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October 24, 2006
Prime Time Blood Libel
"Countless suicide bombers and other Palestinian terrorists have cited Dura as a justification of their crimes. For the past six years PA television has continuously aired a film showing Dura in heaven beckoning other Palestinian children to "martyr" themselves by becoming terrorists and join him there.
"The Palestinians are not the only ones who have used Dura as a terrorist recruitment tool. He is prominently featured in al-Qaida recruitment videos and on Hizbullah banners. Daniel Pearl's murderers interspersed their video of his beheading with the France 2 film. Throughout Europe, and particularly in France, Muslims have used Dura as a rallying cry in their attacks against Jews - attacks which broke out shortly after the Dura film was broadcast.
"At First, Israel accepted responsibility for Dura's death without conducting an investigation. Yet, in the weeks that followed the event, engineers Nahum Shachaf and Yosef Doriel conducted investigations on behalf of the IDF's Southern Command."
To read Caroline Glick's entire article, please click here.
Seraphic Friend Treppenwitz has an extremely important blog about political analyst/Goddess Caroline Glick. I always knew that Trep was impossibly clever, but now he's officially, you know, an important pundit.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at October 24, 2006 09:56 AM
Comments
Seraphic Secret is private property, that's right, it's an extension of our home, and as such, Karen and I have instituted two Seraphic Rules and we ask commentors to act respectfully.
1. No profanity.2. No Israel bashing. We debate, we discuss, we are respectful. You know what Israel bashing is. The world is full of it. Seraphic Secret is one of the few places in the world that will not tolerate this form of anti-Semitism. That's it. Break either of these rules and you will be banned.
CG> In their judgment last week, the judges argued that Karsenty's
allegations against Enderlin and France 2 could not be credible since
"no Israeli authority, neither the army which is nonetheless most
affected, nor the Justice [Ministry] have ever accorded the slightest
credit to these allegations" regarding the mendacity of the Dura
film.
I hate this argument. This is sort of defense that used to done sometimes by Clinton (and
others) in the United States.
By this logic, the National Guard forgeries that 60 Minutes used in 2004 were not forgeries.
The Texas National Gurd documents lie was exposed by bloggers. About 4 blogs were involved. You ciould look it up at Powerlineblog.com
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/007760.php
And they used technical evidence.
The same thing here. There is a good amount of technical evidence that the charge is untrue. The fact that the Israeli government didn't chllenge it doesn't make that go away.
This is an argument that empowers liars. It is bad enough when made in a public forum - it is far worse when it becomes the basis for a judicial
decision.
It was Little Green Footballs not the Bush White house or campaign that exposed the lie.
If you think this way, in the future people could even BUY consent to lies.
If the targets of an accusation have a monopoly on challenging it - that if they don't do it for one reason or another - then the liars have a
tremendous advantage.
And anyway there are more people than just the israeli government interested in challenging the blood libel.
I don't think it should be conceded that the Israeli government has a monopoly on
challenging it, which Caroline Glick seems to do.
That argument - that there is some monopoly - that is something is untrue it will be denied - is itself untrue, both by logic and by experience.
Because this will happen again and again this cannot be allowed to stand - this argument. It's not true at all.
THINGS DON'T WORK THAT WAY.
I am sure there is all sorts of "practical" advice Israeli officials are being given for not challenging the libel:
1) We don't know the facts - especially since the Israeli governmennt didn't investigate this anywhere near as much as Phillip Karsenty.
2) We have no credibility, or the least credibility.
3) It's a dead issue.
4) Nobody believes this anyway. If they do things against Israel it is because of true things, like territorial occupation or wanting to
destroy Israel on principle, but not libels
OR
5) Arabs will believe this anyway, so arguing is useless.
Not to mention that exposing the lie would at this stage expose somebody's incompetence earlier.
This needs to be a strong protest against this very argument - that accusations of lying about Israel cannot be true unless the Israeli
government says so.
Posted by: Sammy Finkelman at October 24, 2006 02:31 PM