False TV report fueled start of intifada - When pictures lie

[papau]

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/Archive/DigitalArchive.aspx?panes=1&aid=12001054_1
Because lies can kill- Lies do kill.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-gelernter9sep09,0,5905347.story?track=tottext

DAVID GELERNTER
When pictures lie
A TV report that helped fuel the deadly Palestinian intifada appears to be false. So how is truth supposed to compete with a video fraud?
DAVID GELERNTER

September 9, 2005

A 55-SECOND video report, produced in 2000 by a French TV station and distributed free of charge around the world, has caused untold injury and grief to Israeli civilians. This month, the French author Nidra Poller analyzes the evidence in Commentary magazine and shows that the video is a fraud — "an almost perfect media crime," the retired French journalist Luc Rosenzweig calls it. That Poller's piece is conclusive is merely my own judgment, of course. But we are all required to make such judgments, in the light of such reports.

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.

Lots of supporting evidence was supposed to back up the cameraman's story — more footage of the supposed father and son pinned by Israeli fire, footage showing the child's death throes. France 2 has since admitted, according to Poller, that no such footage exists.

The voice-over reports that the child is dead, yet the rest of the segment — which wasn't aired but survives — shows the child propping himself on an elbow, shading his eyes with his hands. Poller saw the tape.

A boy named Mohammed Dura did die in a Gaza hospital that fateful Sept. 30. His face doesn't match the face in the video. Presented with these facts, France 2 officials said that "they would look into the matter."

In early 2005, Enderlin published an article in the French newspaper Le Figaro. His report "may have been hasty," he wrote, but was justified because "so many children were being killed." (But the intifada had barely started; "so many children" were not being killed — not yet.)

What did happen? Chances are we will never know for sure. But Poller reports that outtakes she saw show phony battle scenes staged by Palestinians. Painstaking analysis done by students at the Israeli Military Academy found the same actors playing multiple roles: "The injured and dead jump up, dust themselves off, play at offensive combat."

Poller's article raises far more doubts about the report's authenticity than I can list here. But disproving a video report is much harder than getting people to believe it. You must convince people that their own eyes and ears have deceived them. They must follow the twists and turns of your logical argument, do their own thinking, reach their own conclusions. Give people an opportunity to switch off their brains and they will grab it.

How can cautious, painstaking truth compete with brazen video lies? If the report turns out to be just what it looks like, a despicable fake, who will produce another 55-second video telling the truth? Which TV stations will broadcast it? Where does Israel go to get its reputation back? What will it all matter to grief-stricken Israelis whose children, husbands, mothers and fathers have died in acts sparked by the Dura story? <snip>

[Tace]

1. News Is A Serious Business

Whether print or broadcast, news stories can have very serious consequences. This is something all of us should keep in mind when we pass along information here on DU.

[papau]

3. Very true! :-)

:-)

[idontwantaname]

2. who is: David Gelernter

Gelernter is a contributor to magazines such as City Journal, The Weekly Standard, and Commentary which are often considered neoconservative or rightist. He is an op-ed columnist for the LA Times where he regularly espouses neoconservative views.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Gelernter

[papau]

4. Should mention Commentary Magazine leftest beginnings and neo-con

and Jewish links?

Commentary Magazine is a publication of the American Jewish Committee, although the magazine is editorially independent and often takes very different views than the majority of that organization's membership.

We could note that evil neo-con's Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz, are neither still editors at Commentary Magazine, and that Neal Kozodoy, on the staff of the magazine since 1966, is its current top editor.

But then does that mean that we can now judge truth by reading the article - or do we dis the article because it is in a neo-con mag?

There are so many rules to being a truth seeking person on the left.

sigh....

:-)

[idontwantaname]

5. do you think this french footage has anything to do with the 2nd intifada?

and could you please PM or post the text to the Commentary Magazine article as i am not a subscriber i could not access it.

[papau]

6. The Footage was made into Posters for the 2nd intifada - so - yes- I think

it influenced its development and the attitude of the Arab world a bit. (without the fake video the Arab world was not about to love Israel - but some really sincere Arab friends that now feel kindly toward suicide bombers would - in my opinion - not feel kindly toward the bombers)

As to the link - there is no subscription requirement.

Just click on 2005 Sept to reveal the articles available, then click on "Myth, Fact, and the al-Dura Affair"

[idontwantaname]

7. ah. the rosa parks of the 2nd intifada.

i will check the link again.

[papau]

8. Islam does not condone the killing of innocents - yet that event allowed

many to close their minds to that fact, and to give sympathy to the bombers.

As I said - It will take time - and a reasonable two state solution - for the bitterness of past events to dim in the memory folks on both sides.

But this was a major event - albeit faked - that made the media in all its forms all over the Arab world.

[idontwantaname]

9. media responsibility is important

it was wrong to fake this footage and call it genuine.

unfortunately the "relationship" between occupied palestine/the arab world and israel was such that nobody questioned the footage.