Haha, classic. Have you read the Old Testament? Christians skip over that like it never existed. I know i know, it was meant for the Jews. HOWEVER, its still your God that sanctioned all that brutality and in many cases encouraged it AND YOU KNOW IT. It goes much further than roman Catholics. Were those that burned witches in Mass Catholics? I always thought they were Protestants?
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=117197028485578&set=vb.256984981088910&type=2&theater
Pretty disturbing video. Cannot embed here though.
Pretty disturbing video. Cannot embed here though.
More about the debate between (moderate) Islam and (fundamentalist) Islamism:
Islam vs. Islamism, again
This is a familiar controversy to longtime Jihad Watch readers; in November 2011 I published an article in National Review responding to a piece by Andy McCarthy and criticizing the Islam/Islamism distinction for obscuring the fact that doctrines of warfare and subjugation are found in Islam's core texts.
I've long rejected the term "Islamist" for reasons I explained in that piece: "...the distinction is artificial and imposed from without. There are not, in other words, Islamist mosques and non-Islamist mosques, distinguishable from one another by the sign outside each, like Baptist and Methodist churches. On the contrary, 'Islamists' move among non-political, non-supremacist Muslims with no difficulty; no Islamic authorities are putting them out of mosques, or setting up separate institutions to distinguish themselves from the 'Islamists.' Mevlid Jasarevic [a jihadist in Sarajevo] could and did visit mosques in Austria, Serbia, and Bosnia without impediment before he started shooting on Friday; no one stopped him from entering because he was an 'Islamist.'"
And so to say we must work with ordinary Muslims while eschewing collaboration with Islamists is not precisely a distinction without a difference, but a distinction that is practically imperceptible and, in many cases, in fact not there at all.
This is not to say that Islam can never be reformed. Many strange things have happened in history: events that no one 100 or 50 or sometimes even 10 years before they happened would have or could have predicted. The Berlin Wall came down in 1989, but in 1986 and 1987 there were still plenty of learned analysts all over the airwaves and in the corridors of power in Washington talking about how we were going to have to deal with the Soviet Bloc for generations to come. So I will never say that something can never happen. But we have to recognize fully and honestly the obstacles in the way of it happening so as to make a truly realistic assessment of the situation we're in, and apply remedies that are most likely to work, as well as to accord with our own fundamental principles.
This piece by Daniel Pipes has stirred up some controversy already; Pamela Geller comments here; Andrew Bostom weighs in here; and Walid Shoebat here.
"Islam and its infidels," by Daniel Pipes in the Washington Times, May 13:
And the punishment for heresy and apostasy is death. That's why Mahmoud Muhammad Taha was murdered in the Sudan in the 1980s for daring to suggest that the Qur'an's peaceful verses (which are slight and scanty in any case) should supersede its violent ones, instead of the other way around, as is the traditional understanding in Islamic theology and law. (Islam's doctrine of abrogation holds that the verses revealed later chronologically supersede those revealed earlier, if there is any contradiction -- and the violent verses came later.) That's why the Moroccan cleric Ahmed Assid, who just recently condemned violence in Islam's name, was declared an apostate and an enemy of Allah by other clerics, and threatened with death. That's why the Iraqi Shi'ite scholar Sayyed Ahmad Al-Qabbanji called for reason in Islamic discourse and jurisprudence, and was promptly arrested.
It's hard to see how a mass reform movement can ever grow when those who make even a peep calling for reform are promptly condemned and arrested, but the larger point is that the claim of Qur'anic and Islamic authenticity by the jihadists and Islamic supremacists is extremely powerful, has never been successfully challenged on any large scale, and will continue into the foreseeable future to stifle genuine attempts at reform. It would be unwise to wave it away lightly.
I stand by that.
Islam vs. Islamism, again
This is a familiar controversy to longtime Jihad Watch readers; in November 2011 I published an article in National Review responding to a piece by Andy McCarthy and criticizing the Islam/Islamism distinction for obscuring the fact that doctrines of warfare and subjugation are found in Islam's core texts.
I've long rejected the term "Islamist" for reasons I explained in that piece: "...the distinction is artificial and imposed from without. There are not, in other words, Islamist mosques and non-Islamist mosques, distinguishable from one another by the sign outside each, like Baptist and Methodist churches. On the contrary, 'Islamists' move among non-political, non-supremacist Muslims with no difficulty; no Islamic authorities are putting them out of mosques, or setting up separate institutions to distinguish themselves from the 'Islamists.' Mevlid Jasarevic [a jihadist in Sarajevo] could and did visit mosques in Austria, Serbia, and Bosnia without impediment before he started shooting on Friday; no one stopped him from entering because he was an 'Islamist.'"
And so to say we must work with ordinary Muslims while eschewing collaboration with Islamists is not precisely a distinction without a difference, but a distinction that is practically imperceptible and, in many cases, in fact not there at all.
This is not to say that Islam can never be reformed. Many strange things have happened in history: events that no one 100 or 50 or sometimes even 10 years before they happened would have or could have predicted. The Berlin Wall came down in 1989, but in 1986 and 1987 there were still plenty of learned analysts all over the airwaves and in the corridors of power in Washington talking about how we were going to have to deal with the Soviet Bloc for generations to come. So I will never say that something can never happen. But we have to recognize fully and honestly the obstacles in the way of it happening so as to make a truly realistic assessment of the situation we're in, and apply remedies that are most likely to work, as well as to accord with our own fundamental principles.
This piece by Daniel Pipes has stirred up some controversy already; Pamela Geller comments here; Andrew Bostom weighs in here; and Walid Shoebat here.
"Islam and its infidels," by Daniel Pipes in the Washington Times, May 13:
What motives lay behind last month’s Boston Marathon bombing and the would-be attack on a Via Rail Canada train? Leftists and establishmentarians variously offer imprecise and tired replies — such as “violent extremism” or anger at Western imperialism — unworthy of serious discussion. Conservatives, in contrast, engage in a lively and serious debate among themselves: some say Islam the religion provides motive; others say it’s a modern extremist variant of the religion, known as radical Islam or Islamism.
As a participant in the latter debate, here’s my argument for focusing on Islamism.
Those arguing for Islam itself as the problem (such as Wafa Sultan and Ayaan Hirsi Ali) point to the consistency from Muhammad’s life and the contents of the Koran and Hadith to current Muslim practice. Agreeing with Geert Wilders’ film “Fitna,” they point to striking continuities between Koranic verses and jihad actions. They quote Islamic scriptures to establish the centrality of Muslim supremacism, jihad and misogyny, concluding that a moderate form of Islam is impossible. They point to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s deriding the very idea of a moderate Islam. Their killer question is “Was Muhammad a Muslim or an Islamist?” They contend that we who blame Islamism do so out of political correctness or cowardliness.
To which, we reply: Yes, certain continuities do exist, and Islamists definitely follow the Koran and Hadith literally. Moderate Muslims exist, but lack Islamists’ near-hegemonic power. Mr. Erdogan’s denial of moderate Islam points to a curious overlap between Islamism and the anti-Islam viewpoint. Muhammad was a plain Muslim, not an Islamist, for the latter concept dates back only to the 1920s. And no, we are not cowardly but offer our true analysis.
Not only do moderate Muslims "lack Islamists’ near-hegemonic power"; they also lack the justification in the Qur'an and Hadith that Islamic jihadists always point to in order to gain recruits among peaceful Muslims, as well as to justify their actions. And this is a key point: if Wafa Sultan and Ayaan Hirsi Ali (both, not incidentally, ex-Muslims) are right that there is a "consistency from Muhammad’s life and the contents of the Koran and Hadith to current Muslim practice," and they most certainly are, as Daniel Pipes apparently acknowledges when he says that "certain continuities do exist, and Islamists definitely follow the Koran and Hadith literally," then attempts to prescind from Qur'anic literalism in order to reform Islam and create a more peaceful version of the faith will always be challenged by the literalists (who are and have always been the mainstream in Islam) as heretics and apostates. As a participant in the latter debate, here’s my argument for focusing on Islamism.
Those arguing for Islam itself as the problem (such as Wafa Sultan and Ayaan Hirsi Ali) point to the consistency from Muhammad’s life and the contents of the Koran and Hadith to current Muslim practice. Agreeing with Geert Wilders’ film “Fitna,” they point to striking continuities between Koranic verses and jihad actions. They quote Islamic scriptures to establish the centrality of Muslim supremacism, jihad and misogyny, concluding that a moderate form of Islam is impossible. They point to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s deriding the very idea of a moderate Islam. Their killer question is “Was Muhammad a Muslim or an Islamist?” They contend that we who blame Islamism do so out of political correctness or cowardliness.
To which, we reply: Yes, certain continuities do exist, and Islamists definitely follow the Koran and Hadith literally. Moderate Muslims exist, but lack Islamists’ near-hegemonic power. Mr. Erdogan’s denial of moderate Islam points to a curious overlap between Islamism and the anti-Islam viewpoint. Muhammad was a plain Muslim, not an Islamist, for the latter concept dates back only to the 1920s. And no, we are not cowardly but offer our true analysis.
And the punishment for heresy and apostasy is death. That's why Mahmoud Muhammad Taha was murdered in the Sudan in the 1980s for daring to suggest that the Qur'an's peaceful verses (which are slight and scanty in any case) should supersede its violent ones, instead of the other way around, as is the traditional understanding in Islamic theology and law. (Islam's doctrine of abrogation holds that the verses revealed later chronologically supersede those revealed earlier, if there is any contradiction -- and the violent verses came later.) That's why the Moroccan cleric Ahmed Assid, who just recently condemned violence in Islam's name, was declared an apostate and an enemy of Allah by other clerics, and threatened with death. That's why the Iraqi Shi'ite scholar Sayyed Ahmad Al-Qabbanji called for reason in Islamic discourse and jurisprudence, and was promptly arrested.
It's hard to see how a mass reform movement can ever grow when those who make even a peep calling for reform are promptly condemned and arrested, but the larger point is that the claim of Qur'anic and Islamic authenticity by the jihadists and Islamic supremacists is extremely powerful, has never been successfully challenged on any large scale, and will continue into the foreseeable future to stifle genuine attempts at reform. It would be unwise to wave it away lightly.
And that analysis goes like this: Islam is the 14-century-old faith of a billion-plus believers that includes everyone from quietist Sufis to violent jihadis. Muslims achieved remarkable military, economic and cultural success between roughly 600 and 1200 A.D. Being a Muslim then meant belonging to a winning team, a fact that broadly inspired Muslims to associate their faith with mundane success. Those memories of medieval glory remain not just alive, but central to believers’ confidence in Islam and in themselves as Muslims.
Sufis haven't always been all that quietist. They have long been involved with the Chechen jihad; Hasan Al-Banna of the Muslim Brotherhood was strongly influenced by them; and some of their most revered figures, including Al-Ghazali himself, were quite clear in their espousal of violent jihad and dhimmitude for non-Muslims. Islam "includes everyone from quietist Sufis to violent jihadis," and yet the one aspect of this glorious diversity that we would want to see most is unfortunately missing: an Islamic sect that actually rejects the concept of jihad warfare against and subjugation of unbelievers under Sharia. The Ahmadiyya reject violent jihad, although they energetically pursue dawah for the imposition of Sharia, and are violently persecuted as heretics.
Major dissonance began around 1800, when Muslims unexpectedly lost wars, markets and cultural leadership to Western Europeans. It continues today, as Muslims bunch toward the bottom of nearly every index of achievement. This shift has caused massive confusion and anger. What went wrong? Why did God seemingly abandon His faithful? The unbearable divergence between premodern accomplishment and modern failure brought about trauma. Muslims have responded to this crisis in three main ways. Secularists want Muslims to ditch the Shariah (Islamic law) and emulate the West. Apologists also emulate the West, but pretend that in doing so they are following the Shariah. Islamists reject the West in favor of a retrograde and full application of the Shariah.
Islamists loathe the West because of its vast influence over Muslims and its being tantamount to Christendom, the historic archenemy. Islamism inspires a drive to reject, defeat and subjugate Western civilization. Despite this urge, Islamists absorb Western influences, including the concept of ideology. Indeed, Islamism represents the transformation of Islamic faith into a political ideology. Islamism accurately indicates an Islamic-flavored version of radical utopianism, an -ism like other -isms, comparable to fascism and communism. Aping those two movements, for example, Islamism relies heavily on conspiracy theories to interpret the world, on the state to advance its ambitions, and on brutal means to attain its goals.
"Islamism" as a modern construct was by no means the first to transform the "Islamic faith into a political ideology." Islam was political from the beginning; Islamic tradition portrays Muhammad as a political as well as religious leader, and his successors amassed large Islamic empires based on the proposition that Islam was a political system. In fact, the most prominent contemporary exponent of "Islamism," the Muslim Brotherhood, was founded in 1928 by Hasan al-Banna as a direct response to the abolition of the caliphate, the foremost symbol of political Islam, by the secular Turkish government in 1924. Al-Banna envisioned the Brotherhood not as some kind of innovation, but as a revival of traditional and mainstream Islam.Islamists loathe the West because of its vast influence over Muslims and its being tantamount to Christendom, the historic archenemy. Islamism inspires a drive to reject, defeat and subjugate Western civilization. Despite this urge, Islamists absorb Western influences, including the concept of ideology. Indeed, Islamism represents the transformation of Islamic faith into a political ideology. Islamism accurately indicates an Islamic-flavored version of radical utopianism, an -ism like other -isms, comparable to fascism and communism. Aping those two movements, for example, Islamism relies heavily on conspiracy theories to interpret the world, on the state to advance its ambitions, and on brutal means to attain its goals.
Supported by 10 percent to 15 percent of Muslims, Islamism draws on devoted and skilled cadres who have an impact far beyond their limited numbers. It poses a threat to civilized life in Iran and Egypt, and not just on the streets of Boston, but also in Western schools, parliaments and courtrooms. Our killer question is “How do you propose to defeat Islamism?” Those who make all Islam their enemy not only succumb to a simplistic and essentialist illusion, but lack any mechanism to defeat it. We who focus on Islamism see World War II and the Cold War as models for subduing the third totalitarianism. We understand that radical Islam is the problem and that moderate Islam is the solution. We work with anti-Islamist Muslims to vanquish a common scourge. We will triumph over this new variant of barbarism so that a modern form of Islam can emerge.
Moderate Islam is a solution that does not exist, and can only be a solution if it could be successfully invented. Calling upon Muslims to renounce the aspects of their theology that violate basic human rights will never be effective if we do not acknowledge that those aspects exist -- and that requires talking about Islam. As I said in that National Review article: "Andy is wrong in his claim that I have ever said that any form of Islam is 'the only Islam,' but the fact is that throughout its history, and in all its theological, legal, and sectarian manifestations, Islam has always been supremacist and political. Acknowledging that is simply acknowledging reality. Pro-Western Muslim reformers have to start there. In Christian history, the Protestant reformers did not pretend that Church doctrine was other than what it was. They confronted and refuted portions of that doctrine. But Andy seems to expect contemporary Islamic reformers to succeed by pretending that Islam is not what its authoritative texts teach and what it always has been historically. He says that he does not see 'what purpose is served' by telling Islamic reformers that 'Islam is incorrigibly supremacist and political.' But if it is supremacist and political, whether 'incorrigibly' or not, then sincere reformers have to start there in order to fix it. Wishful thinking and self-deception are not reform. Ultimately those doctrines can be combatted only by actually combatting them."
I stand by that.
From al Durah to Badawi: Lethal journalism and Palestinian Propaganda's Manufacturing of Consent
Posted: 03/05/2013 10:58 am
It was a defining image of the last conflagration in Gaza. Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh and Egyptian prime minister Hashim Kandil held up a Palestinian child's corpse to the cameras, his face bloodied, his lifeless eyes a compelling entreaty to the world: "Will you not stand against Israel for killing this child!?"
But it wasn't Israel that murdered 4-year-old Mohammed Sadallah, it appears to have been Hamas. In a grotesque irony, one of the thousands of rockets Hamas had aimed at Israeli children reportedly landed on the 4-year-old Gazan boy instead. The Islamist group thought nothing of turning the child into a PR weapon -- and the international press obliged. That same week, Palestinian activists repeatedly tried to pass off photos of dead Arab children as Israel's doing. The photos were in fact of Syrian children massacred weeks earlier by Bashar Assad. And this month, following unprecedented public criticism, the UN fired Kulhood Badawi, one of its senior public affairs officers in Jerusalem. Badawi had tried to peddle a photo of a girl killed in an accident in 2006 as a victim of Israel. These activists, Badawi and Hamas -- whose minister boasted in 2009 of its use of "human shields of the women, the children... to challenge the Zionist bombing machine" -- assumed that the international press would simply take them at their word, as it had always done.
Bloggers exposed their lies, but the damage had been done. And the damage when journalists help certain Palestinian activists abuse public compassion to demonize Israel is counted in lives lost -- on both sides.
In the war for hearts and minds, some propagandists for the Palestinian cause understood long ago that feelings trump facts. Images and accusations that molest the emotions and exploit the public's natural empathy are irreplaceable ammunition to coerce sympathy with the Palestinians and hostility to Israel. Yasser Arafat himself in January 2002 -- two days before his own Fatah organization murdered six guests at a Bat Mitzvah celebration in Israel -- cynically underlined the value of dead Palestinian children as propaganda tools: "the Palestinian child holding a stone, facing a tank - is that not the greatest message to the world, when that hero becomes a 'martyr'?"
When Arafat spoke those words, he was thinking of the heart-wrenching images of the death of Mohammed Al Durah. That 50-second clip, filmed and distributed globally by France 2 in September 2000, shows a boy and his father caught in crossfire, crouching fearfully behind a concrete cylinder in Gaza. Some arresting moments later, the picture jumps, final shots ring out, and a cloud of dust dissipates to reveal the boy strewn lifeless at his father's feet. France 2's reporter, Charles Enderlin, narrating the scene though he did not witness it, decrees to the world that the boy and his father were "the targets of Israeli fire."
Enderlin's report went viral and was instrumental in fueling the Second Intifada. Within days, an enraged mob in Ramallah shouted "revenge for the blood of Muhammad al Durah" as they dismembered two lost Israelis. A deluge of Palestinian suicide bombers often claimed the same motive before murdering hundreds of Israeli civilians in horrific attacks on restaurants, schools, buses and malls. Al Qaeda used al Durah as a major recruiting theme, and jihadists beheaded Daniel Pearl in 2002 with al Durah's picture behind them. In the West, Enderlin's report irreversibly indicted Israel and provided moral cover for Palestinian groups' terror attacks; many went so far as to equate Israel with Nazi Germany. Twelve years on, is it any wonder that Mohammed Merah gunned down Jewish school children in Toulouse to avenge the killing of "Palestinian children" by Israelis? Assisted by the mainstream news media, one child's death has become a global license to kill Jews, westerners, and their children.
But it wasn't Israel that shot Mohammed Al Durah.
Critics rapidly exposed the yawning gaps in Enderlin's report: Al Durah was said to have died of blood loss but the footage shows no blood; the picture of his body in a Gaza morgue was shown to be that of another boy; the wounds that his father said he sustained from Israeli fire were from a stabbing, years prior. Most damning, from their position, the Israelis simply could not have hit Al Durah that day.
Ironically, one of the activists working tirelessly to unearth the truth, Philippe Karsenty, was charged with defamation for publicly questioning the credibility of Enderlin's work. But when the French court ordered France 2 to produce the unedited reels used by Enderlin in his report, things rapidly unraveled for the accusers. In the footage, after Enderlin had declared Al Durah dead, the boy miraculously moves his body, lifts his arm and looks out. Instead of gun battles, the footage showed Palestinian participants faking injuries, staging and choreographing "battle" scenes in full view of dozens of reporters from leading news agencies -- all as children wander in front of the Israeli position, unperturbed. The Al Durah story -- the trigger for an explosion of violence and suffering -- was a lie. "You know, it's always like that" and "oh, they do that all the time," France 2 officials and Enderlin are reported to have said when confronted with the staged "news".
Badawi's firing last week should not cause false hope. France 2 and Enderlin are unrepentant, and the French media establishment is closing ranks behind them. The dearth of stories on this affair indicates that they may be successful in shielding Enderlin -- and their profession -- from accountability.
The international press should rather ask itself what the cost of its collusion in a propaganda campaign of calumny is. Is peace advanced by allowing for those Palestinian groups who target and use children to artificially focus world ire on Israel instead? Why is the media creating an incentive for Fatah, Hamas and others to put children in harm's way while cameras roll? And, no less important, how many innocents continue to die because of sloppy journalism on the Arab-Israeli conflict?
Talal Abu Rahmeh, the Palestinian cameraman who shot Al Durah's death, said to a Moroccan paper in 2001 that he went into journalism to fight for the Palestinian people. Those words -- a stinging rebuke of the international press' lack of diligence with respect to its Palestinian stringers -- are eerily reminiscent of Hamas' charter: "Jihad is not confined to the carrying of arms and the confrontation of the enemy. The effective word, the good article... are elements of the Jihad." How much longer will the international press serve as an accessory to mediatic jihad?
*More information is available at www.aldurah.com and www.theaugeanstables.com.
Posted: 03/05/2013 10:58 am
It was a defining image of the last conflagration in Gaza. Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh and Egyptian prime minister Hashim Kandil held up a Palestinian child's corpse to the cameras, his face bloodied, his lifeless eyes a compelling entreaty to the world: "Will you not stand against Israel for killing this child!?"
But it wasn't Israel that murdered 4-year-old Mohammed Sadallah, it appears to have been Hamas. In a grotesque irony, one of the thousands of rockets Hamas had aimed at Israeli children reportedly landed on the 4-year-old Gazan boy instead. The Islamist group thought nothing of turning the child into a PR weapon -- and the international press obliged. That same week, Palestinian activists repeatedly tried to pass off photos of dead Arab children as Israel's doing. The photos were in fact of Syrian children massacred weeks earlier by Bashar Assad. And this month, following unprecedented public criticism, the UN fired Kulhood Badawi, one of its senior public affairs officers in Jerusalem. Badawi had tried to peddle a photo of a girl killed in an accident in 2006 as a victim of Israel. These activists, Badawi and Hamas -- whose minister boasted in 2009 of its use of "human shields of the women, the children... to challenge the Zionist bombing machine" -- assumed that the international press would simply take them at their word, as it had always done.
Bloggers exposed their lies, but the damage had been done. And the damage when journalists help certain Palestinian activists abuse public compassion to demonize Israel is counted in lives lost -- on both sides.
In the war for hearts and minds, some propagandists for the Palestinian cause understood long ago that feelings trump facts. Images and accusations that molest the emotions and exploit the public's natural empathy are irreplaceable ammunition to coerce sympathy with the Palestinians and hostility to Israel. Yasser Arafat himself in January 2002 -- two days before his own Fatah organization murdered six guests at a Bat Mitzvah celebration in Israel -- cynically underlined the value of dead Palestinian children as propaganda tools: "the Palestinian child holding a stone, facing a tank - is that not the greatest message to the world, when that hero becomes a 'martyr'?"
When Arafat spoke those words, he was thinking of the heart-wrenching images of the death of Mohammed Al Durah. That 50-second clip, filmed and distributed globally by France 2 in September 2000, shows a boy and his father caught in crossfire, crouching fearfully behind a concrete cylinder in Gaza. Some arresting moments later, the picture jumps, final shots ring out, and a cloud of dust dissipates to reveal the boy strewn lifeless at his father's feet. France 2's reporter, Charles Enderlin, narrating the scene though he did not witness it, decrees to the world that the boy and his father were "the targets of Israeli fire."
Enderlin's report went viral and was instrumental in fueling the Second Intifada. Within days, an enraged mob in Ramallah shouted "revenge for the blood of Muhammad al Durah" as they dismembered two lost Israelis. A deluge of Palestinian suicide bombers often claimed the same motive before murdering hundreds of Israeli civilians in horrific attacks on restaurants, schools, buses and malls. Al Qaeda used al Durah as a major recruiting theme, and jihadists beheaded Daniel Pearl in 2002 with al Durah's picture behind them. In the West, Enderlin's report irreversibly indicted Israel and provided moral cover for Palestinian groups' terror attacks; many went so far as to equate Israel with Nazi Germany. Twelve years on, is it any wonder that Mohammed Merah gunned down Jewish school children in Toulouse to avenge the killing of "Palestinian children" by Israelis? Assisted by the mainstream news media, one child's death has become a global license to kill Jews, westerners, and their children.
But it wasn't Israel that shot Mohammed Al Durah.
Critics rapidly exposed the yawning gaps in Enderlin's report: Al Durah was said to have died of blood loss but the footage shows no blood; the picture of his body in a Gaza morgue was shown to be that of another boy; the wounds that his father said he sustained from Israeli fire were from a stabbing, years prior. Most damning, from their position, the Israelis simply could not have hit Al Durah that day.
Ironically, one of the activists working tirelessly to unearth the truth, Philippe Karsenty, was charged with defamation for publicly questioning the credibility of Enderlin's work. But when the French court ordered France 2 to produce the unedited reels used by Enderlin in his report, things rapidly unraveled for the accusers. In the footage, after Enderlin had declared Al Durah dead, the boy miraculously moves his body, lifts his arm and looks out. Instead of gun battles, the footage showed Palestinian participants faking injuries, staging and choreographing "battle" scenes in full view of dozens of reporters from leading news agencies -- all as children wander in front of the Israeli position, unperturbed. The Al Durah story -- the trigger for an explosion of violence and suffering -- was a lie. "You know, it's always like that" and "oh, they do that all the time," France 2 officials and Enderlin are reported to have said when confronted with the staged "news".
Badawi's firing last week should not cause false hope. France 2 and Enderlin are unrepentant, and the French media establishment is closing ranks behind them. The dearth of stories on this affair indicates that they may be successful in shielding Enderlin -- and their profession -- from accountability.
The international press should rather ask itself what the cost of its collusion in a propaganda campaign of calumny is. Is peace advanced by allowing for those Palestinian groups who target and use children to artificially focus world ire on Israel instead? Why is the media creating an incentive for Fatah, Hamas and others to put children in harm's way while cameras roll? And, no less important, how many innocents continue to die because of sloppy journalism on the Arab-Israeli conflict?
Talal Abu Rahmeh, the Palestinian cameraman who shot Al Durah's death, said to a Moroccan paper in 2001 that he went into journalism to fight for the Palestinian people. Those words -- a stinging rebuke of the international press' lack of diligence with respect to its Palestinian stringers -- are eerily reminiscent of Hamas' charter: "Jihad is not confined to the carrying of arms and the confrontation of the enemy. The effective word, the good article... are elements of the Jihad." How much longer will the international press serve as an accessory to mediatic jihad?
*More information is available at www.aldurah.com and www.theaugeanstables.com.
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