In 2003, dismayed — if not outright disgusted — by television and newspaper coverage of the second intifada in particular and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in general, French filmmakers Jacques Tarnero and Philippe Bensoussan produced a potent rebuttal.
Their persuasive and well-researched documentary, “Décryptage” (or “Deciphering”), is a dense exposé of the biases in French media. The film offers a high level — especially by American TV standards — of practical and philosophical analysis that relies primarily on interviews with serious journalists, historians and intellectuals.
The filmmakers’ main concern was that the anti-Israeli news slant was contributing to the rising tide of anti-Semitism in France. The film is four years old and the specific cases it explores may have receded into distant memory, but it remains an exceedingly valuable program for American viewers.
“Décryptage” has its U.S. television premiere at 9 p.m. Monday, March 12 on the Sundance Channel.
While the documentary has more on its mind than simply bashing the media or analyzing Palestinian public relations gambits, it does shred what’s left of Yassir Arafat’s dismal reputation. A section of the film focuses on the offers made by Ehud Barak at Camp David and rejected by Arafat, including a shared Jerusalem that would serve as the capital of both Israel and Palestine. The conclusion of one pro-Israel analyst is that the Palestinians are never forced to suffer the consequences of negotiating in bad faith, and therefore are never motivated to talk in good faith.
“Décryptage” takes both the Palestinians and the media to task in the example of Ariel Sharon’s 2000 visit to the Temple Mount, which was widely reported as the provocation that triggered the intifada. The filmmakers make the case that Sharon’s visit was merely a handy excuse.
A Palestinian diplomat is shown giving a public, outdoor speech in Beirut where he declares, “The intifada was planned since the return of President Arafat from the talks at Camp David, where he stood [his] ground against President Clinton, and rejected American conditions in the very heart of America.”
Bensoussan, who put out a film called “Autopsy of a Lie: Holocaust Denial” in 2000, and Tarnero devote chunks of this film to two other incidents that were spun 180 degrees. In the first case, a Palestinian boy named Mohammed Al-Dura was killed after being caught with his father in the crossfire between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian gunmen. The footage, shot by a TV cameraman from a particular angle, if viewed with a particular agenda, seemed to indicate that the soldiers were the guilty and callous party.
The headline in the French press was “The War That Kills Children,” while the Arab media and Palestinian educators endlessly replayed the TV clips to inflame the masses and radicalize children. “Décryptage” uses maps to pull back and provide the relative positions of the principals, and argues that the boy was a tragic casualty of war but hardly a target.
By way of contrast, the film examines coverage of the murders of Kobi Mandel and Yossi Ish-Ran, two Israeli boys who were stoned to death in a West Bank cave. They were identified in newspaper headlines as “young colonists,” a term that neatly flipped them from victims to aggressors, and headed off any sympathy the reader may have been disposed to feel.
The press’ motives in making the Palestinians look better and the Israelis worse are open to conjecture, but historian Denis Charbit of the University of Tel Aviv espouses one theory. “It’s difficult to be a Westerner in regard to what happened in 1939-45,” he notes, so “somehow people would 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.”
“Décryptage,” which is dedicated to the memory of Jewish journalist Daniel Pearl, has an unmistakable point of view but can’t be dismissed as merely a screed. Although it will confirm some American Jews’ worst fears about the French media, it is not a knee-jerk apologia for the Israeli government.
It is a diligent and deeply felt piece that, even four years later, is well worth catching.
“Décryptage” airs 9 p.m. Monday, March 12 on the Sundance Channel.