Sunday, September 11, 2005
I just found this opinion piece lauding Nidra Poller's Muhammed al Dura expose in, of all places, the LA Times (via Snapshots). Is there hope yet? Naaahhhh...
There is a wider story here also. We are vulnerable to video lies. Against purposeful lies, truth has never been so helpless, so weakly defended.
More than 500 Israeli civilians have been killed in the intifada, the Palestinian uprising that began five years ago. They were ordinary people chatting on a bus, eating ice cream in a restaurant; suddenly, a bright flash. The next moment the walls are spattered with blood and the bomb's hellish odor fills the air. Some people are blinded, others are cut to pieces. Parents living the worst seconds of their lives cast about wildly for their children in the screaming, smoky chaos.
What explains such bestial crimes? The reported death of a Palestinian child, Mohammed Dura, in Gaza did as much as anything else to ignite the current uprising. In the short video segment produced on Sept. 30, 2000, and distributed immediately, a state-owned French television station called France 2 accused the Israeli army of deliberately shooting and killing the 12-year-old.
You may remember the footage: A man and boy crouch in fear. Shots hit a wall far from the pair; a final round of gunfire kicks up a dust cloud that hides father and son, who are "targets of gunfire from Israeli positions," says the voice-over. When the dust clears, the boy is stretched at the man's feet. The voice says that he is dead.
This version of the story was retold around the world — and it has figured in countless wall posters, an Al Qaeda recruiting video, an epic poem. Last June an aspiring suicide bomber was arrested on her way to a hospital — to kill Israeli children, she said, in memory of Mohammed Dura.
BUT, ACCORDING to the Commentary article, the video is a fraud. The footage itself is ambiguous, the alleged main event hidden by dust. The voice-over is what makes us understand what we are seeing. It comes from Charles Enderlin, a correspondent at France 2 (and a French Jew who became an Israeli citizen 20 years ago). Enderlin has never claimed to have been anywhere near the scene of the alleged shooting. His Palestinian cameraman told him the story...
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2 reactions:
There would have been something to hang a new intifada on, if not this. The LA Times mistakes the pretext for a real cause.
If even the LA Times is indignant over this fraud, then the Palestinian cause may have finally jumped the shark.
Well, it might be a little optimistic to say that the LA Times is indignant. I would read this more as a token "alternative viewpoint" that I'm given to understand even papers like they allow to appear from time to time to keep up appearances. It's nice that they printed it, though.
Gazans Burn Synagogues in Israeli Soldiers' Wake
That's the headline in this morning's LA Times.
The NY Times doesn't mention the burnings, it does, however go through thsi "blame Israel" routine:
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Israel was left with two bad choices: tearing them down, or leaving them standing with the knowledge they might be desecrated. He voted with the majority to leave them in place.
Skip to next paragraph
Israel Withdraws From Gaza
Forum: The Middle East
"Jews do not destroy synagogues," the foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, said Sunday. "I hope the Palestinian Authority will come to its senses and not allow barbarism and vandalism to rule over the synagogues."
The Palestinians responded with dismay, saying the synagogues should have been demolished by Israel, as were 1,500 homes occupied by settlers, which have been reduced to mounds of rubble.
Mohammed Dahlan, the Palestinian civil affairs minister, described the Israeli decision about the synagogues as a "political trap."
The Palestinian leadership said it respected places of worship, but did not want the responsibility of having to protect buildings that many Palestinians want to tear down as symbols of Israel's occupation. Late Sunday night, Tafiq Abu Khossa, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, told The Associated Press that the Palestinian Authority planned to destroy the synagogues.
The Israeli cabinet, after a last-minute debate, on Sunday reversed an earlier decision and voted 14 to 2 not to tear down about 20 synagogues in the Jewish settlements in Gaza. On Sunday, the cabinet approved the end of military rule in Gaza, which was established after Israel captured the territory from Egypt in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
Since the summer of 2004, the government had been saying the synagogues would be destroyed when Israel left. The cabinet reaffirmed the decision recently, and it was upheld by the Supreme Court.
But prominent rabbis argued that it was wrong for the state of Israel to tear down synagogues and would send a message that it was acceptable to do so elsewhere, causing cabinet ministers to rethink their stance.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/12/international/middleeast/12mideast.html
But on the morning after the synagogues burned, the fact was not reported in the NY Times.
LA, of course, has three extra hours to put the paper to bed. But that is no excuse in this case since the morning Boston Globe has the story of the burning synagogues.
"Attacking what they saw as symbols of hated occupation, youths set ablaze several of the houses of worship left behind in 21 settlements evacuated last month under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to disengage from conflict.
"
Palestinians were furious when Sharon's cabinet decided to leave synagogues intact, under pressure from rabbis whose support could be key in a power struggle. Adding to tensions, Israel demanded on Monday that the buildings be preserved."
The Globe apologizes for the anti-Semitic valdalism, but , unlike the Times, it at least reports the story.
http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2005/09/12/palestinians_sweep_in_as_israel_abandons_gaza/
The New York Times put up an updated story:
Palestinians Move Into Gaza, Burning Synagogue
Too late. Updating is fine. The question is, why didn't they have the story at press time. The Globe did, so the Times ought to have had it, too.
I think that's a fair criticism.