Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: era dunque una balla

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/philippe-assouline/post_4454_b_2811771.html
 
 
It was a defining image of the last conflagration in Gaza. Hamas prime
minister Ismail Haniyeh and Egyptian prime minister Hashim Kandil held
up a Palestinian child's corpse to the cameras, his face bloodied, his
lifeless eyes a compelling entreaty to the world: "Will you not stand
against Israel for killing this child!?"
 
But it wasn't Israel that murdered 4-year-old Mohammed Sadallah, it
appears to have been Hamas. In a grotesque irony, one of the thousands
of rockets Hamas had aimed at Israeli children reportedly landed on
the 4-year-old Gazan boy instead. The Islamist group thought nothing
of turning the child into a PR weapon -- and the international press
obliged. That same week, Palestinian activists repeatedly tried to
pass off photos of dead Arab children as Israel's doing. The photos
were in fact of Syrian children massacred weeks earlier by Bashar
Assad. And this month, following unprecedented public criticism, the
UN fired Kulhood Badawi, one of its senior public affairs officers in
Jerusalem. Badawi had tried to peddle a photo of a girl killed in an
accident in 2006 as a victim of Israel. These activists, Badawi and
Hamas -- whose minister boasted in 2009 of its use of "human shields
of the women, the children... to challenge the Zionist bombing
machine" -- assumed that the international press would simply take
them at their word, as it had always done.
 
Bloggers exposed their lies, but the damage had been done. And the
damage when journalists help certain Palestinian activists abuse
public compassion to demonize Israel is counted in lives lost -- on
both sides.
 
In the war for hearts and minds, some propagandists for the
Palestinian cause understood long ago that feelings trump facts.
Images and accusations that molest the emotions and exploit the
public's natural empathy are irreplaceable ammunition to coerce
sympathy with the Palestinians and hostility to Israel. Yasser Arafat
himself in January 2002 -- two days before his own Fatah organization
murdered six guests at a Bat Mitzvah celebration in Israel --
cynically underlined the value of dead Palestinian children as
propaganda tools: "the Palestinian child holding a stone, facing a
tank - is that not the greatest message to the world, when that hero
becomes a 'martyr'?"
 
When Arafat spoke those words, he was thinking of the heart-wrenching
images of the death of Mohammed Al Durah. That 50-second clip, filmed
and distributed globally by France 2 in September 2000, shows a boy
and his father caught in crossfire, crouching fearfully behind a
concrete cylinder in Gaza. Some arresting moments later, the picture
jumps, final shots ring out, and a cloud of dust dissipates to reveal
the boy strewn lifeless at his father's feet. France 2's reporter,
Charles Enderlin, narrating the scene though he did not witness it,
decrees to the world that the boy and his father were "the targets of
Israeli fire."
 
Enderlin's report went viral and was instrumental in fueling the
Second Intifada. Within days, an enraged mob in Ramallah shouted
"revenge for the blood of Muhammad al Durah" as they dismembered two
lost Israelis. A deluge of Palestinian suicide bombers often claimed
the same motive before murdering hundreds of Israeli civilians in
horrific attacks on restaurants, schools, buses and malls. Al Qaeda
used al Durah as a major recruiting theme, and jihadists beheaded
Daniel Pearl in 2002 with al Durah's picture behind them. In the West,
Enderlin's report irreversibly indicted Israel and provided moral
cover for Palestinian groups' terror attacks; many went so far as to
equate Israel with Nazi Germany. Twelve years on, is it any wonder
that Mohammed Merah gunned down Jewish school children in Toulouse to
avenge the killing of "Palestinian children" by Israelis? Assisted by
the mainstream news media, one child's death has become a global
license to kill Jews, westerners, and their children.
 
But it wasn't Israel that shot Mohammed Al Durah.
 
Critics rapidly exposed the yawning gaps in Enderlin's report: Al
Durah was said to have died of blood loss but the footage shows no
blood; the picture of his body in a Gaza morgue was shown to be that
of another boy; the wounds that his father said he sustained from
Israeli fire were from a stabbing, years prior. Most damning, from
their position, the Israelis simply could not have hit Al Durah that
day.
 
Ironically, one of the activists working tirelessly to unearth the
truth, Philippe Karsenty, was charged with defamation for publicly
questioning the credibility of Enderlin's work. But when the French
court ordered France 2 to produce the unedited reels used by Enderlin
in his report, things rapidly unraveled for the accusers. In the
footage, after Enderlin had declared Al Durah dead, the boy
miraculously moves his body, lifts his arm and looks out. Instead of
gun battles, the footage showed Palestinian participants faking
injuries, staging and choreographing "battle" scenes in full view of
dozens of reporters from leading news agencies -- all as children
wander in front of the Israeli position, unperturbed. The Al Durah
story -- the trigger for an explosion of violence and suffering -- was
a lie. "You know, it's always like that" and "oh, they do that all the
time," France 2 officials and Enderlin are reported to have said when
confronted with the staged "news".
 
Badawi's firing last week should not cause false hope. France 2 and
Enderlin are unrepentant, and the French media establishment is
closing ranks behind them. The dearth of stories on this affair
indicates that they may be successful in shielding Enderlin -- and
their profession -- from accountability.
 
The international press should rather ask itself what the cost of its
collusion in a propaganda campaign of calumny is. Is peace advanced by
allowing for those Palestinian groups who target and use children to
artificially focus world ire on Israel instead? Why is the media
creating an incentive for Fatah, Hamas and others to put children in
harm's way while cameras roll? And, no less important, how many
innocents continue to die because of sloppy journalism on the Arab-
Israeli conflict?
 
Talal Abu Rahmeh, the Palestinian cameraman who shot Al Durah's death,
said to a Moroccan paper in 2001 that he went into journalism to fight
for the Palestinian people. Those words -- a stinging rebuke of the
international press' lack of diligence with respect to its Palestinian
stringers -- are eerily reminiscent of Hamas' charter: "Jihad is not
confined to the carrying of arms and the confrontation of the enemy.
The effective word, the good article... are elements of the Jihad."
How much longer will the international press serve as an accessory to
mediatic jihad?

 It was a defining image of the last conflagration in Gaza.
 
no, l'immagine defining è il numero di QUATTROCENTO minorenni
massacrati a Gaza. Smentirne uno non vuol dire smentirli tutti, a meno
di non volersi ridurre all'uso infame che i negazionisti fanno di
Enric Marco.

Bombacci, sai che si vede che stai cambiando discorso? Image defining  o no, la lacrimosa storia del ragazzino inerme sacrificato dagli ebrei in nome della loro barbara religione statolatrica, era una balla. 
Una balla che è stata messa in circolazione senza essere verificata ed appoggiandosi a pregiudizio molto diffuso ("se c'è un bambino arabo morto, ci devono essere degli assassini ebrei"). 
Una balla che è stata creduta da molti perché quel pregiudizio è appunto molto diffuso.
Una balla spacciata per vera da regimi dittatoriali: e sai che novità.

 Bombacci, sai che si vede che stai cambiando discorso? Image defining  o no, la lacrimosa storia del ragazzino inerme sacrificato dagli ebrei in nome della loro barbara religione statolatrica, era una balla.
 
e quella degli altri 400 minorenni no. E "piombo fuso" è un nome che
rimanda alla religione, senza ombra di dubbio

 e quella degli altri
 
stai-cambiando-discorso