Jenin, Jenin….whose Jenin?

In April 2002, the Israeli Defence Forces mounted a major operation in the PA-administered West Bank town of Jenin, identified by the IDF as the major fountainhead of the wave of terrorist suicide bombers then infiltrating Israeli territory and killing scores of Israeli nationals. Before long, the western (and Middle Eastern) media were full of horror stories about the operation, including reports of hundreds of innocents deliberately killed by the IDF. “Genocide” was a term freely employed by local journalists (mainly Palestinian stringers), and repeated uncritically in the MSM.

What actually happened back then was hotly contested at the time, and has been ever since. Eventually, a report by a UN investigating team found that only 56 Palestinians had been killed in fierce street fighting, and 23 Israeli soldiers.

In this connection, there was an interesting report yesterday on YNet:

Reservists to receive compensation for ‘Jenin Jenin’ screening

Tel Aviv, Jerusalem cinematheques to pay NIS 40,000 to five IDF reservists who claimed screening of contentious documentary about Operation Defensive Shield in West Bank town offended them

Yoram Yarkoni

Published:

11.26.07, 10:11 / Israel Culture

Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv cinematheques will pay NIS 40,000 in restitution to five IDF reservists who were offended by the screening of the contentious film “Jenin Jenin”. The reservists maintained that the film, in which actor and director Mohammed Bakri depicts IDF excursions into Gaza during Operation Defensive Shield, is defamatory and slanderous.

First screened in 2002, the documentary “Jenin Jenin” asserts that the IDF committed atrocious war crimes and deliberately slaughtered innocent civilians during Operation Defensive Shield in the West Bank town. Following the screening, the reservists filed suit for defamation against both Bakri and the cinematheques that screened his films to the tune of NIS 2.5 million.

CAMERA critiques the film here, and compares it with the counter-narrative described in The Road to Jenin.

Jenin, Jenin’s maker, Mohammed Bakri, lauds his own film thus:

I’m proud that justice was done and the truth came to light,” filmmaker Mohamed Bakri exulted in November 2003 when the Israeli Supreme Court reversed a ban on his controversial documentary Jenin, Jenin. “Every truth has two sides–our side and your side–and the two truths are one big truth.”

Ah-ha — “the accidental post-modernist”.

______________________

Here are the “two truths”. You decide. I’ve already made up my mind, of course.

Jenin, Jenin

The Road to Jenin

And finally, a footnote from Richard Landes, of Augean Stables and Second Draft fame: The Living Dead — Resurrection in Palestine. This footage of a funeral in Jenin involving an over-active “corpse” was taken by an IDF surveillance drone.

______________

There is much that needs to be said about the role of the media in situations such as at Jenin — and, even more crucially, Iraq. Fortunately, Yankee Wombat has said it far better than I could.

I think the intentional creation of footage - real or faked - by our enemies to sell to our media is possible only because our media is open to it. One vector is the endless appetite of TV for dramatic footage to maximize the emotional impact of their coverage. Another is the general disaffection of our press with the goals of our government and military.’

Combat pictures from Afghanistan

From the British Army’s 40th Commando.

More over at Defence of the Realm.

War and peace in Annapolis

Annapolis, the capital of Maryland, is a very beautiful town. In the old downtown districts, the 18th and 19th centuries survive with surprising grace and resilience. It’s the best town I’ve ever known just for walking around. I’ve been a few times: eaten good food there, and bought some great books, too, at Briarwood Book Shop on Maryland Avenue.

This week in Annapolis there will be a gathering of hawks and doves. Israel and the Palestinian Authority will be there, as will Syria and Saudi Arabia, under the hopeful, watchful eye of President George W. Bush, eager to rescue his reputation as international statesman with some kind — any kind — of breakthrough in the Middle East. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will be there too, equally anxious to influence history’s verdict on her secretaryship.

Hopes are not high. So far, the parties cannot even agree on a framework for discussions. The Jerusalem Post’s Caroline Glick, with her customary incisiveness, sails into the whole process here:

The mood is dark in the IDF’s General Staff ahead of next week’s “peace” conference in Annapolis. As one senior officer directly involved in the negotiations with the Palestinians and the Americans said, “As bad as it might look from the outside, the truth is 10 times worse. This is a nightmare. The Americans have never been so hostile.”

On Thursday a draft of the joint statement that Israeli and Palestinian negotiators are discussing ahead of the conference was leaked to the media. A reading of the document bears out the IDF’s concerns.

The draft document shows that the Palestinians and the Israelis differ not only on every issue, but differ on the purpose of the document. It also shows that the US firmly backs the Palestinians against Israel.

And Carl in Jerusalem, an Israeli blogger I check out every day, has been arguing against the conference for weeks now.

These guys are a lot smarter than me and are much more likely to be right than I am. But I have a slightly different take on Annapolis.

For decades, the problem of Israel vs. Palestine has been helplessly awaiting its solution. Many things have been tried, and they have all failed. Wars have been won and lost, and none has made any difference. Oslo was a hugely unproductive bribe, proffered by the US and Europe to induce Yasser Arafat to say, in his broken English, something that could be construed as conceding the right of Israel to exist (in Arabic, he said exactly the opposite). Limited democracy — and the grant of a free vote in the absence of the institutions and the expectations of a democratised polity can only be limited in its democratic effect — has brought about no more than the ascendancy of a terrorist clique (Hamas) over a criminal kleptocracy (Fatah). Disengagement, whether from Lebanon or Gaza, has achieved nothing for peace — rather its reverse — in the desperately troubled and traumatised strip of land on the Mediterranean littoral.

So why on earth should anyone entertain the remotest optimism about the possible outcomes in Annapolis?

The principals involved certainly don’t inspire confidence. Olmert leads the weakest Israeli government that I can remember, and is its weakest ever leader. Abbas has a suspect past, to say the least, and is as powerless as Arafat was reluctant to rein in the terrorists in his own ranks. And, rightly or wrongly, Bush wears the legacy of his Iraq adventure like a poisoned crown of thorns he will never be free of, regardless of Annapolis.

The reasons for optimism, then, lie not in the players but in the patterns. Not in the men (no disrespect, Dr Rice), but in the moment. We have seen before, in the case of the end of the apartheid regime in South Africa and the collapse of the old Soviet Union, that a ‘problem’ long seen as intractable and irredeemable somehow proved to be its opposite, much to the world’s astonishment. Some would say it was the man, and not the moment: it was Mandela (and de Kierk), and Gorbachov who wrought those protean changes.

But maybe not. In both those cases there came a time when it became starkly clear that it was impossible to go on; it was impossible not to change. And the right men, at the right time, recognised the fact and seized the day. I think that day may have come in the Middle East — and it has come precisely because everything else has failed up to this point. It can’t go on as it has done any longer.

Israel cannot go on as before. The summer war in Lebanon demonstrated the limits of its military power. It cannot defeat a terrorist army dug into the bedrock and protected by the civilian infrastructure. Whether it’s fair or not, world opinion will not allow Israel that victory. We saw that at Qana, when Israel’s moral case for war evaporated in the wake of a few minutes’ coverage on CNN. We see it every day that the Qassams fall on Sderot and the world pays no mind until Israel strikes back.

Nor can Palestine. The only thing that holds the West Bank back from becoming the disaster that has enveloped Gaza is the Israeli security presence. Somehow Palestine has to shake off the dreadful legacy of Oslo, which established it as a perpetual beggar state bereft of dignity and self-respect, eternally beholden to outside funding, and eternally resentful for such. It needs an economy, infrastructure, jobs, growth, wealth. And Israel could teach it such a hell of a lot.

I don’t know that the time has come, but I hope it may have. I hope that the strange, unexpected and mysterious confluence of forces that resolved the problems of South Africa and Eastern Europe will configure itself again above this lovely port city on the shore of Chesapeake Bay, and fall like the rain.

It may be, precisely because of the weakness of each of the key players, that this is the time of the moment. It may be, according to the principles of game theory as applied to the theatre of politics by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, that now, more than at any time before, the principals may realise that it is inescapably in their own interests to seek peace rather than war. Few politicians could withstand that particular siren’s call.

We shall see. But somewhere, in these unpredictable and conflicted spirals of strength and weakness, hope and fear, hate and joy, there may — just – be a distant chance that each side will agree to forgive the other for the blood of the past and the pains of the present. No catalogue of the possible can include a perfect future for Israel and Palestine, but at least we can envisage one that does not require a constant and continual investment in death.

Maybe Annapolis will bring us closer to that state.

Carpe diem.

More, and countervailing, from Carl, Melanie Phillips. I’m a bit closer in opinion to Dalia at Good Neighbours.

“Icon of Hatred”

Those who have been following the Mohammed al-Durah hoax will already have seen this film, Icon of Hatred, by Richard Landes of Augean Stables and The Second Draft.

It’s hard viewing, but necessary. Richard reminds us just how serious the al-Durah affair was. It was far from being just another instance of journalistic malfeasance of the kind with which we have become all too familiar. This was journalism with consequences — real consequences, like the similarly false Gitmo-guard-flushes-Qu’ran-down-toilet story, which sparked riots across the Muslim world and claimed a dozen deaths.

It’s not easy to say how many people will have died as a result of this footage — on both sides during the Intifada, at the hands of Al Qaida in America, Afghanistan and Iraq, on the streets of the Middle East. Bin Laden gorged on it, as did the beheaders of Daniel Pearl, and the waves of suicide murderers destined for the clubs and bars of Israel’s cities. The tally may run into thousands.

Yet it was false, fraudulent, faked. And though so many people have lost their lives in consequence, not one journalist has lost even his livelihood.

Power without responsibility: the whore’s prerogative throughout the ages. And now it is the singular privilege of the journalist.

Mohammed al-Durah update: the rushes see light of day

Yes they did, and it’s looking bad for Charles Enderlin, Talal Abu Rahmad and France2.

From HonestReporting:

HonestReporting together with Take-A-Pen covered this afternoon’s hearing in France where raw footage of the Mohammed Dura was publicly screened for the first time. HonestReporting/Take-A-Pen’s Alain Benjamin, who saw the video in court, discussed by phone the proceedings with MediaBackspin editor Pesach Benson.

What did the raw footage show?

We can definitely say that nobody can say who was shooting at who. Charles Enderlin said in court that the Palestinians started shooting first, but in the end, there’s no way we can say what happened that day. You can’t tell who did what. The assertion from Charles Enderlin, that the Israeli army killed the boy, is totally wrong. The least he could’ve said was that the boy was killed–but we don’t know by who.

There was a dispute over how much footage was to be screened. Was the full video shown?

Charles Enderlin submitted 18 minutes of footage. The judge, without any prompting from Philippe’s lawyers, asked what happened to the 27 minutes. Enderlin said on record in court that he had to manipulate some footage that was not relevant to that day. He said he transferred the footage onto DVD for the court. That was amazing.

So she asked if anyone in attendance had seen the full footage. Luc Rosenzweig was there, stood up , and said he saw a tape that was more than 20 minutes long. Richard Landes also stood up. He saw the footage at Enderlin’s office. He said the timer he saw was at least 21 minutes long. The judge basically let that issue rest, but there was serious doubt hanging over the room that the footage was tampered or doctored.

After the hearing ended, how did people react to what they saw?

Not one person believed that the version of France 2 was right. Some people maintained that the footage was staged. Others think the footage was real. Clearly, nobody believed that anybody died.

Does the footage vindicate Karsenty?

Everyone was going, “Wow” and talking about whether he’ll take action against France 2 for trying to swindle the court. He can wait for the verdict, or sue France 2 for tampering with the tape. He has quite a few options. Clearly, the judge wasn’t convinced by France 2’s version. The judge’s verdict is to be given on February 27.

How did the France 2 people react after the hearing?

France 2 left immediately. They just ran out and left. They didn’t want to speak to anyone.

More from Richard Landes and Melanie Phillips, both of whom were in the courtroom.

Here’s the video:

Mohammed al-Durah redux

Tomorrow — or whenever it’s Wednesday in France — is a kind of high noon in the seven-year struggle to get to the truth of what it was that happened, or did not happen, to a Palestinian child, Mohammed al-Durah, at Netzarim junction in the Gaza Strip just days after the eruption of the second Intifada in September 2000.

Richard Landes of Augean Stables has waged an almost solitary battle in the English-speaking world to demonstrate that the boy’s ‘killing’, which inflamed the Intifada with irrevocable force and led to the deaths of thousands on both sides, was faked. His latest, indispensable summary is here. It’s up at Pajamas Media as well.

On the information available, I believe that on that day of 30 September, 2000, out of sight and out of the line of fire of a local Israeli police post, Palestinian kids and some adults were playing games. They were acting out a series of tableaux for the benefit of attendant cameramen, who wanted library footage to accompany stories of ‘violent’ clashes in (then) occupied Gaza — film which they could safely retrieve from their databases and include as real-life footage, without having to venture into harm’s way to get it.

One of them, a Palestinian stringer named Talal Abu Rahmah, shot some footage of a boy and his father acting out the scene ‘crouching terrified under withering Israeli fire, boy then agonisingly killed’. He recognised its particularly powerful impact, notwithstanding it was staged, and sent it off to France2’s Jerusalem editor, Charles Enderlin, as coverage of a real event. Enderlin had it broadcast, the world picked it up, and the rest is history.

Tomorrow the rushes of the footage will be shown in a French court. They have already been viewed by senior journalists, and Landes himself, and all are agreed they depict no more than play-acting by a bunch of Palestinian kids.

But what will the media make of it? I’m a pessimist in this regard. I doubt the MSM will touch it. And if they do, it will be along these lines:

(Note: Just to be clear. What follows is an imagined pre-construction. It is not a news report.)

Anger, sadness greet ’smear’ of Palestinian boy martyr

GAZA CITY, 15 Nov., 2007. Palestinians reacted yesterday with a mixture of sadness and anger to allegations in a French court that the death of 12-year old Mohammed al-Durah, killed by IDF gunfire at Netzarim Junction in the Gaza Strip in 2000, had been ‘faked’.

The allegations, which have not been supported by either the Israeli or French governments, arose from a little-known libel case in France, which involved a so-called ‘independent’ analysis of the seven-year old killing by pro-Israeli activists in France and the US. Some of them have been described by world-renowned US journalist James Fallows as fanatics.

The dead boy’s father, Jamal, reacted bitterly to news of the allegations. ‘My son was a martyr slaughtered at their hands’, he said angrily, ‘and now they smear and slander him in his death and dishonour his memory, and the memory of all the Palestinian children they have destroyed’.

Veteran Ha’aretz journalist Gideon Levy - regarded as one of the finest and most fiercely independent of Israeli journalists - agreed, though more cautiously. ‘Undoubtedly the allegations are designed to deflect attention from the IDF’s appalling human rights record in the Occupied Territories,’ Mr Levy said, ‘especially its proven history of killing innocent children.’

Mr Levy also questioned the timing of the allegations, just days before the crucial summit in Annapolis, where the hopes of moderate Israelis and Palestinians for a negotiated peaceful settlement will rely heavily on the goodwill of both sides. Mr Levy thought the sudden appearance of these allegations might derail the peace conference by destroying the atmosphere of trust. ‘Is this what Olmert actually wants? Is this what’s behind the resurrection of a story that was dead seven years ago? The death of the peace process?’, Mr Levy asked.

Meanwhile, in Gaza, the site of the boy’s death, Hamas spokespeople were playing down the possibility of violence in response to the charges. In Gaza, Mohammed al-Durah remains an icon of the Intifada, and an adored role model for thousands of Gazan children. Allegations that his death was ‘faked’ could be expected to be controversial, to say the least.

However, Government spokesman Hamid Ismail said the mood in the Strip was sad rather than angry. ‘We understand’, he said, ‘why Israel has to do this, why they will stop at nothing to tear down the shrine of this martyr. Even in death and silence he condemns them’.

He added: ‘There remains the chance that some will be so outraged that it will be difficult to prevent them shouting out loud in the streets, and possibly firing weapons into the air.’ But he was confident restraint would prevail.

The charges in the French court were sparked by claims that examination of the footage of the shooting broadcast by France2 showed some scenes might have been staged.

No-one, including the veteran journalist and cameraman who broadcast the story, has admitted any wrong-doing and no-one has ever been charged with any breach of professional ethics.

These claims have not been taken seriously by any court or tribunal in seven years. As for the case before the French court, it is actually an appeal by one of the pro-Israel activists, Philippe Karsenty, against his conviction in a lower court on a charge of libelling France2 and its Jerusalem editor, Charles Enderlin, who is both Jewish and an Israeli citizen.

Satire ends.

There are at least seventeen conscious and identifiable spins in that ‘article’. If it were a real one, and I were writing it, I would be careful to say nothing that was factually inaccurate. Spin’s easy. Everything can be spun. That’s why journalists do it.

Update: When word got around that the court hearing Philippe Karsenty’s appeal had ordered France2 to produce the rushes — which comprise 27 minutes of footage — cynics predicted that the TV station would ‘lose’ the film or censor it in some way. According to this video from Karsenty (and I’ve seen similar reports around the blogosphere), France 2 is going to show only 18 minutes of the footage. Hmm.

Hat tip: Carl in Jerusalem.

A poem from Iraq

Badr Shakir al-Sayyab (1926-1964) was Iraq’s most celebrated poet.

Perhaps his most famous poem was “The Song of the Rain”. It is beautiful, breathtaking, even if translated with necessary imperfection from the Arabic into English.

Your eyes are two palm tree forests in early light,
Or two balconies from which the moonlight recedes
When they smile, your eyes, the vines put forth their leaves,
And lights dance . . . like moons in a river
Rippled by the blade of an oar at break of day;
As if stars were throbbing in the depths of them . . .

And they drown in a mist of sorrow translucent
Like the sea stroked by the hand of nightfall;

The warmth of winter is in it, the shudder of autumn,
And death and birth, darkness and light;
A sobbing flares up to tremble in my soul
And a savage elation embracing the sky,
Frenzy of a child frightened by the moon.

It is as if archways of mist drank the clouds
And drop by drop dissolved in the rain . . .
As if children snickered in the vineyard bowers,

The song of the rain
Rippled the silence of birds in the trees . . .
Drop, drop, the rain
Drip

Drop the rain

Evening yawned, from low clouds

Heavy tears are streaming still.
It is as if a child before sleep were rambling on
About his mother (a year ago he went to wake her, did not find her,
Then was told, for he kept on asking,
“After tomorrow, she’ll come back again . . .
That she must come back again,

Yet his playmates whisper that she is there
In the hillside, sleeping her death for ever,
Eating the earth around her, drinking the rain;
As if a forlorn fisherman gathering nets
Cursed the waters and fate
And scattered a song at moonset,
Drip, drop, the rain
Drip, drop, the rain
Do you know what sorrow the rain can inspire?

Do you know how gutters weep when it pours down?

Do you know how lost a solitary person feels in the rain?
Endless, like spilt blood, like hungry people, like love,
Like children, like the dead, endless the rain.
Your two eyes take me wandering with the rain,
Lightning’s from across the Gulf sweep the shores of Iraq
With stars and shells,
As if a dawn were about to break from them,
But night pulls over them a coverlet of blood.
I cry out to the Gulf: “O Gulf,
Giver of pearls and shells and death!”
And the echo replies,
As if lamenting:
“O Gulf,
Giver of shells and death .

I can almost hear Iraq husbanding the thunder,
Storing lightning in the mountains and plains,
So that if the seal were broken by men
The winds would leave in the valley not a trace of Thamud.
I can almost hear the palm trees drinking the rain,
Hear the villages moaning and emigrants
With oar and sail fighting the Gulf
Winds of storm and thunder, singing
“Rain . . . rain . . .
Drip, drop, the rain . . .
And there is hunger in Iraq,

The harvest time scatters the grain in-it,

That crows and locusts may gobble their fill,
Granaries and stones grind on and on,

Mills turn in the fields, with them men turning . . .
Drip, drop, the rain . . .

Drip
Drop
When came the night for leaving, how many tears we shed,
We made the rain a pretext, not wishing to be blamed
Drip, drop, the rain

Drip, drop, the rain

Since we had been children, the sky

Would be clouded in wintertime,

And down would pour the rain,
And every year when earth turned green the hunger struck us.
Not a year has passed without hunger in Iraq.
Rain . . .
Drip, drop, the rain . . .
Drip, drop . . .
In every drop of rain
A red or yellow color buds from the seeds of flowers.
Every tear wept by the hungry and naked people
And every spilt drop of slaves’ blood
Is a smile aimed at a new dawn,
A nipple turning rosy in an infant’s lips
In the young world of tomorrow, bringer of life.

Drip…..
Drop….. the rain . . .In the rain.
Iraq will blossom one day ‘

I cry out to the Gulf: “O Gulf,
Giver of pearls, shells and death!”

The echo replies
As if lamenting:
‘O Gulf,
Giver of shells and death.”
And across the sands from among its lavish gifts
The Gulf scatters fuming froth and shells
And the skeletons of miserable drowned emigrants

Who drank death forever
From the depths of the Gulf, from the ground of its silence,
And in Iraq a thousand serpents drink the nectar
From a flower the Euphrates has nourished with dew.

I hear the echo
Ringing in the Gulf:
“Rain . . .
Drip, drop, the rain . . .
Drip, drop.”

In every drop of rain
A red or yellow color buds from the seeds of flowers.
Every tear wept by the hungry and naked people
And every spilt drop of slaves’ blood
Is a smile aimed at a new dawn,
A nipple turning rosy in an infant’s lips
In the young world of tomorrow, bringer of life.

And still the rain pours down.

Still the rain pours down.

A question concerning Iraq

…from IraqPundit.

Is your hatred for George Bush so great that you prefer to see millions of civilians suffer just to prove him wrong?

And his answer:

You are determined to see Iraq become a permanent hellhole because you hate Bush.

His position?

We are determined to see Iraq become a success, because we want to live.

Iraq: the media, or Michael Yon?

Make up your own mind.

I’ve pretty much made up mine.

Good news from Afghanistan

At least I think so.

OTTAWA — A strong majority of Afghans approve of the presence of NATO-led troops in their country, including from Canada, and want the foreign soldiers to remain to fight the Taliban and support reconstruction efforts.

In a poll of Afghans conducted by Environics Research on behalf of The Globe and Mail, the CBC and La Presse, respondents expressed optimism about the future, strong support for the government of President Hamid Karzai and appreciation for the work being done by NATO countries in improving security.

In Kandahar, where the Taliban is stronger and violence more pervasive, support for the foreign troops was weaker, but respondents still want the soldiers to stay.

Spread the word.