Eleven years after the al Dura hoax -- produced and broadcast by state-owned France 2 TV -- the same outfit treats us to a ludicrously staged Palestinian State promotional film.  Was the 2陆 -hour "documentary" aired on October 3 in the geopolitical magazine Un 艙il sur la plan猫te (an eye on the world), a chef d'oeuvre in the campaign to destroy the Jewish State or a last gasp of shopworn Palestinianism¹?

Looking at the world through keffieh-colored glasses, MC Etienne Leenhardt disingenuously asks: "Is the creation of a Palestinian state still possible?"  First stop, Ramallah.  Chic, modern, bustling with business and a humming bureaucracy that maintains law and order...everything you need to make a state.  How did Ramallah get so shiny and peaceful?  What keeps it from tumbling into the maw of the Islamists who rule Gaza?  Who is financing its prosperity, and what does the "wall" have to do with it?  Don't ask.  Leenhardt and cohorts know why the Palestinians don't have the state they've been yearning for since the days of Adam and Eve: it's because the cruel, heartless, murderous, land-grabbing, gun-slinging Israelis colonize their land!

One brief scene sums it up.  A Palestinian in the West Bank (Judea-Samaria) points to a clump of trees in the near distance and laments: "You see that fertile land over there?  That's what the colonists [Israelis] took for themselves.  They left us this arid stuff."

The indictment builds and incriminates.  The Israelis/Jews stole the land, siphon off the water, erect a wall between a man and his fields, expropriate the very holiness, and, one could assume, took all the fertile intelligence for themselves, colonizing the Nobel prizes and leaving the Palestinians with nothing but bile.

Actually, this docu-hoax could be used to help the Zionist cause.  It is so grotesque, so crudely fabricated, so false and so dishonest that it sheds light on the subtle twists of more sophisticated products that weave their way through public discourse, gradually bending minds and condoning atrocities.  We who have been working tirelessly to expose the Mohamed al Dura hoax can take some comfort in observing that this long-drawn out genocidal hate speech exercise doesn't seem to have the electrifying effect of the September 2000 blood libel.  Unfortunately, this does not rule out a potential increase in thuggery against French Jews.

Intuitively avoiding the fact-check trap, I followed the film without noting one by one the lies, fibs, half-truths, distortions, misconceptions, and twists that would have distracted from a cogent analysis of the overall enterprise.  The five-part broadcast, presented as the work of globetrotting reporters who gathered the facts at ground level, was a total fabrication -- so much so that Uzi Landau, granted a short minute to say that no sovereign nation would give free rein to an entity determined to exterminate it, seemed unreal, even when you know him personally.

What was the point of broadcasting this fictional documentary a few days after Mahmoud Abbas made his U.N. Security Council bid for recognition of a Palestinian state carved out along the 1947 partition lines with Jerusalem as its capital and a funnel to pour millions of "refugees" into the temporarily surviving rump state labeled "Israel"?  Whom did France 2 hope to convince with its overblown, slapdash, hysterically hyped, sleazy marketing film?

Was it aimed at the European Parliament?  If it's possible to be less discriminating than the U.N., the European Parliament is your man.  Was it tailored for UNESCO, whose advisory board giddily recommended admission of a Palestinian state?  We're the cultural arm of the U.N., dahling, we don't have to quibble about mundane things like borders and democratic institutions.  Palestine, for us, is a fashion statement.  Was it a sop to our local punk jihadis...if they had the patience to sit through this yawn-a-minute, low-testosterone production?

Or was it simply made to order for the choir that never tires of preaching to itself: print media, academics, NGOs, and value-added Jews who certainly slurped up Avrum Burg's six minutes of pontifications?  For these aficionadas, the repetition of the word "colon" ("colonist") is as thrilling as a lap dance.  According to St茅phane Juffa of Metula News Agency, the Arabic mustaotinin -- settler -- is systematically mistranslated as colon.  Hallowed places like Jerusalem are polluted with colons, and in Hebron, Palestinians have to share their "mosque" with the colons: "On their Sabbath and holidays, it's half of our mosque for them, half for us."  The "mosque" is no less than the synagogue built over the Cave of Machpela, said to be the tomb of Adam and Eve, Sarah and Abraham, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Leah.

Apparently aligned with the jihad practice of launching attacks on Jewish holidays, France 2 threw its Eye on the Planet in our faces during the "days of awe" between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.  The reaction was rapid and forceful.  France 2 has learned nothing from the al Dura fiasco.  But we have!  Thinkers, writers, associations, and honest citizens are speaking out.  The CRIF (Jewish umbrella organization) and the Israeli embassy publicly protested and will be meeting with France 2 authorities later this month.  Samy Ghozlan of the BNVCA (national bureau for vigilance against anti-Semitism) is filing a lawsuit.

As usual in France, when Jews and their allies protest against incitement to hatred, they are accused -- first, of censoring the media, and second, of bad faith, clannishness, thin skin, emotional overreaction, dual loyalty, refusal to face the truth of their (i.e., Israel's) pernicious deeds...and finally, they are dumped into a Protocols of the Elders of Zion cesspool.

The corporation of journalists stands shoulder to shoulder to protect France 2 and its planetary eye from the wicked Jews.  The monotonously unanimous war cry is "there are no factual errors in this program."  Charles Enderlin of al Dura fame says so, and he should know.  All the guys and girls who worked on the film  -- it took five months, by golly-- say so, and how could they be wrong when everything they said, showed, and recorded is 100% factual?  Every Palestinian who walked, talked, and gestured in front of their cameras spoke the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth.

They have the good Professor Walt on their side.  Jimmy Carter, too.  One is led to understand from the "Israel Lobby" segment that American journalists, unlike their French counterparts, are not free to give the facts on the itchy Mideast conflict.  Are the garish lighting and harsh camera angles reserved for The Lobby factually true?  Does AIPAC hand out envelopes to puppet politicians?  A journalist fingered by CAMERA for not painting a pretty picture of Israel can't get work anywhere in the U.S., right?  What's not factual about the choke-gulp-gasp panorama of Christian Zionists?  The big guns aimed at Glenn Beck?  The outrageous behavior of Israel-lobbied congressmen and women who threaten to punish the Palestinians for trying to put together a decent state?  Aren't these people and their organizations objectively lurid, shady, manipulative, and permanently accompanied by dramatic here-comes-the-villain music?

And if you don't like it, you're a dirty Jewish censor, n'est-ce pas?  The representative of the Israeli embassy said, "Press freedom, yes -- freedom to incite hatred, no."

What's not to hate?  The plight of a Muslim family in Hebron -- plump mother in hijab/djellaba, mustachioed father, numerous wide-eyed children, a spoon-fed baby -- who can't go anywhere, do anything, live, breathe, or swallow in peace, because of the colons.  Here, you see this window in the kitchen?  The colons were always throwing rocks at it.  The broken glass went into our food.  Now we covered it with a steel shutter.  No sunlight, but it's better than having glass in our food.  The farmers of Gaza want to feed the hungry population...their fields just happen to run along the border with Israel.  Israeli soldiers pop them off like clay pigeons.  Helpers from the International Solidarity Movement (presented as an impeccable source of information and disinterested action) radio the soldiers: "We'll be here for a short time...just to pick our crop.  We aren't doing any harm."  Ha! They take three steps and the soundtrack crackles with the ping-zing and evil snickers of faceless sharpshooters.

Eye on the Planet caught a strangely muted glimpse of the "internationally famous" Charles Enderlin "interviewing" Nabil Shaat.  It looked like a spliced image -- the two don't appear in the same frame.  Enderlin whispers a few semi-questions, and the rest of the sequence is Shaat, supremely alone, spouting off about how they had tried everything for decades, but the Israelis just don't want to make peace, don't respect any agreement they sign, don't stop chomping away at our land to make colonies, kill our people, send dogs against them, we had no choice but to go to the U.N.  We are ready for statehood.

At this writing, a meeting is scheduled with France T茅l茅vision's news director Thierry Thuillier, former chief of the Oeil sur la plan猫te program, who has ominously warned: "They [president of the CRIF and a representative of the Israeli embassy] have something to say to us, but we have something to say to them."  What?  Is there an insult or accusation that was not included in the broadcast?  Something saved to throw in the faces of those who dare to protest?

What can we say to reporters with no scruples, no depth, no sense of fair play, who have been covering the conflict year in, year out with no regard for the truth?  How can you reach journalists who have crossed into the Palestinian camp and see nothing wrong with stamping a promotional film with the logo of state-owned French television?

The Eye on the Planet outfit has announced its line of defense: there are no factual errors in the report.  Wouldn't it be wise to sidestep and attack at the fundamental level?  For, in fact, the entire report is a lie; the "Palestinian State" defended in the film by French journalists and at the U.N. by Mahmoud Abbas is a lie.  The sixty-plus years of Palestinian distress is due not to the lack of a state, but to the frustration at not being able to implement a genocidal project.  The security barrier, checkpoints, Gaza blockade, and other vexations deplored by the Planet's Eye are not impediments to Palestinian statehood; they are a direct consequence of the genocidal project.  And everything in the report, from the hustle and bustle of Ramallah to the house keys of Palestinian refugees to the fifth generation in Lebanon who participates in that genocidal project, has nothing to do with statehood.  The only possible effect of the pretentious Eye on the Planet episode will be to further the genocidal project by enflaming hatred against Jews, without bringing Palestinians one inch closer to a theoretical statehood that they have never pursued.

If I were invited to the face-to-face, I would be dignified, imperious, and unemotional.  No hint of lamentation or supplication.  As long as the genocidal project hides behind the term "Palestinian State," I would say that it is logically and materially impossible to envision any normally functioning civil entity under the same label.  It is counterproductive to quibble over details.  Your film embraces the genocidal project.  It is disgraceful, but it will fall by the wayside.  We are strong.  You are foolish.  Adieu.

Addendum:

October 17: Christian Denisot, a 45 year-old unemployed IT technician, holds hostage the Director and her assistant in a state employment agency in the 11^th arrondissement of Paris. Several hours later the hostages are released, unharmed. Monsieur Denisot's gun was a fake. But the 20-page Manifesto transmitted by Denisot, curiously enough, gives short shrift to the travails of the unemployed. According to Pierre Haski, editorial director of the Rue 89 blog [1], 15 pages were devoted to a denunciation of the "extremist Zionist fringe groups" that have poked a "black hole" in our democracy. Denisot declares that the purpose of his act was to awaken society to the dangers of these Zionists, namely the Betar, the Jewish Defense League, the CRIF, and Samy Ghozlan of the BNVCA. Citing various incidents that occurred over the past ten years, Denisot claims these organizations confuse anti-Zionism and criticism of Israeli government policies with anti-Semitism, and get away with it.

Shortly after taking the hostages, Denisot contacted Rue 89 and specifically asked to speak to the specialist on Mideast affairs. He kept a running conversation with Haski throughout the operation and finally surrendered after the police had assured him that his message had been relayed to major media and broadcast publicly. In fact, outside of Rue 89 his message was either not mentioned or dismissed as "vague." I contacted Rue 89 this morning to request a copy of the Manifesto and was told that Haski, who has an appointment with the police today, cannot transmit it "because it hasn't been published."

Will it eventually be made available? I have my doubts. But I will try to contact some of those "extremist Zionist fringe groups" to see if they at least have had access to the document that incriminates them.

The comparison with the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik is intriguing. In both cases, a "native" European focused on Muslims or Jews attacks his own. Will those who accused anti-jihad thinkers of propelling Breivik now suspect Un 艙il sur la plan猫te of inspiring the hostage-taker? 

¹Blurbs for the five segments:

A working State? by Martine Laroche-Joubert and Thierry Breton : There is already a working administration in Palestine. International organizations congratulate the management of ongoing affairs. The West Bank is much more modern than South Sudan, the State most recently admitted into the UN...

1000 faces of Gaza, by Katia Clarens and Val茅rie Lucas : Besides the West Bank there is the Gaza Strip, run by the Islamists of Hamas, infamous for bloody suicide attacks in Israel. In retaliation the territory is subjected to a blockade. In retorsion Hamas sends rockets to Israel, that counter-attacks... Violence that severely penalizes civilians. A majority has nothing to do with Hamas and wishes they would leave. But there are also Salafist groups that find Hamas too moderate... Exclusive report.

Frontiers of Discord, by Alexis Monchovet and Sophie Claudet: There are other obstacles to the creation of a Palestinian State. First, frontiers. The Israelis don't want to hear anymore about the lines traced before the Six-Day War. For strategic or religious reasons, they multiply colonies in the West Bank, monopolizing the water and the best land. Jewish colons also settle in and around Jerusalem. How can a viable State be created under these conditions?

And the right of return? by Negar Zoka and Malek Sahraoui: Another concern, the Palestinian refugee question. There are approximately five million outside the territories. More than in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The right of return is transmitted from generation to generation. In Lebanon some have been rotting away for more than 60 years in unsanitary camps. Only a minority can return to Israel or Palestine.

The pro-Israel lobby in the United States, Estelle Youssouffa and Christophe Obert: Despite UN Resolutions, Israel has long been able to count on unfailing support from the top world power. Because the Israeli lobby is very influential in the United States, with a mixture of Jewish organizations and conservative Christians. Their pressure weighs with all its weight on American foreign policy. But the Arab Spring has redistributed the cards.