Journal for the Study of Antisemitism

2009] BETRAYING TRUTH 175
landmark decision that should have been reported and commented upon by
journalists and media lawyers around the world. Yet there was not a word
in any major American newspaper, including the New York Times—whose
masthead famously purports to publish “All the News That’s Fit to Print.”
(Ironically, when former Times executive director Abe Rosenthal was eulogized
two years earlier, he was lauded for his fierceness in confronting
entrenched institution–and for saying: “When something important is going
on, silence is a lie.”) 139
Was Karsenty’s stunning victory–in a case in which he had accused
Enderlin, a renowned journalist, of having aided and abetted the airing of “a
faked death,” a “hoax,” and a “fraud”–not worthy of publication? Was it
not worth an editorial about the global “anger and hate” sown by Enderlin
and his cameraman, in spawning the false, incendiary allegations in the al-
Dura case against Israel? Was it not “news that’s fit to print”? 140
The Times was not alone in ignoring Karsenty’s victory for free media
criticism, in what has been termed a blood libel against the state of Israel.
The mainstream media in France and elsewhere were conspicuously silent.
There was nothing in Le Soir, Le Monde, or Figaro, nor was there any
report on French television. ABC ran a short (190-word) story from
Reuters, but it was not even mentioned on FOX, CNN, or MSNBC, or in
the International Herald Tribune, the Washington Post, or the Los Angeles
Times. 141
The Wall Street Journal did comment in passing that it is “hard to
exaggerate the significance” of the court decision that “called the [al-Dura]
story into doubt.” 142
Antisemitic Incidents
Antisemitic incidents occur with such regularity in France today that it
might be understandable that not every one of them is widely reported.
Those that elicit comments from the government, however, should not
escape notice.
In June of 2008, a boy of seventeen named Rudy Haddad was walking
in a larger Jewish arondissement in Paris, wearing a skullcap, when he was
set upon by 15-30 “African immigrants” and beaten brutally. Although
French President Nicolas Sarkozy told reporters that he was “particularly
139. See Editorial, “Abe Rosenthal of the Times,” New York Times, May 12,
2006, p. 32.
140. See Levin, supra note 133.
141. Id.
142. Editorial, Wall Street Journal, May 27, 2008.