Author: Tom Gross
Publication: Jewish World Review
Date: June 6, 2005
URL: http://jewishworldreview.com/0605/gross_2005_06_06.php3
The beauty of European enlightenment
in practice
A French court just found three
writers for Le Monde, as well as the newspaper's publisher, guilty of "racist
defamation" against Israel and the Jewish people. In a groundbreaking decision,
the Versailles court of appeal ruled that a comment piece published in
Le Monde in 2002, "Israel-Palestine: The Cancer," had whipped up anti-Semitic
opinion.
The writers of the article, Edgar
Morin (a well-known sociologist), Daniele Sallenave (a senior lecturer
at Nanterre University) and Sami Nair (a member of the European parliament),
as well as Le Monde's publisher, Jean-Marie Colombani, were ordered to
pay symbolic damages of one euro to a human-rights group and to the Franco-Israeli
association. Le Monde was also ordered to publish a condemnation of the
article, which it has yet to do.
It is encouraging to see a French
court rule that anti-Semitism should have no place in the media - even
when it is masked as an analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The
ruling also makes it clear that the law in this respect applies to extremist
Jews (Mr. Morin is Jewish) as much as to non-Jews.
Press freedom is a value to be cherished,
but not exploited and abused. In general, European countries have strict
laws against such abuse and Europe's mainstream media are in any case usually
good at exercising self-censorship. Responsible journalists strenuously
avoid libelous characterizations of entire ethnic, national or religious
groups. They go out of their way, for example, to avoid suggesting that
the massacres in Darfur, which are being carried out by Arab militias,
in any way represent an Arab trait.
The exception to this seems to be
the coverage of Jews, particularly Israeli ones. This is particularly ironic
given the fact that Europe's relatively strict freedom of speech laws (compared
to those in the U.S.) were to a large extend drafted as a reaction to the
Continent's Nazi occupation. And yet, from Oslo to Athens, from London
to Madrid, it has been virtually open season on them in the last few years,
especially in supposedly liberal media.
"Israel-Palestine: The Cancer" was
a nasty piece of work, replete with lies, slanders and myths about "the
chosen people," "the Jenin massacre," describing the Jews as "a contemptuous
people taking satisfaction in humiliating others," "imposing their unmerciful
rule," and so on.
Yet it is was no worse than thousands
of other news reports, editorials, commentaries, letters, cartoons and
headlines published throughout Europe in recent years, in the guise of
legitimate and reasoned discussion of Israeli policies.
The libels and distortions about
Israel in some British media are by now fairly well known: the Guardian's
equation of Israel and al Qaeda; the Evening Standard's equation of Israel
and the Taliban; the report by the BBC's Middle East correspondent, Orla
Guerin, on how "the Israelis stole Christmas." Most notorious of all is
the Independent's Middle East correspondent, Robert Fisk, who specializes
in such observations as his comment that, "If ever a sword was thrust into
a military alliance of East and West, the Israelis wielded that dagger,"
and who implies that the White House has fallen into the hands of the Jews:
"The Perles and the Wolfowitzes and the Cohens . . . [the] very sinister
people hovering around Bush."
The invective against Israel elsewhere
in Europe is less well known. In Spain, for example, on June 4, 2001 (three
days after a Palestinian suicide bomber killed 21 young Israelis at a disco,
and wounded over 100 others, all in the midst of a unilateral Israeli ceasefire),
the liberal daily Cambio 16 published a cartoon of Israeli Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon (with a hook nose he does not have), wearing a skull cap (which
he does not usually wear), sporting a swastika inside a star of David on
his chest, and proclaiming: "At least Hitler taught me how to invade a
country and destroy every living insect."
The week before, on May 23, El Pais
(the "New York Times of Spain") published a cartoon of an allegorical figure
carrying a small rectangular-shaped black moustache, flying through the
air toward Sharon's upper lip. The caption read: "Clio, the muse of history,
puts Hitler's moustache on Ariel Sharon."
Two days later, on May 25, the Catalan
daily La Vanguardia published a cartoon showing an imposing building, with
a sign outside reading "Museo del Holocausto Judio" (Museum of the Jewish
Holocaust), and next to it another building under construction, with a
large sign reading "Futuro Museo del Holocausto Palestino" (Future Museum
of the Palestinian Holocaust).
Greece's largest newspaper, the
leftist daily Eleftherotypia, has run several such cartoons. In April 2002,
on its front cover, under the title "Holocaust II," an Israeli soldier
was depicted as a Nazi officer and a Palestinian civilian as a Jewish death
camp inmate. In September 2002, another cartoon in Eleftherotypia showed
an Israeli soldier with a Jewish star telling a Nazi officer next to him
"Arafat is not a person the Reich can talk to anymore." The Nazi officer
responds "Why? Is he a Jew?"
In Italy, in October 2001, the Web
site of one of the country's most respected newspapers, La Repubblica,
published the notorious anti-Semitic forgery, "The Protocols of the Elders
of Zion," in its entirety, without providing any historical explanation.
It did suggest, however, that the work would help readers understand why
the U.S. had taken military action in Afghanistan.
In April 2002, the Italian liberal
daily La Stampa ran a front-page cartoon showing an Israeli tank, emblazoned
with a Jewish star, pointing a large gun at the baby Jesus in a manger,
while the baby pleads, "Surely they don't want to kill me again, do they?"
In Corriere Della Sera, another
cartoon showed Jesus trapped in his tomb, unable to rise, because Ariel
Sharon, rifle in hand, is sitting on the sepulcher.
Sweden's largest morning paper,
Dagens Nyheter, ran a caricature of a Hassidic Jew accusing anyone who
criticized Israel of anti-Semitism. Another leading Swedish paper, Aftonbladet,
used the headline "The Crucifixion of Arafat."
If the misreporting and bias were
limited to one or two newspapers or television programs in each country,
it might be possible to shrug them off. But they are not. Bashing Israel
even extends to local papers that don't usually cover foreign affairs,
such as the double-page spread titled "Jews in jackboots" in "Luton on
Sunday." (Luton is an industrial town in southern England.) Or the article
in Norway's leading regional paper, Stavanger Aftenblad, equating Israel's
actions against terrorists in Ramallah with the attacks on the World Trade
Center.
Grotesque and utterly false comparisons
such as these should have no place in reporting or commenting on the Middle
East. Yet although the French court ruling - the first of its kind in Europe
- is a major landmark, no one in France seems to care. The country's most
distinguished newspaper, the paper of record, has been found guilty of
anti-Semitism. One would have thought that such a verdict would prompt
wide-ranging coverage and lead to extensive soul-searching and public debate.
Instead, there has been almost complete silence, and virtually no coverage
in the French press.
And few elsewhere will have heard
about it. Reuters and Agence France Presse (agencies that have demonstrated
particularly marked bias against Israel) ran short stories about the judgment
in their French-language wires last week, but chose not to run them on
their English news services. The Associated Press didn't run it at all.
Instead of triggering the long overdue reassessment of Europe's attitude
toward Israel, the media have chosen to ignore it.
