“Stop the Israel Bashing in the Media and the Jews Will No Longer Be Hated.” An Interview with the Triumphant Phillipe Karsenty.

Newsflash: Read Karsenty’s own statment at Pajamas Media.

Well, our era’s Dreyfus has just been vindicated. Or, as an Israeli website would have it: “Pigs Fly Over the Eiffel Tower.” See my previous interview with Karsenty HERE.

A few hours ago, a French Appeals Court finally decided that Phillipe Karsenty did not libel Charles Enderlin of France’s Channel 2 in the matter of Mohammed Al-Dura. One wonders whether the world which was so eager to lap up the base, visual propaganda against Israel, will now just as eagerly lap up the truth. Somehow, I doubt it. Even if the world’s mainstream media now covers this legal victory widely, respectfully, and accurately, it may still not be able to reverse the revulsion towards Israel that this staged photo of the twelve year-old Mohammed al-Dura, (allegedly shot to death by Israeli soldiers), managed to provoke-and to keep on provoking as it was repeatedly aired, copied onto tee shirts, coffee mugs, posters, and banners at demonstrations.

Primed to believe the worst about Israelis, this staged event at the Netzarim Junction has already done its vast and dirty work. Can a carefully rendered legal decision-many words on the page-compete with a soul-stirring staged photo in the Arab speaking world? How about in the Israel-bashing French speaking world? How about in America’s mainstream media?

Can the families of all the Israelis who were murdered and maimed during the Al-Aqsa intifada sue France’s Channel 2 and Charles Enderlin for money damages? Enderlin and his Palestinian cameraman knowingly perpetrated a hoax. Having just lost, Enderlin is now vowing to appeal the decision. (Enderlin-the-guilty is the one who sued Karsenty for “libel”). As the excellent Professor Richard Landes notes in his ongoing coverage of this case on his blogsite Augean Stables: “Those whom the gods would destroy, first they drive mad.”

I spoke to Karsenty just hours before the decision. Here is some of our conversation…Continue Reading on Chesler Chronicles >>