Posts Tagged ‘Israel’

Reporter dead in Israel-Lebanon border skirmish

August 3rd, 2010

Al Jazeera is reporting that Assaf Abou Rahhal, a journalist with Lebanon’s Al Akhbar newspaper, was killed today in an exchange of fire between the Lebanese Army and the Israel Defence Forces. Read more here

The truth about Mohammed al Dura

July 12th, 2010

It was the most iconic image of the second intifada: the killing of a Palestinian child. Ten years on, French libel courts are still settling disputes about what really happened at the Netzarim crossroads. Natasha Lehrer reports

Just over two years ago the French appeals court overturned a guilty verdict against Philippe Karsenty. The blogger was originally found guilty of libelling Charles Enderlin, the veteran French television correspondent whose report on the killing in September 2000 of 12-year-old Mohammed al Dura by an Israeli bullet has been the subject of controversy for a decade. Now Karsenty has won his own libel case against the broadcaster Canal + and the magazine L’Express.

In June this year, Canal + and TAC PRESSE, an independent television company, were found guilty of libelling Karsenty in a 2008 programme on the subject of media hoaxes. The programme drew parallels between the September 11 conspiracy theorists and Karsenty, who has spent almost 10 years challenging the veracity of Enderlin’s 2000 report for the state television station France 2. The court found that the failure of Stéphane Malterre, the documentary’s director, to make any mention whatsoever of the many doubts that have been raised about the original news report and which have been widely reported around the world — considerably more so than in France itself — constituted evidence of a lack of good faith on the part of the programme makers and the broadcaster Canal +, and justified Karsenty’s claim of libel.

An article by the journalist Vincent Hugueux, in the magazine L’Express, published the same day that Malterre’s documentary was broadcast, reiterated the accusation that Karsenty was a hoaxer.

In Rumeurs, intox: les nouvelles guerres de l’info….Stephane Malterre showed us various recent hoaxes, from the rantings after the September 11th attacks to the concerted attacks on the journalist Charles Enderlin.
…. The episode on the journalist Charles Enderlin, target of a campaign as loathesome and relentless as it is inept, had the merit of exposing two specimens in thrall to a pathetic form of nervous obsession: the historian Richard Landes and the Frenchman Philippe Karsenty.

On 1 July 2010, the presiding judge found in favour of Karsenty, L’Express was found guilty of libel. However, the judge rejected Karsenty’s claim for €25,000 damages, finding that Hugueux was influenced by the content of Malterre’s documentary and therefore had written his article in good faith.

In an interesting footnote to this long-running case, the judgment includes the following statement: “Philippe Karsenty acted in good faith by exercising his right to criticise Charles Enderlin for having broadcast a faked report.” Karsenty has made clear his satisfaction in this interestingly unequivocal statement, avowing in his own press release that the judgement will “be useful in the future because it confirms that France 2′s news report was phony and that [the] Canal + documentary was defamatory and manipulative enough to influence a journalist”. It seems highly unlikely that the judgment signals the end of this affair.

Natasha Lehrer is a writer and translator. She lives in Paris.

PODCAST: Israeli settler radio—Piracy goes Kosher

June 28th, 2010

With the launch of a West Bank radio station, settlers are winning legitimacy and influence. Padraig Reidy and Israeli journalist Anat Balint discuss radio in the occupied territories



Anant Balint is a former media correspondent for Haeretz

For more on the topic read Anat Balint’s article Piracy goes Kosher, which appears in Radio Redux, the new issue of Index on Censorship, out now


Israel: Director to appeal banning of spy documentary

June 25th, 2010

Nir Toib, director of a banned film which exposed an espionage scandal within the Israel Defense Forces[IDF], is to appeal the documentary film’s banning at the Supreme Court. The Secret Kingdom features interviews with Brigadier General Yitzhak Yaakov, Israel’s first chief scientist and a former research and development head for the IDF, who is accused of espionage in the documentary. Toib refutes the military censor’s claims that the film divulged nuclear secrets, instead arguing that the majority of the information which was cut from the original version of the film was already within the public domain.

Mordechai Vanunu jailed again in Israel

May 26th, 2010

Mordechai Vanunu, the former Israeli nuclear plant technician who spent 18 years in prison for exposing the country’s nuclear arsenal, was jailed again on 23 May. He was found guilty of “unauthorised meetings with foreigners” which include journalists and his Norwegian girlfriend. The Israeli government did not allow Vanunu to leave the country, visit foreign embassies nor meet with people from outside Israel after finishing his sentence in April 2004. He was convicted of breaking these terms in December 2009 and sentenced to six months community service. Vanunu claims he did not comply with the order out of fear he would be assaulted.

West Bank: Journalists detained

May 4th, 2010

Twoal-Jazeera reporters were prevented from covering a demonstration in the West Bank on Friday by the Israeli military. They were detained for four and a half hours before being released and told to never return. Cameraman Majdi Bannoura and assistant Nader Abu Zer were arrested trying to videotape the weekly protests on the separation barrier being erected in Bil’in by Israel.

Israel: Shops bans controversial pamphlet

April 14th, 2010

After immense pressure from the right-wing on Sunday, the Israeli bookstore chain Tzomet Sfarim has stopped selling a leftist political manifesto heavily critical of the settler movement. In The National Left, the authors call settlers “messianic madmen” and brainwashed “zombies”. The company claims they pulled the book not for political reasons, but because it “hurts the feelings of some of our customers”.Meanwhile cameraman and AFP correspondent Hazem Bader was arrested by Israeli forces in Hebron after he refused to stop filming a protest. Fifteen protesters were also arrested for not leaving the closed military area. Bader was detained for three hours then released after AFP intervened.

Israel: Anat Kamm gag order lifted

April 8th, 2010

Reports are emerging that an injunction on the reporting of the case of Anat Kamm, an Israeli activist accused of leaking confidential military documents to the media, has been lifted by a Tel Aviv court.More to follow