Despite the gracious and fraternal tone of A.B. Yehoshua's letter to Gideon Levy in Haaretz, the concluding paragraph has a curious effect on the letter's contents:

Please, preserve the moral authority and concern that you possessed, and your distinctive voice. We will need them again in the future, which promises further ordeals on the road to peace. In the meantime, it would be best for us all - we and the Palestinians and the rest of the world - to follow the simple moral imperative of Kantian philosophy: "Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.

Curious because, well, one may as well condescendingly remind an astronomer of the Ptolemaic model of the solar system, and implore them to apply it across the board. Kant was a great thinker on the limits of reason  and a compelling enough moral thinker on many fronts, but the categorical imperative is only his famous, not the most useful of his contributions. Most have heard of it, but few have heard of the Problem of the Enquiring Murderer. It goes like this: according to the Kantian imperative, we should all tell the truth all the time. So what if a murderer asks you to disclose the location of a person he wants to kill?

The imperative neglects the fact that two notions of the good can often conflict. Many of our most fiercely debated issues of the day hinge on how adamant one is about the correctness of his or her judgment regarding which of several conflicting goods is greatest. Take Iraq, for instance. It can hardly be disputed that civilian casualties and a five year occupation are bad and that it would have been good to have avoided both. And yet, the discontinued existence of Saddam Hussein's regime is a good thing, too. Tempers rise and explode over this question of conflicting goods. Kant is of no use to us in these moments...unless one hopes to lend the sheen of universality to one's own assessment of the good.

Perhaps it is to my slight advantage that I'm not familiar enough with Levy's coverage of the current conflict in Gaza to make a fair assessment of whether Yehoshua's criticisms are fair. To read only the letter, I'm led to conclude that the two have agreed on many key points in the past with regards to Israeli wrongdoing, but that now Yehoshua feels Levy has overstepped the bounds from rational critic to unfair detractor of a just war. He goes on to note several instances where Levy's omissions or judgments have undermined his once-laudable moral authority. But there is sleight of hand here. Despite the fact that many of the most honest pro-Israeli intellectuals doubt the ability of the current military campaign to effectively deter future missile strikes, Yehoshua writes:

All we are trying to do is get their leaders to stop this senseless and wicked aggression, and it is only because of the tragic and deliberate mingling between Hamas fighters and the civilian population that children, too, are unfortunately being killed.

just moments after he points out that he has asked Levy whether he

truly believe[s] that if they fire missiles the crossings will be opened, or the opposite. And whether you truly believe that it is right and just to open crossings into Israel for those who declare openly and sincerely that they want to destroy our country.

The consistency Yehoshua demands of Levy would require the realization that the tactics are either both futile or they are both justifiable. But then Yehoshua implies something of great import in the latter statement without coming right out and saying it: Hamas can't be persuaded or dealt with because it its ideology is genocidal and irrational. But if this is so, as I believe it is, then one must also accept that, unless Israel plans to oust Hamas and occupy Gaza (the America-in-Iraq model), no amount of force can be truly thought to be accomplishing forseeable objectives. It is, then, as pointless and doomed to impotence as are Hamas' rocket attacks designed to "open the crossings."

The most depressing thing about the current conflict and the coverage of it is that time and again we are offered two competing visions of the good and treated as if we must be categorical about one or the other. And always the implication from each side rings, as Yehoshua's letter does, of sanctimony and myopia. But Kant had a better lesson. His second formulation of moral law suggests that we treat each individual rational being as an end in itself, never as a mere means to an end. By adhering to this formula, one is permitted to insist on both supposedly competing visions of the good, while also insisting that no rational being be treated as merely a means to that end. One can argue for an end to dual stranglehold on Gaza by Hamas and Israel, remain opposed to Islamist fanaticism as well as colonialism, while remaining opposed to every casualty inflicted as players on each side cynically treat Israeli and Palestinian civilians as means to their supposed end.

From Haaretz:

French public television network France 2 on Tuesday revealed they had aired photographs that allegedly showed destruction caused by the Israel Air Force during Operation Cast Lead, which were in fact taken during a different incident in 2005, one in which Gaza civilians were killed by an explosion caused by militants in the Strip.

The footage aired on Channel 2 on Tuesday afternoon showed dozens of dead bodies, including Hamas gunmen and citizens, which the channel said were killed by an IAF bombing raid on January 1st. It later came to light that the channel had instead aired footage of the devastation caused after a truck full of explosives blew up in the Jabaliya Refugee Camp.

A news editor at France 2 told Le Figaro Tuesday that they had "made a mistake by airing those pictures," which he said depict events from 2005.

I will in all seriousness credit France 2 with acknowledging its mistake, even if it means that the original images it broadcast have already been propagated and have already done their unavoidable damage. I'll also go so far as to not draw any definitive conclusions about the current integrity of a television network whose Israeli bureau chief, Charles Enderlin, has, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary -- last legitimized* by the Paris Court of Appeal -- maintained his position that the IDF was responsible for the alleged shooting death of Mohammed al-Durrah, a 12 year-old Gazan whose "martyrdom" has been called the Palestinian Dreyfus Affair. Reporters are not necessarily defined by their news organizations (Marx wrote for the New York Tribune), and vice versa.

War reporting, it must also be said, is prone to errors, and some errors carry heavier consequences than others. Whatever the truth behind France 2's admission of an honest mistake, it does emphasize an important point raised recently by Jeffrey Goldberg about the stupidity of the IDF's decision to disallow foreign correspondents into Gaza.  There are good, honest print, TV and photo journalists from all countries--not least of all, ours --willing to expose the very real tragedies of war, and also the heinous propaganda efforts which seek to fabricate new tragedies for ideological purposes. (As Jeff points out, Hamas is unconscionably adept at doing just that.)

Still, that this snafu comes at a moment that demands great sensitivity and fastidious attention to detail, whatever one's politics or sympathies, indicates a gross dereliction of duty on the part of France 2. Whoever is responsible for running old images of dead Palestinians--killed, no less, by detonated Hamas explosives--should at the very least be kept away from the newsroom for the remainder of the conflict.

(For those curious, the embedded photograph is probably the most famous war photo ever taken, by the unrivaled Robert Capa during the Spanish Civil War. It's entitled "Loyalist Militiaman at the Moment of Death, Cerro Muriano," and is dated September 5, 1936.)

* Ismail's comment below is correct. My original use of the term "substantiated" was technically misleading because the Court did not rule that Karentsy had proven his case, but it did uphold his right -- based on the seriousness and sincerity of his investigation -- to call the al-Durah footage a forgery. There is indeed overwhelming evidence that the tape was a fake. This is not a minor point, and many other critics of France 2's reportage have come to similar determinations. See in particular James Fallows' piece in the Atlantic, "Who Shot Mohammed al-Dura?" The reader is of course invited is make up his own mind, but I would add the following: given the contentiousness surrounding France 2's portrayal of events during the second intifada, might it not have been expected to exercise greater caution in its reporting of the current conflict?

A hero of mine is the Ha'aretz reporter Avi Issacharoff, who, with other journalists, stopped a Jewish pogrom against innocent Palestinians in Hebron. His harrowing report is here, and Dion Nissenbaum has more detail.

I've written about these Hebron settlers before, and have catalogued their extremism. But it needs to be said over and over again: They are a disgrace to Judaism. As the late, great Rabin said of Baruch Goldstein and his degenerate supporters: "You are an errant weed. Sensible Judaism spits you out. You placed yourself outside the wall of Jewish law. You are a shame on Zionism and an embarrassment to Judaism."

The gag order imposed on media reporting of the Shin Bet treason case against Azmi Bishara has been lifted. Unfortunately, we don't know much more now than we did before. But at least it has freed Bishara from enough constraints that he has published a sharp rebuttal to the charges (as much as they are known) in the L.A. Times. Haaretz has reported the case based on anonymous security sources giving their view of the charges. A dubious proposition journalistically, but that seems to be how Israeli media operates giving (too) wide latitude toward government sources. It also would be nice to see a whole lot more "alleges" in this dispatch since otherwise we're to assume we should accept the Shin Bet's allegations as truth. Here is what those sources report:

The police and Shin Bet have sufficient evidence to indict former MK Azmi Bishara for crimes such as contact with the enemy, say sources who have seen the evidence in recent weeks. The sources say it will be very difficult for Bishara to refute the evidence, even if he appears in person to participate in police interviews. ...Most of the allegations involve contact with Hezbollah intelligence agencies, which the police and the Shin Bet say were responsible for collecting intelligence on Israel during the Second Lebanon War. The bulk of the evidence is based on wire taps of Bishara's telephone conversations with Hezbollah agents. These recordings were authorized by the Supreme Court. The evidence also suggests that Bishara assisted Hezbollah in broadening the impact of its attacks on Israel by helping direct its rocket barrages and offering recommendations on how to carry out psychological warfare against Israelis. Bishara is also suspected of transferring to Hezbollah military information, but the military censor has imposed a gag order on that information. In addition to the evidence suggesting that Bishara's activities were tantamount to treason, investigators are working on an angle involving financial violations. The investigators are trying to connect evidence to suspicions that Bishara violated the law forbidding the funding of terrorism. The evidence is based on the testimony of a family of Jerusalem-based money changers who say they have delivered hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash to Bishara's home in Beit Hanina. The funds have also not been declared to the tax authorities as required by law. The investigators have so far been unable to trace the money and are not sure whether Bishara kept the funds or distributed them to other organizations. The police are considering initiating an investigation in a number of countries where the funds are known to have originated or passed through.

Continue reading...

Jewcy contributor Aaron Hamburger stares down the chauvinism at Shmuel Rosner's Ha'aretz blog, wherein writers far and wide mail in their questions. Aaron and Shmuel had a bit of a sparring match, too:

There are a few things in your column that I think should be cleared up. Your sentence "Hamburger himself evinced enough interest in Israel to stay in the country a few weeks and then write a book set there," is misleading because it implies that my background on issues relating to Israel is that of a first-time novice. I have been to Israel more than a dozen times in my life. My family and I rented a house there one summer. I have cousins there. My brother married an Israeli woman and we visited her family several times as well. In writing Faith for Beginners, however, I did not rely solely on my own experience of Israel. I also did copious research and cited a few of my sources in the back of my book.

I don't know what you mean by "Hamburger has said in the past that he is interested only in Americans." (Maybe it would help if you quoted my words directly.) However, if that statement were literally true, why would I write two books set outside of America, first in Prague, then in Israel? Yes, my focus is on America and Americans and the way we deal with the world in an age when American decisions have such profound ripple effects, but certainly not to the exclusion of all others. Anyway, isn't it natural for me to focus on Americans since I am American myself?

What else to call this rebarbative, bullying demand that Israeli universities swear their opposition to Tel Aviv in order to escape a British boycott? Oh, yes, classic English anti-Semitism: 

Israeli universities cooperate with the occupation, and therefore, all coopertion with them should be boycotted," declared Tom Hickey, one of the Britons. "Israel commits terrible, exceptional crimes in the occupied territories. However, he added that he would be willing to cooperate with any Israeli college that publicly denounced its government's activities.

Given that the targeted universities everyday produce scholarship that refutes the worst Jewish chauvinism and mythologies about "Greater Israel," there is absolutely no moral or intellectual legitimacy for an academic boycott. As one professor at Ben-Gurion University pointed out, there is "widespread cooperation between our universities and Palestinian and Jordanian universities; the proposed boycott will damage this cooperation."  Indeed, if there is to be any internal advancement of the peace process and the end of Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza, will not the most persuasive and heeded cases come from liberal Israeli scholars?

What makes this boycott particularly egregious, of course, is that universities of, say, Zimbabwe, Indonesia, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, Venezuela, Cuba, et al. have not been asked to take the same commissar-enacted pledge against their own governments, which not only routinely violate human rights, but commission no public investigations into those violations.