Post-Modernism and its offspring, Political Correctness and Multiculturalism, hold that there is no such thing as objective reality. In their view all reality is constructed, imposed by the dominant narrative upon the victims of that narrative. There is a superficial plausibility to such a view, supported by fields as disparate as Philosophy, Psychiatry, and the burgeoning neurosciences (where the constructed nature of our perceptions is unmistakable.) However, the Post-Modernists have taken their theory to an absurd degree in which reality itself, rather than simply our experience of reality and our interpretation of reality, is brought into question. One of the effects of Post-Modernism that I have long been struggling with is the degree to which their conception is operationally true, although not at all in the sense that the Post-Modernists imagine.
There are many issues in which this question arises. Today, there is a great deal of discussion in the blogosphere about the significance of the resolution of the Al-Durah Affair. Richard Landes, who has been involved with this from early on, documents a great victory for the truth against an edifice built on lies:
Karsenty Strikes Blow for Freedom in Al-Durah Case
The French court of appeals, presided over by the redoubtable Madame Laurence Trébucq, has reversed the decision of a lower court — the (in)famous “Chambre 17″ that specializes in verbal crimes had found Philippe Karsenty guilty of defaming France2 after Karsenty, in a 2004 article, claimed (as have many familiar with the dossier), that the scene was staged. The unexpected reversal by the court of appeals represents the first major European breach of the blanket of silence that has greeted any effort of critics to call into question France2’s presentation of the Al Dura footage as actual news.
The Muhammad al Durah affair represents one of the most revealing and distressing cases in the mainstream media’s coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict. On September 30, 2000, France2’s Middle East correspondent, Charles Enderlin, ran footage of what looked like a boy and his father, together hiding behind a barrel, “the target of fire coming from the Israeli position.” According to this report, the boy was killed and the father badly wounded. The footage went around the world instantly, provoking outrage and violence against both Israel and Jewish communities in the Arab world and in Europe.
France2 compounded these violations of journalistic ethics by attempting to block any criticism. Ridiculing the proponents of the “staged hypothesis” as conspiracy theorists on the order of 9-11 truthers or holocaust deniers, France2 sued independent French citizens who had the nerve to criticize them for their journalistic incompetence.
Richard has a round up of blogger reactions at Karsenty Wins Court Decision!! and it is hard not to share in his jubilation. The Al-Durah blood libel has caused untold grief for so many people and has given a major push to the rampant anti-Semitism that has once again emerged from the shadows. Yet there is reason for concern. Phyllis Chesler, in her cri de couer last night, begins to get at the problem, of which the Al-Durah affair was just a small part:
Karsenty Covered But Also Buried by The Times
I have had it with the so-called “even handed” reportage that buries the truth in a barrage of lies. What, pray tell, am I talking about? While the online edition of the New York Times has actually covered Phillipe Karsenty’s legal victory, you’d never know it is a victory from reading the piece.
The reporter, Mike Nizza, opens with this: “A fierce debate over an iconic Palestinian image was jolted anew today by a French court appeal court ruling…”Say what? We are not talking about an “iconic image” but about a manufactured news report that damned Israel in the eyes of the world.
This is not just about the New York Times, a partisan broadsheet that has no more relation to the former "paper of record" than Meryl Streep's dissipated alcoholic Helen Archer had to her once glorious career; this has to do with the ways in which reality has been and continues to be shaped by those who act as our sensory perceptual apparatus and whether reality can successful penetrate the filters through which they present the world.
Any fair minded observer of the staged scenes documented by Pallywood, plus the steadily growing body of evidence of ongoing, sophisticated efforts to use the Western news media as witting, and often unwitting, agents of propaganda, would be hard pressed to describe the AL-Durah footage as anything other than a fabrication, yet for years the Western press has treated it as sacrosanct, and apparently, such posturing will continue indefinitely. I will let other attempt to discern the agenda behind such slanted and overtly fabricated "news" stories. My concern is the way in which such slanting and fabricating creates and enforces a world view at odds with the underlying reality.
Fro much of the world, the narrative of the Arab-Israeli conflict assigns the role of amoral oppressor to the Israelis and the role of helpless victim to the Arabs. All reporting that follows this template, which is most of the world's reporting, distorts all news to fit the narrative. Probably 99% of the Muslim world accepts this narrative without question; well over 50% of the European populations accept the narrative (and much of this was driven by the AL-Durah affair); a significant fraction of the American populace believes this to be the case and even a not insignificant fraction of the Israeli populace accepts it. Worse still, the vast majority of thew Western Media and elites also support this narrative. Even President Bush, who more than any recent President placed the onus on the Palestinians to make the changes necessary for peace in the Middle East, hedges on facing reality (that Fatah has been as guilty at oppressing the Palestinian people as Hamas and every other Arab government) and supports the narrative of the Palestinians as victims of history, if not directly of the Jews. Even many Israelis, not to mention left leaning Diaspora Jews, accept that Israel has become an oppressor, even if a reluctant one.
The Al-Durah affair, along with other examples of fauxtography, overt Palestinian acts which cause increased misery among the Gazans, longstanding anti-Palestinian abuse and bias among non-Palestinian Arabs, etc, should place the onus of responsibility directly on the Arabs and the Palestinians for the chronic disorder in the Middle East, yet as long as such a large majority of opinion makers and a compliant sensory apparatus (our MSM) continue to promulgate the fantasy narrative, in effect, reality will have been constructed for the benefit of those who desire the current narrative.
[Presumably, if Israel were ever to be successfully "pushed into the sea" as promised for so many years by so many Arab spokesmen, future historians might well conclude that that was the Arab goal all along and marvel at how the West enabled such genocide.]
The Post-Modernist left and their useful idiots insist on seeing the world through their dialectical filters; while the Karsenty victory is a great victory for reason and reality, it is also a reminder of how successful the Post-Modernist narrative has been. Further, it raises the question of whether that narrative can ever be discredited enough to minimize its noxious effects on our current reality.
Recent Comments