When it Comes to Al-Dura, Journalists Are Against Free Speech
Earlier this month, the French weekly Le Nouvel Observateur launched a surreal “Appeal for Charles Enderlin” in response to a French court judgment clearing media critic Philippe Karsenty of charges of having “defamed” Enderlin and his employer, France 2 public television. The court thus overturned the October 2006 condemnation of Karsenty by a lower court.
A full professional translation of the higher court’s judgment is available here on Richard Landes’s Augean Stables blog. (The complete judgment in French is here.) Richard Landes’s translation of the Nouvel Observateur’s “Appeal for Charles” is here. The “Appeal” has in the meanwhile been signed by hundreds of Enderlin’s colleagues in French journalism, plus several “personalities,” and even some simple “web surfers” [internautes].
I say that it is surreal, since it is by no means clear what the point of the appeal is supposed to be or what exactly the signatories want done “for Charles Enderlin.” It was not, after all, Enderlin who was on trial: he and France 2 were the plaintiffs. The “Appeal for Charles” identifies Karsenty as the “person mainly responsible” for an “obstinate and hateful campaign” against Enderlin. But, as PJM readers will know (and Nouvel Observateur readers might not), Karsenty is in fact just one of numerous critics who have challenged the authenticity of Enderlin’s September 2000 report allegedly showing the killing of the Palestinian boy Mohammed Al-Dura by Israeli troops.
It was indeed France 2′s legal strategy of singling out Karsenty and two other website owners for prosecution — as well as Karsenty’s “obstinate” refusal to be intimidated — that converted him into one of the chief protagonists of what has become the “Al-Dura affair.”
The authors of the “Appeal” — like Enderlin himself in a blog post published shortly after the rendering of the court’s decision — take heart in the fact that the higher court “recognized” that Karsenty’s litigious remarks regarding the Al-Dura report “unquestionably do damage to the honor and reputation of news professionals”: i.e. Enderlin and France 2 as a whole. But the court’s observation in this connection is in fact a mere tautology. In his November 2004 text — in which, incidentally, Karsenty called for the “immediate dismissal” of Enderlin and France 2 news director Arlette Chabot — Karsenty himself describes Enderlin’s Al-Dura report and, above all, France 2′s defense of it as “a masquerade that does dishonor [déshonore] to France and its public television.”
The real question, of course, is whether Karsenty’s criticisms of France 2 are well-founded and whether the underlying accusation that the Al-Dura report was a fake is true — or, in other words, whether it is not in fact, as Karsenty’s remarks suggested, Enderlin and France 2 that brought the “dishonor” upon themselves. The French court did not answer this question. Nor indeed did it have any need to do so.
It sounds like gang warfare, with the Cliques [Enderlan and the signatories] facing off against the Outlanders [Karsenty and his fellow seekers of wisdom and truth], and Richard Landes gets it just right:
“I put up the following astonishing ‘public letter of support’” for Charles, that paragon of journalistic virtue who is inexplicably allowed to be the target of criticism from people who are not part of the clique. It’s classic ad hominem with no regard for the evidence. In the future, these cosigners will be part of a list of ignominy, the in-crowd that kept the al Durah affair from seeing the light of day for so long. Amazing.”
Against the need to regain lost “honor” amongst their peers, mere truth is nothing to the Cliques. As Shelby Steele wrote In another context regarding what motivates leaders of the Islamist terrorist community, they “have used menace to make their people visible in the world, to bring them back into the scheme of history.”
this list of signatories will supply a generation of graduate students with the beginnings of thesis research on the dysfunctions of the MSM in early 21st century Europe.
I cannot believe that the Nouvel Obs just deleted the link to the commentaries on this petition – if they felt there were ‘inflammatory’ or ‘racist’ or any other type of inacceptable remarks (by using well-known standards…) they could have just deleted/moderated these out – but to delete everything! Why has this been noticed only by a very few people (and blogs)? For me this is a VERY black/white situation, the Nouvel Obs is also fighting AGAINST free speech. Thank you very much M. Rosenthal for talking about this situation in a very clear, objective way. I just wish the NYT, or the IHT, or the WSJ, or Le Monde, or Le Point or any of these guys would give this issue a really good look (while using the FACTS). I read the Appeal Courts ruling (in French) – wow the facts kind of speak for themselves!
ps – was also very interested in your report on RSF – I was surprised and rather destabilised by that signature, now I understand why…
Thank you for writing this article .
Among the sixty or so original signatories you can also find Jean Lacouture who was “grand reporter” till 1975 at “Le Monde”.A very well known ,even famous “journalist”.
This is what I wrote as a reaction to the “Appeal”: (From Wikipedia in french)
En novembre 1978, Jean Lacouture reconnait ses erreurs sur ses présentations du Viêt Nam et des Khmers rouges. Dans un entretien à Valeurs Actuelles, il déclare :
« avoir pratiqué une information sélective en dissimulant le caractère stalinien du régime nord-vietnamien. Je pensais que le conflit contre l’impérialisme américain était profondément juste, et qu’il serait toujours temps, après la guerre, de s’interroger sur la nature véritable du régime. Au Cambodge, j’ai péché par ignorance et par naïveté. Je n’avais aucun moyen de contrôler mes informations. J’avais un peu connu certains dirigeants actuels des Khmers rouges, mais rien ne permettait de jeter une ombre sur leur avenir et leur programme. Ils se réclamaient du marxisme, sans que j’aie pu déceler en eux les racines du totalitarisme. J’avoue que j’ai manqué de pénétration politique. »
(Wikipedia).
Vrai ?
Il a signe ?
On reconnait ses “erreurs” et tout rentre dans l’ordre ?
Ethique ?
Vive le journalisme !
06.06 à 06h58
A lesson for the next generation of journalists !! Lacouture confesses he lied ,knowingly in his articles !! 2 million people died and he says he did lack political insight !He signs again . He is 86 ,he didn’t learn anything !
Let us all thank G-d Sarcozy is a new President. The process has started with Chiraque being a president. And we all know how biased and anti-Semitic alumni from ENA are, no matter what a party they belong to. I have followed the whole process on the http://www.camera.org. And with the French “democracy” and “freedom of speech” it seemed to have only one end: Karsenty had to loose. But the appeal happened after the elections. And the new president is’t anti-Israel and anti-Semitic at all. It shows of course how powerfull a French president is in a matter like this, but this time the bad guys lost, and that was great.
I’ve read the shocking article in the Nouvel Observateur and thought: oh my! They mean it serious! All that stuff they say! They really protect MSM journalists from the freedom of speech. They ATTAC not merely Karsenty but the freedom of speech and don’t even feel ashamed! I cannot imagine a NYT correspondent being so shamelessly open. An American MSM journalist would probably cover his or her hatered under a clever or stupid pretext of “justice” or “democracy” or “sencitivity”. But French ones doesn’t even need pretexts. Actually they say that it’s wrong to give everyone the right to defame a respected journalist. Wow. Wow! I read this and think: G-d bless America. And thank you, G-d, France has the new, non-anti-Semitic president.
http://www.amnestyinternational.be/doc/article7893.html
En novembre, le commandant d’une compagnie de l’armée israélienne a été acquitté de tous les chefs d’accusation concernant l’homicide d’Iman al Hams. Cette adolescente de treize ans avait été abattue par des soldats israéliens en octobre 2004 à Rafah, dans le sud de la bande de Gaza, alors qu’elle passait à proximité d’une tour fortifiée de l’armée israélienne érigée en face de son école. Selon un enregistrement des transmissions de l’armée, le commandant avait affirmé que « tout ce qui bouge, se déplace, dans la zone, même un enfant de trois ans, doit être tué ». Le chef d’accusation d’homicide n’a pas été retenu contre le commandant ni contre aucun autre soldat, le tribunal ayant considéré que l’officier supérieur n’avait pas enfreint les règlements relatifs à l’utilisation des armes à feu. Le tribunal s’est limité à la question de savoir s’il avait eu un comportement inconvenant en tirant à plusieurs reprises sur l’enfant alors qu’elle était blessée ou déjà morte.
Snipers with children in their sights
Palestinian civilians have been killed by the army with impunity
* Chris McGreal
* The Guardian,
* Tuesday June 28 2005
* Article history
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/jun/28/comment.israelandthepalestinians
This article appeared in the Guardian on Tuesday June 28 2005 . It was last updated at 00:01 on June 28 2005.
It was the shooting of Asma Mughayar that swept away any lingering doubts I had about how it is the Israeli army kills so many Palestinian children and civilians.
Asma, 16, and her younger brother, Ahmad, were collecting laundry from the roof of their home in the south of the Gaza Strip in May last year when they were felled by an Israeli army sniper. Neither child was armed or threatening the soldier, who fired unseen through a hole punched in the wall of a neighbouring block of flats.
The army said the two were blown up by a Palestinian bomb planted to kill soldiers. The corpses offered a different account. In Rafah’s morgue, Asma lay with a single bullet hole through her temple; her 13-year-old brother had a lone shot to his forehead. There were no other injuries, certainly none consistent with a blast.
Confronted with this, the army changed its account and claimed the pair were killed by a Palestinian, though there was persuasive evidence pointing to the Israeli sniper’s nest. What the military did not do was ask its soldiers why they gave a false account of the deaths or speak to the children’s parents or any other witnesses.
When reporters pressed the issue, the army promised a full investigation, but a few weeks later it was quietly dropped. This has become the norm in a military that appears to value protecting itself from accountability more than living up to its claim to be the “most moral army in the world”.
As Tom Hurndall’s parents noted yesterday after the conviction of an Israeli sergeant for the manslaughter of their son, the soldier was put on trial only because the British family had the resources to bring pressure to bear. But there has been no justice for the parents of hundreds of Palestinian children killed by Israeli soldiers.
According to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, the army has killed 1,722 Palestinian civilians – more than one-third of them minors – as well as 1,519 combatants, since the intifada began nearly five years ago; the comparable Israeli figures are 658 civilians killed – 17% minors – along with 309 military. The army has investigated just 90 Palestinian deaths, usually under outside pressure. Seven soldiers have been convicted: three for manslaughter, none for murder.
Last month, a military court sentenced a soldier to 20 months in prison for shooting dead a Palestinian man as he adjusted his TV aerial, the longest sentence yet for killing a civilian, and less than Israeli conscientious objectors have got for refusing to serve in the army.
B’Tselem argues that a lack of accountability and rules of engagement that “encourage a trigger-happy attitude among soldiers” have created a “culture of impunity” – a view backed by the New York-based Human Rights Watch, which last week described many army investigations of civilian killings as a “sham … that encourages soldiers to think they can literally get away with murder”.
In southern Gaza, the killings take place in a climate that amounts to a form of terror against the population. Random fire into Rafah and Khan Yunis has claimed hundreds of lives, including five children shot as they sat at their school desks. Many others have died when the snipers must have known who was in their sights – children playing football, sitting outside home, walking back from school. Almost always “investigations” amount to asking the soldier who pulled the trigger what happened – often they claim there was a gun battle when there was none – and presenting it as fact.
The military police launched an investigation into the death of Iman al-Hams last October only after soldiers went public about the circumstances in which their commander emptied his gun into the 12-year-old. He was recorded telling his men that the girl should be killed even if she were three.
Colonel Pinhas Zuaretz was commander in southern Gaza two years ago when I asked him about the scale of the killing. The colonel, who rewrote the rules of engagement to permit soldiers to shoot children as young as 14, acknowledged that official versions of several killings were wrong, but justified the tactics as the price of the struggle for survival against a second Holocaust.
Perhaps that view was shared by the soldier who shot dead three 15-year-old boys, Hassan Abu Zeid, Ashraf Mousa and Khaled Ghanem, as they approached the fortified border between Gaza and Egypt in April. The military said the teenagers were weapons smugglers and therefore “terrorists”, and that the soldier shot them in the legs and only killed them when they failed to stop.
The account was a fabrication. The teenagers were in a “forbidden zone” but kicking a ball. Their corpses showed no evidence of wounds to disable them, only single high-calibre shots to the head or back. The army quietly admitted as much – but there would be no investigation.
By publicly stating their convictions, the signatories become known as people who can be trusted to side with right people. From the list of signatories to the online petition supporting Enderlin will come future employees of France 2 and the EU.
Bernard, spare us your sweating exhaustion and “work”. We all know your sources, Der Gurdian, “B’Tselem” and “Hujman Rights Watch”. I think at moments like this at official press-conferences the asked person reply with the fancy formula: “No Comment!”. Have you ever heard it Berny?
Thanks to John Rosenthal for excellent coverage of European hate and hate apologists.