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November 19, 2007
Oceans of Blood: The Al Durah Blood Libel
From that fine blogger Breath of the Beast, the latest on the blood-libel that should be on the front pages of every paper in this country, but won't be because, y'know, it's okay when Muslims fake a death and then libel Israel, Jews and Judaism, and the Islamic world, enabled by the Western press, uses the obviously fake and bloodless footage as an excuse to launch murderous terrorist attacks in every corner of the world.
Muhammed Al Durah is alive. My guess is that he's in a madrassah somewhere in Pakistan or Sudan. Meanwhile, his father makes a nice living traveling about the Muslim world signing pictures of his "dead son" much like O.J. Simpson signing memorabilia at sports conventions.
The Muslim world is addicted to the culture of death. The younger the better. It is ghastly.
Even more ghastly are the Jews on the left who enable these monsters. Charles Enderlin is a Jew, an Israeli citizen, a man who tampers with evidence. May his name be blotted from our memory.
Charles Enderlin is adrift in a rising ocean of blood. He is either so arrogant or so blinded by his fear that he is helpless to do what needs to be done to stem the tide. It is a tragedy of Biblical scale. When it all started, he was riding an exhilarating wave. (Background: here, here and here)
In October of 2000 he had what must have been a dream job. He was the Jerusalem Bureau Chief for France2. He got to live in one of the great, cosmopolitan, civilized cities of the world and report daily on a simmering, dangerous, richly symbolic conflict at the cutting edge between civilization and chaos. There was always a story. Because he lived and worked in Jerusalem there was never any censorship or physical threat or even any physical discomfort. He had Palestinian stringers who fed him footage and information from the unsafe and difficult areas so he could sit in Jerusalem, edit film in his fuzzy robe and slippers and be a war correspondent.
I am guessing that he just got too sloppy and arrogant to see how he was being used by his trusted Palestinian sidekick Talal Abu Rahma. Rahma knew the boss wasn’t disposed to check up on his work as long as he delivered serviceable goods and he gave him a juicy scoop once in a while. One day, Rahma overplayed the deal and Enderlin was setup for a fall. The rest of the story boils down to what Enderlin knew, when he knew it and whether or not he would take responsibility for it.
His now controversial report on the alleged shooting of a twelve year old boy named Muhammed al Durah at Netzarim Junction in Gaza vaulted him to the top of the jounalistic world. He had “scooped” everyone and had presented a perspective on the Arab-Israeli conflict that had been hinted at by the media and longed for by the liberal and leftists in the dank guilt-ridden recesses of the west- especially Europe. It quickly became apparent that although it had never actually been seen or proven, there was a large and willing potion of the audience that readily took to the image of the Israelis as oppressors and thugs. The film and Enderlin’s presentation of it would, if true, have been proof of murderous brutality by the Israeli army. Enderlin reported that they killed the boy in cold blood. Looking at the report footage now, with the knowledge and background that has come to light it is hard to believe that such ambiguous and poorly staged stuff could have caught the imagination of the world the way it did. But, then, you had the voice of Charles Enderlin telling you what to believe about it in your ear and it is always dangerous to underestimate the size and explosivity of the subterranean lake of anti-Semitic blood-libel that seems to bubble and churn beneath the entire world’s population.
To read the complete story, please click here.
And here is a report by Melanie Phillips on the Al Durah blood-libel, from the trial in France.
Ms. Phillips concludes her piece on a powerful cautionary note:
The ‘killing’ of Mohammed al Durah was swallowed uncritically by the western media, despite the manifold unlikeliness and contradictions which were apparent from the start, because it accorded with the murderous prejudice against Israel which is the prism through which the Middle East conflict is habitually refracted. This scandal has the most profound implications not just for the media, not just for the Middle East conflict but for the western world’s relationship to reason, which seems to grow more tenuous by the day.
The very best book on why the media tilts so ferociously against Israel is Stepanie Gutmann's The Other War: Israelis, Palestinians and the Struggle for Media Supremacy. Highly recommended.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at November 19, 2007 02:44 PM
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