Charles Enderlin

Charles Enderlin is a Franco-Israeli journalist, specialising in the Middle East and Israel.

Enderlin came to international public attention in September 2000, when he provided the voice-over for a controversial France 2 report, now commonly referred to as the Muhammad al-Durrah affair, during which Enderlin reported Israeli soldiers had targeted and killed a Palestinian boy, one of the key events at the start of the Second Intifada. Enderlin's reporting of the incident was criticized by some as being allegedly inaccurate or false and sparked a controversy in France about journalistic standards and defamation.

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 normalisation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, 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).

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 targeted and killed by shots fired from Israeli positions. Over time, he came under intense criticism from some French commentators, who asserted 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. An aggressive campaign on the Internet claims the story was designed to poison international opinion against Israel, and "often smacks of conspiracy" according to some.

On October 20, 2006, Enderlin and France 2 won a libel case against French media commentator Philippe Karsenty, who published accusations that Palestinians had staged the Muhammed al-Durrah shooting with the knowledge of France 2's freelance Palestinian cameraman. The court found that Karsenty, "echoing ... without distance or critical analysis of its own sources, the idea of staging for propaganda purposes" had "seriously failed to meet the requirements expected of an information professional" and that Karsenty's conclusions were "devoid of any serious or coherent character", being "fed by peremptory claims to which no official Israeli authority - neither the Army... nor the justice system - has ever given any credit". Enderlin and France 2 were awarded symbolic damages of one euro each, and Karsenty was ordered to pay a fine amounting to €1,000, plus legal costs of €3,000 on behalf of Enderlin and France 2.

In May 2008, the libel conviction was overturned on appeal. The appeals court rejected claims that Karsenty's claims were "neither complete nor serious," finding that although Karsenty's claims had been "undoubtedly damaging," and while he "cannot claim to demonstrate" the allegedly fraudulent nature of the story, he had nonetheless done a thorough investigation and acted in good faith, and his conduct had therefore been within the boundaries of permissible expression in the context of media criticism. France 2's lawyer said he was "disappointed" by the verdict, and that the judgment is to be appealed to the Cour de cassation, France's highest court. In the same decision, the appeals court declared "worthless" (sans objet) the conclusions reached by Karsenty in his own analysis, thus confirming the analysis of Karsenty's conclusions in the initial verdict.

Books

• Par le feu et par le sang. Le combat clandestin pour l'indépendance d'Israël 1936-1948, ISBN 978-2-226-18084-1, Albin Michel, 2008
• The Lost Years: Radical Islam, Intifada and Wars in the Middle East 2001-2006 (trans. Suzanne Verderber) ISBN 9781590511718 , Other Press 2007
• Les années perdues : Intifada et guerres au Proche-Orient, 2001-2006 ISBN 2213621500 , Fayard 2006
• 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)

See also

• Camp David 2000 Summit
• Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• Pallywood
• Proposals for a Palestinian state

External links

• Other Press page about Charles Enderlin
• jewishjournal.com Shattered Dreams' 10 Years After Oslo We learn what was offered at Camp David. by Ethan Bronner, The New York Times
• Interview With Charles Enderlin
• An Interview with Charles Enderlin on Jerusalem Calling
• Biography on France2.fr Template:Fr icon
• Interview Template:Fr icon
• L'express Template:Fr icon
• La stratégie de harcèlement judiciaire de Gilles-William Goldnadel Template:Fr icon
• La haine envers Charles Enderlin, correspondant de France 2 à Jérusalem : Pourquoi ? Template:Fr icon