Charles Enderlin

Charles Enderlin is a French journalist, specialising in the Middle East and Israel. He is one of the prominent actors in the Muhammed al-Dura affair, the harassment campaign which followed, and the ensuing polemic about freedom of speech in France. An expert of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, he published several authoritative books on the subject, including Shattered Dreams.

Biography

Charles Enderlin was born in Paris in 1945, and grew up in Metz with his divorced mother, his sister and his grandparents, a family of Austrian Jews who had immigrated in France after the Anschluss. He began medicine studies in Nancy, before leaving for Israel at 22, to live in a kibbutz, in December 1968.

In 1971, he became a journalist in the French section of the Israeli radio. Two years later, he became correspondent of RMC, and the next year, senior editor at the news department of Kol Israël. In the beginning of the 70s, he took Israeli citizenship.

Charles Enderlin is an admirer of Judenstaat (The Jewish State). He refers to citations like the parts where Theodor Herzl recommends confining religious leaders "in temples, like we will confine the professional army to its barracks".

In 1981, he became correspondent of the French television channel Antenne 2, where he obtained the title of Grand reporter ("Grant Reporter") in 1988. Three years later, he became chief of the Israeli antenna of France 2.

He became an expert on the political and diplomatic process of normalisation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, an experience which helped him write an overview of the negotiations in 1997 (Paix ou guerre, les secrets des négociations israélo-arabes 1917 - 1997, Peace or War, the Secrets of Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations, 1917 - 1997).

He later became familiar with the important leaders of the Peace Process, which allowed him to have a privileged view of the peace negotiations in Camp David in 2000. This became an important part of his book Shattered Dreams, published in 2002.

This book, as well as the "Al-Dura affair" (see [Muhammed_al-Dura]) induced outrage in some parts of Israeli public opinion, as well as in some circles of the French Jewish intelligensia close to the Israeli far right wing [1] (http://www.zescoop.com/news.php?id=1330). (see below)

He is vice-president of the Association of Foreign Press Correspondents in Jerusalem.

al-Dura Controversy

In autumn 2000, pictures of the young Muhammed al-Dura, shot dead during a firefight between the Israeli army and Palestinian activists, appeared on French television. Charles Enderlin commented on the images (taken by Talal Abou Rahmeh, a Palestinian cameraman of his team) and instantly became the target of a violent denigration campain.

On the Internet, Jewish French-speaking web sites politically close to Ariel Sharon accused him of having doctored Muhammed al-Dura's death. More widely, a heated harassment campaign began, on the grounds that the very harsh images, which had been broadcasted in loop by some Arab channels, would increase the violence in Israel, and that their diffusion amounted to a crime. "These images will cause more harm than weapons" was the typical formulation of the critic.

The "Ligue de Défense Juive" (Jewish Defense League, an extremist movement forbidden in Israel) made a public call for a "demonstration against France 2 lies". More violent sites, while denying the incident, made explicit incitement to physical violence (The most infamous instance is the extremist web site "amisraelhai.org", which published a list of "bad Jews to be re-educated with baseball bats"). Numerous Jewish organisations, often referred to as "extremists" in mainstream French press, awarded Charles Enderlin the "Goebbels Prize" for disinformation. The very polemical nature of this public insult actually induced more support for Enderlin than it created suspicion against him (see notes for more details).

Note that "the Israeli army has admitted that it was probably responsible for killing [ the] 12-year old-Palestinian boy (...) and has expressed sorrow at his death" (BBC, [2] (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/954703.stm)).

Generally, the very heated critics coincided with a movement in France by supporters of Ariel Sharon, and similar political tendencies (Likoud France), to systematically discredit journalists expressing criticism against Israel (see [3] (http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2002/12/VIDAL/17276)). Four years later, on the 18th of November, France 2 filed a "Lawsuit against X" for "Public Defaming".

Quotes

• "What he says about terrorism during the Algeria War can by applied to the Israel-Palestine conflict. He explains quite clearly, for instance, how, from the moment where the oppressed takes arms against the occupier, he crossed the line of moral interdiction. And he also describes very well the atrocious marriage of terrorism and repression."

(about Albert Camus's Réflexions sur le Terrorisme)

• "When a press correspondent starts working while thinking about the reactions which will be induced by his information, he is dead meat."

• Antisemitism in France is "a French problem, which belongs to the French police and to French justice. Not to the press".

• "If my Editor-in-chief decided that such or such subject should be filmed differently because of such or such possible reaction, I would face a major problem. This never occurred".

• In Israel, words will trap you from the first moment. As soon as you talk about Cisjordania or Judea-Samaria, according to whether you say "Occupied Territories" or "Territories" only, you will automatically be classified as pro-Palestinian or pro-Israeli. It is complicated, perhaps impossible, to escape it. I try using the UN formulation. You have to be distant, forget who you are. "

• About how Israel imposed the vision of Arafat as sniper of a "generous compromise" : "This is a mystery. Reality is this: in Camp Davis, Israel never offered a Palestinian state upon more than nine-tenths of Cisjordania, nor conceded the sovereignty of the Arab quarters of Jerusalem and the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount. Arafat never demanded the effective return of three million refugees. Moreover, it would be dishonest to say that everything collapsed from this moment. On the 23rd of December 2000, Bill Clinton made his "parameters" public, which were much more advanced than the progress from the summer. Why so late? Probably because Ehud Barak had asked him to do so, not to "reward violence", as the al-Aqsa Intifada had just broke out. During the Taba talks, in January 2001, we were close to an agreement. But months of work would be missing.

Books

• Shattered Dreams: The Failure of the Peace Process in the Middle East, 1995-2002 ISBN: 1590510607 (2002)

(Le Rêve brisé : Histoire de l'échec du processus de paix au Proche-Orient (1995-2002))

• 1997: Paix ou guerre,les secrets des négociations israélo-arabes 1917 -1997 (éd.Stock)
• Shamir, une biographie (1991)

See Also

• Camp_David_2000_Summit
• Israeli-Palestinian_conflict
• Proposals_for_a_Palestinian_state

Notes

The "Goebbels prize" was awarded by a "Collective against disinformation", which included :

• ABSI - Keren Or
• AJGE (Association des Jeunes Juifs des Grandes Ecoles)
• Amitiés Judéo-chrétiennes de Boulogne
• Amitiés Judéo-chrétiennes de Toulouse
• Association France-Israël
• Avocats sans Frontières
• Centre Simon Wiesenthal
• Cercle d'Etudes Hébraïques de Loire-Atlantique
• CIMO (Comite Information Moyen Orient)
• Comité Mondial pour la Justice et la Paix
• Forum Citoyen Juif
• G2PI
• HEVEL (Association Internationale d'Aide aux Victimes de la Violence)
• Ligue de Défense Juive
• Ligue contre la désinformation
• Maccabi-Inter Créteil
• Maccabi-inter Sarcelles
• MIGDAL
• SASSOUN (Association d'amitie du peuple armenien avec le peuple juif)
• SIONA
• TASK FORCE
• UPJF (Union des Patrons Juifs de France).

Most of these associations are close to the views of the Likud or Ariel Sharon. Some of these associations are recognised as far-right movements (the Ligue de Défense Juive, forbidden in Israel, MIGDAL, G2PI); "Avocats sans Frontières" is linked to "association France-Israël", "Droit à la Sécurité (DALS)" and "Ligue internationale contre la désinformation", since they all count Gilles-William Goldnadel (a polemical lawyer, self-defined as "a combat Jew") as a prominent member of their direction [4] (http://www.communautarisme.net/index.php3?action=page&id_art=45433).

External Links

• Other Press page about Charles Enderlin (http://www.otherpress.com/display_bio.php?name=EnderlinC&desc=Written%20by&BP=%2Fsearch_results.php%3Fcmd%3Dsame)
• jewishjournal.com (http://www.jewishjournal.com/home/preview.php?id=10534) Shattered Dreams' 10 Years After Oslo We learn what was offered at Camp David. by Ethan Bronner, The New York Times
• Interview With Charles Enderlin (http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0309/14/sm.14.html)
• Biography on France2.fr (http://contrecourant.france2.fr/article.php3?id_article=35) (in French)
• Interview (http://contrecourant.france2.fr/article.php3?id_article=33) (in French)
• L'express (http://livres.lexpress.fr/entretien.asp/idC=4606/idR=5/idTC=4/idG=0) (in French)
• La stratégie de harcèlement judiciaire de Gilles-William Goldnadel (http://www.communautarisme.net/index.php3?action=page&id_art=45433) (in French)
• La haine envers Charles Enderlin, correspondant de France 2 à Jérusalem : Pourquoi ? (http://c.asselin.free.fr/french/enderlin.htm) (in French)