COMMENT: A recent French  judi­cial rul­ing has been ren­dered in the case of Philippe Karsen­ty. As dis­cussed in FTR #719, the emblem­at­ic inci­dent involv­ing the sup­posed slay­ing by Israeli troops of a Pales­tin­ian boy named Mohamed al-Dura is a read­i­ly ver­i­fi­able hoax.

Despite irrefutable evi­dence that al-Dura could NOT have been killed by Israeli fire and may not have been killed at all, French tele­vi­sion, the French judi­cial and polit­i­cal estab­lish­ments and the world’s media have fer­vent­ly clung to the Pales­tin­ian Big Lie of the boy as a mar­tyr to the cause.

We should note that the al-Dura case was cit­ed by bin Laden and the mur­der­ers of Daniel Pearl as jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for their blood­let­ting, in addi­tion to set­ting a prece­dent of Arabs stag­ing pho­ny war crimes and atroc­i­ties alleged­ly com­mit­ted by Israeli troops as pro­pa­gan­da for their cause. (The Lebanon war of 2006 and the Gaza war of ear­ly 2009 were salient exam­ples of this. The Gold­stone report–alleging the verac­i­ty of the pho­ny Israeli atroc­i­ties has been refut­ed by Richard Gold­stone him­self.)

Do note the absence of media cov­er­age of Karsen­ty’s case. This one-sided, dis­hon­est media slant is among the con­tribut­ing fac­tors to the ongo­ing cri­sis in that part of the world.

At the end of the day, that slant but­tress­es the Israeli right-wing’s point of view, which is that Israel is on its own, and should act to pro­tect itself, regard­less of the views of oth­ers.

Should the Israelis make the con­sum­mate mis­take of attack­ing Iran, the result­ing deba­cle will derive in part from this type of insti­tu­tion­al­ized big­otry.

“Com­mu­nique from Philippe Karsen­ty: Reac­tion to the Deci­sion of the Court of Cas­sa­tion Ver­dict Ren­dered on 2/28/2012.”; myrightword.blogspot.com; 2/29/2012.

The nul­li­fi­ca­tion, which is dis­ci­pli­nary and based on a legal tech­ni­cal­i­ty, does not pre­judge the out­come: the Court of Cas­sa­tion deems that the Appel­late Court of Paris could not order France 2 to show the raw footage con­tain­ing images that were not broad­cast by France 2. How­ev­er, the legal cri­te­ria of my good faith– qual­i­ty of the inves­ti­ga­tion, absence of per­son­al ani­mos­i­ty, legit­i­ma­cy of aim and pur­pose, pru­dent and mea­sured expres­sion – were not chal­lenged.

Charles Ender­lin, France 2, and I will find our­selves in court again at an unde­ter­mined date to plead our cas­es in the al Dura affair. The case will be heard again in the Appel­late Court of Paris, by a dif­fer­ent pan­el of judges con­vened to reex­am­ine the facts.

I serene­ly antic­i­pate the hear­ing that will allow me to present once more to the court and con­cerned media the demon­stra­tion that France 2 broad­cast a staged scene as news on Sep­tem­ber 30, 2000.

In more than eleven years of con­tro­ver­sy, we have brought dozens of pieces of evi­dence and sci­en­tif­ic exper­tise show­ing that the scene was staged, where­as France 2, Charles Ender­lin, and their cam­era­man have nev­er been able to prove the verac­i­ty of their reportage. Fur­ther, it has been revealed through a suc­ces­sion of court cas­es that France 2, Charles Ender­lin, his cam­era­man, and the father of young Mohamed have lied on sev­er­al occa­sions to cov­er their media fraud.

I have pre­sent­ed the al Dura affair in many jour­nal­ism schools and fes­ti­vals, in pres­ti­gious Euro­pean and Amer­i­can uni­ver­si­ties, before the Sen­ate and the House of Lords; no one has ever suc­ceed­ed in refut­ing the evi­dence of a staged scene.

I call upon open-mind­ed peo­ple to pur­sue the search for the truth. This is a com­bat for the hon­or of the jour­nal­is­tic pro­fes­sion, for jus­tice, for democ­ra­cy and against dis­in­for­ma­tion; a com­bat against the mur­der­ous anti-Semi­tism con­veyed by this reportage. I ask those who in good faith believed the nar­ra­tion imposed by this reportage to sim­ply exam­ine the facts with­out pre­judg­ment.

It is the uncom­pro­mis­ing estab­lish­ment of the truth that will con­tribute to the sore­ly need­ed peace, tol­er­ance, and friend­ship among peo­ple and nations.