By Charles Jacobs
July 3, 2008
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Remember Mohammed al-Dura, the 12-year-old Palestinian boy "murdered" on his father's lap by Israeli gunners? The French TV broadcast of the incident made al-Dura an icon; his "murder" became a battle cry against the Jewish state.
Now it turns out that the report may have been a fraud. A French court just vindicated Phillipe Karsenty, the media critic who was sued for defamation when he called the broadcast a hoax.
A hundred French journalists signed a petition in favor of their colleague, the TV anchor who sued and lost. Sadly, this was not surprising.
But how to explain that the Israeli media showed an almost total disinterest in Karsenty's defeat of this modern blood libel?
Richard Landes, in a brilliant essay, suggests the answer. Landes -- a Boston University professor living in Israel -- is the man who coined "Pallywood," the systematic creation of media frauds by film-savvy Palestinians designed to defame Israel. His blog, "The Second Draft," contains numerous infuriating examples.
Last week, Landes deconstructed the single mainstream Israeli press report on the al-Dura affair, showing why and how Israelis are misled by their own media.
Larry Derfner of The Jerusalem Post, a usually thoughtful writer and Israeli patriot, had accused Karsenty and Landes of being "morally blind" for suggesting that the al-Dura report may have been a hoax. Landes' blog analyses Derfner. Paraphrasing:
Derfner understands that the Israelis could not have killed al-Dura, given the physical positions of the soldiers and the boy. But even in the face of footage showing Palestinians performing for the cameraman, who called for scenes to be repeated, and even in the face of evidence that the boy may not have been shot at all, Derfner insists that no decent person can think Palestinians are producing hoaxes.
Why? For Derfner, the matter is primarily ideological: making a huge deal out of the al-Dura case is a "right-wing" position. Derfner insists he believes that France's TV anchor acted in good faith, reporting what his Palestinian cameraman had described to him. Why does he believe this?
Derfner gives some reasons why conspiracy theory here is not reasonable, but in the end, he relies on a more primary principle: believing that Palestinians pulled off such a hoax means, he thinks, describing Arabs as evil and mendacious. Having such thoughts makes the person who thinks them unvirtuous. So much for empiricism!
To suggest that Palestinians are incapable of putting another fraud over on the Western media -- after the fake 2006 Lebanon war photos, the fake blackout of the Gaza legislature, the fake Jenin "massacre," and above all, after watching billions of Western aid dollars mysteriously go missing from Palestinian accounts for decades -- demonstrates titanic and willful gullibility.
Derfner fulminates against "conspiracy nuts." But a minor street theater scene that succeeded beyond anyone's expectations is not the same as believing NASA faked the moon landings. And to equate the two shows a deliberately uncritical mind at work.
And that, as Landes shows, is the problem.
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