Here’s a court case worth following. An Israeli court began hearing on Tuesday a lawsuit, filed by five Israeli soldiers who fought in Jenin refugee camp during Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, against the director of the 2002 documentary “Jenin, Jenin.”
According to the Jerusalem Post, the plaintiffs site 13 incidents of libel in the film, including the following (worth considering that all the alleged libel was made by those interviewed in the film, not by the filmmaker himself):
• An old man claimed that soldiers shot him in the arm and leg in cold blood without cause.
• A film segment was edited to indicate that a bulldozer drove over a group of Palestinians lined up on the ground.
• Soldiers used children as human shields and ordered them to make holes in the walls of houses so they could progress from one to the next without exposing themselves. They warned they would shoot the children if they did not obey.
• Soldiers executed a disabled and retarded man by running him over with a bulldozer.
• A doctor at a Jenin hospital accused the IDF of removing the bodies of Palestinians killed in the fighting.
• Soldiers tied up a Palestinian and shot him.
Before brushing off the $2.5 million lawsuit as absurd, consider this: two of the plaintiffs were actually pictured in photographs of soldiers accompanying advertisements for the film, which showed in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, at the Cinemateque, a well known Israeli art house. Israel’s military censors banned the film, but that ruling was overturned by the Supreme Court.
7 responses so far ↓
1 linda grant // Sep 19, 2007 at 8:47 am
A friend of mine, who was one of the first photojournalists into Jenin, when it was still closed by the army disputed the details of some of those interviewed in the film which he saw when it was released. He argued that that interviewees said what they believed to be true, but evidence showed that they were wrong and that the director did not correct this. The director replied, when my friend asked him at a screening, that he was only reporting what he was told, even though he agreed that he knew it to be incorrect.
2 yaacov // Sep 19, 2007 at 2:37 pm
Charles -
Why brush the lawsuit off as absurd? Just as freedom of sppech is a fundamental part of democracy, so is the right of the individual not to be wrongly defamed. That’s why all democracies have rules of libel: to protect both fundamental rights, and to decide when the one overrides the other. Nothing absurd in any of that, is there?
3 Mimi // Sep 19, 2007 at 2:40 pm
Charles, have you seen the film? “Operation Defensive Shield” or the “Jenin Massacre” (depending on who you talk to) is always a hotly contested subject between the Israelis and Palestinians I work with. Would like to know what you thought.
4 greenmamba // Sep 19, 2007 at 3:14 pm
The Jenin episode highlighted with absolute clarity, the blatant bias of the world’s heritage media, along with the EU and the UN, among others.
5 tsedek // Sep 19, 2007 at 8:51 pm
we’ve seen the ‘tricks’ used in a documentary here on israeli tv a few years ago - for instance - there was this woman in a hospital that had to say to the cameras that the IDF didn’t let her through, but she didn’t say that - in fact she said that she got through and reached the hospital in time. the people making the film ‘jenin, jenin’ weren’t satisfied with that answer and she had to say what they told her to say…
very strange conduct.
6 Kebz // Sep 21, 2007 at 7:36 pm
Why did the Israelis stop the UN investigation of the incident? In the end the UN colluded with the massacre by guessing at the number of dead underneath the rubble. A horrific crime was covered up and continues to be this very day. The only blatant bias is pro-Israeli.
7 linda grant // Sep 21, 2007 at 8:42 pm
From Wikipedia
* April 30 - Qadoura Mousa, the director of Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement for the northern West Bank set the total dead at 56 after a team of four Palestinian-appointed investigators reported to him in his Jenin office.[10]
* Considering the Palestinian body count the U.N. Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, suggested that he may disband the U.N. fact-finding team supposed to determine whether a massacre had taken place.
According to the United Nations (which was prevented from making a visit), “at least 52″ Palestinian deaths were confirmed.[13] Human Rights Watch “confirmed that at least fifty-two Palestinians were killed … This figure may rise”.[36] No other Palestinian deaths from the battle have been confirmed since this time. The IDF estimate the number at 52. The designation of combatants differs (IDF counts 38 “armed men”, HRW counts 30 “militants”). Palestinian Fatah investigators claimed the death toll is 56,[37] announced on April 30 by Qadoura Moussa, the Fatah director for the Northern West Bank. 23 Israeli soldiers were also killed.[38]
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