episode and then a montage of images, desined to serve the Palestinian cause and defame, has become a recurrent in certain pro-Israeli media.
This is a particularly interesting remark. It is a truism in post-2000 French culture that anyone who presents evidence favorable to Israel is, by definition pro-Israel, and by implication, Jewish, and by extension, not reliable because partisan (communautariste as the French say. As both Jews and Gentiles told me in France, whenever I defend Israel, people say, “I didn’t know you were Jewish.” Thus, in a Catch-22, We will see this appear also in the courts judgment (below).
...
“Coming from a unique source, an Israeli press agency [i.e., MENA], which formulated this accusation late (almost two years after the broadcasting of the information), based essentially on extrapolations and amalgams, (the thesis) draws on peremptory affirmations,” said the Parisian judgment.
I’d have to see more of the court’s language to know what “extrapolations and amalgams” means, but it — and the peremporty language — surely would apply to the logic and action of Enderlin in putting together his broadcast and subsequent defense. The idea that Philippe’s material was based only on MENA’s work — which is itself extensive — is pretty amazing, since it’s also based on the even more extensive and more “mainstream” work of Esther Schapira, and work done and represented by Gerard Huber, Luc Rosenzweig, and me as witnesses. But it seems — again caution till we see the full text from the judges — to imply that if it’s an Israeli press agency, then it cannot be trusted. Perhaps that’s why the German documentary, which France2 blocked from being shown in France, gets ignored entirely. [Emphasis mine. CiJ]
...
This language of the court echoes directly the claims of Enderlin that, if he had done wrong, wouldn’t the Israelis say something? This is facetious (if convincing) as an argument. There can be other reasons why the Israelis would say nothing, but it assumes that the Israelis would defend themselves if they could, and underlines the deeply troubled, even dysfunctional nature of Israeli “hasbarah” (explanation, the Hebrew word for PR). I have promised some reflections on this in the past, and will eventually address it. [Emphasis mine. CiJ]
...
Philippe Karsenty asserts notably that the 27 minjutes of “rushes” of the reportage permit one to prove that the young Palestinian is not dead and feels that the “unlikelihoods, the contradictions, the lies of the reportage can be easily demonstrated.”
I would be extremely surprised if Philippe said that the boy “is not dead.” The most any of us can assert is that, in the last scene, the scene Enderlin cut from his broadcast, the boy is still definitely alive, despite having already been declared dead by Enderlin. [Emphasis mine. CiJ]
A funny thing happened on the way to the courthouse
You look at this story and you just have to wonder what would have happened over the past x years if Israel had actually stuck up for its rights in any of tens of other judicial forums to which we've been subjected.
On Monday morning, I reported that the IDF has finally requested the entire 27-minute France 2 television tape from which the 55-second staged 'murder' of Muhammed al-Dura was made. The IDF request was made in the context of the appeal of a judgment against Phillipe Karsenty for 'libeling' France 2 and its Jerusalem correspondent Charles Enderlin. The IDF and the State of Israel had apparently ignored the original trial completely. But now that the IDF has demanded the complete tape, the French court of appeals was apparently not going to be outdone:
The French Appellate court trial of Phillippe Karsenty in the matter of Mohammed Al Dura - the epochal case of the Palestinian boy allegedly shot by Israeli troops in 2000 - took a huge turn today. Photos of the boy have been accused of being the birth of fauxtography.
Appellate Court Presiding judge Laurence Trébucq has demanded that France 2 hand over the 27-minutes of raw footage shot on the afternoon of September 30, 2000 by Talal Abu Rahmeh. France 2 lawyer Maïtre Bénédicte Amblard tried to convince the judge that the request was not appropriate, relevant, necessary or even advisable. But the judge wants to see the outtakes with her own eyes. This is the first time the French court has made such a demand that would be normal in the US system. The court will now be able to determine if the Al Dura shooting and tape was a fake, as many have alleged.
Maître Amblard was not able to reach her clients to confirm availability of the footage. Today’s hearing was adjourned. The next hearing is scheduled on November 14th… to view the raw footage.
Earlier today, Pajamas Media's Paris correspondent, Nidra Poller, wrote that the French media was completely ignoring the appeal:
To my knowledge, the only mention of the upcoming hearing in the French media was a Radio J interview with Philippe Karsenty. The Radio J journalist, Michel Zerbib, is the only French journalist to have given consistently serious attention to the al Dura affair over the past few years. Mainstream media that reported on Karsenty’s conviction, misinterpreted as proof that the al Dura “death scene” was not staged, have not mentioned the recent IDF demand for handover of the outtakes — despite the fact that it expresses serious doubts about the credibility of a major news report.
It seems that even Karsenty himself never thought that the court would demand to see the tape:
Asked if the change in government might influence the outcome of his trial, Karsenty replied that there are two possible avenues of success: either the court could rule in his favor and/or President Sarkozy could instruct Patrick de Carolis, director of France Télévisions, to turn over the outtakes [to the IDF. CiJ] as requested.
Recalling that a letter of praise for Charles Enderlin from then president Jacques Chirac weighed heavily in the case against Karsenty, it will be interesting to observe the attitude of the Court during tomorrow’s hearing.
Only four people have seen the entire tape. The observations of two of those four people, Richard Landes and Luc Rosenzweig about the tape indicate that the entire event was likely staged:
To my knowledge, four people have viewed the 27-minute video: Richard Landes (professor of history at Boston University, director of www.seconddraft.org and Augean Stables), Luc Rosenzweig (a retired first-class French journalist), Denis Jeambar (former editorial director of the news weekly l’Express, currently director of Editions du Seuil), and Daniel Leconte (reputable journalist and director of Doc en Stock, producer of documentaries for French TV).
All four witnesses have testified, formally or informally, to the absence of images of Jamal and Mohamed al Dura in the 27-minute outtakes. They have all, in differing degrees, noted extensive footage of staged battle scenes in the 27-minute segment. None of the four have claimed that the 27-minute segment includes any image that could substantiate the voiceover in the narrative of the “death scene” as broadcast by France 2 on September 30, 2000.
Landes and Rosenzweig maintain that the 55-second video is a staged scene. Jeambar and Leconte maintain that the boy was killed and the father injured in a crossfire. There is no evidence of a crossfire in the 55-second “death scene” video. There is no other image of Jamal and Mohamed al Dura in the 27-minute outtakes.
One more thing. At the end of her article, Poller includes a translation from French into English of the IDF letter requesting the full tape. Here are the key paragraphs:
5. I am aware that divergent points of view were presented before the French court that judged the affair Enderlin, France 2 versus Karsenty (file 0433823049). In his verdict, Judge Joël Boyer reiterated the argument that the State of Israel had never adopted the allegations of a staged scene, had never denied that Mohamed Al Dura was killed by IDF soldiers, and had never made an effort to refute allegations on this subject in the France 2 report. This verdict also led one to believe that the State of Israel had never attempted to obtain the footage used to produce this news report.
6. I want to emphasize that these allegations are totally inconsistent with the repeated attempts by the IDF to obtain the footage, and equally inconsistent with the conclusions of the Tsahal Investigating Commission, which was widely cited in the French and international media. General Samia also made clear to me that all attempts to obtain the footage in order to complete the investigation had been unsuccessful. Furthermore, Reserve General Samia had asked his Palestinian colleagues (primarily General Majdaye, Commandant of the Palestinian police and Brigadier General Omar Ashur, chief of the unity of liaison with Israel) to send Palestinian representatives to join the investigating commission. These requests, as well as requests for handover of photographs of the child’s body and forensic pathology reports were rejected by the Palestinian police chiefs.
7. Given that we are fully aware of attempts to stage scenes for the media and given that such doubts have arisen with respect to the said news report we request handover of the said footage in order to discover the truth and bring an end to this affair.
If only the IDF had been this insistent seven years ago, instead of immediately taking the blame and apologizing.
The Double Standard: Why some killings matter and others don't
Last week, I published a story about the fate of some 700 'Palestinians' who are stuck in no-man's land between Iraq and Syria. In conclusion, I noted that
"When push comes to shove, the Arabs could not care less about the 'Palestinians.' They are just a tool."
In the weekend edition of the Jerusalem Post, Sarah Honig took up the case of the world's indifference to the death of Yihyeh Abu Bakra, a 2-year old infant who was killed in one of the battles between Fatah and Hamas last week to prove a similar point. You should absolutely read Sarah's entire article, but here is the bottom line:
Only the outcry was missing. Yihyeh's untimely demise made no headlines. His mother's grief tugged no heartstrings. PATV didn't sanctify his sacrifice, and the world continues as it had smugly before. Not a ripple. Nothing out of place. No pandemonium. No commotion.
Why? Because there was no opportunity to claim that Israelis pulled the deadly trigger. Yihyeh fell victim to terrorist infighting.
We always realized the world retains incredible composure when Arabs deliberately target Jewish babies. We now learn that it's also unmoved when Arabs murder Arabs - even when the casualties include juvenile Gazans.
Bottom line: it's not who's slain but by whom. If Jews cannot be implicated, it doesn't matter.
This is exactly what Charles Jacobs argues lies at the core of the Human Rights Complex. It doesn’t matter who the victim is, or how badly he’s suffering, but who the perp is. If the perp is white, then outrage is the order of the day, if the perp is “of color”, then let’s not make too much of a stink. This is the core of the moral rot that is eating away at the human rights community, making it, by both ommission — ignoring all the places people suffer terribly at the hands of “third world” “insurgents” — and commission — getting morally hysterical when, for example, Israel, in defending itself against people who fire from behind their own civilians, kills civilians in collateral damage.
I suspect this is directly related to the off-hand remark by Richard Cohen in the article that won him a place with Tony Judt and Tony Kushner in Alvin Rosenfeld’s analysis: “There’s no point in condemning Hezbollah.” Why? Because they have no conscience and will, at best, laugh in your face, at worst, shoot you?
What if these folk, whom everyone will agree, inhabit cultures profoundly concerned with honor and shame, had their misdeeds denounced before the world? What if when something like Qana happened, the press reported on their shooting from inside civilian residences, and laid out the ghoulish ways they abuse their dead children to get photos before the camera, so people like Richard Cohen can write editorials telling Israel it was a mistake, and “intellectuals” like Jostein Gaarder can call for Israel’s destruction?
How does Mr. Cohen know they won’t respond? They’re willing to kill people to get good coverage and to avoid bad coverage. Let’s have the MSM try an experiment. How some moral outrage for the revoltingly wanton resort to violence on the part of both Hamas and Fatah, say 1/10 what they aim at Israel for its carefully gauged violence against their wanton effort to kill Israeli civilians? How about some reflections from Messieurs Kushner, Lerman, Judt on whether the Palestinians deserve a state given that they are already drenched in the blood of civilians before they even get an army? And then we’ll see if there’s “no point” in condemning these people.
Even if they don’t have a conscience, they do care how they look to the outside world. Why else do they kidnap and kill reporters?
Of course, Richard and Sarah are both correct. But what bothers me even more is a different issue. Sarah hints at it; Richard may not have noticed.
Sarah's article compares the killing of Yihye Abu Bakra to the killing of Muhammed al-Dura and speculates (quite realistically) how the mainstream media might have reacted were there any hope of holding Israel responsible. Towards the end of her hypothetical, she notes the following:
Israel is laden with shame. IDF top brass and otherwise hyperactive government mouthpieces hem and haw, yammer and stammer, own up to an unmeasured degree of culpability, pending a thorough, slow, lugubrious investigation.
Our in-house guardians of other folks' conscience - representing a plethora of platitude-spouting bleeding hearts from all left-of-political-center niches - mercilessly beat their fellow Israelis' breasts and boastfully broadcast embarrassment for their affiliation with this accursed collective. They thereby bask in the glowing limelight of the unstinted outpouring of enlightened universalist approval for post-Zionists raking their benighted compatriots over the coals.
Richard doesn't say it quite so openly, but note the names of Israel's critics whom he cites (I've bolded the relevant ones where I quoted from Richard's post): Richard Cohen, Tony Judt, Tony Kushner and Anothony Lerman (more fully discussed here). And they all have in common that... based on their last names they are all Jews....
Why is it that our own people are so zealous to prove the correctness of the prophet Isaiah (49:17) that "those who would break and destroy you will come from among you?" Why do we as a Jewish community continuously spawn so many self-hating Jews?
In this week's Philadelphia Jewish Exponent, editor Jonathan S. Tobin takes up my issue:
The controversy rose when the UPZ chose to sponsor a speaking tour of Israeli critics of their country's policy in the territories on the coalition's dime. Their program, titled "Breaking the Silence," repeats a view that is often heard on the extreme left of the Israeli political spectrum, and speaks of the small nation's measures of self-defense as illegitimate and illegal. The speakers are Israeli veterans who believe that the Israel Defense Force counterterrorism mission is, as practiced, dehumanizing and immoral.
...
But when [Zionist Organization of America President Morton] Klein, of all people, spoke up as their principle accuser when he petitioned the coalition's governing board to expel the UPZ for promoting an anti-Israel agenda, the reaction from other groups was eminently predictable. A committee that deliberated on the subject unanimously refused last week to contemplate banning the leftists. Nor was it prepared to revisit the coalition's membership criteria or mission statement.
It's no surprise that they wouldn't listen to Klein, who has been playing the proverbial dog in the Jewish organizational manger since the signing of the Oslo peace accords. The fact that he was right about that issue hasn't improved his popularity. In recent years, ZOA's highly critical attitude toward the Israeli governments led by Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert has effectively marginalized it again. As such, the chances that most other groups would join ZOA to do something that could be labeled as censorship were slim and none.
But in this case, was he really in the wrong?
...
But perhaps the question we should also be asking is: What exactly is the difference between a Jewish group bringing in Israeli extremists who bash Israel, and an Arab group bringing in a Palestinian to do the same thing?
And if Jewish-Arab dialogue on campus, or anywhere else, is defined as Jews and Arabs agreeing that Israel is awful, then aren't such exchanges doing more mischief than good?
Moreover, is it appropriate for a coalition that was created expressly for promoting Israel's defense at a time when the press and campus radicals were undermining it with disinformation and out-of-context stories, to pay to bring in speakers who, echo the same distortions the group was founded to oppose?
It is all well and good for Klein's critics to say the right shouldn't be allowed to decide who is pro-Israel enough to speak. But where are supporters of Israel, no matter where they stand on the political spectrum, prepared to draw the line? If groups that are partners in this coalition, like the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee, are okay with being effectively made co-sponsors of presentations that defame Israel, how can they complain when others do the same thing?
And if they agree there is a campaign to delegitimize Zionism that has seemingly won over mainstream opinion in Western Europe and established a foothold in this country principally on college campuses, how can they be unwilling to take a stand against those who question the Jewish state's right of self-defense, even if they are Israelis?
...
These days, Israel-bashing in academia requires no courage, even if it's done by Jews who say they love Israel. What takes guts is to walk onto a campus and say that Israel is in the right.
Rather than acquiescing to a frame of reference that sees Jewish rights as inherently illegitimate and Israeli self-defense as morally indistinguishable from terrorism, what campus coalitions ought to be doing is finding the courage to challenge this notion altogether.
And if it can't agree to do that, then frankly, who needs it?
Tobin is right. Until the organized Jewish community is able to rise up and relegate those Jews who would destroy it to the fringes and beyond, we will continue to be destroyed from within, and the 'organized Jewish community' therefore has nothing to speak for its existence. The only group that has been relegated to the fringes up to now is Neturei Karta (and I would argue that is because they are religiously right wing nearly as much as because of their anti-Israel message). Are you on the governing board of your local Federation or Campus Jewish coalition? If so, this ought to provide you with some food for thought.
Richard Goldstone has an op-ed in Monday's Jerusalem Post which, according to a friend with inside sources at the Post, was not solicited by the Post. Apparently, according to the source, Goldstone is feeling the heat from all the criticism, and asked the Post to publish an op-ed in a bid to deflect some of the criticism. He did not succeed. Let's start with the first paragraph of Goldstone's op-ed:
Five weeks after the release of the Report of the Fact Finding Mission on Gaza, there has been no attempt by any of its critics to come to grips with its substance. It has been fulsomely approved by those whose interests it is thought to serve and rejected by those of the opposite view. Those who attack it do so too often by making personal attacks on its authors' motives and those who approve it rely on its authors' reputations.
That's patently false. Someone asked me earlier today to write a summary of my Goldstone posts for another blog. I did a quick search. I found 136 posts on Goldstone, 126 of them written since the report was published on September 15. Admittedly, I have not attempted to come to grips with the entire 575-page report. But I have attempted to come to grips with a lot of it. I am not alone.
Along with several other serious pro-Israel bloggers, and under the leadership of Boston University Professor Richard Landes (who debunked the al-Dura fraud), I have been part of a group of bloggers who have created a web site that confronts the Goldstone Report head on. If any of you have not yet been to that website, I strongly suggest that you check it out. Our eventual goal is to respond to the Goldstone Report line by line. We're not there yet, but we're getting there, and it will take you days to figure out what we haven't addressed yet.
The problem is that to Goldstone, the only way to 'come to grips with the substance' of his report is for Israeli heads to roll - for IDF officers to be placed on trial for 'war crimes' and convicted. And hopefully that won't happen at all unless the IDF's pending investigations conclude that it ought to happen.
Goldstone whines about all the flack he is taking:
Israeli government spokesmen and those who support them have attacked it in the harshest terms and, in particular my participation, in a most personal and hurtful way.
There is good reason for those attacks. Goldstone accepted a mandate that presumed that only Israel committed 'war crimes.' He worked with a panel in which three out of the four panelists had signed a letter before the panel's hearings started deploring the destruction in Gaza (only), and on which the fourth panelist signed a letter during the war accusing Israel of war crimes. He then rejected a petition presented by UN Watch to remove that panelist from the panel.
Goldstone claims to have dealt with Hamas' war crimes, and yet the sheer volume of the material against Israel makes it appear as if Hamas has done nothing. The fact that Hamas has greeted the report with approval and glee probably says it all. And although he claimed that his panel was not 'judicial,' it made findings of fact and drew conclusions of law as a court would and it is now holding its 'recommendations' over the State of Israel (the idea that Hamas will 'investigate' anything is too laughable to even consider) like a sword of Damocles. Yet its evidentiary standards were non-existent: The panel believed everything Hamas told them.
Yes, a lot of the recent criticism is personal to Goldstone. It didn't start that way. In the days leading up to the report, when our group was forming, we agreed that we would attack the message rather than the messenger. That has changed because facts have come out during the course of our investigation that point to Goldstone's blind ambition (to be UN Secretary General), carelessness (during the Yugoslavia investigation, he actually had a fictitious person indicted), duplicity throughout his career in South Africa, and disingenuous responses to how the report was used.
Also, while we would have preferred to target only the message, Goldstone's use of his own Jewishness as a shield against attack has forced us to attack him personally as a means to discredit the report.
When I started to write this post, I determined that I was not going to 'fisk' the article (respond line by line). There are two reasons for that. One is that Richard Landes has already fisked the entire article and I urge you to read his response. The other is that the JPost carried a response from Alan Baker, former legal counsel to the foreign ministry, and that also deserves a few words without this post spreading down an entire column.
First, for those of you who thought that Israel totally ignored the Goldstone Commission, Baker says that was not the case.
While indeed the mission heard, saw and was persuaded by the very one-sided picture elaborately staged by Hamas in Gaza, including hand-picked witness testimony and internationally televised and web-circulated public hearings, Goldstone's complaint that they were not provided with input from the Israeli side is simply untrue to the point of being ridiculous. Several prominent Israeli and other international lawyers (including myself) and Jewish organizations forwarded to the mission and to Goldstone personally, vast amounts of information, including the official papers issued by Israel's Foreign Ministry, legal opinions, facts and media cuttings regarding the Hamas rocket barrages, violations, ambulance hijackings and the like.
I appeared before the mission in Geneva, together with a senior delegation of Magen David Adom (MDA), in an attempt to persuade it of the seriousness of the terrorization of Israel's southern population by the Hamas rockets, and the psychological effect on the public. The delegation detailed the wide-ranging activities by MDA in treating those affected - including Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip. Others, including representatives of Israeli families harmed by Hamas, appeared before the mission.
But obviously all this was to no avail, since Goldstone and his team chose, for whatever reason, to ignore this extensive information in favor of a Hamas-organized production and some very selective Israeli and foreign non-governmental organizations known for their criticism of Israel.
Indeed. Goldstone also could have gone through and found the same videos that my colleagues and I found that present the Israeli case (most of them came from the IDF, are on YouTube or LiveLeak and are publicly available). But the Commission had no interest in hearing the Israeli side of the story. Perhaps the most significant proof of that assertion is the Commission's refusal to hear British General Richard Kemp, who was heard by the 'Human Rights Council' for about three minutes on Friday, long after the game was over. In fact, one Israeli witness who testified before the Commission has claimed that Goldstone fell asleep during his testimony.
But here's where I break with Baker:
THE ISRAELI government cannot ignore the call by Goldstone and everyone else, to institute an official governmental inquiry. If indeed Israel has the substantive answers to the accusations levelled by Goldstone, then there is no reason to delay any further the establishment of such an inquiry. It would not, as has been claimed, be perceived as submitting to terror or caving in to international pressure, and would not be seen as lack of faith in our soldiers and officers.
Considerable damage has been done by the Goldstone accusations. Such damage cannot be repaired by hasbara, which has proven itself to be utterly useless, or by repetitive, weak statements by Israeli ministers and deputy ministers.
Israel must act to control that damage by establishing an inquiry manned by a prominent retired Supreme Court justice and serious military and legal experts. Such a move would instantly neutralize and deflate international criticism; it would provide a viable claim of non-admissibility to any attempt to prosecute Israel or Israeli leaders before international or national courts and tribunals.
The implication of those statements is that the IDF is not capable of self-examination and that the more than 100 investigations that have been opened since the war ended are insignificant and unimportant. I cannot buy that. The world wants blood from the Goldstone Report - Israeli blood. All the investigations in the world will not suffice unless and until we give them the blood of IDF soldiers and officers. And by Jewish law, we are prohibited from doing that. If an enemy comes and insists that we hand over a certain number of people for no reason, we are prohibited from doing so. Are we to keep handing over more and more IDF soldiers and officers until the world's blood lust is satisfied? The thought is absurd.
Let the IDF conduct its investigations (the results of which, in any event, may be appealed to the courts). And if those investigations conclude that there were no war crimes, then so be it. To date, nearly all (and maybe all) of the 36 incidents cited in the Goldstone Report have been debunked anyway.
On September 10, the deputy commander of the IDF's Spokesman's Office, Col. Shlomi Am-Shalom, submitted a letter to the France 2 television network's permanent correspondent in Israel, Charles Enderlin, regarding Enderlin's story from September 30, 2000, in which he televised 55 seconds of edited footage from the Netzarim junction in the central Gaza Strip purporting to show IDF forces shooting and killing 12-year-old Muhammad al-Dura.
...
In his letter, Am-Shalom asked for the entire unedited 27-minute film that was shot by France 2's Palestinian cameraman Talal Abu-Rahma that day, as well as the footage filmed by Abu-Rahma on October 1, 2000. Am-Shalom requested that the broadcast-quality films be sent to his office no later than September 15. France 2 has yet to hand over the requested film.
The request is being made against the backdrop of Phillipe Karsenty's appeal of an October 2006 judgment by a French court against him and in favor of Enderlin and France 2. What I find most curious about this piece is the IDF's claim that they have demanded the tape before. I wish they had told someone that!
Last year, France 2 and Enderlin sued Karsenty, who runs the Internet media watchdog Web site Media Ratings, for defamation for a letter he sent out in 2004 accusing France 2 of staging the al-Dura story.
Karsenty also called for the resignations of Enderlin and of France 2's news director, Arlette Chabot, for their roles in promulgating the alleged hoax.
In October 2006 a French court decided in favor of France 2 and Enderlin, and against Karsenty.
The court acknowledged that Karsenty had submitted significant evidence indicating that the event had been staged. Still, in ruling in favor of the plaintiffs, the judges said Karsenty's accusations lacked credibility because, it claimed, he had based his accusations on a single source.
The court also stressed that "no Israeli authority, neither the army - which is nonetheless most affected, nor the Justice [Ministry] has ever accorded the slightest credit to [Karsenty's] allegations" regarding the authenticity of the France 2 report.
In his letter to Enderlin, Am-Shalom disputes the judges' assertion. "It is my duty to note," he wrote, "[that their claim] does not correspond to repeated attempts made by the IDF to receive the filmed materials, and with the conclusions of the IDF's committee of inquiry [into the purported shooting] that were widely publicized in the international and French media."
Am-Shalom has discussed at length the findings of the IDF's probe into the incident. That inquiry was ordered by then-OC Southern Command Maj.-Gen. Yom Tov Samia.
Citing Samia, Am-Shalom wrote, "The general has made clear that from an analysis of all the data from the scene, including the location of the IDF position, the trajectory of the bullets, the location of the father [Jamal al-Dura] and the son behind an obstacle, the cadence of the bullet fire, the angle at which the bullets penetrated the wall behind the father and his son, and the hours of the events, we can rule out with the greatest certainty the possibility that the gunfire that apparently harmed the boy and his father was fired by IDF soldiers, who were at the time located only inside their fixed position [at the junction]."
Am-Shalom further notes that "Gen. Samia emphasized to me that all his attempts to receive the filmed material for the purpose of his inquiry were rejected."
So why suddenly now? Well, the French court of appeals has asked the IDF to comment on the Karsenty verdict. I'm not quite sure why. It could be because the court has a bit more sense of responsibility than the lower court had. It could be because of the change of government in France, with the Sarcozy government being much more open to Israel than the Chirac government was. I cannot say, and the two biggest experts on the subject, Richard Landes and Nidra Poller, have not weighed in on the subject yet. But in any event it's a positive development even if it is likely to be too little too late to change the minds of the leftists and the mainstream media. The date in the appellate court in France is Wednesday. The IDF finally seems to be waking up:
The IDF is in urgent need of the footage, Am-Shalom said, because "it has been asked to comment on the ruling [against Karsenty] from October 19, 2006, on this issue, which is scheduled to be discussed in a French appellate court on September 19."
"Since we are cognizant of the fact that there have been attempts to stage media events, and since doubt has been raised along these lines regarding the story under discussion, we asked to receive the aforementioned materials in order to conclude this episode and to get to the truth," Am-Shalom said.
I hope that whether or not France 2 responds, a representative of the IDF will be in court in Paris on Wednesday, and if France 2 has not responded or responds negatively, they should seek a court order to see the film and have sufficient time to review it and submit papers before judgment is rendered.
For those with little background on al-Dura, I suggest that you at least read this post by Richard Landes about the al-Dura case's continuing impact on Arab terrorism, and watch the video below.
(Partial) translation of French court decision in the Al-Dura case
Richard Landes has posted a partial translation into English of the French court decision that was rendered last week in the Al-Dura case. The translation is a little bit raw - it looks like French translated to English rather than English (as someone who translates professionally from time to time, I can tell you that - as Richard noted - it's a 'rough and rapid' translation that was posted for the sake of those who were impatient to read it). Richard notes:
Generally speaking, I think this is a devastating decision. The judges go out of their way to criticize everyone involved on the side of France2 (including some backhanded swipes at the lower court), but especially to point out the pervasive “incohérences” not only in Enderlin’s initial broadcast, but his subsequent explanations and actions. In particular, after emphasizing the sharpness of both Karsenty’s language and his accusations — which indeed are defamatory and strike at Enderlin’s and France2’s honor and reputation — the judges assert that, given the evidence he had every right to make these statements, in particular given the importance of the case, the damage it did worldwide, and the fact that Enderlin, as a professional of information with a high public profile has to expect to be subjected to this kind of criticism from co-citizens and colleagues.
Here is a small highlight regarding the missing 'rushes' and what they finally (did not) show, but you should go read the whole thing.
That the two journalists there declare without ambiguity that they told Arlette CHABOT about their “serious doubts,” but their “readiness to dismiss the accusations of ROSENSWEIG about the staging of the death of the child if the viewing of all the rushes of Talal ABOU RAMA confirms that Charles ANDERLIN declared at two occasions at lest, one of which to Telerama : “I cult the agony of the child. It was unbearable… it didn’t add anything,” and, having seen the rushes, noted that “this famous agony which Enderlin affirms having cut from his report does not exist.” ;
That they also observe that “in the minutes that preceded the gunfire, the Palestinians seems to have organized a staged scene, … playing at war with the Israelis and simulating in most of the cases, imaginary injuries,” and the the viewing of the full rushes demonstrates that at the moment when Charles ENDERLIN declares the boy dead… nothing permitted him to affirm that he was really dead and even less that he was killed by Israeli soldiers.” That according to them, the journalists from FRANCE2 assured them during the session in which they saw the rushes that, “their experts even showed that the boy was his by shrapnel (?) or by bullets that ricocheted off the pavement, bullets that, in any case, did not aim at the father or the son” ;
That it is true, that while they noted that their colleague should re cognize that he “extrapolated from the rushes and the version of events supplied by his cameraman,” and that the commentary on the Israeli barbarism “had nothing to do” with the images that went around the world, Denis JEAMBAR and Daniel LECOMTE effuse to fully adopt the thesis of the staging of the death of the child, that they support this decision of the film that Talal ABU FAMAH presented by FRANCE2 on the 18 of November 2004 to show that his injuries of the father corresponded exactly to the bandaging that he had the next day in the hospital of Gaza, without considering the possibility of a contradiction between the photos that were presented and their own observation in the rushes, that “the father wears a T-shirt on which one sees no trace of blood ;
It's taken a couple of months, but Hamas' supporters have posted their response to Caroline Glick's 'We con the world.' Caroline appears only briefly in this video. The star is Aliza Landes, who is in charge of new media at the IDF's North American desk - she's the young lady in IDF uniform you'll see several times in this video.
I actually got this from Aliza's Dad, Richard Landes, of Second Draft and al-Dura fame.
Let's go to the videotape.
What this shows is how much of an impact people like Aliza Landes and Caroline Glick and those of us who spread their work around the internet are having on the terms of the debate of the Israeli-Arab conflict. And we're at least faster about getting parodies out than they are.
GIVEN ALL this, I'd like to suggest a different approach to the question of "investigation." I propose that either the State of Israel, or an International Citizens' Tribunal, should begin an investigation into the Goldstone Fact-Finding Mission's proceedings.
In it they should ask the fundamental question: "How could this Mission have conducted itself with such systematic violation of the simplest rules of equity in judgment?"
In doing so Israel could bring to light three fundamental issues that the Goldstone report systematically downplayed in its considerations: Israel's plight (Sderot, surrounding population, long-term negative trends); the repugnant behavior of Hamas - its use of human shields, indoctrination of genocidal hatred, suicidal death cult; and the role of the mainstream news media and NGOs in giving credence to Palestinian claims, many of which could not stand up to serious examination.
An investigation team should gather high-level legal and military experts, summon witness testimony that Goldstone either refused to hear - Yvonne Green, Richard Kemp; or ignored - Dr. Siderer, Noam Bedein; people who have worked on the "data" - Jonathan Dahoah Halevy, Elihu Richter, as well as specialists on urban warfare to compare Israel's records to other nations. Not just to those like Sri Lanka and the Soviet Union, who have no concern for civilians, or to Arab "armies" who target civilians as in Sudan and Iraq, but also to the US, Great Britain and other countries who uphold the Geneva Conventions.
At the end of the article, the JPost notes that Professor Landes has just launched a new collective website: Understanding the Goldstone Report. I am pleased to inform you all that I am one of the participating bloggers in that collective website. I urge you all to bookmark it and to visit it regularly (as of this writing, parts of it are still under construction).
Richard Landes looks at CNN reporting on the recent Lebanon-Israel border clash. Instead of investigating the issue, and discovering the truth, MSM took a "he said, she said" approach, lending credence to excuses offered by Lebanon.
Richard Goldstone had an op-ed in Thursday's New York Times defending his 'commission's report on Operation Cast Lead. Richard Landes does a masterful job of fisking it paragraph by paragraph. Here's a small excerpt:
I accepted because my fellow commissioners are professionals committed to an objective, fact-based investigation.
The case against the composition of his committee — not one person sympathetic to Israel, at least one, Christine Chinkin, openly hostile — has led two groups of lawyers, in England and in Canada, to demand Chinkin’s disqualification since she had already pronounced herself — long before she saw any real evidence — on Israel’s guilt. Goldstone, even as he tossed out the petition on a subtle technicality, admitted that Chinkin’s case was borderline and the report reconfirms her prejudice. So whence comes this bland denial?
But above all, I accepted because I believe deeply in the rule of law and the laws of war, and the principle that in armed conflict civilians should to the greatest extent possible be protected from harm.
While this sounds great to the liberal ear, these laws were formulated for conventional warfare. When the war is asymmetrical and the attacker hides among civilans for protection — using human shields — the laws need reinterpreting. It’s precisely this explanatory context of insurgents using human shields as cover for attacks on enemy civilians, that Chinkin dismissed from the beginning, and that the Commission, even though it occasionally considers evidence for it, systematically minimizes.
Here it is worth noting that this failure to recognize the problem has on the one hand been exploited by UN member states and officials of the UNHRC and by NGO officials to attack Israel’s legitimacy. This is worse than naïveté – by masking and excusing this criminal behavior, this approach constitutes a major contribution to the perpetuation of global conflict.
Another blogger I got to meet in person on Sunday was Richard Landes. Richard was deservedly acknowledged several times during the course of the day as being one of the prime movers in exposing the Mohamed Al-Dura fraud. In an op-ed in Sunday's JPost, he talked about the use of the western mainstream media by the Islamist terror organizations.
Publishing lies about the Israelis will, at worst, get you pained protests; publishing anything that offends the Palestinians (or in Europe, the Muslims), could get you killed. Asked why British cartoonists pick on Israel but not the Palestinians, the head of the professional society that had just given its annual award to a depiction of Ariel Sharon devouring Palestinian children, said: "Jews don't issue fatwas."
That rare candor aside, most journalists, for fear of losing their audience, cannot admit how much they're intimidated, to what extent they buy access to Palestinian sources by scrupulously following "the journalistic procedures with the Palestinian Authority for work in Palestine." Were they to tell the West what was really going on, at best they'd lose access, at worst, their lives.
So in order not to admit even to themselves that they're misreporting, they become advocates: "I'm for peace, justice and fairness, so I support the underdog Palestinians." "In the Middle East a picture can be worth 1,000 weapons," said Bob Simon. 'So,' reasons many a reporter, 'if the Israelis have the weapons, why not level the playing field by giving the 'weak' the victory in the battle of images?'
NO WONDER so many Middle East journalists take the side of the Palestinians. Only that kind of pack mentality can present the image of Israelis as killers of civilians, when Israel has by far the lowest rate of civilian casualties in the world - a 2:1 ratio of target to civilian vs. a 1:10 ratio for the next best. [By the way, the next best is the United States. CiJ].
It may seem "cost free" to trash Israel and "respect" Palestinian sensibilities in the short run, but the long-term consequences are destructive. Through the MSM's (and the NGOs') laundering of Palestinian propaganda as real news, Westerners have had their minds colonized by the Palestinian narrative: It is our fault they hate us; if we could only make enough concessions, we could fix the problem.
This susceptibility of Western news media to Palestinian disinformation imperils not just Israel (its apparent target), but the entire West. It never occurred to the European journalists, for example, whose use of Dura aroused the rage of their Muslim immigrant population, that they too would be the targets of jihad.
The problem is that it is rare that any country outside Israel pays a price for trashing our country. So they don't even consider it a possibility. That's why the apparent freeze on Israel's relations with the European Union so long as Sweden holds its Presidency is so important. Unfortunately, the rest of the world is unwilling or unable to make those who perpetrate frauds against us pay a price. We must force them to pay that price ourselves .
Richard Landes had a great comment on the terrorists for Gilad deal in London's Daily Telegraph (Hat Tip: Amnon N).
Palestine, on the other hand, represents almost the polar opposite. This is a place in which killing daughters and wives and homosexuals for shaming the family with (even suspected and loosely interpreted) inappropriate sexual behavior is a regular feature of society, where “collaborators” are summarily executed, whereofficial statistics for executions put the PA at a rate of formal, legal execution that cedes only to China, Iran, N Korea, Yemen and Libya.
The trade of over a thousand Palestinians for one Israeli highlights the radical differences between the cultures. As Hizbullah’s Nasrullah put it after a prison exchange in 2004: “We have discovered how to hit the Jews where they are the most vulnerable. The Jews love life, so that is what we shall take away from them. We are going to win, because they love life and we love death.”
If a European, concerned about the nature of the aggressive Islam that has begun to crop up in his cities, citing for example Sharia zones, wanted to understand the nature of the Arab-Israeli conflict, he might spend a moment visiting the sites of Palestinian anti-Zionists, where this profoundly perverse culture teems. But of course, that would be politically incorrect. To spend any time pointing out the problems here constitutes the highest level of politically incorrect Islamophobia.
So instead of helping Europeans understand what’s at stake, most of the media and the NGO community have spun this story as one of violations of human rights on “both sides” with a heavy focus on Israeli misdeeds. The prisoners were considered “equal,” and Israeli primarily held accountable by the Geneva Convention for the treatment of enemy combatants when, in reality, the only one protected under these conditions was Shalit, a uniformed soldier kidnapped on his own soil in non-combat situation, and the thousand Palestinian prisoners where convicted in a court, primarily of crimes related to terror attacks on civilians (an, alas, necessary redundancy in these days of sophism).
Thus,The New York Times’s Robert Mackee could speak glibly about the “joy of parents on both sides” at the return of prisoners, and the UN could voice its concern that the prisoners Israel released might be subject to illegal forced transfer. “Returning people to places other than their habitual places of residence is in contradiction to international humanitarian law.” The UN’s concern for the full exercise of free will by convicted mass murderers illustrates the problem. Humanitarian discourse has been turned on its head to protect the ugliest players in this particular game, threatened by ugly forces within their own society, all the while implying that Israel, in its haste to get its own soldier back, trampled their rights and violated humanitarian law. Not surprisingly this led Ban Ki Moon to a moment of moral vertigowhere he denounced the violation of everyone’s rights.
Of course, in order to present the moral equivalence of all the “prisoners” in the swap, one has to play down the heinous nature of the crimes and personalities of the Palestinian prisoners released. BBC correspondent Jon Donnison showed the extent of ignorance among the supposedly professional news media by interviewing a man in prison for organising and abetting several suicide bombings. (Because the attacks only injured but did not kill, he did not receive life sentences.) “You are 31 years old, 10 years in prison, serving a life sentence for being a member of Hamas, I mean, how do you feel today?” BBC viewers could be excused for sympathising with a political prisoner, inhumanly incarcerated for belonging to an opposition party, free at last.
Read the whole thing. By the way, in light of this exchange and others, I believe we have no choice but to institute the death penalty (which Richard discusses at some length) for 'Palestinian' terrorists who murder civilians.
Israel Radio's Paris correspondent Gil Michaeli has just reported that the French Court of Appeals has overturned the libel judgment against Phillipe Karsenty and has determined that Karsenty did not libel France 2 correspondent Charles Enderlin when he reported that the 'death' of 12-year old Mohamed Al-Dura at Netzarim in the Gaza Strip in September 2000 may have been staged, and that it was unlikely that the death was caused by IDF soldiers.
More to follow as soon as I have it.
Yes, I know that the photo above is offensive. I'm trying to remind you all of how the al-Dura hoax is being used around the world.
Richard Landes, who has been one of the driving forces behind the effort to expose the al-Dura hoax from the beginning, reminds us all that there is still a written opinion to be issued, and that the court's evidentiary standard ought to make that opinion a doozer. He also asks the most important question here:
Now we get to see how the French (and Western) MSM handle this. It’s a stunning victory for Karsenty and loss for Enderlin and France2 who initiated this case when they didn’t have to.
I don't know how this has been reported elsewhere in the world, but here in Israel, I have not seen the story on any of the major newspapers' English-language websites (JPost, Haaretz and YNet) nor, more surprisingly, on Arutz Sheva. Other than the first report just after 3:00, I did not hear it on Israel Radio's 4:00 news (I was on a work call at 5:00). And the correspondent who reported from Paris was someone who - according to Yitzchak Noy, the host of the international news hour - 'is working with us on this case.' He is not Israel Radio's regular Paris correspondent. That would be Michel Zlatovsky.
Heh.
Fear not, Richard and Phillipe. The blogosphere will make them all squirm. Remember Rathergate?
"The verdict means we have the right to say France 2 broadcast a fake news report, that [al-Dura's shooting] was a staged hoax and that they duped everybody - without being sued," Karsenty told The Jerusalem Post shortly after the verdict was issued at 1:30 p.m. Paris time.
...
Karsenty, the head of the media watchdog Media Ratings, was sued for libel after calling for Enderlin's and France 2 news director Arlette Chabot's dismissal, saying the footage was "a hoax." Enderlin, who was not present in Gaza at the time of the incident, has vehemently denied the charge, expressing confidence in cameraman Abu Rahma's honesty.
Convicted of libel in 2006, Karsenty, the director of the media watchdog group Media-Ratings, was slapped with two $1,380 fines - one to be paid to France 2 and one to the station's reporter - and ordered to pay another $4,000 in court costs when he wrote that the incident constituted a "masquerade that dishonors France and its public television." On Wednesday, his appeal against that conviction was upheld.
The IDF, which initially apologized for the death of al-Dura, concluded after an investigation that the boy could not have been hit by Israeli bullets.
A statement forwarded to The Jerusalem Post from Enderlin said that "the appeals court ruled that Karsenty's words were, in fact, libelous, and that Karsenty failed to prove that the news was staged and/or false." The statement added that the case was nevertheless overturned because "the court believed Karsenty had the right to stridently criticize the [France 2] report, since it dealt with an emotional topic, and that Karsenty's investigation into the matter convinced the court he was bring sincere."
A source close to Enderlin's side of the case explained that "you can get out of a libel suit either by proving you're right, or by showing you were sincere and had some research. The court found the latter to be the case."
The source also said Enderlin and France 2 would appeal the verdict, noting that they had won three out of four instances of judgment in the matter.
But, replied Karsenty, the only appeal left would be to France's Supreme Court.
"If they continue to insist they are correct," added Karsenty, "we will have victims of terror attacks that directly resulted from the [al-Dura] footage sue France 2."
Karsenty also called on French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who Karsenty sees as "ultimately responsible" for the publicly owned television station, "to take responsibility for the French state's defense of the worst anti-Semitic lie around. It's time to apologize to the world for broadcasting a fake news report that has inflamed the Muslim world and endangered world peace."
Karsenty's claims are based on inconsistencies in the footage, including a publicly-available video-taped admission by Abu Rahma that there are untold secrets related to the case, the fact that only seven bullet holes are seen behind al-Dura despite Abu Rahma's repeated statements that the child survived 45 minutes of continuous shooting by Israeli forces directed at the boy, footage clearly showing pretend gun battles and faked ambulance runs at the junction that day, testimony of the IDF soldiers stationed at the junction who said they did not participate in any firefight that day, and the lack of footage of al-Dura's actual shooting.
Despite France 2's playing down of the verdict, some analysts believe it is significant. According to Gross, "today's ruling shows there are serious doubts about France 2's version of events, and that the entire world press was irresponsible in being so quick to take at face value the claims of a local Palestinian cameraman, who has admitted his partisanship."
Several months ago, the deputy commander of the IDF Spokesman's Office, Col. Shlomi Am-Shalom, wrote to France 2 asking for the entire unedited 27-minute film shot by France 2's Palestinian cameraman on September 30, 2000, as well as footage the cameraman filmed on October 1, 2000. Am-Shalom stressed that the IDF had "ruled out" the notion that al-Dura was killed by Israeli fire.
Citing the findings of the IDF's probe into the incident, ordered by then-OC Southern Command Maj.-Gen. Yom Tov Samia, Am-Shalom wrote, "The general has made clear that from an analysis of all the data from the scene, including the location of the IDF position, the trajectory of the bullets, the location of the father and the son behind an obstacle, the cadence of the bullet fire, the angle at which the bullets penetrated the wall behind the father and his son, and the hours of the events, we can rule out with the greatest certainty the possibility that the gunfire that apparently harmed the boy and his father was fired by IDF soldiers, who were at the time located only inside their fixed position [at the junction]."
The text of Wednesday's final verdict has not yet been released to the media.
It will be most interesting to see whether France 2 stands behind Enderlin. But I'll go ahead and say it: The story was a hoax.
UPDATE 10:50 PM
Karsenty has written an essay about the meaning of today's ruling. You can (and should) find it here.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
