The Al Dura Trial In France

If you are following the Al-Dura Trial in France, you have to read what Nidra Poller has to say.

One question she asks is how France 2 could take the risk of a lawsuit against those who have come out saying that the Al-Dura incident is fake.

But she also touches on the open acknowledgement that the Palestinian Arabs regularly fake news events:

Many journalists who are unashamedly hostile to Israel admit that the Palestinians produce falsified news but they find nothing to deplore in this practice—it's simply propaganda, and everyone does it. A France 2 official acknowledged in the presence of news director Arlette Chabot, whose honor is allegedly sullied by Philippe Karsenty, that the Palestinians regularly enact fake battle scenes, some of which are reported as news in Western media.

All of these people freely admit that some, much, or even most of the material contained in the 27-minute video shot by Talal Abu Rahmeh at Netzarim Junction in the Gaza Strip on that fatal day are in fact staged scenes. (French journalists admit in private that the al-Dura scene, too, was staged; they say everyone knows it, no one will ever admit it publicly, this sort of revelation is totally and absolutely impossible in France, and besides it's an old story and no one is interested.)
For four years Enderlin claimed to have absolute proof of the authenticity of the al-Dura report in the form of 27-minutes of footage, the golden outtakes, which he refused to make available for independent investigation. When Rosenzweig, Jeambar, and Leconte described, in articles and radio interviews, what they had seen, the golden outtakes were reduced, by reverse alchemy, to dross.

Another point she makes is the timing of the lawsuit itself. Given the background of the recent Israel-Hezbollah war--with the revelations of faked pictures, staged photographs and manipulation of the media--there is an interest in the proceedings that France 2 could not have anticipated, or wanted.

At the time when the lawsuits were brought against Karsenty, Lurçat, and Gouz, there was little reason to hope they would attract international attention. Nothing—not the initial investigation, not articles in known, unknown, and/or prestigious publications, not the lectures, meetings, books, videos, websites, letters, demonstrations, revelations—nothing had pierced the invisible wall that separated the truly fascinating documentation of a monumental hoax—with extremely grave and widespread repercussions—from the wall of indifference and confusion that blocked every attempt to bring the case to light and obtain some form of justice.

Ah, but reality is stronger than any theory, and phlogiston stands as the symbol of imposed ignorance in the face of troubling evidence. The July –August Hizbullah war against Israel brought a windfall of staged news. From Pallywood to Hizbollywood with its cohort of fauxtography the blogosphere rapidly produced a wealth of documentation on a phenomenon that replicates everything we had observed in the al-Dura case. But this time, the results were immediate. Reuters dismissed fauxtographer Adnan Hajj and withdrew his photos from their archives. The information leaped from blogs to mainstream. CNN journalist Anderson Cooper admitted he had been manipulated by Hizbullah handlers. The NY Times wriggled out of its false pieta with a lame excuse, but lame is better than nothing. Pristine cuddly toys among the ruins; Green Helmet bouncing dead kids in the air; rescue workers becoming, by turns, bereaved fathers, distressed neighbors, and Hizbullah operatives; a grieving old lady performing in front of several different ruined homesteads, all of them 100% civilian, all of them hers, all of them source of unbearable sorrow; a wounded ambulance driver miraculously cured; press cars hit by missiles and resisting better than a Merkava tank… all of this and more available for analyses that yield a coherent picture of something beyond propaganda—a weapon, a type of warfare that I call "lethal narratives."

Also take a look at Augean Stables, who besides covering the trial on his blog is also testifying at the proceedings as well.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Al-Dura and France 2 and Pallywood and Palestinians.