by
Richard A. Landes
The French have a saying for the idea of a public secret,
un secret de Polichinelle dans le tirroir
– a humiliating fact still hidden in the drawer that will eventually
come out, like an unwanted pregnancy. And France has one of those
secrets, but rather than a life, this particular one gives birth to
hatred, vengeance, and death. The drawer rattled recently when Mohamed
Merah, native-born of Algerian parents, killed seven people, including
three Jewish children in cold blood (he filmed himself), to avenge the
way “the same Jews” kill his “Muslim brothers and sisters in Palestine.”
And many in the French Muslim community considered him a hero,
imitating rather than drawing back in horror from his violence. The
prognosis for a civil society with such an “
enmity movement” in its midst is not encouraging.
And
the secret in the drawer is the colossal failure of the French media in
the case of Muhammad al-Dura from its original occurrence in 2000 to
this very day. Al-Dura was the 12-year old boy whose alleged death from
Israeli bullets in his father’s arms shocked the world and became the
emblem of the Oslo Intifada, an image, it turns out, as false as it was
powerful. So, for many good reasons, the French, indeed every
civic-minded citizen of the global community, should pay attention to
what is happening today in France’s Court of Appeals in Paris.
For
the sixth time in as many years, the courts will hear accusations by
France2 against citizen Philippe Karsenty for accusing them of having
run “staged” footage as news in the case of Muhammad al-Dura. To his
devotees, “le petit Mohamed,” as he’s known in France, is “martyr of the
world” because, thanks to France2, “the whole world saw” him shot dead,
the “target of fire from the Israeli position,” dying in his father’s
arms. Except that no one saw him die on film, much less in his father’s
arms. On the contrary the overwhelming evidence suggests that it was a
scene staged by France2’s cameraman, Talal abu Rahmah, which Charles
“Scoop” Enderlin, unknowingly or not, turned into sensational news.
Indeed, few stories better embody the lethal
secret de Polichinelle
that haunts France today. France2 (and everyone else, as Enderlin is
quick to point out), runs staged footage – Pallywood – all the time:
it’s a public secret that they openly admit in private but deny in
public. “They do it all the time,” Enderlin and his bosses confided
privately when confronted with the extensive evidence of staging in his
cameraman’s work. But publicly Enderlin insists, especially when
confronted with claims that he staged the al-Dura footage, “I have 100
percent confidence in my cameraman, so much that I wouldn’t even think
of questioning him.” And yet, when the judges in the last trial saw the
footage shot by the key “witness,” France2’s Palestinian cameraman, they
dramatically reversed the lower court’s finding, with harsh criticism
of Enderlin’s journalistic standards. “And to think I asked for that
footage as a favor to France2,” one of the judges later remarked off the
record.
Rather than provoke an “aha” moment among the broader
profession, however, this decision inspired Enderlin’s colleagues to
close ranks. The prestigious
Nouvel Obs sponsored a petition in
defense of both his honor, and of journalistic right to report freely,
without the “chilling” criticism of lay citizens “sapping the energies
of good journalists.” The reactions combined medieval honor-driven guild
solidarities with medieval credulity: “I don’t care if it’s the Virgin
Birth affair, I would tend to believe him. Someone like Charles
[Enderlin] simply doesn’t make a story up.”
Meanwhile Charles’
employer, the state-owned media giant France2, appealed to the highest
court, which, despite a strong opinion against from the “Parquet,”
(which vigorously defended the value to civil society of allowing such
criticisms), ruled that the appeals court had no right to demand the
footage, nullified their opinion, and sent the case back to appeals
court where it arrives today, same room, same “Palace of Justice” in
Paris.
The story of Muhammad al-Dura and the lethal journalism it
has spawned deserve the close attention of anyone who cares about press
freedom and the democratic culture it serves and preserves. No single
incident better illustrates why the West has so far fared so poorly in
its encounter with the forces of global Jihad in the new millennium, why
Western progressives have consistently lost ground to some of the most
repressive forces on the planet.
The affair combines three
traits in a deeply toxic stew: the absurdity of the narrative in the
face of the evidence (Sherlock would not give it a second glance); the
way in which some fashioned that narrative into weapons in a Jihad of
vengeance against the Jews (Bin Laden and other recruiters for global
Jihad); and the determined refusal of journalists, whose profession is
to investigate, to re-examine the matter despite the extensive damage it
occasioned. The result has been more than a decade in which credulous
journalists have pumped poisonous lethal narratives about Israel into
Western information systems as news, feeding the worst instincts of a
radicalized minority, and crippling the ability of more sober people to
understand the situation, much less resist what Bin Laden called, “the
strong horse” of global Jihad.
Karsenty accused Enderlin of
“being duped and in so doing duping us,” and that, claims Enderlin, is
an intolerable and unacceptable blow to his honor. (He’s right about all
but the “unacceptable.”) The accusation can be extended to the
mainstream news media: they are duped by Jihadi cognitive warriors who
manipulate them with an apparently irresistible supply of lethal
narratives about Israeli malfeasance, and in so doing, blind us to the
threats around the world to the very decency and humanity towards which
modern, enlightened peoples everywhere strive.
In a Dreyfus Affair of
global
significance, will the French appeals court decide in favor of the
right of their citizens to criticize their media professionals, or in
favor of what Daniel Dayan has called the “new sacred institution,” the
news media, and its right to use the power of the state to save its
honor by silencing criticism of its prerogative? Is freedom of the press
a privilege or a responsibility? And if it is a responsibility – to
us! – dare we stand by silently while some with access use the levers of power to assert it as their privilege?
All the references for this piece can be found at The Augean Stables.
Richard A. Landes
Source: http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/al-durah-and-the-tragic-legacy-of-lethal-journalism/
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
