A superficial look at this story would suggest the following to disinterested bystander:
1. A probably biased reporter made a film and claimed the death of a child from Israeli bullets.
2. The IDF admitted responsibility.
3. Pro-Israeli commentators objected.
4. The French media outlet concerned either covered up a screw up, or was villified by a concerted campaign of defamation.

IMHO, point 2 is the crucial part of this tale. If the IDF had vehemently denied responsibility and insisted the execution was staged as a default position until proven otherwise, Israel's public relations would be *no worse* than they are already.

There is not much point trying to retrieve a situation that was lost by the cringing attitude of the Israeli authorities. As for the French authorities, they may simply be acting corruptly: most media outlets are either state-owned or in the hands of personal friends of the last two Presidents. However, if a French child had been allegedly killed by the French or any other army, I have no doubt that a different attitude would have prevailed in the trial.

"And so I find that we have descended and degenerated, from some far ancestor--some microscopic atom wandering at its pleasure between the mighty horizons of a drop of water perchance--insect by insect, animal by animal, reptile by reptile, down the long highway of smirchless innocence, till we have reached the bottom stage of development--namable as the Human Being. Below us--nothing. Nothing but the Frenchman.

"There is only one possible stage below the Moral Sense; that is the Immoral Sense. The Frenchman has it. Man is but a little lower than the angels. This definitely locates him. He is between the angels and the French."--Mark Twain

Antoine:

You are probably right about the IDF. They are forever taking responsibility for deaths they had nothing to do with, playing right into the hands of Pallywood and the anti-Simetic world media. It's time for the IDF to grow up.

However the larger picture remains, France has fallen to its default position: Dreyfuss is still guilty.

P.S. Karen and I received your card yesterday. Thank you so much.

Mordechai:

We can always count on Mr. Twain for a great truth.

Robert,



Mark Twain's essay "Concerning The Jews " (Harper's Magazine, March, 1898) begins with a wry defense of Satan:

All religions issue bibles against him, and say the most injurious things about him, but we never hear his side. We have none but the evidence for the prosecution, and yet we have rendered the verdict. To my mind, this is irregular. It is un-English; it is un-American; it is French. Without this precedent Dreyfus could not have been condemned.

Not all of the essay is so complimentary... a fact overlooked by most of those who quote it. (I still bristle at the snide juxtaposition of Satan and the Jews.) But in a world dominated by the likes of Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky and Ezra Pound, Twain is a beacon of light. Especially in his conclusion:

If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one per cent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of star-dust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly the Jew ought hardly to be heard of; but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world's list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are also away out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers.

He has made a marvellous fight in this world, in all the ages; and has done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself, and be excused for it. The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed, and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished.

The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?

right about the IDF. They are forever taking responsibility for deaths they had nothing to do with, playing right into the hands of Pallywood and the anti-Simetic world media. It's time for the IDF to grow up.
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The problem is that too many people in the IDF beleive Arab propaganda - or don't understand the depths to which Arab propaganda will go. There is no reason to admit responsibiluity if you just don't know. Or maybe I should say there is a good reaosn not to if you don't know. It's nice to be honest but this is not honesty.

A few comments on your site, if you will:

(1) You can call it private or public or whatever you like. In reality, it's pretty much all public. One of the hallmarks of private property rights is the right to exclude others from coming onto your land. You don't have the right to exclude here (in this case, substitute land for this website). You could make a username/password system to get in, but until then, sorry, it's public and your rules are arbitrary. Of course, as you said, you do have the right to ban a user's IP, but if you know anything about IP addresses, you should know that changing them is a piece of cake, especially when you work behind a PROXY, motherfuckers (oops, did I just violate an arbitrary rule?).

(2) "No Israel bashing"? Yet "debate" is OK? When one side is precluded, what kind of "debate" does this encourage? Has it occured to you that one of the reasons that people who have a negative opinion of jews have this view because anything remotely critical of Israel is automatically labelled as the product of an anti-semite or Israel-basher. Rather than discuss the criticism, you attack the character. Your comment 2 supports this trend.

You've got a kid caught in a crossfire and shot dead. The IDF, who was there, admits liability. A journalist, who was there, whose integrity is probably his most important asset, testifies under oath to IDF liability. Yet a racist history professor on the other side of the world at the time of the event, with tertiary or quartenary sources of information, decides to oppose the primary sources. And you jump on his bandwagon. Unreasonable and illogical. Why would anyone do it? Maybe I can answer it in (3).

(3) Bash away at me as an anti-semite, but thankfully I am not religious, therefore I never have to associate myself with fundamentalist jews or muslims or any of you people who are destroying the world to create a sense of superiority for something that you have no part in creating (religion), except for getting your foreskin chopped or eating a cracker and drinking the communal wine. So long!