Karsenty and the Mohammed Al Dura Affair

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Some iconic images from the Al Dura Affair

Mali Monument	Al Dura Billboard

I attended an interesting presentation in the House of Commons yesterday (27 January 2010) by Philippe Karsenty on the Mohammed Al Dura Affair, a subject on which he has expended much energy since the original incident about a decade ago. Recall that the 12-year-old was apparently shot on 30th September 2000, while sheltering behind his father, as a result of exchanges of fire between Israelis and Palestinians during the Second Intifida.

This incident has become iconic in the Islamic world, with many states issuing postage stamps commemorating it on billboards, naming streets as well as erecting statues, etc. The incident was originally reported by Charles Enderlin, a respected French-Israeli reporter, who was not present at the scene but added the commentary on the basis of footage supplied by his Gazan cameraman, Talal Abu Rahma. It should be noted that Enderlin is a journalist for France 2, the French national TV station.

Karsenty’s exposure of the incident as a staged hoax led to his losing a case in a French court following Enderlin’s writ for libel on December 9, 2004, followed by a writ from France 2 on December 3, 2005. This decision was overturned on May 21, 2008, and an Appeal by France 2 to the French Supreme Court (Court de Cassation) is currently being heard. There is a detailed account of this controversy here, while Ha’aretz has a summary, and there is an excellent account by Camera.

All of this is, of course, well known. But what intrigued me is the seeming reluctance of many Israelis and Israel-sympathizers, and prominent Jews such as Frenchman Jacques Attali, to support Karsenty or pursue the perpetrators of such an obviously staged event. Some light was thrown on this reluctance by Karsenty himself. Given the weakening of US-Israel relations since Obama’s presidency, and the outright anti-Israel hostility of much of Europe, spearheaded by the UK, it seems futile to antagonize the one possible new ally of Sarkozy’s France, which has just awarded Enderlin the Legion d’Honneur.

Makes sense!

The Dog That Didn’t Bark

In Conan Doyle's story "Silver Blaze", Sherlock Holmes has this exchange at the crime scene with Gregory, the Scotland Yard inspector:

Gregory : "Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"
Holmes: "To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."
Gregory: "The dog did nothing in the night-time."
Holmes: "That was the curious incident."

On Friday 8th January, there occurred riots between Palestinians, the British-led Viva Palestina group, and the Egyptian police at the Rafah crossing from Egypt into Gaza. One Egyptian was killed, with several others injured. Ahmed Abul Gheit, Egypt's foreign minister, said in remarks published on Saturday, that members of Viva Palestina, the last convoy allowed through, had "committed hostile acts, even criminal ones" on Egyptian soil. Following this incident, the leader of the Viva Palestina group, British MP George Galloway, was deported from Egypt.

This episode understandably made headlines on most foreign and some British-based news channels. (See Aljazeera's take.) That is, on most TV channels - with the glaring exception of the BBC – for whom it was largely a non-story. One would have thought that the involvement of a British MP in foreign riots, followed by deportation, would have been headlined non-stop throughout several days.

Imagine – if you will – had the riots occurred at one of the Israeli crossing points, involving death and injury, and “peaceful” humanitarian aid workers as well as a British MP…. Questions would have been asked in Parliament, protest marches in the streets, “understandably aggrieved British youth” would have explained that this is the sort of behaviour which leads to suicide bombers, etc. etc. It is not beyond possibility that the United Nations General Assembly would have met.

So the BBC obsession is not with the Middle East – it is with Israel.

The fact that the dog did not bark, now that was the curious incident.

Intelligent profiling

The abysmal failure of US security to prevent a putative suicide bomber from boarding Northwest Airlines international flight 253 on December 25, 2009, highlights the need for intelligent profiling on passenger flights. Note I said "intelligent profiling "; paying particular attention to young males with Islamic-sounding names is not, and never has been, sufficient. The silliest comment I heard in this respect was on today's Radio 4 Today programme, when one contributor stated that particular attention should be paid to holders of Iraqi and Afghanistan passports. These are precisely the passport holders who have never been, and will never be, airline bombers. On the other hand, recall the Irish girl, pregnant by her Palestinian lover, who after profiling, that is, background analysis, was prevented from boarding an El Al plane while carrying both her unborn child and the bomb put in her luggage by her lover.

Once after a scientific visit to the Haifa Technion Chemistry Department, where I was collaborating with a colleague who was actually a physicist, I was stopped by a young female security officer. Officer:"What were you doing in Israel?"Me: "Visiting the Chemistry Department of the Technion."Officer: "Prove it."As it so happens I had to hand a preprint of a paper we had just produced on the subject of SU(2) - a technical subject in mathematical physics. I proudly produced the same.Officer: "SU(2) - that's theoetical physics, NOT chemistry!"
At this point I was so flabbergasted that I had to admit that it was a fair cop, guv. Further explanations were necessary. (The girl happened to be an ex-student of my old professor, the celebrated Israeli physicist, Yuval Ne'eman.)

Now that is what I call "intelligent profiling".

The Gaza Syndrome

Geert Wilders, the controversial Dutch politician, in a recent address to the Dutch parliament, claimed that Europe was falling victim to the Stockholm Syndrome, where a grateful captive identifies with the captors. He illustrated this by the case of a left-wing Dutch journalist, Joanie de Rijke, who in November 2008 was abducted by Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. She was held captive, raped repeatedly, and released after six days for a ransom of 100,000 euros. After her ordeal, she acknowledged that her captors “did horrible things to me,” but added in several media interviews “They also respected me,” and emphasized “They are not monsters.” The efforts made by European leftist elites to “understand” Islamists – in spite of atrocities committed in cities from London to Madrid, seems to Wilders to be symptomatic of a sort of pan-national Stockholm Syndrome. Effectively, the Islamists can do no wrong; this is their culture, this is how they are.

Much as a paedophile grooms his victim, so have many media in Europe groomed their audiences towards a type of inverse phenomenon, a notable example being the BBC during the recent Gaza campaign, in which the Israelis can do no right. We might call this the Gaza Syndrome. For example, we read during that campaign that the Israelis were allowing only “minimal” amounts of aid into Gaza, instead of wondering why an army should be supplying its enemy during a war. And complaints about injured Gazans (even combatants) having to queue at the border to be allowed to enter Israel for hospital treatment; instead of wonderment that an enemy power was putting its medical facilities at the disposal of its adversaries.

The recent Amnesty Report on Gaza – equating the IDF actions in defence of its citizens with the Hamas aggression - was only too predictable. Now we will shortly have a further opportunity to see the Gaza Syndrome in action with the forthcoming Goldstone report, which Alan Dershowitz has sceptically described as a Kangaroo Investigation.

And so it goes on.

Lessons from Japan and Costa Rica

What connects Japan and Costa Rica? Apart from the fact that Japan has been one of the most successful economies in the World, and that of Costa Rica one of the most successful in Latin America?

Here is a clue: excerpts from the Constitutions of these two countries:

Constitution of Japan.
ARTICLE 9. Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes. In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.

Constitution of Costa Rica
ARTICLE 12. The Army as a permanent institution is abolished. There shall be the necessary police forces for surveillance and the preservation of the public order.
Military forces may only be organized under a continental agreement or for the national defense; in either case, they shall always be subordinate to the civil power: they may not deliberate or make statements or representations individually or collectively.

So -these two successful states are essentially demilitarized. Now let us turn to Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt,who will take over the EU presidency in July. This representative of what is arguably one of the most anti-Semitic* and anti-Israel states in the EU, in a predictably hostile reaction to Netanyahu's proposal for a demilitarized Palestinian state [Bar-Ilan speech, 14 June 2009] said "The fact that he uttered the word state is a small step forward," but added "whether what he mentioned can be defined as a state is a subject of some debate."

Well, Mr. Bildt, do you have doubts that Japan and Costa Rica are "states"?

If not, then why does the absence of an army destroy the legitimacy of a putative Palestinian state in your eyes?

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*Zvi Mazel, who served in Sweden as Israel's ambassador in 2004, told a Swedish newspaper that "Sweden is among the most severely anti-Semitic places" with "daily agitations in the media to kill Jews."

A Modest Proposal….

with Apologies to Jonathan Swift

Some 280 years ago, the Irish satirist Jonathan Swift offered what he termed a modest proposal for the alleviation of the plight of the poor of Ireland ¹. Noting that the children of these impoverished classes were an embarrassment due to their number, taking up both space and consuming food, he proposed that the parents should simply eat their children.

Having returned to their ancestral historic homelands of Judea and Samaria after 2000 years, the Jews have once again settled the land, creating fertile soil where there was wilderness, and towns where there was empty desert.

However U.S. Secretary of State Clinton has demanded that these settlements stop “natural growth”.

Clearly as far as she is concerned, the children of the settlers are, in Swift’s terms, a burden to the country – in this case the “country” presumably being the United States. Arresting natural growth seems a difficult feat to achieve, but perhaps not impossible, if one follows Dean Swift’s advice. Why is what superficially appears a drastic proposal necessary? Perhaps the Jews of these areas should cease to procreate? But as Tacitus, the Roman historian writing about the Jews of Judea some 1900 years ago, noted: “as a nation, they are singularly prone to lust”, such a proposal would seem unlikely to be greeted with universal approbation. And for the orthodox settlers, birth control and universal abortion would also appear to be unacceptable.

So we are forced to return to the good Dean’s modest proposal. However there is a problem here too. Following the strictures of Leviticus, while children are clearly animals, and although one may be uncertain as to whether or not they “chew the cud”, I fear that in spite of respectable medieval Christian sources to the contrary, they rarely if ever appear to have cloven hooves. So, with regret, we must abandon the good dean’s undoubtedly well-intentioned helpful suggestion.

Thus we can understand that, notwithstanding Bibi’s wish to acquiesce to Obama and Clinton’s every whim, this is one point on which he must, albeit regretfully, demur.




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¹ A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland
from being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and
For Making Them Beneficial to The Public. By Jonathan Swift (1729)

Our magnificent Boys in Blue….

At last the British Bobby has regained his resolve. Confronted on April 1st by a crowd of G20 protesters, many of whom being desperate pensioners – but some as young as 75 – the British Bobby made up for previous shortcomings. Recall that during the London Islamic riots – er, sorry, peaceful protests about Gaza - of 10th January in Kensington, a cowering phalanx of Boys in Blue retreated before violent Muslim hooligans – er, sorry, justifiably Enraged British Youth – and indeed suffered injuries. Boys in Blue: 3 down. And they watched discretely from the sidelines while a respected member of the British Respect Party urged the mob to trash shops in the High Street – which of course the mob proceeded dutifully to do, without let or hindrance.

But our Guardians of the Peace really did their duty on April 1st. As the Guarniad reported,
“at least 10 protesters sitting down in the street close to the Bank of England were left with bloody head wounds after being charged by officers with batons at around 4.30pm. One woman, said to be an Italian student, was carried off unconscious.” Tally so far for our brave Caribinieri? Blue casualties:0. Red casualties:10. And I am not counting the subsequent toll; “Injured demonstrators with bleeding heads and necks were ushered through the crowd while others handed out milk so that people could wash the pepper spray from their eyes and mouths.”

How’s that for “proportionality”? My mathematician friends tell me that this gives a ratio of – infinity in favour of the Blues! Israel–so-called-Defense Forces, eat your hearts out!

Let this be a warning to future Hunt protesters, unemployed marchers, bankrupt pensioners, indeed any peaceful protest.

But somehow I don’t think our Enraged British Youth have anything to worry about.