And in another court decision…
…the French Court of Appeals has ruled against Philippe Karsenty in the al Dura case, in a decision that can be rightly called “outrageous”:
French media analyst Philippe Karsenty was found guilty Wednesday by a French court of defamation for accusing a state television network of falsely depicting the death of a young Palestinian boy in a firefight between Palestinian gunmen and Israeli soldiers, the Times of Israel reports.
The footage of the boy, Mohammed al-Dura, was aired by the France 2 network. The start of the Second Intifada in which over 1000 Israelis were killed, was largely attributed to the video, which was circulated throughout the world.
A Paris court fined Karsenty 7,000 euros claiming that he falsely accused the network’s Jerusalem bureau chief, Charles Enderlin, of fabricating parts of the segment.
In an interview with The Algemeiner Karsenty expressed his disappointment. “I think it is a dark day for French democracy and I think it is a dark day for the truth,” he said.
French-Jewish artist and activist Ron Agam told The Algemeiner that the whole case was a set up.
“Karsenty never had a chance here. The television station is a government outfit and the unions are anti-Israeli. This entire judgement is not about justice, but about defending the indefensible,” he said.
The evidence that Enderlin and France2 ignored their own footage and lied about it is overwhelming. But that hasn’t mattered.
I’ve been following this case for many years as it drags through the French court system with its libel laws, which are very different from ours (I refer you to these posts).
Justice has not been served here, to say the least. This verdict is shocking in the sense of dreadful, but it is not shocking in the sense of surprising, because the French courts are dedicated to protecting the reputation of the renowned and esteemed and honored journalist Charles Enderlin as well as the government-supported France2. It has an interest in hiding the fact that Enderlin and France2 colluded in and orchestrated a piece of misleading propaganda that led to enormous anti-Semitism and retaliatory hatred and murder around the world. It would have taken a great deal of moral courage and an interest in justice—two things the French court lacks—to have found for Karsenty.
We’re really the last nation on earth that stands for ideals. The French have given in to the binary outcome oriented nature of the socialist state: anything not forbidden is required. The English have a tradition of sorts, but that is mainly being eroded. Germany stands for the financial security of Germany.
Sadly, I feel we are quickly becoming the nation of narratives rather than ideas.
I wonder if any of the families of those killed in the Second Intifada have standing to sue France2 and Enderlin for compensation.
Steve:
Not in France they sure don’t.
What’s more, if they even tried, they’d probably be slapped with a libel lawsuit, as Karsenty was for writing about what Enderlin and France2 did (the evidence backs Karsenty up, but the French courts aren’t big on that sort of thing).
The French have no problem with anti-Semitism. In 1898 there was the famous Dreyfus affair in which a Jewish officer was framed for espionage. The writer Zola, who pointed out the miscarriage of justice, was sued for libel. Sound familiar? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J'accuse
France was the only occupied country in WWII that willingly deported Jews to the concentration camps. One of my aunts was a German Jew whose mother was Christian and father was Jewish. They sent him to France thinking that he would survive the war there. If he’d spent WWII in Berlin as the rest to the family did, he would have.
More recently the French ambassador to England called Israel “that shitty little country”.
I read about the French art world and Dreyfus while in a waiting room today. The French, at all societal levels, were divided into the pro- and anti-Dreyfus camps. It was of course a no-brainer. Dreyfus was innocent, but that did not matter; he was a Jew. A hundred years later, nothing has changed.
In this wretched art mag (nothing but modern dreck, a paean to Neo-Expressionism), there was also an article about women artists in Islam, and what a tough time they have of it, because “Islam is conservative”.
Paul in Boston and Don Carlos: My thoughts exactly. The first thing that came to my mind when I heard this news today was the Dreyfus Affair and Zola’s famed “J’accuse.” It seems the French have learned nothing, and along with much of the rest of the world pay haughty homage to the post-WWII notion of “Never Again.” And yet they constantly congratulate themselves for their liberal attitudes while showing such an eagerness to repeat infamy that it is nearly staggering.
These are truly the end times. What a travesty.
In the Europe of the Middle Ages, dissing important people (i.e. the nobility and high churchmen) was considered an attack on the government and therefore a form of petty treason. It is still that way, apparently. Somehow we diverged from that, and as early as the Zenger trial (1735). I have no idea how we got so lucky.
Paradigmatic modern European civilization. Socialism at its finest.
Time to move on.
There is no such thing as justice for those unwilling to let the blood of tyrants run.
For only blood can repay the coin of evil and sin.
The judgment will now bring another round of murder and hate around the world, which may be the purpose.
round one knocked out how many?
round two will do what?
“It seems the French have learned nothing…”
When i read that, all i could think of was, of course not. at the end of the war, they shot the men, and shaved the heads of women… hair grows back, and ego protects the past…
along with much of the rest of the world pay haughty homage to the post-WWII notion of “Never Again.”
did you hear? the Caucasian population is collapsing early. i sure remember pointing out that the subset within the set that that is happening to are whom?
as i have been saying, people don’t get equivalence, its too different.. 🙂
do the math… fewer of them, and no protectors..
and a population fed on what in terms of them?
the same disparate impact used back in Europe, thought hen it didn’t have a name. but it made the people angry like here and justified removing businesses (though here they use SBA and programs that are only for women and minorities), rationing their health care options changing outcomes, and even making sure they did not get an education.
interesting how the feminist women, and everyone think that by ejecting the handicapped white male, the poor white male, and the immigrant white male, they somehow got a victory in limiting the wealthy white male target, whose male children can plunder the common harem, not worry about competition from those three other groups, and be sure the best places in the outside world, as those others don’t get to compete with them. [note that once they found out that Chinese were not what they appeared to be from the railroad days, they plugged that hole fast]
of course, there have been examples, like in Germany, of the privileged classes under the regime, to beat up on the underclass. though here, the privileged think they are not and believe they are the underclass, while the underclass being removed and beaten up are the privileged. makes it justifiable, eh?
anyway… you can be pretty sure that the certain classes are not going to want to go to war to save certain people and will have the votes to prevent it. not to mention to beat them up for social justice reasons as they do now, at random.
[i bet if one really tried, one could find a beating in the archive, and a beating in the news, and play them side to side and be remarkably the same]
!!STUDENT BEATEN FOR SNEAKERS!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Tv9sjdXmN0
Nine students of Dean College were expelled after video was posted on the web of one student beaten for his shoes.
that was 2011, this was yesterday
Caught On Camera: Police Say Teen Beaten For Shoes, And Web Notoriety
http://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2013/06/26/teen-beaten-outside-of-brookline-rec-center/
I feel that “man-hating” is an honorable and viable political act, that the oppressed have a right to class-hatred against the class that is oppressing them – Robin Morgan
and just to make sure that this is your modern feminist movement:
Let’s run it on down. White males are most responsible for the destruction of human life and environment on the planet today. Yet who is controlling the supposed revolution to change all that? White males (yes, yes, even with their pasty fingers back in black and brown pies again). It just could make one a bit uneasy. It seems obvious that a legitimate revolution must be led by, made by those who have been most oppressed: black, brown, and white women—with men relating to that as best they can. A genuine Left doesn’t consider anyone’s suffering irrelevant, or titillating; nor does it function as a microcosm of capitalist economy, with men competing for power and status at the top, and women doing all the work at the bottom (and functioning as objectified prizes or “coin” as well). Goodbye to all that.
“Goodbye to All That”, 1970 in Going Too Far: The Personal Chronicle of a Feminist, p 123.
and just to be clear who else thought similarly:
The murders perpetrated by members of Charles Manson’s “Family” were inspired in part by Manson’s prediction of Helter Skelter, an apocalyptic war he believed would arise from tension over racial relations between blacks and whites. He and the Family would create an album with songs whose messages concerning the war would be as subtle as those he had heard in songs of The Beatles. More than merely foretell the conflict, this would trigger it; for, in instructing “the young love,” America’s white youth, to join the Family, it would draw the young, white female hippies out of San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury. Black men, thus deprived of the white women whom the political changes of the 1960s had made sexually available to them, would be without an outlet for their frustrations and would lash out in violent crimes against whites.
guess which one is in prison, and which one is a icon?
oh, i almost forgot a third leg on that wacko stool…
The Brink’s robbery of 1981 was an armed robbery committed on October 20, 1981, which was carried out by Black Liberation Army. several former members of the Weather Underground, now belonging to the May 19th Communist Organization, including David Gilbert, Judith Alice Clark, Kathy Boudin, and Marilyn Buck; and an unknown number of accomplices
Gilbert was a founding member of Columbia University Students for a Democratic Society (and is in prison now)
Kathy Boudin was arrested, convicted, and was released in 2003, She is currently an adjunct professor at Columbia University
Judith Alice Clark was very outspoken, so she is serving 75 to life
Marilyn Jean Buck was an American Marxist revolutionary, convict, and feminist poet, who was imprisoned for her participation in the 1979 prison escape of Assata Shakur, the 1981 Brinks robbery and the 1983 U.S. Senate bombing.
Ayers and others were their friends..
[assata shakur is tupac shakurs aunt]
and why pray tell did they need the brinks money?
for similar ideas of Morgan and Manson…
odd world…
its doing what they want to do
and telling you what happened was something else
We fantasize, but Israel could declare states to be anti-semitic and thus justifiable targets in the event that Israel is attacked with nuclear weapons in a second holocaust. After all, Israel is a tiny country and it would not take many strikes to destroy its major population centers. But the threat of retaliation against the likes of France might curb its inherent anti-semitism.
On a side note, it is morbidly fascinating that Israel’s mortal enemies are tearing themselves apart in a civil war in Syria. Our decisive President hasn’t yet realized that the enemy of your enemy may not be your friend. Of course, that assumes he is actually a friend of the United States. That may well be a poor assumption. It sure seems that way.