Charles Enderlin

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Charles Enderlin is a journalist of French and Israeli nationality, specializing in the Middle East and Israel. A student of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, he is the author of several books on the subject, including Shattered Dreams: The Failure of the Peace Process in the Middle East, 1995-2002.

Enderlin came to international public attention in September 2000, when he provided the voice-over for a controversial France 2 report that triggered the Muhammad al-Durrah affair, during which Enderlin accused the Israeli army of killing a Palestinian boy, one of the key events at the start of the Second Intifada. Enderlin's reporting of the incident sparked a controversy in France about journalistic standards and freedom of speech.[1]

Contents

[edit] Biography

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 moved to France after the Anschluss. He studied medicine in Nancy, before leaving for Israel in December 1968 at the age of 22 to live on a kibbutz.

In 1971, he became a journalist with an Israeli radio station. Two years later, he became correspondent of RMC, and the next year, senior editor at the news department of Kol Israel. At the beginning of the 1970s, he acquired Israeli citizenship.

In 1981, he became a correspondent with the French television channel Antenne 2, acquiring the title of grand reporter in 1988 ("grand reporter" is a senior title in the French media). Three years later, he became chief of the Israel bureau of France 2, the new name of Antenne 2. As of 2005, he was also vice-president of the Association of Foreign Press Correspondents in Jerusalem.

He has studied and written extensively on the political and diplomatic process of normalization between Israel and the Palestinian Authority [1], and wrote an overview of the negotiations in 1997, published as Paix ou guerre, les secrets des négociations israélo-arabes 1917-1997 (Peace or War, the Secrets of Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations, 1917 - 1997).

[edit] Muhammad al-Durrah reportage and lawsuits

In September 2000, footage of the reported shooting in the Gaza Strip of a Palestinian boy, Muhammad al-Durrah, was broadcast by France 2. Narrating the footage, though not present during the incident, Enderlin stated that al-Durrah had been killed by Israeli troops. He came under intense criticism from French journalists and other commentators, who alleged that Enderlin had no way of knowing, at the time of his report, whether the boy had been killed by Israeli fire, or even whether he had been killed at all.[1]

On October 20, 2006, Enderlin and France 2 won a libel case against Philippe Karsenty of Media Ratings, a French media watchdog, [2] which had published accusations that Palestinians had staged the Muhammed al-Durrah shooting with the knowledge of France 2's freelance Palestinian cameraman. Enderlin and France 2 were awarded symbolic damages of one euro each, and Karsenty was ordered to pay a small fine and court costs. In May 2008, the ruling was overturned on appeal, the court ruling that Karsenty's allegations were legitimate, although it did not examine their accuracy.[2]

On November 28, 2006, a case by Enderlin and France 2 against Pierre Lurçat was dismissed on the grounds that they had not proven that Lurçat was the director of the website Ligue de Défense Juive, [3] which had published a text calling for Enderlin and France 2 to be awarded the "Goebbels Disinformation Prize."[3][4]

[edit] Books

  • Les années perdues : Intifada et guerres au Proche-Orient, 2001-2006 ISBN 2213621500 , Fayard 2006
  • The Lost Years: Radical Islam, Intifada and Wars in the Middle East 2001-2006 (trans. Suzanne Verderber) ISBN 9781590511718 , Other Press 2007
  • Shattered Dreams: The Failure of the Peace Process in the Middle East, 1995-2002 ISBN 1-59051-060-7 (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)

[edit] See also


[edit] References

  1. ^ a b Schwartz, Adi. In the footsteps of the al-Dura controversy, Haaretz, November 08, 2007.
  2. ^ "Reportage sur la mort d'un enfant palestinien: Charles Enderlin débouté en appel", Libération, 21 May 2008
  3. ^ "France 2 Loses The Second al-Dura Trial", Pajamas Media, 28 November 2006
  4. ^ "Affaire Al Dura: France 2 et Enderlin Deboutes", Guysen Israel News, 29 November 2006 (on Ligue de Défense Juive website)

[edit] External links

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