Richard Landes on fake news
Richard Landes, the man who exposed the al Durah hoax and coined the term “Pallywood” for the Palestinian staging of false scenes of victimization at the hands of Israelis, is writing a new book. It’s not out yet, but it will be called They’re so Smart cause We’re so Stupid: A Medievalist Guide to the 21st Century. Landes is a historian by trade, a courageous and brilliant man, and a good friend of mine.
Here’s an excerpt from his work in progress; it describes his discovery of how obvious the fakery of Pallywood was, and how complicit the news media in Europe has been:
Even had the child [Muhammad al Durah] died in a crossfire, blaming his death on deliberate Israeli action made it a classic blood libel: A gentile boy dies; the Jews are accused of plotting the murder; violent mobs, invoking the dead martyr, attack the Jews…The first blood libel announced by a Jew (Enderlin)[a renowned French journalist], spread by the modern mainstream news media (MSNM), and carried in cyberspace to a global audience. It was the first wildly successful piece of “fake news” of the 21st century, and, as an icon of hatred, it did untold damage.
Here’s how Landes was able to see the rushes, the raw video footage from which the much shorter version that had been shown around the world had been taken:
And that had brought me to see these rushes, the raw, unedited footage shot that day in September 2000 at Netzarim Junction. The film was in the possession of senior French-Israeli journalist and France2 chief correspondent Charles Enderlin, who was the employer of Abu Rahma, the cameraman who had shot the footage. He was known to only show the rushes to investigators “on his side” but coming on the recommendation of a friend, Enderlin assumed I was sympathetic. For the viewing, I had Enderlin on my left, and on my right, an Israeli cameraman working for France2, who had been with Enderlin in Ramallah the day of the filming.
What I saw astonished me. In scene after scene, Palestinians staged scenes of battle, injury, ambulance evacuation, and panicked flight, which the cameraman deliberately filmed, all the while standing around in front of the Israeli position, completely unafraid. To judge by Abu Rahma’s 21 minutes of film, and a Reuters cameraman’s two hours, Netzarim Junction that day of September, the “third day of the intifada,” was the site of multiple makeshift stages upon which cameramen, most Palestinian, some foreign, filmed “action sequences,” performed by everyone from military men with guns to teenagers and kids standing by…
The Israeli France2 cameraman snorted.
“Why do you laugh?” I asked.
“It’s so obviously fake,” he responded.
“I know,” I said, turning to Enderlin, “this all seems fake.”
“Oh, they do that all the time. It’s a cultural thing” The senior correspondent replied.
“So why couldn’t they have faked it with al Durah?”
“They’re not good enough,” said Enderlin. “They can’t fool me.” …
I already knew that Palestinians faked footage, but what I now understood was that the mainstream news media, whose first imperative was to filter out such blatant propaganda, had accepted it as a normal practice, and used the fakes to tell the “real” story…as they can cut it into believable site-bytes of Israeli aggression and Palestinian victimhood…When Esther Schapira, in her documentary Three Bullets and a Dead Child, asked a TV official with the Palestinian Authority why he had spliced into the al Durah footage a shot of an Israeli aiming his gun (at crowds rioting because of the al Durah footage, making it look like he was ‘targeting’ al Durah, he responded:
These are forms of artistic expression, but all of this serves to convey the truth … We never forget our higher journalistic principles to which we are committed of relating the truth and nothing but the truth…
A higher truth, of course.
Landes was shaken:
As I left the building, still stunned by Enderlin’s response—he had been using the cameraman, apparently never rebuking him for his unprofessional behavior, for twelve years!—thinking about the deep symbiosis of Palestinian staging and Western news reports. “It’s an industry,” I thought, “a ‘national’ industry, like Hollywood, or Bollywood… it’s Pallywood.
Had Enderlin had the courage to respond to Abu Rahma’s al Durah, lethal propaganda by firing him, and running a sensational piece on how his own Palestinian cameraman had tried to trick him into airing a staged scene in support of a potentially lethal blood libel… had he warned his fellow journalists of the danger to their professional integrity in running Palestinian-filmed footage without checking carefully… the course of the Oslo Jihad, and with it, the future of civil society in the 21st century might have been very different.
What I soon discovered, however, was the immense resistance of everyone involved, even the Israelis, to any effort to change the narrative.
Please read the whole thing.
I remember following this as Dennis Prager went through the whole story in depth at the time. I’m currently reading a biography of de Gaulle and the French were determined to hold onto Syria after the war and prove themselves “fellow Musselmen.”
The Algerian Muslims were not fooled.
Clearly, all too many Democrats in the US, along with so-called progressives around the world, have enthusiastically, alas, adopted the Palestinian playbook.
(Which playbook is based on other extremely effective—if, fortunately, impermanent—20th-Century totalitarian precedents.)
Barry,
Exactly. Mr. Landes writes of “Palestinian, premodern, attitudes in which manipulating evidence to make accusations of murder, is loyalty to a higher truth.”
How aptly this describes the behavior of the Dems’ High Mucky-Mucks and their minions in the matter of the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh.
Neo,
Thanks for the article. It is so atrocious, what these “newsmen” do. Why in the name of everything do the “news” media in the West repeat this sort of trash when they know it’s trash! No better than liars and sellers of deadly snake oil themselves.
.
But I hope you enjoyed your family affair today, Neo. :>)
I have been involved in a couple of events that made the newspapers. When I read the newspaper accounts of the events, I could scarcely recognize the event that I was a part of. And this was not a matter of shading the story. It was a matter of just not getting the facts straight from the get go. Thus, I have known that news stories are seldom correct in all the details. Trust but verify has long been my mantra.
When the news reporters manufacture their stories to present a just so account that is propaganda, my mantra is question, question, and question some more.
Pallywood is an egregious example of such manufactured stories. That our Western media give any credence to such BS is a partial reason they have lost at least 50% of their customers and are fading into irrelevancy.
Barry & Julie,
That parallelism jumped out at me also when I read the article earlier today.
Substitute protesters and Democrats for Palestinians; conservatives and Republicans for Israelis; select your victim-group-du-jour; and it is the same thing we have seen in American politics for decades.
“This footage, shot by a Palestinian cameraman working for Reuters, had familiarized me with the Palestinian practice of staging scenes, whose basic sequence ran: Fake a dramatic injury, have people gather around you, pick you up (often brutally, without stretchers) and rush you to an ambulance, helpers eagerly grabbing the injured on the run, in order to get on camera. Those carrying the wounded, then throw him in the back of the ambulance, slam shut the doors, and the driver takes off, sirens blaring. That evening, you all go home and see how many times you made the news.
I already knew that Palestinians faked footage, but what I now understood was that the mainstream news media, whose first imperative was to filter out such blatant propaganda, had accepted it as a normal practice, and used the fakes to tell the “real” story. Professional standards for journalists in the West can make even staging B-roll problematic. But apparently, in the Middle East, Western journalists have few problems with staged A-roll as long as they can cut it into believable site-bytes of Israeli aggression and Palestinian victimhood.
…
And as far as Enderlin was concerned, the al Durah story was believable precisely because it “corresponded to the situation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip at the time.” In other words, the situation was not as Enderlin thought: that ‘PA journalist-warriors aren’t good enough to fool me’, but rather, he was so set on getting his headlines that their rubbish effortlessly fooled him.
…“It’s an industry,” I thought, “a ‘national’ industry, like Hollywood, or Bollywood… it’s Pallywood.”
Indeed.
“Indeed.”
Bt it’s more than that. Far more.
The Palestinians are, very simply, permitted to attack Israelis (and Israel).
Permitted. Allowed. Even encouraged.
This, because they are, after all, “oppressed” and they are “colonialized” and they are “occupied”.
And so they are permitted to do—attack, kill, maim, bomb, burn—anything and everything.
And so they are permitted to say—lie, invent, intimidate, deny Israel’s legitimacy, change history—anything and everything.
(Which is, by the way, precisely why the Palestinians are in no hurry to end the “occupation”; especially when one factors in the drip-drip hatred and venom that accrues and accumulates and collects and coalesces and congeals….against the Jewish State—in the global media and in global institutions, day in and day out. And especially, also, when one factors in the tremendous amounts of money that has been pouring into Palestinian coffers for decades—though diverted, in large part, to the private bank accounts of Palestinians leadership and their families. Yes, because they are “oppressed, colonized, and occupied”.)
It is the perfect, the absolutely perfect, scam. Especially when one can pervert the universities, the politicians and the minds of myriads of decent people around the world (as well as less as those less than decent) by stressing the “human rights” angle to the fullest.
By stressing Palestinian “suffering” to the fullest.
By stressing Israel’s purported malfeasance and purported criminality to the fullest.
Drip, drip, drip.
Yes, the Palestinians can, and do, attack both physically and verbally. And they will continue to do so until they achieve their goal of Israel’s disappearance.
Moreover, Israel is NOT allowed to fight back. Is NOT permitted to defend itself.
Because of all the above.
Similarly, the Democrats and the almighty MSM can use ANY and EVERY means—can make any and every declaration and insinuation, including lie and slander—to attack, vilify, delegitimize Republicans and the GOP—and anyone who dares to support them.
And similarly, Republicans are NOT allowed to respond. Are NOT allowed any modicum of self defense. (And if they do try to respond, they are further attacked, or criticized, or delegitimized. Or ridiculed.)
Because “Palestinian rules” are in effect.
The Palestinians have created their own fantasy of Israel’s destruction and have been living that fantasy for 70 years, fully expecting, hoping and praying that Israel will, like the Crusades in the Middle Ages, collapse, disappear, be obliterated.
“God willing”.
And the Democratic Party has, increasingly, been creating a similar fantasy regarding the moral—and logical—necessity for their being in power, which moral—and logical—necessity permits them to do anything and say anything to obliterate their opposition.
(Keep in mind that for Obama, the GOP was a far greater enemy than either the mullahs or Russia.)
Moreover, since the election of Donald Trump (whose election the Democrats must, necessarily, hold, insist, believe with all the faith they can muster, was/is/will always be illegitimate and illegal) the Democrats have persuaded themselves that they must do everything to overturn such illegality, such illegitimacy.
By any and every means available.
They must RESTORE America to the “correct” path—to RETURN America to the “arc of history”—from which AMERICA, under Trump and his supporters, has so sorely strayed….
And so the Democrats have become the RESISTANCE.
They must—for all the highest moral and ethical reasons—RESIST Trump and everything he stands for, everything he does, everything he says, and everyone who supports him or defends (even some of the time).
They must resist the right-of-center “enemies” of America. They must tear down the “Enemies of the People”.
This (along with Israel’s destruction) has become the ethical imperative of our time…..
The Democrats, like the Palestinians—those perennial Victims, par excellence—MUST resist.
Hence, the Democratic Party and its supporters—assuming more and more the oh-so-useful role of Victims—are THE RESISTANCE.
One ought be very worried about the ramifications of this infantility. Of this perversity.
Even as one might well wonder to what extent the meme, ingeniously crafted by the anti-Israel Left and Academia and the MSM (increasingly allied with perfervid members of the Religion of Peace) that the Israeli “apartheid” state is helping Trump to “attack minorities” (and forge a “White-Supremacist” police state) will gain further and further traction in the public square.
Interesting times, as they say….