Revisiting ‘Al Durah’ in Time of Iranian Media Control
Below, I list some video footage detailing the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of a major MSM figure — one of the most influential journalists in Europe for the last two decades. Not one word that he utters has any substance in terms of serious argumentation.
In any first-year graduate seminar in history, the cavalier contempt for hard evidence and argumentation that Enderlin displays here would earn him the disbelief of fellow students and a ticket to ride from the professors … unless, of course, we were in an honor-shame culture where someone with protected status could get away with anything he wished to say.
Both in the details, and in the argumentation, Enderlin gets an “F” in the “Second Draft” of journalism.
Below is Charles in court the day of the showing of Talal’s rushes — the beginning of his downfall — pugnaciously leading with his chin. He is typically dismissive (“you can say he was killed by Martians”) and categorical (“we didn’t fabricate these images” — by the way, if that “we” includes Talal, it’s problematic). But the most revealing “argument” is that people who oppose him do so because they “don’t want my reports, my books, and my commentaries.”
Note the revealing slip at the beginning: “This is a libel suit … uuuh, a libel against me.” He’s the one bringing the suit against Karsenty, but he’s trying to position himself as the victim. Indeed, we met one vociferous ex-Israeli French journalist in the court who was indignant at how Enderlin was being dragged through the judicial mud by this suit against him.
But the larger question is certainly worth considering. Enderlin, true to style, uses conspiracy-theory logic. Cui bono? To whom the good? If I lose this case, then my whole oeuvre will be in doubt. Ergo, those who attack me on this case actually want to discredit me entirely.
Actually, I had never heard of Enderlin before this, and my concern was both to challenge such a powerful and hate-engendering icon — a blood libel — and, as I became involved, to challenge the inexcusable complaisance of the MSM with Pallywood footage.
As I’ve learned more about Enderlin, I think he’s right on one point: his behavior here should call into question the rest of his work which, as I’ve learned, is also tendentious and treats evidence loosely. But to stretch from there to “it’s a conspiracy to shut me up” not only shows the paranoid quality of Enderlin’s thinking, but also the nature of his appeal:
“Don’t listen to them; they don’t like my politics.”
Alas, this works all too often these days.
Below, Charles is asked about why he claimed that the child was dead, and then three “takes” later, he’s still moving. This is, of course, a critical issue, since the scene in which the child moves was one that he cut from his broadcast. I don’t know if Schapira asked him why he cut it, but I presume he’d have answered the same way he has for nine years — “it was the death throes, and too unbearable for the public to view.” You be the judge regarding to whom this cut footage is unbearable — the viewer, or Talal’s and Enderlin’s “narrative.”
In response, Enderlin lets us know how he works: “This is the way I do a story …”:
I’m very sorry, but the fact is the child died. Maybe not at the precise moment I showed. But this is the way I do a story. “The child is dead,” is a statement. What’s your problem with it?
It was pretty clear that the kid was never shot. But the conviction on the face of the “journalist” who shot the video was so convincing. The propaganda that has come out of the anti-Israel islamist groups is incredible. They’d make the Nazis proud.
Excellent, Richard!
President Obama told the Iranians “The World is Watching”, but is he and “the world” really learning anything?
Not without clarity and accuracy from the media, unfortunately.
http://breathofthebeast.blogspot.com/2009/06/iran-where-blood-is-real-and-world-is.html
In the same manner in which technological/scientific advances can be used for good or evil, so too can the iconic images of Neda and Al-Dura be used for good or abused for evil.
While on the face of it both are images which circled the globe after clashes between opposing forces,
however, this is where the similarity ends.One is a non doctored image of Neda,an on the spot visual, the other is a staged ‘murder’ of Al-Dura, with the COLLUSION of the MSM.
IF not for the dogged and heroic efforts of Landes and Karsenty this colossal travesty of injustice towards Israel would never have been exposed.
Even now there are many who refuse to connect the dots, albeit for their own anti-zionist/anti-semitic proclivities.
When a lie gains legs it is nearly impossible for it to die.You tell a lie often enough and enough people will believe it, them’s the facts.
Regardless, ALL people of conscience owe a debt of gratitude to the dynamic due of Landes & Karsenty.
Kudos!
And where are the world-wide demonstrations and rallies, with Neda’s photo, against the crimes of the Iranian regime? Where are the posters “Pasdaran=SS” and “Mullahs=Nazis”?
Oh, it isn’t the Zionist army. Nothing to protest.
tiens, that’s funny, one has nothing else to chew at the moment !
good point, Notre Dame de Sion. the response to al durah was ferocious.
The man is a moral cretin. But what is appalling is the silence of the MSM in this country.
After Abu Ghraib, the US Army brought the perpetrators to trial and punished them. As Bill Whittle put it in his “Pope John” essay “Power policed itself.” This was something unseen in that country. Since when has the MSM policed itself? And as long as it is in bed with the Left, it will never police the Democratic party. Nixon’s Watergate brought down a presidency, but the repeated theft of elections by the Democratic machine, including perhaps the one that Nixon lost to Kennedy, were never front-page news.
This a profound, terrifying danger to human freedom everywhere. For without the truth you can never be free.
If you search the sites google and yahoo, you can find further explanations of the Pallywood setup. There is an excellent one of Talal pointing to the area where the shots were coming from, “they were coming from directly behind me.” and he points with his thumb. Directly behind him were the Palestinians. Another major point is that if you look closely there is a tripod about six feet behind them. The whole scene was being filmed from behind. That film man was standing “in the line of fire” the whole time. His films were never included and he was never shot. Had the Israelis shot at him, he would have been a dead man. Other Pallywood sequences are also shown and shown to be fraud. Bob Simons is seen making one or his famous Sixty Minutes broadcasts stating that at least 30 people were killed there by the Israelis. That lie was never brought out by Sixty Minutes, explained or apologized for. Bob Simons helped the lie of al Dura have legitimacy.
The French have always been notorious anti-Semites! The idea that a French news organization would behave this way does not surprise me in the slightest.
Other news outlets will continue to lie until this incident begins to turn up in schoolbooks as an example of Jewish brutality against the Arabs. By then, it will be established as fact forever.
Everyone is able to look themselves in the mirror by repeating the lie “It is an accurate representation of what was happening all over the region at the time. The Jews were brutal occupiers and we simply showed their true faces.” That, after all is the defense they used!
MERDE!
bubblehead
If it’s French anti-Semitism, they found their useful Jew(s), Enderlin being the first and foremost one. But, as Oscar the Grump points out, it’s a world-wide phenomenon. And the double standards are only too visible when compared to media and public reactions to the current Iranian Intifada.
Speaking of selective editorializing, consider the NY Times keeping the fact secret that one of their journalists was kidnapped by the Taliban. Apparently their is some criticism over the NY Time’s motives; did they keep the secret to reduce the risk of the journalist’s killing or to keep the ransom cost down? Be that as it may, the more interesting observation is that when it’s one of their own the NY Times has no problem with news blackouts and keeping a secret; they only have a problem with news black outs and keeping a secret if it is Gitmo or enhanced interrogation pictures or releasing intelligence gathering sources and methods, because then only the troops get their throats slit. It does provide a reportable event however, also known as a revenue source. If it bleeds it leads is also an instance of pragmatism too, the favorite philosophy of realists.
See these sites, there are plenty of others.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_B1H-1opys
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzsCBFhCsyY
i don’t think it’s anti-semitism (which i define as the paranoid belief that if you don’t exterminate the jews, they’ll exterminate you), so much as moral Schadenfreude or the thrill of being able to say, “you jews, 2000 years you were oppressed by others and the minute you get power, you turn around and do it to the palestinians. you’re just as bad as everyone else.” and then of course there’s the moral sadism of taking the next step: “in fact you’re worse, you’re like the nazis, you’re even worse than the nazis because you should know better.” that last position is moving rapidly towards anti-semitism. post-modern anti-judaism fuels muslim pre-modern anti-semitism, and there’s no better illustration of the destructive relationship than the imbecility and corruption surrounding the al Durah affair.
Whether the Al Dura matter is a manifestation of French anti semitism or not, the larger picture is colored by the fact that active antisemitism is on the rise in Europe. Its manifestations include physical attacks on Jews throughout Europe. Even more dangerous is the acceptance of antisemitic narratives among the elites. To say you don’t like Jews is much more acceptable now than it was 20 years ago. Acceptance of anti Israelism (and its accompanying antisemitic references) among academics is so widespread that to defend Israel is an act of courage. The Al Dura photos and accusations of Jews as child-killers certainly accelerated the outing of these sentiments and made them much more mainstream. An official refutation of Enderlin’s work might be back page news, but it would help reduce the sting.