Mazuz's farewell decision: Will 'Jenin, Jenin' director be indicted?

I did not say a 50% civilian casualty rate was ok. Unlike you,I do not leap to moral judgments. But the tales about a massacre of 500 unarmed civilians in Jenin by the IDF were war propaganda. It was a pitched battle by the IDF against a heavily armed, well-prepared enemy who had chosen to base themseleves in a densely populated civilian area, booby trapped houses and cars and blown holes in the walls of adjoining houses as escape routes. So spare us the BS about the IDF being responsible for the destruction - or the civilian deaths. Questions of criminal intent or recklessness cannot be decided in the absence of hard evidence. You have none, but here are a couple more facts for you to contemplate. The civilian casualty rate in the 1991 and 2003 Gulf wars was 67%. In drone attacks in Afghanistan right now it's 90%. Time for you to grow up.

Mazuz is well aware of the dangers that Mr. Bakri might be able to produce enough evidence to prove in court of law that YES the Israelis army did commit war crime in Jenin. For this very reason Mazuz is not moving forward.

(retry) "They HATE the Jews FAR MORE than they ever did" Which MEANS Pali Brit finally ADMITS the palis have ALWAYS hate Jews. Enough HATE to CELEBRATE when Jews are KILLED and to GLORIFY the MURDERERS who killed them. Which means ALL her BLABBERING about palis being "INNOCENT" is but a trough of HOGWASH.

(retry) "The Palestinian civilian population is not responsible for the acts of terrorists" They ARE when the same CIVILIAN population UNABASHEDLY, UNRESERVEDLY and KNOWINGLY elected TERRORISTS - whose MAJOR and OFFICIAL aim is to ERADICATE Israel - as THEIR govt and LEADERS. They ARE when they are UNITED with and WILLINGLY support THEIR govt, and OBEY them WITHOUT reservations. "Will the US bomb Nigerial because one if its citizens tried to blow up a US plane?" SMOKE and MIRRORS at PLAY here. The palis did NOT just TRY to. They DID. And SUCCEEDED many times MURDERING Israelis, including CHILDREN and NON-COMBATANTS. BTW, here is REMINDER re US bombing a nation - Libya. So ALL the TRUNCATED "reasoning" by Pali Brit to OBSCURE the FACTS - is that SOMETHING to do with HER culture or religion, I wonder?

prosecuting ? It makes no sense , because then every production , which are mostly a dramatization , illusions , and mostly agenda driven could be judicially questioned . But if clear besmirching and other damages could be proven , then it is possible to prosecute . First it has to be established , is it a documentary or a movie ?

I did not say there was a "massacre" in Jenin, conceding dozens not hundreds were killed; though the levelling of the refugee camp was clearly collective punishment of a civilian population and a despicable war crime. Hizbullah is not relevant as it is not a Pal organization. I know of many incidents in which Pals have specifically attacked IDF, including a suicide bomber who detonated at a bus stop where virtually all of the affected persons were IDF and attacks on checkpoints. I made it clear in my post that both Pal and IDF attackers who knowingly or intentionally kill mostly innocent people are terrorists. There's no difference between an IAF pilot firing a half dozen missles at a car on a crowded street (even if there is a militant inside), knowing he willl kill and injure more innocents than militants, and a Pal that targets IDF but intentionally kills civilians. They're both wrong.

The answer to your question is "no." Your analogy in of course inapposite because the IDF soldiers were acting in Jenin not on behalf of themselves, but the state of Israel. Moreover, what Israel can threaten its critics with is not merely civil (money) damages, but jail. In a free country, the right to criticize the state trumps all personal rights the soldiers have to clear their names. In the U.S. this is called the "public official doctrine," or the Sullivan doctrine after the case, Sullivan v. NY Times. When a person acts on behalf of the state, he cannot maintian a libel case, even if the statements published about him were not true. In America, these soldiers cannot even sue for money damages. This is so becuase we prize rich public debate. Under our law artists and critics don't live under the chilling prospect of jail for what they say about government actions. That is one of the many reasons your country is not a democracy and does not deserve our support.

I am not going to try to convince you or anybody that there was no massacre in Jenin because those who want to see it that way will not be willing to change their points of view no matter what anyone says. It should be made clear that suicide bombers target civilians and not soldiers - their aim is to kill innocent men, women and children and they celebrate those accomplishments just the same way that Palestinians celebrated 9/11. Hizbullah repeatedly targeted civilian centers in 2006 and Nasrallah has repeatedly stated that Hizbullah will send rockets to downtown Tel Aviv - sure sounds an awful lot like Hamas, Fatah, Hizbullah, Islamic Jihad, PFLP and other splinter groups want to kill Jewish Israeli citizens, and at the same time create the illusion that they are innocent of any wrongdoing. They are all wrong Mr. Boston, and it is pure bias to only blame the IDF for the massacre that did not truly happen.

This is not the issue. The issue is that no massacre ever occured (even my beloved UN admitted after the froth has setteled of the anti-Israel mouths). And this lie continue to live and be belived.

Yes there was destruction as it should. News flush: IT WAS A WAR. In which war did things not get destroyed? Checnia? Sudan? Hama? Sarajeov? Why only Israel is judged this way dude? Think about it. And The only massacre that occured is the killling of the Israeli soldiers. Very few Palestinan CIVILIANS were killed, although the terrorists hid in the casba and homes full of civliians. The IDF should be praised for its work! Good job IDF!

The precise definition of a "massacre" is unclear. Dozens of Palestinians were killed, but not hundreds. I'm shocked you find a roughly 50% civilian casualty rate okay. To those who value all races equally, it is contemptible and reflects the dehumanization of Pals by the IDF and Zionists. If a suicide bomber hits a cafe killing 2 dozen IDF and 2 dozen Israeli civilians, does that make their action legitimate? Their target, no doubt, was the IDF. The IDF argues that as long as its "targeting" militants, it can kill any number of civilians without being terrorists. This argument fails equally for the IDF and for the suicide bomber. One who attacks knowing or intending that as many or more civilians as combatants will be killed or hurt is a terrorist, regardless of his race or that of those he kills or hurts. What gets the far too little attention is that the IDF levelled an entire refugee camp, leaving thousands of civilians homeless. This is a war crime.

how can I get a copy?

That is not the issue. The issue is if I accuse you of killing 100 people, should it be you who sues me for libel or the State?

Nobody is saying that individuals cannot clear their names if they are unjustly accused. What I am saying is that it is for the individual to instigate court proceedings against Mohammed Bakri. It is not a matter for the State to instigate criminal proceedings against freedom of speech.

http://www.un.org/peace/jenin/ "Report of the Secretary-General prepared pursuant to General Assembly resolution ES-10/10 4 August 2002 56. Fifty-two Palestinian deaths had been confirmed by the hospital in Jenin by the end of May 2002. IDF also place the death toll at approximately 52. A senior Palestinian Authority official alleged in mid-April that some 500 were killed, a figure that has not been substantiated in the light of the evidence that has emerged." More than half of the 52 Palestinians killed were terrorists armed to the teeth, not "civilians".

A number of soldiers did sue Bakri and lost. They had their day in court and could not make a case. This article is about governmental suppression of criticism.

You really ought to read more carefully. Private libel suits have been brought and lost. This is not about individuals trying to clear their name. This is about the government criminalizing speech it doesn't like. This would never happen in any true democracy. You dont say where you live, but you should study the US Pentagon Papers decision by the US Supreme Court. IT brilliantly examines the roles of government critics in a democracy. In a real democracy, the right of persons to investigate and criticize the government publicly is every bit as essential as elections. Truly democratic nations respond to what they regard as spurious lies by airing the other side, not prosecuting their critics. Israel is not even close to being a true "western-style democracy" as it claims.

Jenin was a dirty operation. Now soldiers are complaning they are depicted as performing a dirty operation. If only they were so sensitive when they were crushing the village with their D-9' s

The names of the five soldiers are not mentioned in the film. If they were, their right to defend themsellves would indeed "have nothing in common with democracy". A criminal proceeding against a movie which consists of eywitness accounts (Bakri says nothing in the soundtrack) has a lot of to do with democracy.

but is the decision of the individual accused of war crimes in the film. It is for the individual concerned to sue the film maker not the State. If the State does get involved then Israel can no longer claim it is a democratic country based on western democratic values. You cannot censor things because you don't like what it infers, or it doesn't fit your political mindset.

You seem to forget that Jenin was a center from which came attacks into Israel during one of the most vicious wars Israel has known. The operation in Jenin was part of a campaign to end the attacks, not win the hearts and minds of Palestinians. Now that we are seeing one of the calmest years in the Israel/Palestinian territories we can say that the tactic worked and we can start working on the hearts and minds of the people whi need healing on both sides

I stood in the middle of Jenin camp when it was all over. We could not believe our eyes. Everything in that area was totally flattend and we were standing on ground level on homes that had been buried deep into the ground. Men and women searched hopelessly trying to salvage anything they could. One old man sat on a rock and looked around, pointing out where his home, and the homes of his married sons and daughters had once stood. They all have new homes, provided by benefactors now. They hate the Jews far more than they ever did, so what was actually gained from such a revenge attack?

The Palestinian civilian population is not responsible for the acts of terrorists. This applies to any country. Will the US bomb Nigerial because one if its citizens tried to blow up a US plane? Israel, on the other hand, always chooses to perform revenge acts on Palestinian civiilians. Is that something to do with Israeli culture or the Jewish religion, I wonder? Whatever, anyone would understand that all this does is deepen the hatred for Israel from the Palestinians and those who sympathise with them. This leads to shrill screams of "anti-semitism....." How about trying another tactic?

Israel will have to face the not so very nice facts about its war against the Palestinians, and about the occupation of the Westbank, and the siege of Gaza. Of course there have been suicide bombers, and the rockets on Siderot, and a lot more. It is what you harvest by driving a people to despair, into the arms of people like Arafat (who abused the anger of Palestinians for using them as canonfodder). How brave is Israel, does it live up to its "Hatikva"?

There actually is a huge difference between civil courts and criminal courts. Libel and slander are for civil courts, unless the state wants to suppress freedom of political expression. It is hard to claim democracy where there is no freedom of political speech, even lies like are told about the US President or may have been told about Jenin. Criminal prosecution suppresses freedom of political speech, pure and simple - no 'ifs' or 'buts.'

Mr. Eyewitness, People who fight in wars are not vegetarians, however, nor are most of them vicious and violent. In lines 8-9, it seems the bloke what writ them was off-sides some and . . . he is reacting to the Palestinian Arab way of war "in kind". It's not our way, but to judge a whole offensive on the basis of one soldier's overreaction is dirty pool. Occupation is not nice, though, I wonder sometimes if the people who are occupied have a record of doing nasty stuff to the people who are occupying long before they were . . . you could regard the "occupation" as a way to keep the guys who have been stickin' to ya' from continuing to do so. In a certain sense it's a form of survival, no?

Suppose you were attacked one evening and you managed to fight back and get home safely. Now suppose a friend one of your defeated assailants made a film that accuses you of murdering his entire family when in fact they are still alive and well. Would you, living in a democracy, be entitled to your day in court in order to clear your name?

"?For three days, I just destroyed and destroyed. The whole area. Any house that they fired from came down. And to knock it down, I tore down some more. They were warned by loudspeaker to get out of the house before I come, but I gave no one a chance. I didn?t wait. I didn?t give one blow, and wait for them to come out. I would just ram the house with full power, to bring it down as fast as possible. I wanted to get to the other houses. To get as many as possible. Others may have restrained themselves, or so they say. Who are they kidding? Anyone who was there, and saw our soldiers in the houses, would understand they were in a death trap. I thought about saving them. I didn?t give a damn about the Palestinians, but I didn?t just ruin with no reason. It was all under orders." http://www.gush-shalom.org/archives/kurdi_eng.html

If I claim that you murdered 100 people, should you I able to make this calim without any basis in reality and without any consequences? In thw Western world (not in one of the failed state you live in), there are cocepts such as libel, damage, lie and crimes. You should research these terms, it would really help you to understand.

Any constructive suggestions how to deal with slander?

Passion rather than logical thinking in politics have got the Palestinian cause only discredited and stuck for more than 60 years. Bakri, if you noticed, was not there either when things happened.

Bakri's film is just the symptom for tribal thinking so prevalent in the ME, especially the Arab collectives. Where are all those that don't use their intellectual powers for incitement?

Palestinians suffered about 50 dead. Israel lost 13. Where's the "massacre" that you por-Palestinians desperately long for?

If Bakri were to publish a book with lies could the families of those dammaged through alleged slander sue him? Why can't they sue him for slander in the film?

When arab terrorists explode pizza parlors and civilian buses,they are "freedom fighters" against the "ocupation"...When the IDF engages the murderers in combat and loses men to avoid hitting civilians,the IDF is acused of "war crimes"...Israel is bashed for defending itself.Better be acused and alive.The only problem is that Israel is afraid of the darn "world opinion" and is not harsh enough...Right now,if any terrorist is traded for Shalit,he will turn around and murder Israelis the next day...

Unless you were there you don't know the truth. Shooting the messenger will not change the facts. There was a massacre of Palestinians in Jenin, and war crimes were committed. Period.

Has nothing to do with democracy

Now every Arab artist in Israel must consider whether the Jewish state will slap him with a criminal prosecution if his work says that what Israel is doimg to the Palestinians is wrong. Perhaps Mazuz can also indict the editors of Ha'aretz for publishing the accusations in the Goldstone report, or better, perhaps a warrant can be issued through Interpol for Goldstone himself. Democracy? Rubbish!