Augean Stables

The Pope’s recent remarks have set off a particularly revealing firestorm of criticism. Distracted by the Al Durah trial, I haven’t paid close attention until now.

Dismaying is probably putting it mildly. At a distance, one gets the following impression. The Pope expressed disapproval of Jihadi “thinking” in Islam; Muslims the world over expressed vigorous if not violent objection to the Pope’s remarks; and responsible Westerners waxed indignant at the pope’s unnecessary provocation. Under the double pressure of a politically-correct public sphere and a violent or threatening Muslim “street,” the pope apologized.

Of course, the second stage of this story — the Muslim response — is nothing less than a very bad joke. “Call me violent? I’ll show you! I’ll riot and rampage until you stop calling me violent!” This is the kind of silliness even a five-year-old can get.

But the “adults” are not laughing, at least not in public. So what happened?
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Stuart, one of the commentaters at this site has sent in a translation of a Le Monde article on the Fauxtography Scandal. It represents a good example of how ill-informed the French MSM is about their Augean Stables, and how ill-equipped to even understand much less deal with the challenge of the blogosphere in this regard. The author, Claire Guillot (CG) does not appear to be ill-intentioned; on the contrary, she seems to want to try and be even-handed. The results, however, are telling.

[Note: Le Monde article in blockquote bold; quotes from other sources in blockquote italic; a previous post of the end of the article has been included and developed.]

War in Lebanon and Fauxtography

The conflict has triggered a controversy on the Net of conservative bloggers suspecting images of being manipulated.

It was “Little Green Footballs” that broke the scandal at the beginning of August. The conservative American blog accused Adnan Hajj, stringer photographer of the Reuters Agency, of having manipulated by computer a photo of Beirut to thicken the smoke after an Israeli bombing. Indeed, the retouching was crude.

The agency presented its excuses and removed the incriminating photo. But the blog then presented as evidence another of Mr Hajj’s photos where he had duplicated a rocket fired by an Israeli plane. The photographer, who apparently does not know how to use Photoshop very well was sacked and all of his archives deleted.

“There was a chain of human errors” pleads Tom Szulkovenyi, director of photography at Reuters. “This story is contrary to all our principles and has never happened before.”

Of course, at this point, an astute journalist might say, “how can Tom Skzukolvenyi (TS) know this, especially given how he was fooled by the admittedly crude work of his stringer… and how can others check the validity of this claim, when TS has removed the large cache of photos from this apparently unreliable stringer from their archives, thus making any further examination of his work impossible? And the latest news from Reuters is that TS’s CEO Tom Glocer thinks just the opposite, that these matters are widespread.

But nothing like those observations follow… on to right-wing cabals:

“Reutergate” becomes the starting point of a cabal on the Internet: dozens of bloggers, for the most part Americans or Israelis, of the right or extreme right, self-declared “citizen journalists” who set themselves up to investigate from their living rooms. If you believe them, the case of the “fauxtography”, according to this neologism which is typical of the Internet, splatters the whole profession in Lebanon: photographs which have been manipulated or are manipulating, handed over to be retouched, or even set up to give a truncated image that is pro-Hezbollah, or even anti-semitic, of the conflict.

Wow! Nothing like letting your readership know just who they’re dealing with. Shades of Charles Enderlin dismissing his critics as “groupuscules d’extrême droite.” And like Enderlin and the rest of the die-hard, bien pensant “left,” this ready resort to splattering the whole group of critics, actually gets the issue exactly wrong. Most of the folks now labeled “right-wing” are actually refugees and exiles from a “left” that lives in a fantasy-world of denial. MENA is not right-wing; indeed it has an explicitly progressive agenda. They’re just not fellow travelers. Same with Charles Johnson, Roger Simon, Neo-Con, and many of the players in the blogosphere. They’re just not still in dogmatic slumber.
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Stuart, one of the commentaters at this site has sent in a translation of a Le Monde article on the Fauxtography Scandal. It is emblematic of everything that ails the MSM, everything that created and maintains the Augean Stables.

I will post a fisking later of the whole piece in his translation, followed by the original for those who either prefer French or want to check his/my translation. But in the meantime, there is a particularly revealing passage at the end of the article about matters of “unethical behavior” among journalists working for Western media outlets in the Middle East, and the reluctance to reveal its presence that, I think, sheds a bright light on the problems we face. So I will first post this segment of the analysis here, and follow with the full fisking later.

War in Lebanon and Fauxtography

The conflict has triggered a controversy on the Net of conservative bloggers suspecting images of being manipulated.

…………

The photographers admit with difficulty the existance of little arrangements. One of them admitted on the Net having seen photographers in Lebanon asking rescuers to pose with the victims adding that “the dead bodies, they were real.”

Today he regrets having made the statement and wishes to remain anonymous. “I wanted to encourage the handful of photographers who have carried out such condemnable practices to act with greater ethics.” In reality, my statement mostly harmed the Lebanese people. Rather than reflecting on the atrocities carried out on one side and the other, each one is searching in the images for the means to prove that there were no war crimes…”

Now as a medievalist who is trained to look for evidence of supressed material, this is precious. The journalist herself tells us that photographers admit these manipulations “with difficulty” — obviously they’re not supposed to do it, and if they can they’ll deny it. Like the ad for mouthwash that has someone asking advice “for a friend with bad breath,” the reluctant photographer admits that a “handful” of photographers do this, but hastily adds “the bodies were real.” (As if manipulating real dead bodies for sensational pictures were somehow a mitigating circumstance.)

But even that is too much. He now regrets his remarks and seeks to assure his anonymity. In the primary community to which this photographer “reports back,” this was not a “good” thing to say. So he self-censors.

Who is it who so objects to these remarks that it makes him regret them? What is this primary group to which he answers back? Not, apparently, his public, who clearly would like to know what’s going on “behind the scenes” as it were.

He insists of anonymity. Why? What does he risk having it known that he’s admitted that a minimal amount of staging goes on? The obvious answer is, he risks offending the powers that be on the scene, i.e., Hezbollah, and thus at the very least losing “access” to more pictures, and more seriously losing the use of any or all of his limbs. But to say that outright would be to admit to intimidation. That’s also not supposed to happen.

Instead we get a marvelous piece of ideological justification that clues us in to the intellectual world this anonymous photographer inhabits and reports from, and answers back to.

In reality, my statement mostly harmed the Lebanese people. Rather than reflecting on the atrocities carried out on one side and the other, each one is searching in the images for the means to prove that there were no war crimes…”

Wow! Let me unpack this for those not used to the language of PCP advocacy journalism (i.e., those who brought us Pallywood). Our anonymous’ statement “mostly harmed the Lebanese people,” and therefore he should not let his public (us!) know even that watered-down admission. Among other things, this means that he gauges his statements according to their effect and not either their relevance or accuracy.

According to what criteria do we judge this “greater good”? The answer appears to be: “According to a calculus in which the perceived interests of the Lebanese people are at the front of my concerns, indeed sufficiently strong that these perceived interests override my willingness to give outsiders information that they might find important to know.”

In other words, “I won’t offer them any support for the argument that they’re being given Pallywood as news.” This is remarkably close to the remark that Charles Enderlin made to Esther Shapira that “I will not give the Israeli Army the rushes so they can whitewash themselves.”

He’s saying in effect that as part of his advocacy journalism, he militates for that which he believes to be the “right” or “deserving” side, and controls information with an eye to implementing that which works towards his goal. In this case, “the good of the Lebanese people.”

So what issues determine what the good of the Lebanese people is?

Rather than reflecting on the attrocities carried out on one side and the other, each one is searching in the images for the means to prove that there were no war crimes…”

Now that’s a really good one. Strictly speaking, it is strictly neutral. “Both sides” are carrying out atrocities; “each one” is searching for the means to exonerate its side; let us journalists and photographers not let that happen.

But the reality here is, that Hezbollah is not trying to exonerate its side from targetting Israeli civilians — it revels in the number of Israelis killed. And of course, Israelis don’t orchestrate media events around dead civilians. Indeed the media seems largely uninterested in showing Israeli civilian casualties, and none of the outspoken moral institutions — from the UN to the NGOs to the “statesmen” seem inclined to hold Hezbollah accountable.

Hezbollywood, on the other hand — the images here in question — serve a particular one-sided goal: they consistently demonize the Israelis and if not justify, certainly to buoy the hopes of Hezbollah. That’s why Hezbollah spends so much time courting and intimidating the press…. it matters.

So even-handed appearances aside, this remark basically means: “I’m sorry I mentioned the staging because it gives Israel the opportunity to get off the moral hook by claiming that phony coverage is manipulating Western outrage. Moreover, as I see it, it is in the interests of the Lebanese people to have Israel on that moral hook since they are the ones bombing the Lebanese, and getting them to stop will make the Lebanese situation better.”

What if PCP is Wrong? The Consequences of Well-Intentioned Error

But now we come to our real problem. What if our photographer — talented perhaps, but not a particularly deep thinker on matters of morality and geopolitics — is part of a community that systematically misreads the situation with the mistake only a beginner in liberalism persists in repeating: liberal cognitive egocentrism? That is to say, he systematically interprets the “other side” (the one whose culture is so different from his own) in the most generous liberal terms? What if his exclusive concern for the Lebanese people and loud silence about the good of the Israeli people reflects the degree to which his Politically Correct Paradigm (PCP) has imbibed the demonizing of the Israelis — they are the Goliath, why should he give them any sympathy?

But what if there are dead bodies here in such profusion on both sides of the line not because Israelis like to kill innocent civilians (Hizbullah’s account), but because Lebanon is in the grip of religious zealots who worship death and thrive on it? What if the vast weight of responsibility for the catastrophe that just befell the southern Lebanese was a) a mere fraction of the devastation that would have reigned down had it been, say, the Syrians who were reacting to an attack by declared mortal enemies hiding among civilians, and b) overwhelmingly the result of both long-range and short-range behavior from Hizbullah that systematically sought not only to shield themselves behind their civilians to take advantage of Israel’s constraints, but also to further spread hatred and violence throughout the world with their lethal narratives.

What if… ?

Then the entire reasoning of our photographer and the larger journalistic culture in which we need to place his solidarity (i.e., his desire for anonymity among, his regrets at breaking rank with) is working against his and their stated concern, the Lebanese people. What if the peer-group pressure of the an unconscious advocacy journalism pushes people to make terrible mistakes, to play the dupe to the demopaths, and, as with the Palestinian case, by running the “lethal narratives,” empower the very people who victimize the Lebanese people. In other words, what if our well-intentioned journalists were actually encouraging Jihad with their advocacy journalism based on the PC Paradigm and not the Jihad Paradigm.

One would imagine that a true advocacy reporter — i.e., someone truly committed to the principles of a civil society and concerned for civilians on both sides — would to expose the full range of sources of Lebanese suffering, rather than this confected demonization of the Israelis intended to help the Lebanese.

And certainly, among these sources, our intrepid reporter would emphasize to Westerners who have difficulty imagining what this world is like unless they’ve studied the Middle Ages and the early Modern period — what it means to be increasingly in the grip of a powerful mafioso-like organization which invokes religious war with calls to genocide, promotes a death cult, targets enemy civilians and easily sacrifices its own people, desecrating the corpses for PR victories.

But he need not be that much of a hero… just an honest and reasonably modest individual who does his job as he’s supposed to. With rare exceptions, journalists are not supposed to be visionaries who make decisions about what to tell people based on how that will lead them to the “higher good.” Journalists are supposed to give us clean, accurate, relevant information and let us make decisions as to what it means, and how to get to the “higher good.” The difference between propaganda and journalism is that one manipulates and the other informs; the former disempowers, the latter empowers the reader. Our journalists have no business making these kinds of decisions, for which they are completely unqualified.

Here what the readers (i.e., we still living in free societies and capable of making decisions on the basis of a free press) need most is an honest appraisal of how accurate the information our MSM provide us with. If the information is staged, if photographers break their ethical rules in order to get “exciting” pictures that get into the MSM, and if those “spectacular” photos lead the opinion makers to get morally hysterical about one side of the conflict while overlooking the moral depravity of the other… then I’d say we’re all in trouble.

The word is that when US Intelligence people wanted advice at the end of WWII, they went to medievalists because we’re trained to reconstruct a large picture from fragmentary evidence. When I saw Talal’s work, heard Enderlin’s reaction, and watched Bob Simon “cover” the Al Durah affair, I realized that Pallywood never could have happened without a wide-ranging and systemic failure in the MSM.

And nothing embodies that failure better than this passage from a typical product of Le Monde, on the brave new world of accountable MSM that the blogosphere heralds. Nothing makes it clearer that the members of the MSM who do work in the Middle East have to come clean about what’s going on. In a time of crisis like the current, we cannot afford a MSM that stinks like the Augean Stables.

Global Jihad Warming and the Media Greenhouse Effect

And when the MSM plays into this manipulation rather than denounce it, they not only sacrifice the innocent Lebanese people who do not want this religious mafia to take over and use them as sacrificial shields, but they damage civil society the world over. On the one hand, they blind us to the deeds and motivations of organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah, so that demopaths can ask us to join demonstrations under the rubric: “We are all Hizbullah!”. And on the other hand, they encourage the hatreds and angry desires for revenge that feed the global Jihadi appeal. Global Jihad warming shot up by 5 degrees after Qana as Muslims the world over looked in growing horror and outrage at the spectacles of these dead children milked transmitted by a misguided and eager media.

If it had turned into an international PR disaster for Hezbollywood, in which the world looked aghast at the ghoulish manipulation of dead bodies, whose very deaths were primarily the responsibility of a religious death cult, one can imagine that the temperature might have dropped considerably. Not only would the Jihadis not have found new fuel for their hatreds, but the real moderates would have found much strength.

But instead of exposing Hezbollah, our photographer reports in ways that channel Hezbollah’s agenda in the name of the Lebanese people. Instead of helping a people in the death-grip of a vicious elite, the media helps the vicious elite by broadcasting it’s poisonous propaganda as news — “the bodies were really dead.” And in so doing, they act like a hot-house, increasing the temperature of Global Jihadi passions by advertising these lethal narratives and incensing the world. How can a Muslim anywhere be anything but outraged that the USA would support a bunch of murdering maniacs like the picture he gets of the Israelis from the MSM?

Why?

Why does the same media who never cease to chide George Bush, Benedict XVI and any other critic of Islam with “making things worse” engage in such consistently dangerous activity that almost unquestionably makes this worse. Why don’t they speak out? Why don’t they denounce?

There are many troubling answers to this question including psychological ones. Here I want to focus on two: Intimidation and Advocacy.

We do not know, and our media will not let us know, just how bad the intimidation. If you don’t look closely at incidents like the kidnapping of Bob Simon (January 21, 1991), or the recent forced conversion of two Fox correspondants, then you have very little clue as to the degree of terror against the media that is currently operative in Arab, increasingly any Muslim culture. In the Arab-Israeli conflict, the assassination and kidnapping of reporters became a chronic feature of the landscape in the 1970s and 1980s, just the time Pallywood got going according to our current estimation.

This should not be surprising. It is characteristic of honor-shame cultures that criticism of those with power is viewed as an assault and a legitimate object of retaliation… all the more when a death-cult takes over.

What appears in the allusions to intimidation our anonymous journalist has made — and whose implications seem to have escaped Le Monde’s reporter — suggests that this culture of enforced solidarity operates at nearly full force in this arena of Middle East newsreporting. It’s the only way to understand how Pallywood not only takes place but persists, year after year… how something like Al Durah can remain uncorrected for now six long years of constant, visible damage.

But there is an alternative explanation: that these journalists are committed ideologues and advocates, that they either don’t know what they’re encouraging global Jihad or don’t agree that that’s what they’re doing, people like anonymous who readily back down on even mentioning photographers giving into the temptation to “fix” scenes, “for the good of the Lebanese people.”

These are the ones who must decide now, whether they will continue to ignore the stench of the Augean Stables, continue to call those who pay attention to it “right-wing,” continue to adhere to a now clearly destructive — as well as dishonest — paradigm that holds Israel fundamentally responsible for Arab suffering.

These are the ones who need to find enough modesty to consider that they might most resemble the members of the Emperor’s court the day he processed naked in front of his people, who have swallowed a “line” that denies the very reality before our eyes, who need to be a good deal more professional and less ideological. As I said to Charles Enderlin the first day I met him and watched the rushes: “at least consider as a working hypothesis the possibility that you’ve been duped.” (And please don’t answer as he did: “Impossible, they would never even think of cheating like that because I’d catch it right away.”)

Time for honesty, no matter how painful. It is not for you to decide what information is “good for the Lebanese, or Palestinian people.”

An Appeal to Members of the MSM

So please, Mr. Anonymous, and all the other reporters and photographers who know better… how about some honesty? How about some accountability not to your handlers who give you “access” but to your readers who depend on you? How about some small cracks in the omertà that has created our Augean Stables?

Then people might be able to assess for themselves who they hold responsible for the victimization of the Lebanese people, rather than you telling us. Then people might be able to defend against an emotional manipulation by the Jihadis that plays on precisely those humane feelings that these Jihadis do not share (indeed they despise), in order to demonize Israelis, who do share those concerns for life and innocence.

That’s how blood libels work. They project the hatred of the libelers onto the libeled and hope to arouse violent hatred with the resulting tale. Why on earth would our modern MSM want to vehiculate such medieval cruelties?

For those who might wonder why I have lavished so much effort, attention and time on the Al Durrah affair, I post here an updated version of an essay from The Second Draft on Reception and Consequences.

AL-DURAH: IMPACT ARAB WORLD

AL DURAH AND THE PA

The impact of the pictures of al-Dura on the Arab world were instantaneous, explosive, and enduring. As soon as the footage ran - on Israeli TV - Israeli Arabs began to riot in a number of places, including Nazareth and Jaffa. This had not occurred among Israeli Arabs since the foundation of the state. It seemed as if a massive uprising (intifada) had spread to both sides of the Green Line (1948-67 borders). And the role of Muhamed’s picture is confirmed by every discussion of the issue, including the Ohr Commission’s report. As Dr. Sabikh, an Israeli Arab explained to Stephan Juffa of the Metula News Agency:

You understand, Steph, when we saw these pictures [of Mohamed al-Dura], we said that there was a radical change in the way Jews considered us. We had never seen or imagined Israeli soldiers shooting a child to kill him, and for forty minutes. In the towns and villages, at Sakhnin, Nazareth, Rameh, we thought that if you had no pity for Arab children, you were going to massacre us all! So it was urgent to go out into the streets and show you that we were not about to give up and it would cost you dearly.

[Never mind that if they really thought the Israelis were going to massacre them all, they hardly would have taken to the streets and given the Israelis an excuse to do so.]

The Arab rioting, which was, like the attack on Tuvya Grossman in Jerusalem the 29th of September, really violent, drew police fire, killing 13 Israeli Arabs, and further inflaming hatreds. Not only did the West Bank become hostile territory, but areas within Israel as well.

On the West Bank, rioting that had broken out in response to Sharon’s visit and subsequent crackdowns became widespread and far more deadly. The staggeringly violent affect it had can best be gauged by the fate of two army reserve soldiers who took the wrong turn and fell into the hands of the Palestinian police in Ramallah (seat of government of the PA, some dozen km from Jerusalem), some of whom, along with an enraged mob literally tore the policemen apart with their bare hands and dragged their body parts through the city. The savagery stunned journalists who witnessed it, who report hearing repeatedly “Revenge for the blood of Muhammed!”

Palestinian culture immediately seized upon this image of Muhammed al Durah and made it the icon of the Intifada - far more potent than any picture of Sharon on the Haram al Sharif. Palestinian TV inserted a picture from the riots in Nazereth into the footage, clearing up any ambiguity that might remain from Talal’s work, clearly indicating the Israeli soldier who killed Muhammed in cold blood — yet another stage in the Pallywood production, which posed no moral dilemma for those doing the editing.

Muhammed became the call to a ferocious uprising that would devour everyone. Certainly the educators in Palestinian territories were ready to send every last child to their deaths for revenge. The paroxysm of violence it had inspired in Ramallah became a rite of passage, with kindergarten children taught to dip their hands in red paint and show them, the way one of the killers at Ramallah did from the window of the station, crying:

“In the name of the Shahid (martyr) Mohammed al-Dura and the Shahida, the infant Iman al-Haju, we promise to continue with the Jihad, the resistance and the Intifada”.

It was the very emblem of an unquenchable hatred, and fueled the Intifada long after Sharon’s visit became a Palestinian trope for blaming the violence on Israel.

This hatred fed a genocidal rhetoric that fueled the Intifada’s attack on Israelis on either side of the green line. Sermon after sermon, rerun on Palestinian TV, had imams calling for killing the Jews wherever they are in the world. The apocalyptic hadith about how at the end of time, the Muslims will slaughter the Jews and the Jews will take refuge, and even the rocks and the trees will call out, “Oh Muslim, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come kill him,” became a staple of Palestinian rhetoric.

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For those coming here to get background on the Al Durah Affair and the ongoing trials, I offer a quick survey of the material I’ve posted with a few other links:

The full dossier on both Pallywood and Al Durah can be found at The Second Draft.

For those who have yet to see either of the two “video essays” we’ve done on Pallywood and Al Durah: The Making of an Icon, go to Pallywood and Al Durah Up at YouTube for the easiest links. There is a French version of Pallywood, and of Al Durah: The Making of an Icon, and a Spanish version of Pallywood.

For a general introduction to the upcoming trials and the larger stakes involved, see The Al Durah Trials: Portrait of French Culture at the Beginning of the 21st Century.

In French: Procès Al-Durah : état d’esprit de la France du début du XXIe siècle

For a discussion of the raw footage shot by Talal abu Rahmeh, the France2 cameraman who alone caught the “Al Durah footage,” see Al Durah Affair I: France2 Rushes by Talal Abu Rahmeh. It was viewing these rushes that inspired the term Pallywood.

For a discussion of some of the evidence surrounding the most curious thing about footage depicting a child killed by a bullet to the stomach who bled for twenty minutes in front of the cameraman — the absence of blood — see Blood? We’ve Got Some.

For a discussion of the remarkable resistance to even imagining, much less accepting the “staged” hypothesis, see Al Durah as Staged: The Resistance.

For a discussion of the “five scenarios” and James Fallows current position on the matter, see Fallows on al Durah: What is your Position?

For a long meditation (response to Zombietime) on what’s wrong with the media that such cheap fakes get by so consistently, see Meditations on Reutersgate: What’s Going on in the MSM?.

For a discussion of the impact of Al Durah in the Arab and Muslim world, see:
Al Durah in the Arab/Muslim World: Reception and Consequences Part I

For a discussion of the toxic effect of al Durah on French (and by extension, European) society in the early 21st century (including the advent of the Arab/Muslim “street” in Europe, see: On the hidden costs of Media Error: Muhamed al Durah and the French Intifada, and now en français au site d’Alain Jean-Mairet: Les coûts cachés des erreurs des médias: Mohammed al Dura et l’intifada française.

Pretrial Musings:
Mine: Paris Thoughts: Meditations on the Eve of the Trial
Nidra Poller’s: Al Durah the Trial: Part I

On the first trial, see:

My initial reactions at: Vive la France Republicaine: Elle Vit Toujours!

Nidra Poller’s two accounts at Pajamas Media: Part I (Pre-trial thoughts), Part II (initial post-trial reaction), and Part III (blow-by-blow).

Also one of the better MSM accounts with references to others:Cybercast News Service Weighs in on Al Durah Trial

Neo-con has a number of excellent meditations on the trials and the al Durah affair:
What’s behind France2’s stance in the al Durah case?: the press and honesty
Fake but accurate: what if it’s turtles all the way down?
and more.

For those who want to read farther, go to the Introductory Essays section at the Second Draft or the exhaustive linked bibliography at Menahem Macina’s Debriefing.org.

If anyone knows of other articles, or has written reflections on this issue that they’d like posted here, please feel free to send them to me. As anyone who has read me on the topic knows, I think this story has wide-ranging and profound implications for our entire dilemma today. I welcome the thoughts of other observers and analysts. I also particularly invite French comment.

One of the most common questions people ask when they see the Al Durah and Pallywood footage is, “why don’t the Israelis say anything?” — actually one of Charles Enderlin’s favorite defenses. The answer is complex, and some day I’ll try and address it in detail. But for now, I just want to remark that one of the reasons is that the Israeli press is remarkably aggressive and largely leftish (if not more). Ha-Aretz trashed both the investigation and the investigators when they first came out with their claims that the odds were enormous against it being Israeli bullets.

One of my students asked if Ha-Aretz was an Israeli paper. Why? “Because it sounds like it’s written by Palestinians.”

Ah, Israeli self-criticism. It’s hard to realize how hard the Israeli media is on Israel.

Thus when I first got started on al Durah, I was in a cafe in Jerusalem and in walked B. Michael, a well known writer for Yediot Acharonot.

“What do you think of the Muhammad al Durah case?”
“A hundred percent the Israelis killed him.”
“Do you know about the investigation?”
“You mean the one by the engineer with the conspiracy theories?” [Apparently he read Ha-Aretz.] “The one with the theory that the kid committed suicide.”
“Committed suicide?” I said to BM’s table companion?
“He’s being sarcastic.”
“Were you being sarcastic?” I asked BM.
“No. I’m never sarcastic.”
“Suicide?”
“Well, maybe a little.”

I was stunned by his almost arrogant sense of certainty, his contempt of any questioning… even though this was one of the single most damaging “news items” ever to hit the stand. But it’s everywhere.

Virtually no one knows details. As late as 2005, a leading candidate for the Labor party’s leadership knew it might have been Palestinians, but had never heard that it might have been staged. When the Al Durah movie went up at Second Draft in December 2005, I received letters from Israelis — soldiers during 2000 — who also had never even heard of the possibility that it was staged, and when I asked an Israeli friend, he told me the Israelis don’t even know that Al Durah was not their fault.

As a result, the Israeli media is lamentably behind on this case. I fisked an earlier article in Maariv, written by a journalist who combined lack of knowledge in the case with the typical sneering attitude of the MSM towards “right-wing” people like Shahaf.

Indeed, when I told an Israeli friend about the trial in Paris, one of them said, “Why didn’t any of the Israeli press cover this?”

Why do I mention all this? Because we have another example of shoddy reporting — the only Israeli paper to cover the trial — this time from a paper that most Israeli journalists would call “right-wing,” The Jerusalem Post. I fisk it, not because it’s that bad — there’s far worse, but because I think that journalists should get up to speed on Al Durah before writing the articles. We’re now in the second draft of history, and it takes some research to inform your public well. Moreover, he has just filed a second report, from the Paris courtroom that continues to replicate both his attitudes and his inaccuracies.

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J’indique ici les liens à mes articles à propos de l’affaire al Durah (et surtout ce qui concerne les procès qui ont lieu à Paris cet automne).

Pour ceux et celles qui ne les ont pas encore vus, il existe une version française de Pallywood, et de Al Durah: La Confection d’un Icone.

Concernant les enjeux du procès, voir Procès Al-Durah : état d’esprit de la France du début du XXIe siècle

Pour les connexions que je vois entre la diffusion des images d’al Durah et l’arrivée de la “rue arabe-musulmane” en France et le lien avec les émeutes de novembre dernier, voir Les coûts cachés des erreurs des médias: Mohammed al Dura et l’intifada française.

Pour une discussion de ce que j’ai expérimenté en visionnant les rushes de Talal abu Rahmeh, le cameraman de France2 qui a filmé l’épisode “al Durah”, voir Les Rushes de Talal abu Rahmeh et l’affaire al Durah

Pour un compte rendu de mes conversations avec Charles Enderlin au sujet de l’affaire et des rushes que nous avons visionner ensemble, voir
Conversations avec Charles Enderlin: Aux origines de mon témoignage.

En effet, le contenu de ces deux articles est à la base de mon témoignage devant la Cour de Paris.

Pour mes premières réactions au procès numéro 1 (contre Karsenty), voir Vive la France républicaine : Elle vit toujours !

Voir aussi deux comptes-rendus du procès en français :
“L’image choc de l’intifada en procès” du 16 septembre, dans Le Figaro,
et
Veronique Chemla, “La justice française se prononcera sur les images controversées de la mort de Mohamed al-Dura” du 19 septembre dans Guysen News.

Enfin, on trouvera sur le site de Menahem Macina, Debriefing.org, la meilleur compilation d’articles ayant trait à l’affaire Al-Dura (plus de 140, continuellement mise à jour). Voir la rubrique A-Dura - France2.

There has been a fair amount of reporting on the al-Durah affair in the MSM — far more than anticipated. Some of it has been good if brief (Le Figaro), some brief and awful (The Jerusalem Post), some more longer and mixed (The International Herald Tribune). The best so far is from Eva Cahen at CNS (below), who was the only one to actually interview people at the trial (including me), and to cite more than the same predictable comments from France2.

Cahen’s is below (and not only because she cites me at length). I reserve my fisking of Michel Zlotowski of TJP for the moment. And Philippe Karsenty, who has prepared a response to Zlotowski’s work, has sent out a round up at Media Ratings, but I can’t find it at the site. Nidra’s Part III is now up at Pajamas Media, and Véronique Chemla’s account at Guysen.

French TV Network Sues Over Palestinian Shooting Controversy
By Eva Cahen
CNSNews.com Correspondent
September 18, 2006

Paris (CNSNews.com) - Six years after the world was gripped by media images showing a 12-year-old boy’s death during an Israeli-Palestinian gun battle in Gaza, a French state-owned television channel — accused of spreading misinformation — is defending its reputation in court.

In a series of lawsuits, France 2 Television is suing Philippe Karsenty, director of an online media watchdog agency, for alleged defamation, after he published an article urging that the network’s news director Arlette Chabot and reporter Charles Enderlin “be stripped of their positions immediately.”

A public prosecutor [Procureur de la République] here asked the judges to drop the charges against Karsenty, acknowledging that he had defamed Chabot and Enderlin, but declaring that the accusations against them were based on serious and impartial investigations and offered “relatively convincing proof” of fraud.

The France 2 news report, broadcast in September 2000, was seen around the world after the network distributed it internationally — for free.

In the report, Enderlin — who had not been present when his Palestinian cameraman Talal Abu Rahma filmed the incident — said the clip was recorded during a gun battle between Palestinian gunmen and Israeli soldiers at Gaza’s Netzarim junction.

Enderlin said the 55-second clip showed Mohammed al-Durra being shot by Israeli bullets, while a man identified as his father tried to shield him. The images became a symbol of the second Palestinian intifada (uprising), which had erupted several days earlier.

In the Nov. 2004 article published on his Media-Ratings website, Karsenty cited a detailed, frame-by-frame analysis of the video by the Metula News Agency, a small Israeli organization.

The analysis sought to demonstrate that many of the scenes were staged, and claimed there was evidence that the child had not been hit by bullets and did not appear to be dead.

The two France 2 journalists have stood by their story in interviews given to the French press. Enderlin says that 27 minutes of raw footage from which the clip was taken also contained images of the child dying. He had not included that footage in order to spare viewers, he said.

Last year, a France 2 representative told the Cybercast News Service that none of the scenes was staged and warned that the station would sue anyone who questioned the authenticity of the story.

Karsenty’s defense case included showing parts of a Metula documentary which contained footage from a Reuters cameraman showing the fighting scenes were staged by actors. The analysis also showed frame shots of the boy apparently moving after he was allegedly dead. Although several cameramen were present, only France 2’s Abu Rahma taped the child’s alleged shooting.

Four witnesses testified that they were convinced the video was a hoax.

One of them, Richard Landes, a professor of medieval history at Boston University, said Enderlin had shown him the original rushes during a visit to Israel in October 2003.

“I saw the rushes with Charles Enderlin and I was stunned. I was just blown away because everything was staged. They’d fake injuries, then people would rush them off in ambulances, the cameramen would take pictures and the ambulances would rush off with their sirens blaring, then they’d turn around and come back,” he said.

Landes exclaimed to Enderlin that the scenes were all fake and Enderlin had responded: “They always do that. It’s a cultural style, they exaggerate.”

However, despite the staging of various scenes, Enderlin denied that he could have been duped about the death of the child.

France 2’s original raw footage has only been shown to a select few journalists and the network has ignored requests to make it public.

Other allegations

Some who have analyzed the rushes, while concluding that most of the gun battle was staged, have not questioned the death of the child. Instead, they have refuted Enderlin’s claim that the boy was struck by Israeli bullets.

Esther Shapira, a German film maker, concluded in a 2002 documentary that the bullets could not have been fired from the Israeli positions but had to have come from the Palestinian side.

Two French journalists, Daniel Leconte and Denis Jeambar, who were shown the raw footage by France 2, also came to the same conclusion. They caused a public stir in January 2005, when they said in an editorial in the French daily, Le Figaro, that most of the scenes in the video had been staged.

Landes said he believed the child’s death itself had been staged. At the moment when al-Durra was said to have been fatally shot fatally, he said, the boy was seen lifting his elbow and taking a peek.

Landes said he got some of the available television footage together and started showing it to media organizations in the U.S.

“I went to ABC, NBC, WGBH, the Boston Globe and I showed it to them and they all told me to forget it,” he said.

He was given various reasons for the lack of interest. One producer said he had been convinced but there wasn’t much of an “appetite” for “that.” Another said the organization would have to find something the Israelis had done to provide balance and evenhandedness.

Neither Chabot nor Enderlin were present at the court hearing. France 2 based its case on written testimony about the integrity of the network and its reporter. These included a statement by President Jacques Chirac supportive of Enderlin.

In asking for the defamation charges against Karsentyto be dismissed, prosecutor Sandrine Alimi-Uzan said France 2 could have made a stronger case if it had made available the original raw footage to back its assertion that the story was not a hoax.

Following the hearing, a relieved Karsenty said his faith in the French judicial system had been restored.

“Wherever I went, people refused to listen and to look at the evidence,” he said.

“This was a huge problem because the evidence was obvious — as the public prosecutor has agreed. French society will be redeeming itself through its judicial system if the judges confirm the fact that the charges should be dropped because I showed the evidence.”

The judges, who will pronounce their judgment on October 19, are not obliged to abide by the public prosecutor’s recommendation.

In the meantime, Karsenty said he worried about the possibility that political pressure could have an impact on the eventual judgment.

See Also:
French TV Sticks by Story That Fueled Palestinian Intifada (Feb. 2, 2005)
French TV Allegedly Using Threats to Avert Fraud Probe (Jan. 13, 2005)
TV Documentary: Palestinian ‘Martyr’ Likely Shot By Palestinians (April 2, 2002)

I was recently interviewed by Thomas Paine and the Podcast is now up. Please excuse my one-time use of a venerable Anglo-Saxon four letter word to describe the MSM in explaining why I chose of the name Augean Stables for my blog.

I welcome comments both critical and not.

Ici une traduction d’un essai sur ce que les rushes de France2 du jour même et du lendemain de la “mort” du “petit Mohammed” nous apprennent sur l’affaire. (Traduit par Pistache)

LES CASSETTES DE FRANCE2 : LES RUSHES DE L’AFFAIRE AL-DURAH

Notes de Richard Landes après trois visionnages.

L’essentiel du matériel disponible sur les cassettes de France2 a déjà été longuement discuté en ce qui concerne ses rapports avec Pallywood. Je vais ici m’attacher à parler de ce que les cassettes nous disent de plus sur l’affaire Al Durah, en dehors de leur rôle de témoignage direct.

La dernière scène figurant sur les bandes de Talal du 30 septembre, juste après la séquence des al-Durah, montre un homme que l’on charge dans une ambulance au carrefour. Cette séquence, qui ressemble a beaucoup d’autres scènes pallywoodiennes filmées plus tôt ce jour-là (pas de civière, pas trace de sang, évacuation maladroite), ne concerne manifestement ni le père, ni l’enfant (puisqu’ils auraient dus être très ensanglantés, et évacués de derrière le baril). Si Talal avait eu des batteries encore suffisamment pleines que pour filmer cette séquence après celle des Al-Durah, pourquoi n’a-t-il pas pris plus de plans de la soi-disant bien plus macabre séquence des al-Durah – l’enfant « saignant pendant vingt minutes », la pluie de balles, leur évacuation ?

Les informations les plus importantes quant aux al-Durah sur ces cassettes proviennent peut-être de ce qui concerne le lendemain. Sur ce qui a été filmé le jour d’après figure une terrible photo prise la veille à l’hôpital, montrant un garçon (qui n’est pas nécessairement Mohamed al-Durah) au ventre déchiré et aux entrailles apparentes (je n’ai su obtenir une copie de ce cliché, et serais heureux si quelqu’un l’ayant pouvait m’en fournir une). Il est difficile d’imaginer que ce trou béant puisse être le point d’entrée d’une balle ; il suggère plutôt ou un tir par derrière, ou un élargissement pratiqué par les médecins à l’hopital. Dans tous les cas, une telle blessure aurait certainement laissé une quantité de sang massive sur le sol derrière le baril.

Cependant, sur ce que Talal a filmé tôt le matin figurent plusieurs plans du baril qui ne montrent pas trace de sang à l’endroit où le père et le fils étaient assis. Le sol est légèrement plus foncé derrière le baril, ce qui incita Enderlin à me faire la remarque que, peut-être, la mare de sang avait été nettoyée, ou recouverte de sable. Etant donné que le mur aurait dû être éclaboussé de sang, et que le saignement aurait du s’étendre sur une zone bien plus grande que celle qui est légèrement plus foncée, cela ne paraît pas une explication plausible.

Quoi qu’il en soit, les Palestiniens impliqués ont visiblement compris que le manque de sang posait un sérieux problème pour leur « narratif », et fournirent du sang frais avant la visite des journalistes qui arrivèrent plus tard ce jour là. La photo ci-dessous montre la scène vers midi (à en juger le peu d’ombres). Notez la couleur rouge vermillon du sang, chose qu’aucun journaliste n’a commenté dans son compte-rendu. (Goldenberg, en fait, fait référence au « sang s’assombrissant… » - un jour après ?). De plus, il n’y a pas de sang sur le mur, où, vraisemblablement, un total de neuf blessures par balles aurait dû laisser un fameux tableau.

AP photo, October 1, 2000

Pour exhorter France2 à rendre publiques les cassettes contenant le travail de Talal le 30 septembre 2000 et le lendemain, 1er octobre 2000, quelques adresses :

Arlette Chabot est la Directrice de l’Information de France2 Télévision qui était présente lorsque Denis Jeambar, Daniel Leconte et Luc Rosenzweig ont vu les rushes. Elle sait à quel point la situation est mauvaise, et doit être prévenue que nous ne lâcherons pas cette histoire. A ce jour, Enderlin et Abou Rahmeh continuent à travailler ensemble pour France2 et à informer le public français de la situation au Moyen-Orient.

Pour lui envoyer un courriel : a.chabot@france2.fr

Patrick de Carolis est le Président de France Télévision nommé depuis peu. Il devrait être mis au courant du fait que ses prédécesseurs ont été à la tête d’une énorme incompétence journalistique.
Ecrire à : w.devriendt@francetv.com

Dominique Baudis est le Président du Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel, dont l’avis est que les journalistes ne devraient pas diffuser des histoires qui ne puissent être prouvées de manière concluante et qu’ils devraient corriger les comptes-rendus rapidement et en donnant à ces correctifs la même importance que les récits originels.

Vous pouvez leur soumettre un commentaire via la page suivante :
http://www.csa.fr/outils/contact/contacteznous_formulaire.php

Texte-type:
Madame, Monsieur,

Je vous écris pour vous demander de bien vouloir rendre publics les rushes qui ont été tournés par Talal Abou Rahma le 30 septembre et le 1er octobre 2000. Ceux qui ont vu ces images affirment que ces rushes contiennent de nombreuses mises en scène, que votre correspondant, Charles Enderlin a présenté comme des informations réelles. Compte tenu du fort impact de ces images et des doutes sérieux concernant son travail, le public devrait avoir le droit d’accéder à l’information brute, tourné par Abou Rahma, qui lui a permis de tirer ses conclusions dramatiques.

Je vous remercie de bien vouloir tenir compte de ma demande et de m’informer personnellement de la suite que vous comptez donner à ma requête.

Bien à vous,

XXXXX

Ci-dessous je mets une traduction française de mon essai, Conversations with Charles Enderlin. Ce fut la base de ce que j’ai témoigner devant le tribunal. Si Charles Enderlin a envie de m’attaquer en justice, qu’il le fasse. Si j’ai bien compris, ce n’est pas suffisant de diffamer son caractère, il faut aussi que ce que je dis est faux. (Traduit par Pistache)

CONVERSATIONS AVEC CHARLES ENDERLIN DANS LES STUDIOS DE FRANCE2 À JÉRUSALEM

Charles Enderlin est un citoyen israélien né en France qui est correspondent de France2 au Moyen-Orient depuis plusieurs décennies. C’est à lui que Talal abu Rahme, le cameraman palestinien qui captura les seules images des al-Durah sous le feu le 30 septembre 2000 au carrefour de Netzarim, envoya le matériel filmé. Il monta et présenta ces images avec un commentaire basé sur le témoignage de Talal, et distribua gratuitement quelques 3 minutes de ce que Talal avait tourné à toute chaîne qui le désirait. Cependant, ni lui, ni France2 n’a accepté de remettre le jeu complet des rushes de Talal de ce jour là et du lendemain à la commission d’enquête israélienne ni à d’autres investigateurs indépendants.

Le 31 octobre 2003, j’ai eu le privilège de visionner ces cassettes et de parler d’elles avec Charles Enderlin et un caméraman israélien qui travaille pour France2 et accompagnait Enderlin a Ramallah le jour fatal du 30 septembre 2000. J’ai obtenu de revoir ces enregistrements et d’avoir des conversations supplémentaires avec Enderlin à deux reprises par la suite.

Charles Enderlin joue un rôle critique dans l’affaire al-Durah. Sans ses efforts énergiques à la fois pou