"This film is dedicated to the memory of the American journalist Daniel Pearl, assassinated because he was a Jew..." "This film is not a documentary that professes to be impartial." "It is meant to express an opinion and indignation." "It denounces the great pattern throughout History that has made Jews the scapegoats of the world's woes." "In the last fifty years, the demonization of the Jew has changed." "Israel seems to be the epicenter of a worldwide passion." "Israel is not a state above and beyond criticism, but the will to condemn it, to present its soldiers as rapists or child killers settles other scores, expresses more than a contestation of political policy." "In presenting it as evil-doing by nature there is a will to delegitimize this State, not for what it does but for what it is." "This relentless defamation is an historical enigma." "This films attempts to question it." "The song of peace is not merely a prayer." "Peace is at the heart of all our prayers." "It is the will of the Jewish people." "And we have an incredible will to achieve peace!" "We will make peace!" "DECIPHERING" "Albert Camus makes a beautiful distinction between drama and tragedy." "He says that drama, in literature, is when we quickly identify the good and the bad characters." "Tragedy is when Antigone is right and Creon is not wrong." "In my opinion the Israeli- Palestinian conflict is a tragedy, not a drama." ""There is a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to break down and a time to build up, a time to love and a time to hate..."" "When Yitzhak Rabin quoted from Ecclesiastes that 13 September 1993, in Washington, we thought the time of peace had finally come." "We thought the handshake between Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin would end the war that had been going on for 50 years." "That hope, here in France, was one we shared, we, the makers of this film." "What is the position we speak from, if not that bitter place of crushed hopes." "Wednesday, 27 March 2002 - the night of the Passover Seder which reminds Jews of their liberation from slavery in the Egypt of the Pharaohs." "This feast symbolizes hope in freedom and recalls its universal dimension." "A human bomb, a Palestinian man, exploded in the midst of the guests." "There were 30 dead, 140 wounded." "What was the killer's objective?" "Was he fighting for Palestinian independence?" "What did he want to destroy?" "That 27 March, this survivor of the death camps," "Mrs. Stein Zaoui, whom Hitler hadn't succeeded in exterminating, was finally caught up by history." "She wasn't even sick!" "We went to a celebration, we went to pray!" "I'm a peace activist, I'm in favor of sharing," "I'm for the creation of a Palestinian State, but not with terrorists, not a terrorist State." "For the terrorists, a good Israeli is a dead Israeli." "Never mind if he or she is a peace activist." "Ilan Greilsamer is a professor of political science." "This scholar and peace activist, in favor of returning territories to the Palestinians, doesn't beat around the bush." "I'm speaking from the left I belong to, the Zionist left, the Israeli patriotic and Zionist left if you like, and I personally am extremely critical of Israeli government policy, but from another angle we are far more critical" "of today's Palestinians and Yasser Arafat..." "September 2000" " Intifada" "Violence erupts in Jerusalem and the occupied territories after the leader of the right visits the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount." "Head of Likud, Israel's main right-wing party," "Ariel Sharon has always had a flair for provocation..." "Ariel Sharon is surrounded by nervous bodyguards and policemen." "Muslim faithfuls and Israeli Arab deputies shout at him..." "Mr. Sharon is a provocateur!" "Al-Aqsa is a Muslim site!" "Al-Aqsa is a Palestinian territory!" "TV crews weren't allowed on the Temple Mount." "These images were shot by amateur Palestinians..." "Official history gives 28 September 2000 as the start of the second Intifada with Ariel Sharon's visit to the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount." "This history does not tell the truth." "It has constructed a narrative that makes Israel the responsible and guilty party." "We are dismayed and very preoccupied by this outbreak of violence." "The cause, last Thursday, was an irresponsible provocation at the holy site of the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount." "The day before Sharon's visit, which had been announced by the press for a week, their was a meeting between Arafat and Ehud Barak." "And I can tell you clearly, this is no revelation, that Barak told Arafat, face to face," ""Yes, Sharon is going to the Temple Mount tomorrow."" "And Arafat made no comment." "And for good reason, one can see what this was really about." "Ehud Barak had just accepted that which everybody thought unacceptable to an Israeli, that is, the definitive sharing of Jerusalem, the existence of two capitals for the same city..." "He had even used the word Al-Quds, the holy place, which is the Arab word for Jerusalem." "That was a lot!" "While at Camp David, the official topic of discussion is peace, the Palestinian Authority prepares its children for war." "Here the youngest are 10 and the oldest 16 or 17." "These summer camps last three weeks and have enrolled 20,000 children in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip." "They call for the liberation of Jerusalem." "The Kalashnikov, emblem of ancient battles, has become a training tool." "The Kalashnikov is almost as big as she is." "It's also much more resistant, too heavy for a child's hands." "History has not yet turned the page on fedayin freedom fighters." "That was during another revolution which is not yet finished." "In a time of peace negotiations, such paramilitary training may seem confusing, but don't forget that here, if the Camp David talks fail, violence could again become the order of the day." "Faced with violence since its foundation," "Israel has made terrorism an academic discipline." "In Erzilia, Boaz Ganor is director of the research center on terrorism." "The day before Sharon's visit to the Mount, an Israeli soldier, David Birri, member of a joint Israeli-Palestinian patrol," "was murdered in cold blood by his Palestinian colleague." "This was the real beginning of the Al-Aqsa Intifada." "For several months already, Yasser Arafat and the Fatah were bringing in arms through the tunnels of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip which they intended to use." "Secondly, preparations for this war which was to be launched on 29 September, can be seen in the liberation of the first prisoners of the Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, which, contrary to popular belief, did not take place" "after the launching of the war, but immediately after the Camp David summit." "To show its determination the Palestinian Authority immediately released prisoners of Hamas who were being detained in Palestinian jails." "They are responsible for attacks against Israel since 1993." "There's nothing spontaneous about the Intifada." "There was of course contact between Arab Israeli deputies closest to the PLO and the PLO so that they would play a role in the demonstrations which were also carefully prepared." "In Beirut a Palestinian minister said, showing off to his friends of the Hezbollah," ""The Intifada was planned a long time ago."" "...the detestable Sharon at the Al-Aqsa mosque." "That was the last straw that made the Palestinian people lose their patience." "The Intifada was planned since the return of President Arafat from the talks at Camp David where he stood ground against President Clinton and firmly rejected American conditions in the very heart of America!" "Why weren't these images shown on French television?" "Why was this fast shuffle on official history covered up?" "Why was Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount made out to be the sole cause of the outbreak of violence?" "Clément Weil Raynal, journalist for French Channel 3 television, breaks this collusion of silence." "It's the basic mechanism of disinformation - omission." "We don't talk about it, we bury it, we saw and heard nothing." "This evidence that destroys the thesis put forward for months by the French Press Agency (AFP) that blames Ariel Sharon, well, the AFP totally ignored it." "The Mitchell report goes to the heart of the matter." "A mixed commission" " American - approved by both the Palestinians and the Israelis." "It's going to investigate the actual launching of the Intifada." "What did the AFP write?" "Friday morning they wrote," ""The mission of the Mitchell report is to determine the origin of the violence launched by the controversial visit of Ariel Sharon to the Temple Mount, the third holy place of Islam." "Here's a press agency with a serious reputation that, instead of raising the question and announcing that the question is to be raised, prints the answer in the question!" "There was a terrorist attack in Tel-Aviv that killed 20 and wounded over 100, a human bomb in front of a night club, in a city that is post-Zionist!" "In a city where the population is ready for, even favors, seeing a Palestinian State created, in order to turn the page!" "Well, it's to the very heart of this city that certain Palestinians bring war." "A few days later, the BBC aired a documentary on General Sharon elegantly entitled "The Accused."" "He's the one who's responsible for the atrocious crime of Sabra and Shatila and everything is told as if the only solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict today is to try in court the leader that Israel chose out of despair." "That's beyond understanding!" ""Ein Brera" - we have no choice." "That's the basic saying for the history of Israel." "In February 2001, on the ruins of peace bloodied by the resumption of the Intifada, a majority of Israelis elected Ariel Sharon." "The dream of Rabin, Peres, and Barak exploded with the human bombs of the Hamas." "There remain two types of Israelis." "Those that this tragedy plunges in despair, and those that it carries into euphoria." "The latter, in effect, display a kind of great victorious smile, that says," ""We told you so!"" "I'm on the side of sadness, and I remain a ferocious adversary of the side of euphoria." "A division remains." "If you like, today, there are no longer..." "The Israelis have the sense that there are no more choices." "They come back to "Ein Brera", we have no choice, because there are no more partners." "The Stakes at Camp David" "Summer 2000." "Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak leaves for Camp David, having promised the Israelis peace." "He wants to make peace as he did war - quickly and efficiently." "James Rubin was spokesman for Madeleine Albright and advisor to the State Department." "He took part in all the preparations for Camp David." "He's now an attorney in London." "Israel, in its internationally recognized borders, represents two large French departments." "At its narrowest, between the sea and Tulkarem, the first autonomous Palestinian city, it's less than 14 kilometers wide." "That's six times the Champs-Elysées." "The old city of Jerusalem is one square kilometer in area." "That's the size of the Place-de-la-Concorde, with the Crillon and the National Assembly..." "So we're dealing with areas that are excessively small." "The framework that started at Camp David was based on the premise that stated that this was a process of exchange between territories and peace." "We give territories, we receive peace." "And during the negotiations we reached the conclusion that it was more than that, that even if Israel was willing to return the totality of the territories of the West Bank and Gaza, it would not receive from the Palestinians" "peace in the most profound sense of the word..." "That is, the end of the conflict and the recognition of the moral right of a Jewish State." "In this poker game," "Arafat and Barak aren't playing with the same cards." "Arafat has another joker - holy war." "Palestine has gone beyond its borders, for Jerusalem has become the symbol of Islamic obsessions." "Furthermore," "Arafat has made the Palestinian refugees' right to return an unacceptable demand for Israel, because demographically it would mean the end of its identity." "Attacks by the Hamas and the resumption of the Intifada torpedoed remaining hopes." "And here I think we must refer to an extremely beautiful and just phrase by the prince of strategy, Napoleon Bonaparte, who said, regarding peace," ""Peace is less about harmonizing policies than about harmonizing ulterior motives."" "Yasser Arafat in 1994 in Johannesburg, at the Johannesburg mosque, made a speech, shortly after the Oslo accords, and explained," ""The agreement we made with Israel is provisional." "The Israelis may think it's a reconciliation, that it's a long-term agreement." "But my point of view is that of a Muslim, based on the Koran, and I tell you" "I have a right to do this, even with the unfaithful, because my current position is weak." "I can change positions later!" That's incredible!" "In east Jerusalem, Sari Nuseiba is the first Palestinian leader to have dared break the taboos." "This philosophy professor born in a leading Palestinian family has long advocated the coexistence of two States." "He is the first to have declared that the demand for the Palestinians' right to return to Israel was obviously unacceptable to Israel in the context of a peace settlement." "For having dared to speak freely, Sari Nuseiba today is under threat from the Hamas Islamists." "Al-Quds belongs not only to Palestinians but to Palestine, to the Arab world, to Christians, and to the Muslim community throughout the world." "Al-Quds is the capital of the state of Palestine." "Whoever accepts it, accept it!" "Whoever refuses it, refuse it!" "Whoever doesn't like it, go drink sea water!" "Politically, he was unable to accept that one can't reach an agreement with a united society." "If you want to be a real leader, you must have behind you a society that is not united." "If it's united, you don't reach peace." "He wanted to maintain the solidity and internal cohesion of his society and his political family - Hamas, Jihad, and others - and agree with Israel." "That's impossible!" "If the Hamas is satisfied, that means you don't have an agreement with Israel." "And if Israel's far right is satisfied, you don't have an agreement with the Palestinians." "It's simple - you must divide!" "It's inevitable!" "For two years, Georges Marion was correspondent for the French daily Le Monde in Jerusalem." "He covered both sides of the conflict." "This difficult balancing act requires a rare talent - keeping his writing at a distance from both passion and violence." "Arafat arrived without having made a single statement after Camp David, which was a political error." "In a way he let Clinton say that the failure was because of Arafat." "None of his co-spokesmen dared speak because the leader had said nothing." "He boarded his plane, he arrived in Gaza, and that's when we saw the terrible, fascinating image of a wild crowd cheering him, saying," ""Bravo, you won because you gave up nothing!"" "In other words, You won, because we lost peace." "I've reached the conclusion that the poor man is simply incapable, they ask of him things he can't do." "He's there to be a kind of myth, a mythological representation of the collective will of a people, and not necessarily someone who must make decisions." "It seems to me that the man has never really made decisions." "Instead, he has surfed on the wave of the will of the people." "He has led his people from the back, not the front." "In June 2002, in an interview in the Israeli daily Haaretz," "Yasser Arafat declared that today he would agree to the propositions Bill Clinton had set forth at Camp David." "The Construction of Opinion" "No matter how jaded you are by images of violence, a child dying in his father's arms still provokes indignation and grief." "It was unbearable for everyone." "They were caught in the crossfire, both father and son." "They were screaming." "One should not try to ignore the emotion this image provokes." "Palestinians were using live ammunition." "Israelis returned fire..." "Ambulance drivers, journalists, and passersby were caught in the crossfire." "Here Jamal and his son Mohamed are the target of shots coming from the Israeli position." "Mohamed is 12 years old, his father tries to shield him." "But, another hail of bullets..." "Mohamed is dead." "And his father is seriously wounded." "Every image is in the framing, it involves choice." "Watching it over and over again on television," "I thought that what the Israeli army saw was what the photographer saw." "At the Netzarim intersection, this is what the Israeli soldiers saw from their watchpost." "No one can say for sure whose bullets killed Mohamed Al-Dura." "There is nothing to prove that the father and son were the specific targets of the Israeli soldiers." "What is sure, however, is that the Israeli line of fire wasn't aimed from the same angle as the camera that filmed this death." "This picture shows the different Palestinian and Israeli shooting positions." "The father and son were obviously caught in the crossfire." "This explanation in no way minimizes the tragedy of the 12-year-old child's death." "However, the idea of a deliberate murder suggested by the images and commentary is pure manipulation." "The question is obviously what use you make of it, and whether you have the right to make use of it." "I was perhaps less horrified by the comments in France, even if some got carried away," "than by the general hysteria this image caused in the Arab world." "This death and these images were exploited by the Palestinian Authority to portray the Israeli soldiers as child-killing barbarians." "His father protects him But an evil bullet kills him" "His blood splashes to the sky He cries for help" "This clip from Palestinian television presents an edited version that suggests that the soldier opening fire is Mohamed's killer." "His classmates now must also learn to deal with their grief." "Now you are going to witness the scene in Netzarim when your schoolmate was killed." "At school, they teach hatred of the Israeli monster." "When I saw it on TV, I went to throw stones." "I ask all Arabs to do like the Hezbollah." ""There, that's the true face of Israel, we know it, that's what they do."" "That's when I said to myself, No, this can't be." "There's a great Arab ailment that no one wants to admit." "There's really an anti-Zionism in Arab countries that works exactly like the anti-Semitism in late 19th-century Russia." "Popular discontent is diverted to the Jews." "It's glaringly clear." "The image of Mohamed Al-Dura's death became the emblem of the Palestinian martyrdom." "In the West, this scene gave rise to comments so excessive that you'd think it wasn't about the Palestinians' fate but rather about the Europeans' past." "Radio Europe 1 political analyst, Catherine Nay, commented on the image of the death of young Mohamed Al-Dura, saying its symbolic force was such that it would erase the famous photo of the little Jewish boy in the Warsaw ghetto." "How do you perceive this analyst's reading?" "It's difficult to be a Westerner in regard to what happened in 1939-1945 that somehow people would be delighted..." "I use the conditional, but they'd be delighted to see Jews take on the role of the bad guy." "Somehow it's a way of feeling more comfortable with this past that won't go away." "It's extremely hard, for a lot of people in the West, to accept the idea of a Jewish State, a Jewish society, a Jewish nation." "There's something that goes far beyond political criticism." "The Shoah weighs heavily in relations with Israel." "Europe's past weighs heavily in relationship to Jews." "José Saramago, Portuguese writer and Nobel Prize in literature, on an organized visit to Ramallah, calmly compared the fate of the Palestinian city to that of the Jews in Auschwitz." "If I talk about Auschwitz, it's not to say that there are gas chambers." "No, it's the spirit." "If Ramallah is Auschwitz, then Israel is the new Nazi state." "Is it not legitimate to destroy it by all means possible?" "How are we to explain these recurring, convergent, obsessive arguments, which seek to establish at all costs a parallel between Israel and Nazism, between the star of David and the swastika?" "20 years earlier, a TV news anchorman said the same thing using other words." "These recurrent expressions keep repeating the same thing " "Israel is guilty by nature." "The Israeli soldiers are undertaking a total, systematic clearing out of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon." "A sort of final solution..." "Final solution, final solution..." "And that's not why he lost his job on television, it was later, for having spoken lightly of Grace Kelly's death." "I can't help but notice that disapproval of Israel continues to monopolize critical commentary." ""That Shoah that won't go away,"" "Françoise Giroud wrote in Le Monde." "What is happening today?" "Occasions to transform the Jewish martyr into an executioner..." "How are we to interpret this obsessive presence of the Jew as a symbol in post-war European history?" "How can we not see this convergence of extreme-right and ultra-left discourses to deny the reality of the Shoah or claim to reveal its purpose?" "In the collective European political imagination, it was in 1967 that the status of the Jew and Israel was completely transformed." "A nation of victims had supposedly become" ""sure of itself and dominating."" "The Images" "The first images of the start of the Intifada not yet known as Al-Aqsa show a bloody confrontation between kids and robocops armed to the hilt." ""The War that Kills Children."" "Does this cover tell it all?" ""The War that Kills Children" was a generic name for a terrible war that had just broken out, with a death toll of children that was terrifying." "So we had to do that cover, we had to feature the war that way." "This said, what do our photos show?" "Thierry Esch's photos, three weeks after that cover?" "Fabulous images, you see a sort of beach, kids playing and going up to the Israeli soldiers." "Those images tell the truth, they say, Yes, children are in the front line." "Young Palestinians throw rocks and get hit with rubber bullets, or bullets." "When you're a photographer, when you have to choose between two sides, you go for the side that's likely to be hit the most spectacularly." "I didn't want to say it, you said it," "I don't know exactly, but "spectacularly."" "Obviously, you make photos, therefore images." "But there's also that aspect - it's more spectacular, the photo will be stronger." "It's not that it's stronger, hold on, 120 Israeli soldiers haven't died!" "The Palestinians are getting killed!" " So it's a Palestinian story." " I'm not saying it's not." "Reporting on the Israeli army isn't news!" "It's not a report on the Israeli army, it's a report on both sides, as Daniel said." "In every... in most photos you see both sides - you see the Palestinians and the Israeli jeep facing them." "We're often a bit heavy-handed, even in the printed press..." "But television is even more complex, because images themselves - this is no scoop..." "But TV images tend to represent the schematic side of things, the good guys and the bad guys, the black and the white, rather than complexity and understanding." "Televised images don't like complexity or subtlety, they need a good guy and a bad guy, someone who's right, someone who's wrong." "Do you get the feeling that on one side there's the Israeli army, and on the other children throwing rocks?" "Isn't this situation going to degenerate into a war?" "It's not an army against children, it's really an army against fighting police officers - that's not Intifada!" "The only restriction for taking pictures is when, and it does happen, in defense of the Israelis," "Palestinians in street clothes, between ages 25-40, it depends," "sneak in with weapons and take advantage of the confusion to open fire on the Israelis with real bullets." "There, if you take a picture, or try to, you have real problems." "The Palestinians have been very careful to put there children up front and keep the adults back, with the very specific intention of getting press for the Palestinians." "When I said that to Leila Shaid and Elias Sambar, they said, "What you say is disgusting."" "But it's true." "It's the absolute truth." "In this war that won't speak its name, every image matters." "So demonstrators put children - almost babies - up front." "And since there's no limit to exaggeration, why not put a hood over their faces?" "Today was a day of prayer, and every image mattered." "I'd also like to know..." "Please tell me why Fatah trains boys to go out on the streets armed, putting their fragile lives at risk." "Were you with them?" "Give me proof that what you say is true!" "Mr. President, what message would you like to give to the Palestinian people and children in particular." "I want to tell them that they will be the guides to the future," "the pure and brilliant future" "The future of the independence of the Palestinian State, with Jerusalem as its capital." "The child grasping the stone facing the tank, is it not a great message, when this hero becomes a martyr?" "We are proud of them." "My five children, my land!" "The suicide-squad" "Don't fear the tanks!" "The mine will explode..." "These images of propaganda were barely seen by European audiences." "But the war of images plays on compassion - a Palestinian child must be made into the new David confronting the Israeli Goliath." "Children armed with stones will become front-line actors." "In this children's pageant, children play strange little soldiers." "One portrays Sheikh Nasrallah, the leader of the Hezbollah, the other Sheikh Yacine, the leader of the Hamas." "Dynamite belts are toys, the human bomb a heroic figure." "How do we love a child?" "This question has already been asked by others in other times." "Here, instruction in death is a new aspect of educational discourse." "Neil Macdonald is a Canadian TV correspondent in Jerusalem." "His comments, like his vision of things, are straightforward." "What are we going to say?" "That the Palestinians teach their children to hate Israel?" "What else is new?" "Horror quickly followed on horror." "Two Israeli reserve soldiers lost their way in Ramallah." "They were lynched." "One of the Palestinians takes one of the lynched Israeli's cell phone just when his wife calls him, and the Palestinian says to her," ""I'm in the process of killing your husband."" "When I described the lynching of the two Israeli soldiers in Ramallah," "I wanted to describe it to show both the brutality of what had happened - which explained the hatred - and I wanted readers to understand that we were in a situation of total hatred, not to stigmatize it," "I didn't want to take a stance on each side's hatred, but to say that people who hate do horrible things." "I was criticized for that..." "After the Ramallah lynching, the Palestinian forces harassed and fought with the journalists, they confiscated the tapes..." "So no one would see images of the lynching?" "Because they didn't feel that these images were in their national interest." "I asked Jubli Rajoub - the head security chief in the West Bank " ""Why did you do that?" He denied it..." "It was ridiculous!" "I was there!" "In Palestinian society, in my mind, there's no journalistic tradition, actually." "They are more or less agents of the State, they have a tradition of obeying their government, and they have laws to that effect." "Some news services use Palestinians to do reporting, but I don't..." "The "readymade media analysis" does not bother to check facts." "A press agency, then a U.S. magazine and a French daily published this photo as proof incriminating Israel." "The police officer could only be a bad guy and the bloodied man a Palestinian victim of the ranting policeman." "However, the victim is not Palestinian." "He is an American Jewish student." "His name is Tuvia Grossmann." "His father recognized him in this picture published in the American press." "The policeman was not the aggressor, but his savior, rescuing him from certain lynching." "The scene didn't occur on the Temple Mount as the newspaper caption stated, but in front of a service station at some distance from the Mount." "Too late, the harm was already done on the front page, and the excuse of a technical error was used as an apology, on page 13, a few days later." "We tracked down the ranting police officer." "He is a borderguard, he is a Druze." "This picture, actually, seems to have been rigged to mislead people about the Israeli police and border patrol." "People believed we were like this." "It was just the opposite." "I'd have done the same thing, and even more, if the situation had been any different." "Words" "The power of language is that you can say the same thing, you can tone down a word and yet stimulate the imagination - each person's imagination." "Everyone is left to his or her own design in front of the words." "Deaths, mostly Palestinian, wounded, real bullets fired, rockets launched from helicopters, tanks defied with stones." "War scene in Jerusalem, A southern quarter of the city." "It's apparently from here that Palestinian militia fired Kalashnikovs into the Israeli quarter of Guilo." "Palestinian fire targeting this Jewish quarter where schools are now barricaded." "Mortar shell has fallen on the Jewish quarter of Guilo." "...on houses in the Jewish quarter of Guilo." "Guilo, a Jewish suburb of Jerusalem." "How do you name sites in a land that is thrice holy?" "Between September and October 2000, the status of Guilo changed from "quarter in Jerusalem" to "Jewish colony."" "The Palestinians have fired on the colony of Guilo." "The Jewish colony of Guilo has been the target of..." "From the Jewish colony of Guilo..." "Take the use of the word colonist." "At the AFP, we use the word "colonist" a lot." "If you take a U.S. wire, for instance, they talk about settlements, and "settlement" is much more neutral." "The U.S. don't have a history of colonization, they don't have this reference to a collective memory." "In France, there is actually this reference to a memory." "It's a problem I have myself when I write the word colonist, it's, well, let's say the word is objective, leaving aside the references it evokes for the French with regard to the Algerian war" "or the many colonies we had in Africa and Asia." "But still you can say that it concerns the Israelis who went out of their country to establish settlements, colonies elsewhere, on land that is claimed today by a people that considers it theirs, all right." "In that sense it does describe a reality, all right, they're colonists, that's all." "But the word does have heavy connotations." "In the Judean desert, the village of Tekoa is a colony, as they say." "Tamar Castelnuovo didn't come to colonize it as the French did the Mitidja plain." "What will be the price to pay for peace one day?" "Adherence to the Biblical cadastre contradicts another legitimacy, developed later on the same land." "Dream counters reality, especially when the price of the dream is children dying." "I'm a Jew living in Judea." "It was important to me to build the country here." "You say "Judea," others say "the West Bank,"" "and still others say "the occupied territories."" "Are you colonizing this area?" "To me, colonists are maybe the French in Algeria." "Here, I feel I am, as I said, a Jew in Judea." "I say this assertively because when you dig a little, here there are caves, there is historical research, archeology, we find our roots, our base is here, it's a return to the source, a return to our history." "This is the picture of two Israeli children," "Ilera Rosenberg and Naftali Lanskarot, who were stoned to death in a cave in Tekoa." "To me it is impossible to understand how people..." "First... stone two 12, 13-year-old kids to death, for nothing, and then, mutilate the bodies." "Hatred causes violence to degenerate into barbarism." "For some French press analysts, these youths are also "colonists."" "How can you be a "colonist" at the age of 14?" "This is what I see and here's how I work." "I see it begins with the word murder." ""Murder" is a word that criminalizes, that makes a negative value judgment." "Behind "murder" is a little voice saying, That's evil." "But the complement of "murder," is "two young Jewish colonists."" "Since "young" defines "colonists,"" "and "colonists" is a negative, axiological term, meaning there is a negative value judgment behind colonist," ""young colonists" can also be interpreted as," "They're children, but adult enough already to subscribe knowingly to their elders' position." "So it's understandable, they were legitimate targets for an attack." "I found that label scandalous." "Isn't that title, which Georges Marion regretted, in fact, isn't that ideological writing?" "No, but sure, there can be slips with words that can be overinterpreted like that..." "Why overinterpreted?" "Because you say that in the choice of this headline there's an unconscious gesture that translates a political rationale." "If your question is, pay attention to the words you use, children are children, not colonists, fine, and when children are killed, it's children that are killed, on both sides, in fact, and you have to say so." "When dealing with such a passionate conflict, like any conflict, which... - you won't agree with the word - which I'd say is like any colonial conflict." "My job is interpreting words." "It wasn't for fun that, for a book," "I reread Le Monde articles written during the Algerian war." "How people talked about it, they said "Muslims," not "Algerians,"" "of course not, because it was France, so we didn't say that and in our writing we denied, at the time, the issue of an Algerian nation, we denied the existence of the problem seen by the other side." "Palestine in the Mirror of the Algerian War" "France has been looking back on the Algerian war, on the torture, the declarations made by General Aussaresses and that whole controversy in the French press." "This criticism is concomitant, this critical look at the Algerian past is concomitant with the Intifada here." "I mean, we realize that we French were real bastards in the way we treated the Algerians, using electrodes on them and cutting them up, etc." "And today, those who do that are the Israelis, so there's a sort of canalization of this return to the past, on the criticism of Israel" "and it's very flagrant, it's very obvious, especially with all those comparisons " "Sharon or Barak is Guy Mollet..." "The Algerians and the Palestinians are the same, the torture is the same." "The Shin Beth, the Israeli secret services use torture just as the French did, etc." "That reasoning is still used today and explains why part of that left has allied, not in Palestine, but in Algeria, with the ISF Islamists and tries to excuse their worst crimes." "That's where things get interesting, this ideological battle over Algeria that has taken place in France for years is a precursor to this new battle in the Near East." "A double debt feeds imaginary contemporary French politics," "Vichy and the War in Algeria." "This duality finds a representation in the Arab-Judeo, Israeli-Palestinian conflict." "The same schema is applied to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." "Evil had only one face, the face of colonialism and the face of torture as the ultimate truth of colonialism." "How to master the OAS, represented by Sharon, if DeGaulle-Pasqua-Mollet, or Barak, is aligned with the OAS?" "We are invited to view this war solely from the angle of torture." "What is forgotten in this perfectly one-sided interpretation is FLN violence and Islamist violence." "What I find revolting is the myth of Arab innocence." "I say be careful when you say," "The Israeli-Palestinian situation is the one you had in Algeria." "I have to say, Now wait a minute, that means first of all that Israeli legitimacy is null and void, and above all it means that in the end, we'll have to leave one day." "No, the Israelis won't leave." "It is clearly a matter of common sense to understand that the Israelis are no one's Pieds-Noirs and that they have not been backed by any great rear." "The Representation of Israel" "I've covered many countries, including conflict zones, and I've never seen so many journalists per square foot." "How do you explain it?" "We're entitled to our own opinions." "I suppose this kind of crush, like the subway at rush hour, influences the way we report, because we're obviously in a competitive situation." "If the rival reporter writes something you haven't written or seen, at one point or another, you're under the pressure of what he wrote and vice versa." "During the first year of the first Intifada - from December 1987 to December 1988 - in 5,700 square kilometers of Palestinian territory, what is called the West Bank and Gaza, meaning the size of a French department," "there were more foreign correspondents - about 800 - than on the entire African continent. 56 nation-states, a war of extermination in the Sudan, Apartheid, several wars with hundreds of millions of people, a terrible disease, a pandemic, AIDS - but who cares?" "The holy land is a godsend for journalists." "Operation Rempart in April 2002 saw more than 2,000 vie for the slightest glimpse of those sequestered in Bethlehem or of Arafat's candle." "They all have to be lodged and fed." "Inside the Arab quarter in Jerusalem, the American Colony has a host of advantages above and beyond the comfort of a 4-star hotel in the middle of the third world." "All the press congregates there." "Knowing French society and intellectuals as I do," "I know their sources of information on events in the Middle East are extremely limited." "The French intellectual's main source of information on the Middle East is Le Monde, every day, complemented, if need be, by the evening news and current events TV programs," "and if things are really cooking, another newspaper, another source of information, such as Libération in the morning, and a magazine, such as Nouvel Observateur or I'Express." "That's what they know of the Middle East." "As a result, they rely on the way Le Monde, in particular, depicts events here." "Take Le Monde Diplomatique, which, in its September 2001 issue, explained that at the Taba negotiations in January 2001," "Israel made substantial concessions that went beyond what it had proposed at Camp David " "97% of the territories." "Reading the headlines, I had expected a paper like Le Monde Diplomatique to write," ""The Israelis have gone very far in making concessions, and still the Palestinians turned them down."" "Well, the view of the paper's editorialist was just the opposite." ""You see, the Israelis tried to make public opinion believe they were extremely generous at Camp David." "Hardly!" "They proved at Taba they could be even more generous!"" "In other words:" "they can go much farther, all it takes is a little effort." "It's not the Palestinians who refused, it's the Israelis who weren't generous enough." "A good newspaper is one that won't leave me in peace." "A newspaper that forces me - without offending me, it mustn't offend me, it mustn't insult me, it mustn't alienate me by a kind of total remoteness from my sensibility, culture, what I am, it mustn't reject me..." "But at the same time - and this is where it's useful to me as a citizen - it must guide me to think in ways I'm not accustomed to." "The rule is to think," "How do I explain this to a reader in France, who isn't in the middle of it?" "So I try to explain it in terms that are as simple, clear, and de-fused as possible." "I'm not saying we always succeed, but we try." "Israel is very complicated." "So you have to dissect all that." "And as a result, every time Israel is in a position to reply to a slogan, it finds itself obliged to come up with a discourse." "It must to take the time to formulate a structured response to address only to those of good will." "The heirs of Albert Londres are tired." "Do they know this quote from Albert Camus?" ""To misname things is to add misery to the world."" "How do they depict reality?" "How do they write about what they see?" "How do they show what they film?" "Can one pretend to be objective in this passionate cauldron that is the Middle East?" "Why not give in to prejudice, read complex situations with an eye only on the ratings?" "Name the good and name the wicked." "An AFP dispatch in September 1996 inflamed passions in Jerusalem." "It reported on the digging of a tunnel that would pave the way for the destruction of mosques on the Temple Mount." "Who, then, is the source of this false information about digging a tunnel under the mosques?" "By examining the AFP wires, we realize - and we can say this clearly - that the AFP is behind this false information." "It's the AFP that, one fine morning, decided that this tunnel ran under the mosques." "What's interesting is that the very first wire that morning stated that the tunnel went down along the Wailing Wall." "That's perfectly clear." "The journalist who signed the wire, Isham Abdallah, knows the site inside." "There's nothing vague, he knows full well where the tunnel goes, and he explains very clearly that's it a simple opening, a second opening in the Via Dolorosa, which will allow, to say it simply," "more tourists to get through an existing tunnel which has been used by visitors for many years." "Two hours later, it's not a new wire, not a new analysis, it's the same wire." "You know how the AFP functions, it sends out the same wire." "Except that the title changed." "It's signed by the same journalist, Isham Abdallah, with a new title." ""Palestinian anger - the Israelis dig a tunnel under the mosques."" "In two hours, the tunnel took a 90-degree turn." "One must ask why, if the situation is perfectly clear, it is suddenly twisted into a false information." "Why is it so important that this tunnel..." "Why make us believe that this tunnel runs underneath the mosques?" "The great Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, a member of the PLO, devoted a famous poem to it, considered one of his best." ""I get up one morning and what do I discover?" "That the mosques have been destroyed and the Jews are rebuilding the Temple."" "This falsification works on two levels." "It's directed at Westerners listening to the radio and it legitimizes Palestinian violence." "Yes, there was Palestinian violence but look at the provocation, the attack on holy sites." "When you're the first Arab-language agency, that means that those who listen to Radio Cairo," "Radio Damascus, Arab radios in Ramallah, Bethlehem, even Jerusalem, are listening in their living rooms, kitchens - people who live a few hundred yards from the holy sites are hearing that the Jews have dug under the mosques!" "They're destroying the mosques!" "Just as the great poet Mahmoud Darwish said!" "So it's no surprise that there were a certain number of violent demonstrations that day." "The AFP thus played a role in this propaganda, misinforming, brainwashing the Western public and, what's more serious, the Palestinian public." "The 4 days of clashes exacted a heavy toll." "80 dead, 17 Israelis and 63 Palestinians." "The AFP is the primary source of information for all French-speaking media." "AFP sells its dispatches and images." "Information is also a product." "The AFP is the top Arab-speaking news agency in the world." "It must provide satisfaction to all its customers." "At the start of the Intifada, for instance, last fall, there were - let's say in the first two months - about 300 deaths." "Practically at the same time, in Algeria, it was Ramadan, there were many massacres - about 280 dead." "On Israel-Palestine, the airwaves carried about 250 entries, references..." "What's an entry?" "Entries are reports or news items." "On Algeria, there were about 25 - that is, 10 times less." "What does this imbalance reveal?" "Are 300 Algerians killed by fellow Algerians a normal everyday occurrence?" "What is this unacknowledged racism that depicts inter-Arab massacres as commonplace but denounces all of Israel's actions in this war as barbaric?" "The first reason for this journalistic viewpoint is that Israel is totally accessible and open to all possible media." "They kill our young people!" "The other answer lies in ideology, from which journalism is not immune." "Who in Europe remembers what a frontier was?" "Who remembers that the world was bi-polar until 1989?" "The ideological vacuum created by the fall of Communism may have found in the Palestinian cause another ideological passion, a new third world, in which to redeem the sins of the West." "The Durban Conference" "Durban, South Africa, was the venue for an international conference in Summer 2001 organized under the auspices of the United Nations to denounce modern forms of racism." "The conference from the start was taken hostage by Arab-Muslim interests with the active support of the PLO." "Not since the Second World War had one heard such virulently anti-Semitic statements." "It took on an even more explicit form in the NGO forum taking place within the Conference, and there were demonstrations of hatred such as I had never seen in my life." "What does this nice guy with the mustache have to say?" "What if I had won?" "The good things " "There would be no Israel and no Palestinian's blood shed." "The bad things " "I wouldn't have allowed the making of the new Beetle." "The rest is your guess." "There were street demonstrations that were obviously organized - because there's a large Muslim community in Durban." "1,500 feet from the conference you have an old colonial building which is the Jewish community club," "and which had been turned into a camp entrenched against the cries of an aggressive mob which, had the army not been deployed around the Jewish club, was ready to attack it." "Those who attacked Israel and, through Israel, the Jews in Durban no longer spoke the language of racism." "Now you can attack Jews in the name of human rights and democracy." "We heard shouts of people calling for the extermination of Jews, who yelled, "Kill the Jews!"" "or, "One Jew, one bullet."" "The anti-Jewish interests tried to discredit Judaism " "which they considered their adversary - by using the same terms used by those in South Africa during the struggle against Apartheid." "At the same time they contributed to the debasement of the struggle against Apartheid which was conducted by the blacks of South Africa, because this conference should have been a recognition that Apartheid was dead." "You had ethnic cleansing in Sierra Leone, which is continuing in other countries." "It also took place in Liberia, in Somalia - who talked about it?" "No one!" "Not to mention slavery, it was brought up, rightfully so, the Western slave trade." "But there was no mention of the role played by Arab slave traders..." "There is slavery today in Sudan." "There is none in Europe." "But it's up to the Europeans, if you will, to beg forgiveness for the Sudanese slave trade..." "What is striking is the contrast between the inertia of the intelligentsia" "and the way the press as a whole took in this violence and the anti-fascist vigilance under which we've lived for the past 40 years." "We're basically dealing with anti-Jewish anti-racism, anti-Jewish anti-fascism, anti-Jewish anti-imperialism, anti-Jewish anti-colonialism." "So that should make us think..." "The Effects" "Several thousand demonstrated in Paris, Marseilles, and Strasbourg in support of the Palestinians." "In Paris over one thousand marched from the Bastille to the République at a call from anti-racists, the Greens, and the Communists." "What is not reported on TV are the cries of "Death to the Jews!"" "heard in the wake of the demonstration." ""Death to the Jews!"" "The echo of the second Intifada has given rise in France," "Europe, and worldwide, to an unprecedented wave of anti-Jewish incidents." "At first, the media and politicians were not prepared to assess them." "Combined with delinquency, burnings of synagogues, physical attacks, anti-Jewish insults and graffiti reached a peak in March 2002." "Something is rotten in the French Republic." "The shocking figures..." "Since March 29 - in the past three weeks - there have been 303 acts - in most cases, graffiti, but also 14 acts of arson or attempted arson against synagogues, and 16 physical attacks." "Violence and acts of vandalism are being reported daily..." "My husband saw a big flame..." "For the first time since Vichy, a woman, victim of an anti-Jewish attack, prefers to tell her story hiding her face." "In France, 2001, what makes someone set fire to a synagogue?" "Have they nothing else to do?" "What has legitimized this type of action?" "The TV news was worse than fiction." "They got Palestine in their sights." "Muslims are so humiliated there that they commit suicide in self-defense." "One evening, the news lady really got us going..." "She showed the dead, the blood..." "I thought she was sending me a special message." "The Israelis are too strong, they got the USA behind them." "So we thought about the neighborhood synagogue." "We struck it with nuts and bolts." "And the article specifies that neither Mouloud nor Karim could name one town in the Palestinian territories." "Solidarity with..." "Palestinians..." "Victims Yesterday Today Murderers" "We are all Palestinians!" "If there are synagogues burning, we're sorry." "Our future has been burnt for the past 30 years." "But once again, the symbolic dimension seems fundamental because in our collective Arab cultural imagination, as youths, then as adults, this question of Palestine is very important." "But today it is often expressed too ambiguously for young people who don't necessarily have the political or ideological tools to put things in perspective." "When we speak of a conflict between Palestinians and Israelis, there is a dimension of anti-Zionism coming from the Palestinians that is often expressed by anti-Semitism." "We are a free people who want to see" "Arab nations and African nations free and independent, not under the yoke of Zionist multinationals!" "Zionists, fascists, you are the terrorists!" "Why does the Palestinian cause inflame the passions of North African immigrant youths?" "Why does Arab woe find all the answers in hatred for Israel?" "Why do the massacres in Algeria, the democratic deficit and dictatorships in the Arab world, the fate of women in the Arab world fail to excite the same level of indignation?" "Hitler, Sharon, what's the difference?" "Essentially, Islam is the religion of former colonized peoples, the religion of the Algerians," "and so the other religions are all religions linked to colonization, colonists and..." "the colonist has no rights, except to be expelled or be killed." "To summarize, every Jew is a real Zionist, openly or in secret..." "Zionism is a form of colonialism, fascism, and racism, even an agency of genocide and ethnocide, hence every Jew is a colonist, a fascist, a racist and an agent of genocide." "Middle East Passions" "There were lies about the extermination of the Jews, the so-called Holocaust." "These are mystifications, unfounded claims." "Dachau, Auschwitz were disinfection sites." "As for the Palestinians, they unfortunately are talking in the desert." "For every Elias Sambar or Edward Said who condemns the Shoah in no uncertain terms, you have tens of thousands of others who..." "Sambar and Said, of course, condemn negationism and have a high-profile position at the moment of the Congress about to take place in Lebanon..." "But you have tens of thousands of Palestinians, not intellectuals, just average Palestinians, who understand nothing." "I'd say it's incomprehensible." "That's why Israel has been fantasized about as the visible face of an international conspiracy." "And you have to interpret "conspiracy"" "in the forceful sense of the term, the sociological sense, meaning there's a sort of brotherhood of conspirators who come from nowhere and who are everywhere, with plans to conquer the world." "We're beyond reason, that's well said." "Not always, but often." "Sure, we see it every day, regularly, the Israelis are accused either of poisoning wells, or handing out poisoned candy to children, or using gases banned by international agreements - all things that don't hold water, which are false," "but denying them is useless, it's part of the conflict." "You know, you're in a conflict where it's a matter of delegitimizing the other." "In 1999 a news item gets blanket coverage in Upper Egypt." "The rumor was that a sort of sexual frenzy had taken over the women in this region." "This new surge of desire seemed so strange as to merit an inquiry." "The guilty one was finally fingered - a Zionist aphrodisiac hidden in chewing gum." "Who had something to gain from this frenzy?" "The chewing gum was imported from Israel." "The Teaching of Hatred" "Another important aspect still played down in France and other European nations is the teaching of hatred." "Men of faith in mosques explain that they must kill, massacre all Jews and Christians." "Labor or Likud, Jews are Jews." "There are no moderates or artisans of peace among them." "They're all liars." "They must be massacred, killed." "Allah the Almighty said, Fight them." "Them, the Jews." "No pity for them, wherever they are, whatever country." "Fight them wherever you are." "Wherever you meet them, kill them." "Wherever you are, kill these Jews and these Americans who are like them and support them." "They are fighting together against Arabs and Muslims." "I admit this isn't Islamic teaching in general, but it's the teaching of Palestinian nationalism." "It's frightening." "Kids hear this at school and you might say," "Oh, other children in other times heard totally twisted messages and then it was all forgotten..." "Unfortunately, here, it's perpetuated from generation to generation, so it's going to be very hard, very hard," "to neutralize this education of hatred." "Imagine how long it took to neutralize - but has it been done?" "" "Christianity's teaching of contempt for Judaism." "The demonization of the other, the enemy or future partner, the Zionist, the Israeli, or the Jew hasn't ceased with the Oslo accords, it continues to fester." "How can one imagine peace with these songs?" "I impregnated your soil with blood." "I'll come in the time of need." "I'll do all I can to bring a machine gun, violence, rage, and more rage." "I'll walk through the gates of Jerusalem," "I'll become a warrior and commit a suicide bombing." "And I'll be in combat uniform!" " Thank you." " Bravo!" "Bravo!" "Obviously, you can't underestimate what the Palestinians have endured and continue to endure, and you also want to talk about that, especially to talk about the future." "But right now it's increasingly hard to bring up the real issues." "You know perfectly well, the Palestinians were massacred by their Arab brothers." "I belong to the generation that was horrified by the kiss King Hussein of Jordan gave Yasser Arafat after the massacres of Black September, where the Palestinians were slaughtered." "We justify everything that the sufferer does, even if he behaves like an executioner." ""Yes, it's all a bit excessive but they've suffered so much that they must also go through a barbaric period."" "But we've had enough of this justifying the unacceptable in the name of suffering." "The PLO was created in 1964." "Their first official terrorist act was committed on 1 January 1965." "In 1965, there were no settlements, no colonies, no occupied territories, the Six Day War hadn't yet taken place." "It's for this reason, I think, and therein lies the tragedy, that the Palestinian terrorist who is going to attack a bus full of civilians in Tel Aviv, feels a deep conviction that he'll be killing colonists." "Pizzeria, Sbarro, 9 August 2001" "Is the suicide bomber a weapon for an oppressed people, a means of its emancipation?" "What elation is behind such a destructive and sacrificial act?" "Does this fatal logic still have political meaning or does it reveal another form of isolation?" "Can the end justify all means?" "Is the suicide bomber a means or an end?" "I remember once asking Joshka Fischer," "Germany's foreign affairs minister." "I said, You were fighting for the Palestinian cause, for the cause of a nation that has a right to sovereignty, to a solution to the refugee problem, to ending the military occupation." "On all these themes, we agree almost entirely." "But now, from the perspective of Camp David and Taba, do you think that in the 1960s, you were demonstrating for Al-Aqsa?" "When all is now a question of a mosque?" "You'd demonstrated with an entire generation of Palestinians for which Israel was the only one to provide a solution." "No Arab country had done it before, no European country had done it before, we did it and now all that's left is Al-Aqsa!" "Another rare contact with the outside world, this time with Western pacifists - including José Bové - who were in Ramallah, and managed to enter Arafat's general quarter." "With doctors from Ramallah Hospital we decided try anything we could." "Anti-globalization activists have finally found their true cause." "Ramallah is the meeting point for strange pacifists, because they pit one side against the other." "Arafat's lone candle illuminates the thoughts of José Bové." "Who pulls the strings behind the scenes?" "José Bové gives us a "green" version of the Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion." "José, you were in Israel, you were arrested and expelled." "What's the connection with anti-globalization, to support the Palestinians?" "I don't get it." "There's economic globalization that's ravaging the entire planet." "But there's also military globalization, and Palestine now is the center of this military globalization." "In fact a part of the world wants to monopolize the wealth of the planet, and Palestinians are in the way because they're preventing what the powers want the world to be." "Could you say that if you were Israeli?" "You'd risk getting blown up at any moment, you go out and you explode!" "When I was there I denounced blind terrorist acts because these acts are senseless, it's lawlessness, as I clearly denounce all bombings against places of worship in France." "But I also wonder if these bombings might not be provoked in order to divert attention from what's going on in Palestine." "But provoked by who?" "In the 1950s there was a bombing committed against the Jewish community in Iraq." "Today Israeli historians say it clearly, that bombing was organized by the Mossad." "You think the Mossad could attack synagogues in France?" "Wow!" "I don't know, but we should know who stands to gain from the crime." "The anti-globalizers should clean up their act right now." "But they don't." "There's an excess, a pathology - the metaphors are obviously open to criticism - in anti-globalization." "When confronted with 9/11, some people tell us," ""It's the cause of the underprivileged, the have-nots of the world, and after all this attack targeted two towers that embody financial capitalism or, I would say, which give an urban or neo-urban face to globalization, so in fact it's an act of anti-globalization."" "I think that one of the major obstacles to peace between Israel and the Palestinians is what I'd call the excessive support for the Palestinian cause throughout the Western world." "The fact that the Palestinian movement has this excessive support is an obstacle for them - it blocks pragmatic decision-making." "They always have the feeling that if they don't accept this decision now, the world will continue to isolate Israel, attack it, condemn it, come up with another UN resolution, and Israel will be forced... because this excessive support exists." "That's the big difference between the Palestinian movement and Zionism." "Zionism has always been capable of assuming very pragmatic, very tough decisions because Zionism was a weak movement, internationally." "The End of the Terror or The Endless Terror" "One of the major changes in the Israeli conscience is in its perception of 1948 and the Palestinian tragedy in general." "But the Israelis believed that they could ask the Palestinians to recognize the legitimacy of Zionism, meaning the legitimacy of the fact that Jews came here, and that one day the Arabs would say," "You were right in the end, you had this right." "No, it's a fantasy the Israelis had..." "One of the major dimensions of the current conflict lies in Israeli uncertainty as to Palestinian intentions." "They don't know why the Intifada broke out, they don't know why it continued, they don't know why Yasser Arafat refused Ehud Barak's proposals at Taba, and they don't know why things are continuing." "In June 2002, Sari Nuseiba took the initiative to write a text, co-signed by a thousand Palestinians, denouncing the attacks and suicide bombings in Israel." "He sees such acts as destroying not only any hopes of peace but also the future of the Palestinian people." "At the risk of a paradox, I would tend to say that the Muslim world is much more advanced than the French pro-Palestinian intellectuals." "For many Muslims, the recognition of Israel means reconciliation with the world as it is, with modernity." "That's why the stakes are so high, especially in North Africa..." "What parents in France could imagine every morning that their children run the risk of being killed in an attack on their way to school?" "How much can a young Westerner share of a young Israeli's real life?" "How much can a European share of the life of a young Palestinian?" "Europe has lived in peace for 50 years." "Is it possible to imagine what it would be like to defend oneself, to live with a gun at hand?" "Is this a question that you, the viewer, can understand or share?" "Can this film have an ending while the questions it seeks to put forward are not heard?" "It took more than 50 years for those hypnotized by the radiant future of Stalinism to begin to open their eyes." "For those 50 years and many more," "Israel seems to have disturbed the world it questions." "But this world in chaos believes that without Israel it would be a better place." "9/112001, planes in the skies over New York put an end to this illusion." "The front line moved closer." "The threat shifted." "The suicide bombers hit Tel-Aviv and the rest of the world." ""If I don't watch out for myself, who will?" "If I don't do it now, when?" "But if I watch out only for myself, who am I?"" " Hillel." "English translation by Lenny Borger, Anne Fox, Cynthia Schoch" "SUB-TIL Subtitles Adaptation by Joseph Simas"