#nidra poller

[chantssecrets]

James Baldwin, Ted Joans and Archie Shepp at the house of Nidra Poller, Paris 1975

Photo © Marion Kalter

[dignityandtenderness]

How C. Carr writes about David Wojnarowicz's forced introspection in Paris--a trip more escape, more adventure than privilege. (I would've run from those parents, too.) How Wojnarowicz finally started connecting his gut to the world, how he saw these Ernest Pignon-Ernest Rimbauds everywhere. Wojnarowicz's confidence in what he wrote and archived, in his "age and rest and movement and drawings", even as he talked about "sparing" certain things (love, mostly) from the typewriter.

How, though Wojnarowicz never visited galleries portfolio in tow, he sent a manuscript to Nidra Poller and met up with her to discuss it. "All through the journals," notes Carr, "he has written with no cross-outs, no words added in margins, no second thoughts."

[garbanzotoons-blog]

Though fed into the news stream, the Dura report was not produced as news. What was it, then? Sloppy journalism? Crafty Palestinian propaganda? Perhaps a new form of street theater: a staged killing to represent the very real "murder" of Palestinian children, year in year out, at the hands of merciless Israeli soldiers? Or, more gently, a staged representation of the real killing of Palestinian children caught in the crossfire of an endless conflict? These and similar hypotheses fly in the face of the testimony of the sole eyewitnesses—Talal Abu Rahma and Jamal al-Dura—and the France 2 correspondent who brought the incident to the world's attention.

Careful study of the literature shows that no credible defense of the Dura scene as a legitimate news item has ever been formulated. Arguing the case that they brought before the French courts as plaintiffs against media watchdog Philippe Karsenty and other defendants, Enderlin and the France 2 hierarchy were unable to furnish any new material evidence to prove the video's authenticity.[7] Likewise, in his recently published Un Enfant est mort, the author rehashes the original narrative, twisting and tweaking here and there to cover with new inventions some of the glaring anomalies exposed by his detractors.

Here is an example of the method and its madness: What became of the spent shells left at the feet of the victims, which would furnish irrefutable proof of the source of the alleged forty-five minutes of uninterrupted gunfire? The France 2 cameraman Abu Rahma, who has repeated in countless interviews the enveloping narrative that gave substance to his brief non-graphic video, was no match for Esther Schapira of the German broadcast network ARD, who caught him in a convoluted explanation of the disappearance of the spent shells.[8] First, he told her that the Palestinian general Osama al-Ali had the bullets, to which she argued that she had footage of the general denying that he had the bullet casings. Abu Rahma stumbled, then admitted that France 2 had them, breaking into an irrepressible smile of pure deception.

Now Enderlin sets the record straight: "If Esther Schapira had bothered to ask, she would have learned that the Palestinian general Osama al-Ali went to the site early in the morning after the death of Muhammad al-Dura to examine the barrel and, so doing, he put the stone back on top of it, as it was in the France 2 video. He also gathered all the spent shells and asked our cameraman not to tell anyone."[9]

Is this the work of a responsible French-Israeli journalist and his loyal Palestinian cameraman? Is no one shocked or embarrassed by this confession? Did the dozens of French journalists who signed a petition in defense of Enderlin, victim, in their eyes, of conspiracy theory whackos backed by a communitarian lobby, read this passage? Did the journalists who served Enderlin a microphone on a silver platter in so-called interviews to promote this book ever read that passage? Or would they argue: "In case you don't know it, journalists have a right to protect their sources." Their colleague, Enderlin, demeans every individual, newspaper, magazine, or online media that has dared to cast doubt on the authenticity of the Dura incident.[10]

[garbanzotoons-blog]

In May 2004, tens of thousands of mostly Jewish marchers protesting terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians and assaults on Jews in France chanted "Synagogues brûlées, République en danger [torched synagogues, endangered republic]."[1] Today, when the situation of French Jews has jelled into an uneasy truce—with a slow but steady decrease in population, sustained immigration to Israel, and avoidance when possible of heavily Muslim neighborhoods—the French republic is in danger as the anti-Jewish thuggery has been extended to the general population, the "dirty Frenchies" and "filthy whities."

France's politique arabe (pro-Arab policy) has been unwittingly transposed to the domestic scene. The twisted logic and adulterated ethics devised to blame Israel for failing to bring peace on earth has come back to haunt the French. A compassionate discourse that excuses Palestinian atrocities against Israeli civilians as a reaction to "injustice" also excuses French domestic criminality as payback for colonization, discrimination, exclusion, unemployment, and police harassment. Confusion between avowed genocidal intentions and elusive legitimate aspirations—a Palestinian state living side by side in peace with Israel—breeds confusion at home between insurrectional thugs and frustrated but law-abiding immigrants. The "disproportionate reaction" accusation played like the ace of spades against Israel turns into a joker when riot police are portrayed as Robocops oppressing a "Palestinized" immigrant population. Having expropriated the moral high ground by rough riding over the heads of Israeli soldiers, French authorities are disarmed in confrontations with homegrown shabab or youths.

So Palestinian terrorists are called "militants," Gaza Flotilla jihadists are presented as "humanitarians," and the young French criminals are "youths." This deceivingly generic term used to mask the identity of local Maghrebi and African thugs is a paradoxical translation of the Arabic shabab. Indeed, it is not rare to read of a "36-year-old adult youth" involved in a rumble or suspected of murder.