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Thursday, September 07, 2006

Today's Picks

Jameel finds a great editorial in...The Guardian.

Sultan Knish tells us about Ben Hecht.

Batya shares her thoughts on Israel's leadership crisis.

Larry Derfner
tries to take on Caroline Glick but ends up with his foot in his mouth. First he writes:
I'm writing about this because I was one of the reporters on the Moassi beachfront on that June 28 that the column describes, and the behavior of the young settlers there that day wasn't innocent at all, which is what readers of Glick's column would conclude. One of those settlers did in fact try to murder that Palestinian teenager, and he had help. I don't know if it was Cytryn who hit the Palestinian boy in the head with a rock thrown full force from a few feet away, but I know that one of those Jewish marauders did, and others tried to join in the attack. And while this was the worst violent crime they committed during those three days on the Gaza beachfront, it was by no means the only one.
Then he writes:
I got to the beachfront a little after the incident for which Cytryn is standing trial, so I didn't see it with my own eyes. But a TV cameraman showed me the raw footage he'd shot, and I watched it a few times. The images still in my memory are fleeting, but I remember seeing an IDF soldier with a rifle standing with a Palestinian boy - Halil Mejeida, 18 - in his custody behind a wall. I remember seeing a boy hoisting himself atop the wall and hurling a rock at Mejeida, and another boy trying to get at Mejeida, who was lying on the ground as the soldier tried to protect him.
According to Israel National News, the "raw footage" that Derfner saw was fauxtography:
Regarding the alleged "lynching," A.D. said the television footage of an Arab lying on the ground and then two Jewish boys running towards him and throwing rocks at him was a distortion of what actually happened. "That's not the story!" he said. "I saw this same Arab get hit in the head with a rock - and yet he continued to throw rocks, like a tiger, for the next 15 minutes! And then I saw some reporters go over to him and tell him to lie down and act as if he was unconscious. Later on, he was taken out walking on his own, holding on to a soldier..."

And finally the Derfner enlightens us with more "information":
I don't know how long Mejeida stayed in the hospital, and I don't know what kind of condition he was in when he got out, but was the media account of that incident a "fabrication" of "a crime that was never committed," as Glick's column has it?
Derfner "didn't see" and "doesn't know", but that doesn't prevent him from writing. These are your journalists, O Israel.

By the way, be sure to check out The (not) Forgotten Prisoners of Zion blog which has been covering the Cytryn case. See also Israel National News.

Update: An article in Hebrew about the Meshulami family.

4 comments:

Chana @ Lemon Lime Moon said...

It's interesting how Derfner uses the term "Jewish" marauders as if to set himself apart from that word.
One might say simply "marauders", but to use the adjective "Jewish" as if it isn't any relation to him is telling.

Batya said...

Thanks for the link!

Glad you're blogging again.

Daniel Greenfield said...

defner taking on glick is like a poodle barking at the moon,

israel has few journalists and many propogandists with press passes

JoeSettler said...

I wrote about the story also, but you did it much better justice.

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