By Nidra Poller
December 21, 2006
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During this period of infamous "al-Dura" trials, which I have been covering closely for Pajamas Media, I spend a lot of time with colleagues who, like me, have been striving to erase the vicious al-Dura blood libel relayed by France 2 in September 2000 and still going strong. This affair is a bit like last summer's Hizbullah war: no one wins, no one loses, and the verdict pronounced in the court of public opinion is just one more skirmish in an endless war.
I want to write the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth about the al-Dura affair. A text that will take life, live and breathe, go forth in the world, take action, obtain results. A supertext that will soar over the heads of Gotham, Sodom & Gomorra, Paris, and El Buredj, swoop down on the villains, knock their heads together, and restore the harmony of the universe.
Charles Enderlin and France 2 are on a winning streak in the French courts. Victorious against Philippe Karsenty, Maître Amblard used the same arguments against Pierre Lurçat, and will most likely attack Dr. Gouz with carbon copy righteous indignation. She swore that her clients respect freedom of the press, including freedom to criticize journalists, but they cannot accept harsh insulting language. Somehow in the logic of the court you have to find a way to accuse Charles Enderlin and France 2 of lying, Jamal al Dura of play-acting, Talal Abu Rahmeh of filming a staged scene, and all of them of viciously maligning Israel...without using harsh language.
If insults are the problem, why has Charles Enderlin initiated a new round of lawsuit threats, aiming at high profile authors who report on his imbroglio in polite, reserved, journalistically acceptable terms?
Misled by his own sense of self-importance, Enderlin stubbornly defends an unsubstantiated "news report" that collapses after ten seconds of unbiased examination, a worthless news report that has one and only one function -- blood libel.
It is fabricated as blood libel, it functions like blood libel, it is maintained on life support only because it is blood libel. Why do normally intelligent people think this slapdash production is a credible news report? Because it is blood libel, blinding blood libel. Why do France 2 and French media and French society defend Charles Enderlin to the point of losing their own honor? In defending Enderlin, a simple messenger boy in this affair, they defend the blood libel he conveyed and, inadvertently, flattering his inflated self-image. Enderlin gets a free ride on a blood libel that could eventually swallow him up in its maw but in the interim enjoys the privilege of pushing himself in your face every time you try to shed light on the blood libel. He gets interviewed by Telerama (but doesn't seem to have pull with big international media); he or his allies feed information to hapless journalists like Michel Zlotowski, who used to write for the JPost. His mediocre films are shown on French TV, his boring books are published all the way to the USA, his amateurish interpretation of the Mideast conflict is praised by president Chirac. His journalistic qualities can be judged by the way he digs in his heels and insists that the Mohamed al-Dura blood libel is a legitimate news report.
The 55-second al-Dura death scene filmed on September 30 2000 by T. A. Rahmeh, produced by France 2, and broadcast worldwide, is not a news report. It does not respect the criteria of news reporting, it does not resemble a legitimate news report, it does not function as a news report, it cannot be defended as a news report. It has no context, no depth, no duration beyond itself, and no connection with any other point in space or time. It is cut from whole cloth and pasted onto the real setting of Netzarim Junction, but has no relation to the myriad events that actually took place there. It doesn't even fit in with the Pallywood fake battle scenes filmed at the Junction that day.
I defy anyone to give a coherent description of what happened to Jamal and Mohamed al-Dura on the afternoon of September 30 2000. It can't be done.
Jamal himself, Talal the prize-winning cameraman, France 2 officials, journalists of all stripes and nationalities tell, retell, repeat, and reiterate a story concocted like the video, a story that respects none of the rules of news reporting or story-telling, that works only as blood libel. When a detail gets in the way, it is smudged. But it can't be eliminated without undoing the blood libel. Here's an example: Israeli soldiers shot directly at the man and the boy -- sitting ducks -- for 45 minutes, with the sole intention of hitting them and, finally, at the term of those 45 minutes managed to kill the boy and critically wound his father.
Try to make that detail stand alone. Does anyone in his right mind believe an Israeli soldier would need 45 minutes to hit a stationary target clearly visible in his gun sights? The answer is no. The story should choke on that detail, but it gets smudged: sophisticated journalists find urbane explanations for a "minor" anomaly; Talal sends his hierarchy a self-serving disclaimer some years after the fact; your average gullible news consumer swallows and spins...
The problem is, none of the details in the al-Dura blood libel stand up to examination. They can all be spun, dismissed, hid behind someone's back, shrugged off, swallowed, whatever. And yet the ensemble remains intact because it is true as blood libel and only as blood libel. The details were faked to make it look like a news report. Debunking them is a trap too. It gives credibility to the illusion that the scene is somehow, in some way, vaguely if imperfectly, a news report.
Rational journalists and black-robed judges might feel comfortable with the idea that Al-Dura was killed by Palestinian gunfire in a shootout with Israeli soldiers. But how do they explain his status as icon of the al Aqsa intifada? A Palestinian child killed by Palestinians can't be an icon. Kids like Mohamed are getting killed -- by Palestinians -- in great numbers right now in Gaza. Have any of them turned up as icons?
The image of Mohamed al-Dura is worthless unless it is blood libel. It must show that bloodthirsty Jews deliberately kill our children. If anyone really believed the soothingly well-balanced compromise interpretations of those seemingly rational analysts, the image would be deflated to near invisibility.
Ah, but the reasonable analysts will say al-Dura is only an icon in the Arab-Muslim world...implying that nothing we could do here in our civilized neighborhood would discourage them from misusing it. Thanks a lot! First of all, they got it from France 2. And, second, it is working beautifully here too, pumping out more Jew hatred than Saudi Arabia pumps oil, facilitating mini blood libels -- massacres in Jenin, on a Gaza beach, in Qana -- that keep the pot boiling and win wars by losing them.
Graphically, the al-Dura scene does not look like a news report. The shooting angle, the framing, the postures, the sequences, the zoom all ring false. It's not a news report that became an icon, it's an icon misrepresented as news. If it weren't blood libel, trained and untrained eyes would see that it doesn't look like a news report. It is blood libel, blinding blood libel, so blinding that freeze frames that prove the report is faked are used to illustrate articles reporting that Charles Enderlin is vindicated, the famous France 2 Jerusalem correspondent is an honorable man, Charles Enderlin trusted his trustworthy cameraman, and extremists who try to sully their good reputation are beneath contempt. Neither the journalists nor their photo editors bother to find out where the freeze frame stands in the sequence and why it contradicts Jamal's testimony.
The al-Dura scene is not a news report. There is a serious disconnect between the images, the voice-over commentary, and the enveloping narrative peddled along with them. This is glaring evidence of falsification and yet the eyes of reasonable people glaze over when you point it out. If I showed you the image of a shaggy dog sitting in a broken down jeep and said, "Airbus is proud of its jumbo carrier, the A 380... Singapore Airlines has ordered a dozen of these luxurious cruise ships on wings..." the disconnect would arouse your suspicion. The al-Dura disconnect is no less obvious. But blood libel mobilizes base emotions that refuse rational control. Though every word said or written to flesh out the al-Dura myth actually tears it apart, the enveloping narrative was used uncritically as fodder for a slew of articles worldwide. People aren't bothered by the clumsy storytelling. It works because it's blood libel, hysterical incoherent accusations that awaken ugly instincts in the pit of some stomachs and self-defeating guilt feelings in the hearts of others.
The al-Dura story is a sham news report but it's a real blood libel relayed by high tech 21st century media...
It will be dismantled somehow, some day, somewhere out of the reach of the French huis clos.
And all the lawsuits of Charles Enderlin will never put it together again.
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