Paris Court Overturns The Libel Conviction In The "Al-Dura Affair"

France 2's report purporting to show the IDF killing of a young Palestinian boy set off the second intifada with loss of life in the thousands. Phillipe Karsenty charged that France 2 and reporter Charles Enderlin had staged the story and that Israeli soldiers had not killed the boy. Enderlin and France 2 brought a case for libel. You can find the background of the case and coverage of the lower court case resulting in a finding of libel in this series of PJM reports - Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV. A Paris Court that heard the appeal and reviewed the evidence underlying Karsenty's defense, including all of the footage of supplied by France 2, has now overturned the finding of libel. This is a decision that will likely have significant ramifications.

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This from Israeli blogger Israel Matzav:

Israel Radio's Paris correspondent Gil Michaeli has just reported that the French Court of Appeals has overturned the libel judgment against Phillipe Karsenty and has determined that Karsenty did not libel France 2 correspondent Charles Enderlin when he reported that the 'death' of 12-year old Mohamed Al-Dura at Netzarim in the Gaza Strip in September 2000 may have been staged, and that it was unlikely that the death was caused by IDF soldiers.

More to follow as soon as I have it.

Yes, I know that the photo above is offensive. I'm trying to remind you all of how the al-Dura hoax is being used around the world.

UPDATE 3:40 PM

Welcome Instapundit readers.

UPDATE 5:37 PM

Richard Landes, who has been one of the driving forces behind the effort to expose the al-Dura hoax from the beginning, reminds us all that there is still a written opinion to be issued, and that the court's evidentiary standard ought to make that opinion a doozer. He also asks the most important question here:

Now we get to see how the French (and Western) MSM handle this. It’s a stunning victory for Karsenty and loss for Enderlin and France2 who initiated this case when they didn’t have to. . . .

Read the entire post.

Much more on this decision at Soccer Dad.

Update: Philippe Karsenty writes of his vindication at PJM:

Now it is time for France 2 to acknowledge that it created and is continuing to perpetuate the worst anti-Semitic libel of our era. It’s the responsibility of the French government and, ultimately, the responsibility of the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy — who is, for all practical purposes, the chief executive of French public television — to finally reveal the truth.

Read the entire post.

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China's Al Durah Affair

Few countries have been more mistreated than Tibet has been by China since China invaded that country in 1950. The Tibetans are using the occasion of the upcoming Olympics to shine a spotlight on China's detestable actions. The communist Chinese government has pushed back with all the heaviness that a police state can muster and has tried to create a narrative that the Tibetans themselves are in the wrong. That case was helped when a "Tibetan" protestor in Paris attacked a torch-bearer in a wheel chair. Except, it appears now, the protestor was a communist Chinese agent:

This from an exceptional post by Sachi at Big Lizards:

The most iconic photograph from the riots attending the torch-bearing ceremony, the one that has every tongue wagging, is surely this one: A Tibetan supporter violently assaulting a wheelchair-bound woman carrying the torch through Paris.

This one picture came to symbolize the heartless violence of the Tibetan protesters, thus justifying, in many people's minds, the paramilitary troops that China sent to harass, beat, and brutalize the protesters in other countries -- from France and London to the United States to South America . . .

Note especially the bandana this vicious thug wears; it's clearly the Tibetan flag, . . .

Rather like the infamous Mohammed al-Durrah photograph, used by the Palestinians to turn the world against Israel by claiming they shot a young boy, this photograph began to turn the world against the victims of Red China's brutal occupation and subsequent attempt at slow genocide.

But wait; that's an odd comparison to make, isn't it? For the al-Durrah footage is now known to be a fake; careful investigation has shown that the Israelis could not possibly have shot the child from the positions they occupied. He had to have been shot by Palestinians -- if he were shot at all.

So the video footage is infamous mostly because it is a clumsy fake, one of the first instances of "Pallywood."

Surely that can't be case with this photo of the Tibetan protester and the lady in the wheelchair; after all, we see him clearly -- and the camera never lies.

. . . [Chinese bloggers in Japan] stumbled across some other photographs: pictures of the attacker, clearly that same Tibetan protester (still wearing his Tibetan-flag bandana), arriving earlier for the festivities -- and marching in the company of a number of Chinese carrying Chinese flags:


Is it possible that our "protester" friend is in fact -- a Chinese agent provacateur? That would require us to believe that the Chinese Communists could be so devious and duplicitous as to commit an atrocity, just to blame it on the Tibetan protesters and arouse retroactive justification for the crackdown by the Chinese paramilitaries we talked about in an earlier post. . . .

Read the entire post. There is much more.

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