Jerusalem Post: The real victims are...

Hat Tip: Israel Matzav

I am not completely sure how to respond to this.

Samuel Friedman's Salon.com April 2002 article "Going Tribal" described to a T what I was feeling at that time. Those feelings have returned to a certain degree.

That's all I'll say for now.

Elizabeth Devorah Goren-Friedman, 54, who was killed in the murderous bulldozer attack in Jerusalem on Wednesday. Photo: Reproduction

The Jerusalem Post Internet Edition

The real victims are...
Aug. 4, 2008
SETH J. FRANTZMAN , THE JERUSALEM POST

A person grows up and believes there are perpetrators and victims. He sees a person assaulted or hears about a rape or someone being abused, and he believes that in each incident there is a person who perpetrates the crime and a person who is the victim. Then one becomes more "enlightened" and learns that the victim is not as interesting as the perpetrator. The perpetrator's life story and mental state are deemed important in order to understand "why" he or she committed the crime.

Then one grows even older and wiser and comes to learn that when there is a crime, the actual victim is the perpetrator's ethnic or religious group, which will be viewed negatively because of what he did. In the end, one learns that the real victim in every crime is the wider society - particularly the group the criminal came from. This is how one grows up in modern Western society. In this world the "victims" of World War I, far from being all the soldiers or civilians killed, were the Germans because, as the aggressors, they were punished by the Versailles Treaty. The victims of the Holocaust were not the Jews who died but the Palestinians who saw the survivors sent to their homeland. The victims of the three recent acts of terrorism by Muslims from east Jerusalem are not the 11 dead and 70 wounded Jews, but the Palestinian Arabs who might lose work because of the actions of their countrymen.

I REMEMBER the first time I learned how this "true victimhood" works. I was a college student in Tucson, Arizona. Along with everyone else, on September 11 I awoke to news of the terrorist attacks. But a day later, when I began to read the local papers, I was astonished to learn that the true victims were not the 3,000 dead Americans but the nation's Muslims, because after 9/11 they would face increased scrutiny and perhaps even hate crimes.

There were soon marches in my city, not to condemn terror or support the families of the victims, but to reassure Muslims. Muslim human rights groups became wealthy off the notion that Muslims were victims.

As if to reinforce this notion, the BBC published a story on July 24 by Heather Sharp entitled "Palestinian workers fear backlash." There was no story about fears by Israelis of more bulldozer attacks; the only people who were truly victimized, it seems, were Palestinians. The story relates how Palestinian face "widespread discrimination" and how they "fear revenge attacks. They say stones were thrown at them as they worked near a right-wing neighborhood." (What exactly constitutes a "right-wing" neighborhood, according to the BBC, is not clear.)

It turns out, according to the BBC, that "in both attacks using construction vehicles, the motives of the attacker remain a mystery - local press reports suggested that the attackers had previous involvement with crime and drugs, and no links to militant groups have emerged."

There is no mention of the fact that both attacks were directed at Jews and Jews only.

ONE IS reminded of the closing scene of the film A Time to Kill (1996), when the white attorney of a black man accused of shooting three white rapists of a black girl in the American South is giving his closing statements. Realizing he cannot convince the white jury to acquit a black man, the lawyer asks them to imagine the raped girl was white.

In the case of these Jerusalem attacks one must do the same. One must ask viewers of the BBC to imagine that the drivers were settlers driving over Arab children. Then one must ask oneself, would the media claim that "settlers fear backlash"? After Timothy McVeigh bombed Oklahoma City, were we told that the real victims were right-wing militias and Christian conservatives who now feared a backlash?

The real victims of terror are the people who die and are injured. There are no other victims. We must therefore steel ourselves against the media's ever-present attempts to turn innocent Afghan children into the "real" victims of 9/11. The real victims of 9/11 were those who died that day.

Elizabeth Goren-Friedman, 54, Jean Relevy, 68, and Batsheva Unterman, 33, were the victims of the bulldozer terror attacks in Jerusalem. They and the 50 wounded. No one else.

The writer is completing his doctorate at Hebrew University.

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JPost: Tom Tugend: Letting Suicide Bombers Speak For Themselves

Hat Tip: IsraelMatzav

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Letting suicide bombers speak for themselves
tom tugend, THE JERUSALEM POST Nov. 26, 2006

Sixteen-year old Hassan is deeply frustrated because he was caught by Israeli police before he could blow himself up among a crowd of Israeli civilians.

"If I had been killed, my mother would call it a blessing," he says. "My family and 70 relatives would have gone to paradise, and that would be a great honor for me."

Hassan is one of more than a dozen Palestinian suicide bombers captured before they could carry out their missions and interviewed in the documentary Suicide Killers by French-Jewish filmmaker Pierre Rehov.

The movie's subtitle, "Paradise is Hell," is a deliberate allusion and counterpoint to last year's Oscarnominated Palestinian drama Paradise Now, which some critics charged "humanized" and even glorified its two suicide bombers.

The prison interviews of Suicide Killerswill leave most viewers shaken, not because of the ferocity of the would-be terrorists, but because of their calmness and the certitude of their convictions.

No regrets or second thoughts are apparent, except for the failure of their missions, with the female terrorists in particular displaying a truly frightening serenity.

Producer-director Rehov, who has made six previous documentaries on Israeli-Palestinian relations, brings his own history to some of the topics explored in the film.

Born to a Jewish family in Algeria, he said in a phone interview that he grew up among Arab Muslims and continues to feel comfortable among them.

That background, and his French citizenship, made it easier to conduct the interviews for Suicide Killers - once the Hamas prison bosses, who in effect control the inmates inside the Israeli prison, gave their permission.

Rehov's main purpose, and the most interesting aspect of the film, is to explore the terrorists' minds and motivations.

It is Rehov's thesis that although the Israeli occupation, poverty, frustration at checkpoints and a desire to avenge Palestinian deaths may all contribute to convincing young men and women to
strap on explosive belts, the real causes behind such acts lie much deeper.

He identifies two psychological factors he says are key to the formation of the terrorist mindset, both of which he argues are inherent in Islamic belief and practice: a high degree of sexual frustration and a deep sense of humiliation and wounded pride.

Rehov's conclusions, which he says are rejected out of hand as "politically incorrect" in Europe, are borne out to a considerable extent by the prisoners' own words and the commentaries of Arab, Israeli and other experts interviewed in the film.

The would-be terrorists rarely speak of nationalist grievances but constantly emphasize their religious mandate.

"Our goal is to kill all enemies of Islam," says one young woman.

"Those who die for Allah are not dead but live in paradise," a young man proclaims.

Such beliefs easily reinforce hatred of Jews. "Jews have never obeyed God and are not part of mankind," adds another prisoner.

One former recruiter of terrorists says that volunteers signify their wish to become "martyrs" by declaring that they wish to "marry Allah."

A sense of shame is another major motivating factor for aspiring terrorists, according to Rehov. "It is bad enough that the infidel West is superior in technology and wealth, but to have been defeated by Jews, whom Muslims have held in contempt for centuries, is the utmost humiliation," he said.

Rehov treads on more controversial ground when he describes sexual frustration as perhaps the key component of the terrorist mind.

"Young Muslim men are raised in a highly restrictive atmosphere riddled with sexual guilt and taboos," he said. "They grow up without a natural relationship to women, whom they hold in deep contempt."

The fantasy of martyrs receiving 72 virgins in paradise is part of that culture, as is the sense that the more liberal Israeli lifestyle is corrupting Islamic purity, Rehov noted.

He observed similar sexual attitudes among serial killers in other countries, one reason he titled his film Suicide Killers.

The filmmaker dismissed the argument that Islamic moderates will eventually rein in extremists if given proper support by the West.

"All Muslims, even in countries like Egypt and Tunisia, believe that Islam will prevail worldwide in the end, because that's the word of God," he said. "Moderates believe that this will happen sometime in the future. The extremists think that it will happen in their lifetimes, and they want to be part of the victory. It's just a difference in the timing, not in the ultimate outcome."

Suicide Killers has screened at film festivals in Europe, the United States and Asia, and Rehov expects that the film will open in theaters early next year.

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JPost: Judea Pearl: "differences of historical narratives" is the problem

An interesting article from the Jerusalem Post:

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Daniel Pearl's father identifies historical narrative as a threat to civil society
JONNY PAUL, THE JERUSALEM POST Nov. 1, 2006

At a dinner in aid of the Council of Christians and Jews, Judea Pearl, father of murdered journalist Daniel Pearl, spoke on Monday in London about how Daniel's tragic death compelled him to call for people of all faiths to recognize the dangers that threaten civilized society.

Speaking at the event at Crosby Hall, a restored Tudor palace on the Thames River in Chelsea and home of CCJ senior executive trustee Christopher Moran, Pearl said that tackling the "hard questions" needed to be the core of dialogue between faiths and identified historical narrative as the greatest danger.

"It is easy for us to bask in our Abrahamic tradition... and it is not hard even to reconcile theological contradictions," Pearl said. "The hard issues lie in recognizing contemporary worshipers of these biblical figures as legitimate heirs to, and equal carriers of the teachings of, those revered figures."

"Theological questions have been discussed and rehashed…but something has gone wrong with these efforts and we must be honest to admit it," he said.

Pearl proceeded to list examples of the failure of these efforts. "If Mein Kampf becomes the most popular book in Turkey, then something is wrong," he said. "If an eight-year-old girl tells Egyptian TV that Jews are apes and monkeys because the Koran says so, something has gone wrong with her teachers. If 50 percent of Britons think that Muslims should be stripped of some civil rights, then something definitely has gone wrong. If a British all-party Parliamentary committee concludes that classical anti-Semitism is on the rise again in Britain, then something has gone very wrong indeed."

Pearl blamed the anger between Jews and Muslims on "differences of historical narratives."

"Muslims are angry at Jews for supporting a state which they perceive as an outpost of European imperialism and Jews are angry that, after 60 years of struggle and bloodshed, Muslims still deny Jewish claims to an historical homeland on any part of Palestine," he said.

"[Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad] and the Muslim world which he tries to court and which cheers his proposal [are] simply ignorant of the historical fact that Jews were born in Mount Sinai, on the banks of the River Jordan and on the slopes of Masada," Pearl said, responding to Ahmadinejad's recent proclamation that Israeli Jews should be sent back to Germany.

"When I explain how my grandfather came to Israel in 1924 to rebuild the biblical town of Bnei Brak, how my wife came from Iraq, not Germany... I see sparks of understanding and accommodation in the Muslim audience," Pearl said.

He spoke candidly about the last moments of his son's life and about the "amazing capacity of the human spirit to weave together the dignity of being different within the sanctity of being one."

Pearl said that his son's murderers made a critical miscalculation, as his son's last words proclaiming his faith became "iconic personal reminders to principled people around the planet that the current tide of violence and hatred is not an expression of an ordinary conflict between tribes, countries or religions but threatens to erode the very fabric of civilized society."

Daniel Pearl was killed in Karachi, Pakistan in 2002. Speaking before his captors' video camera, Daniel said: "My father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish, I am Jewish... Back in the town of Bnei Brak there is a street named after my great-grandfather, Chaim Pearl, who was one of the founders of the town."

Prof Pearl, a computer scientist and statistician best known for his work on a probabilistic approach to artificial intelligence, set up the Daniel Pearl Foundation in 2002 to encourage faith dialogue and fight the culture of global hatred and intolerance.
Speaking about the work of the foundation, he said: "We do not have the resources to move armies or conquer territories, but we do have the goodwill of millions of principled people around the world - Christians, Jews and Muslims, Pakistanis, Europeans, Americans, Israelis and Palestinians, journalists and musicians - who are determined to form a coalition of the decent and restore this planet to an orbit of sanity."

Founded in 1942, and currently with over 4,000 members in the UK, the CCJ works closely with Christian and Jewish communities to provide understanding and combat intolerance, prejudice and anti-Semitism. Its primary focus is Christian-Jewish relations but it seeks to engage with all faith communities in the UK. Monday's dinner was attended by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and former Conservative leader Michael Howard.
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JPost: Caroline Glick: Prime-time blood libels

Given the usage of images of the Mohammad al-Dura incident at MSU events in the past, I thought I should include this assessment of the situation at hand by Caroline Glick:

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Our World: Prime-time blood libels
Caroline Glick, THE JERUSALEM POST Oct. 23, 2006

Last Thursday a French court found Philippe Karsenty guilty of libeling France 2 television network and its Jerusalem bureau chief Charles Enderlin. Karsenty, who runs a media watchdog Web site called Media Matters, called for Enderlin and his boss Arlette Chabot to be sacked for their September 30, 2000 televised report alleging that IDF forces had killed 12-year-old Muhammad al-Dura at Netzarim junction in Gaza that day.

Their lawsuit against Karsenty was the first of three lawsuits that Enderlin and France 2 filed against French Jews who accused them in various ways of manufacturing a blood libel against Israel by purposely distorting the events at Netzarim junction that day. The second trial, against Pierre Lur at, is set to begin this week. Lur at organized a mass demonstration against France 2 on October 2, 2002 after the broadcast of a German television documentary film by Esther Schapira called Three Bullets and a Dead Child: Who Shot Muhammad al-Dura? Schapira's film concludes that IDF bullets could not have killed Dura.

September 30, 2000 was the third day of the Palestinian jihad. That day an IDF position at Netzarim junction was attacked by Palestinian Authority security forces. A prolonged exchange of fire ensued. That afternoon, France 2's Palestinian cameraman Talal Abu Rahma submitted footage of a man and a boy at the junction cowering behind a barrel. The two were later identified as Jamal al-Dura and his 12-year-old son Muhammad. Enderlin, who had not been present at the scene, took Rahma's 27 minutes of raw footage and narrated a 50-second film in which he accused the IDF of having shot and killed the boy. Enderlin's film itself does not show the boy dying. There are no blood stains where the boy and his father were crouched. No ambulance came to evacuate them. No autopsy was performed on Muhammad's body.

FRANCE 2 distributed its film free of charge to anyone who wanted it - although not the full 27 minutes that Rahma filmed. The film was shown repeatedly worldwide and particularly on Arab television networks. The results of the footage were murderous. On October 12, two IDF reservists, Yosef Avrahami and Vadim Novesche, were lynched by a mob at a PA police station in Ramallah. The mob invoked Dura's death as a justification for its barbarism. The Orr Commission which investigated the violent rioting by Israeli Arabs in October 2000 stated in its final report that "Muhammad al-Dura's picture, which was distributed by the media, was one of the causes that led people in the Arab sector to take to the streets on October 1, 2000."

Countless suicide bombers and other Palestinian terrorists have cited Dura as a justification of their crimes. For the past six years PA television has continuously aired a film showing Dura in heaven beckoning other Palestinian children to "martyr" themselves by becoming terrorists and join him there.

The Palestinians are not the only ones who have used Dura as a terrorist recruitment tool. He is prominently featured in al-Qaida recruitment videos and on Hizbullah banners. Daniel Pearl's murderers interspersed their video of his beheading with the France 2 film. Throughout Europe, and particularly in France, Muslims have used Dura as a rallying cry in their attacks against Jews - attacks which broke out shortly after the Dura film was broadcast.

AT FIRST, Israel accepted responsibility for Dura's death without conducting an investigation. Yet, in the weeks that followed the event, engineers Nahum Shachaf and Yosef Doriel conducted investigations on behalf of the IDF's Southern Command.

Both men separately proved mathematically and physically that the IDF forces on the ground could not see the Duras from their position and that it was physically impossible for their bullets to have killed Muhammad. Then OC Southern Command Maj.-Gen.Yom Tov Samia held a news conference in late November based on their findings at which he said that the probability that the IDF had killed Dura was low.

Yet Samia was the only senior Israeli official to question the veracity of the film. Then chief of General Staff Shaul Mofaz disavowed Samia's investigation. Prime minister Ehud Barak never questioned the veracity of Enderlin's murderous accusation against the IDF.

In the intervening years, private researchers and media organizations have taken it upon themselves to investigate what happened that day. Their findings have shown that at a minimum, the probability that the IDF killed Dura is minuscule and more likely, the event was either staged or edited to engender the conclusion that Dura had been killed by Israel. The few people who have been allowed to watch Rahma's entire film have stated that it is impossible to conclude that Muhammad was killed because he raises his head and props himself up on his elbow after he was supposedly shot.

Respected media organizations like The Wall Street Journal, CBS News, Atlantic Monthly and Commentary magazine have published detailed investigations that all conclude that the footage was either staged or simply edited to show something that didn't happen.

Yet, even as private individuals were dedicating their time and passion to proving that France 2 had purposely broadcast a blood libel against Israel that caused the death and injury of Israelis and Jews throughout the world and marred the honor of the IDF, official Israel remained silent.

The Foreign Ministry never asked France 2 to show its officials the full 27-minute film. Neither the IDF nor the Foreign or Justice Ministries defended the IDF or called into question the veracity of Enderlin's film. As late as this past June 23, IDF spokeswoman Brig.-Gen. Miri Regev told Haaretz, "I cannot determine whether the IDF is or is not responsible for the killing of al-Dura."

IN THE French judicial system, the people's interest is represented by a special court reporter who recommends verdicts to the judges. It is rare for judges to disregard the reporter's recommendations. During his trial, Karsenty and his witnesses produced piece after piece of evidence that called into question the credibility of the France 2 film.

For its part, France 2 sent no representatives to the trial. Its attorney did not question any of the evidence submitted by Karsenty nor did she cross-examine any of his witnesses. She brought no witnesses of her own. She simply produced a letter of support for France 2 from President Jacques Chirac. The court reporter recommended dismissing the case.

In their judgment last week, the judges argued that Karsenty's allegations against Enderlin and France 2 could not be credible since "no Israeli authority, neither the army which is nonetheless most affected, nor the Justice [Ministry] have ever accorded the slightest credit to these allegations" regarding the mendacity of the Dura film.

Over the years Israeli officials have justified their silence by saying that it was a losing proposition to reopen the Dura case. We'll be accused of blaming the victim, they said.

This statement is both cowardly and irresponsible. As the French verdict shows, without an Israeli protest, the protests of private individuals, however substantial, ring hollow. When Israel refuses to defend itself from blood libels, it gives silent license to attacks against Israel and world Jewry in the name of those libels.

In 2000, Barak was desperately trying to close a peace deal with Yasser Arafat. The last thing he wanted was to admit that Arafat was promulgating blood libels against Israel. So he was silent. This is unforgivable, but understandable.

Israel's continued silence is a sign that Israeli officialdom has still not understood what the war of images demands of it. The Dura film, like the fictional massacre of Lebanese children at Kafr Kana in Lebanon this summer, shows that victory or defeat in wars is today largely determined on television. To win, Israel must go on the offensive and attack untruthful, distorted images that are used to justify the killing of Israelis and Jews throughout the world.

When Karsenty heard the court's verdict last week, he said, "If this judgment is upheld, Jews should ask themselves questions about their future in France. Justice covers the anti-Semitic lies of a public channel. It's a strong signal, it is very severe."

To this it should be added that if the Israeli government continues to be silent as the good name of the IDF, of Israel and of the Jewish people is dragged through the mud by distorted television images broadcast by foreign news outlets; if the Israeli government does nothing to defend those who are persecuted for fighting against these distortions, then Jews will have to ask themselves some questions about how on earth we are supposed to defend ourselves, let alone win this war against those who seek our destruction.

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