LOOKING AROUND : Don't confuse them with facts

By Barbara Sofer
Jan. 16, 2003

The college professor spoke before a room crammed with hundreds of college students. In a matter-of-fact manner - as if everyone knew and had long ago agreed with him - he said we had learned from the Holocaust that there is no longer such a concept as "testimony." One could not demand "truth," he said, quoting a post-modern writer. A second staff member argued that specific facts were not all that important - it was the general picture that counted. This he offered as guidance to the hundreds of journalism students in the audience. The evening's host and moderator, the most senior of the panel members, interrupted a student who was speaking with approbation of those Israelis who faithfully fulfill their military reserve service obligations despite the inconvenience and danger. The professor cut him off and mocked, "All that's missing is for you to sing us Hatikva." Where did this happen? Why, in the State of Israel, in the city of Tel Aviv, the first modern Jewish city. When? Last week, two days after two terrorists murdered 22 people in a poor section of the same town. The specific setting was the esteemed School of Media Studies of the College of Management, the largest such school in the country, with 1,000 Israelis studying with the hope of taking up positions in mass media, advertising, public relations, community and educational media. The evening was devoted to a viewing and discussion of Jenin, Jenin - certainly a relevant topic for future journalists and television executives. Invited to the discussion were filmmaker Muhammad Bakri and his antagonist Dr. David Zangen, the pediatric endocrinologist who served as chief medical officer during the operation in Jenin and who has opposed the film in the name of his fellow soldiers. Outside the auditorium doors, students carried on a demonstration against the screening, showing photos of terror victims. Inside, every chair and floor space was taken by students, some wearing badges declaring that they were watching the film the better to oppose it. The film was shown in the framework of the course taught by Dr. David Gurevitz, who served as the evening's moderator, a role that calls for an even-handedness that he did not even attempt to provide. The key subject was censorship, inarguably an important issue for media studies. Unfortunately, no one was there from the film-censorship board to defend the rare decision to censor the film. The discussion shifted to the veracity of the film and the importance or lack of importance of truth itself. IRONICALLY, TO the surprise of the audience, it became apparent that Bakri had censored his own film. The version he had brought to show in front of the students had gaps. "I've seen the film three times, and each time it's gotten shorter," said attorney Ilan Horowitz, a specialist in media law and the only panel member to take a balanced approach. Indeed, the videocassette box for Jenin, Jenin said the film was 74 minutes long. The screening took 49 minutes. "A printing error," Bakri waved away the evidence on the box of the videotape. But he did, later, admit that he had shortened the film since it was first shown at the Jerusalem Cinematheque two months ago. One of the interviewees, he explained, had simply talked too long. And he had removed the promise of a little girl to keep on fighting even if Arafat made peace. Too hopeless, said Bakri. The testimony of the Jenin hospital head, the author of the massacre story, that the hospital had been repeatedly bombed was not excised. Zangen brought close-ups of the hospital, showing the building before and after Operation Defensive Shield. The pictures were identical. He also brought the discharge papers from Ha'emek Hospital in Afula for an elderly Jenin man, brought by IDF soldiers for treatment there because they had discovered heart disease while they were treating him for shrapnel wounds. He accused Israeli soldiers of shooting him in the hand and foot. You had to question the veracity of the documentary material in this film. Of course, if you think truth is irrelevant, this does not matter. The lecturer who eschewed the validity of testimony criticized Zangen for bringing a cold PowerPoint presentation of facts and evidence, when he should have bared his emotions instead. Almost lost in the dramatic evening was the good news: Bakri's censorship of his film. Although the important question remains of which version of Jenin, Jenin will be shown at film festivals abroad, the toned-down version presented to the Israeli audience was a victory for Zangen and his one-man campaign against the defaming of the IDF and his country. Indeed, Zangen has modeled something significant for us: standing up for the truth. Confronting a libel lie by lie is valuable. Would that our national public relations effort would learn from his unrelenting approach. The students, in contrast to their teachers, behaved impressively. They were intelligent, articulate Israelis who respectfully expressed a range of opinions that did credit to the free thinking nurtured in a democracy. They complained loudly when Bakri made unhappy reference to Zangen's kippa, and told Zangen he was off the mark by bringing up Bakri's nephew's alleged terrorist involvement. They insisted that the teacher who eschewed the importance of getting the details correct identify himself before the crowd as the head of a movement for encouraging draft refusal. Most of all, the students were clearly annoyed and embarrassed by their own teachers' lack of professionalism and ability to demonstrate even-handedness. "You're a terrific person, but you just can't take sides that way if you are the moderator," one young woman chided Gurevitz after the performance. I was so proud of them I felt like singing Hatikva