w w w . h a a r e t z d a i l y . c o m

A good citizen defends his country About five months ago, Martin Weyl of Jerusalem read in the British publication ARTnews that the Israel Defense Forces had caused serious damage to buildings of historic value in Nablus, Bethlehem and Hebron. Based on a UNESCO report, ARTnews wrote that the Al Khadra Mosque in Nablus, which is 1,000 years old, was almost totally destroyed ("80 percent destruction"), apparently maliciously. ARTnews, which has been published monthly for the past 10 years and also puts out a weekly newsletter, is considered an important publication in the world of art. For some reason, Weyl assumed that the report was not correct. Is it conceivable that Israel would destroy a mosque? This happens to a lot of decent people: Instead of learning from the information about Israel's actions in the territories that it is necessary to withdraw from them, they assume that the information is incorrect and it is a problem of hasbara (literally, "explanation") or national public relations. As a loyal citizen, Weyl believed that someone needed to put things straight. As a person who for many years had directed the Israel Museum, Weyl figured that he was the right person to castigate ARTnews for bad-mouthing Israel, and asked for the help of the official bodies that are responsible for denying false, anti-Israeli reports of this sort. Naturally, he first telephoned the Foreign Ministry, where he was told that indeed, something must be done so that this fiction would not be left without a response - lest, heaven forfend, the mistaken impression be created that the report of the destruction of the mosque was correct. Unfortunately, the ministry was unable to provide Weyl the information he needed. Promising to look into it, they asked him to wait, and told him that perhaps he should call back the day after tomorrow - or next week, after the holidays. In the end, no one was able to help him. The good citizen Weyl did not despair; he contacted the Israel Antiquities Authority. The people there also told him that he was definitely right: Someone indeed had to respond to the wicked report. Regrettably, they too were unable to assure him with certainty that the mosque had not been harmed. Weyl sought contact with the Israel Defense Forces Spokesperson's Office. He was not the only reader angered by the ARTnews report. The magazine's editorial board had received so many responses that the editor, Anna Somers Cocks, felt the need to publish an editorial in which she assured readers that no, she was not an anti-Semite at all, nor is any member of her staff. But many readers of her publication had accused her of this and also said that the report of the destruction of the mosque reflected "primitive hatred" of Israel. Somers Cocks was not surprised by this wave of responses, she wrote: In the shadow of the Holocaust, Israel refuses to accept criticism, as if it were totally incapable of causing injustice to anyone. It's always like that; it's impossible to talk to them, to the Israelis. They always cling to the Holocaust. In the original report on the mosque, ARTnews also mentioned the harm done to inhabitants of the territories. Weyl commented to the publication that this was not its role, which was to deal exclusively with art. Perhaps he thought that this information, too, was incorrect. In any case, the Amnesty report that was published this week also mentions the damage to historic buildings. But it focuses, and rightly so, on worse deeds, which it defined as war crimes, a rare term and one almost unparalleled in its severity. According to Amnesty, Israeli soldiers have killed about 500 Palestinian civilians, among them about 70 children, and have damaged about 3,000 houses that were home to more than 13,000 people. The Foreign Ministry hastened to condemn this report, but just as it had been unable to deny the damage to the mosque, it was unable to refute the Amnesty report. Martin Weyl meanwhile persisted in his efforts to obtain evidence that ARTnews had lied. The clerks in the IDF Spokesperson's Office at first found it difficult to understand what it was he wanted from them. They promised to call him back and never did, but he phoned repeatedly and repeatedly heard that they were looking into the matter and would get back to him soon. As happens in a small country, Weyl has among his acquaintances an IDF major general; the major general said that he was definitely right and that someone had to respond to the report in ARTnews. In short order, Weyl got a phone call from the IDF spokesperson herself. She asked him how she could help him. Weyl explained himself for the umpteenth time: There is an important publication that deals with matters of art and in this publication thus and so was written and someone has to respond. The IDF spokesperson agreed that Weyl was absolutely right and promised to deal with the matter without delay. Days and weeks went by and Weyl phoned again and again. Finally he received a stack of photographs from the IDF Spokesperson's Office, among them a photograph of the mosque that proved without a doubt: There was absolutely no foundation to the base report that was published in ARTnews. Weyl immediately sat down to work on his letter: The story never happened, and the whole thing is nothing but a "total fabrication." Indeed, this is a mosque that was built on the ruins of a Byzantine church, and the honorable editor should focus her attention on the fact that the Palestinians are destroying all the Jewish traces on the Temple Mount. Sharp and sarcastic, Weyl accompanied his letter with a warning: If his response was not published, he would publish it in other ways, with the help of his connections with directors of major museums throughout the world. He enclosed the IDF Spokesperson's photographs in the letter. The editor of ARTnews was indeed in no hurry to publish Weyl's letter. Unfortunately, she was unable to rely on what he had written, since he, Weyl, had not been in Nablus himself and had not seen the mosque standing there unharmed with his own eyes. Weyl replied that she too had not reported firsthand. Somers Cocks replied to this; he responded again. It was a very British correspondence; Weyl and Somers Cocks attacked each other in a most gentlemanly fashion and in perfectly civilized language. At one stage, Somers Cocks located a Catholic priest who lives in Nablus, and based on what he said, she acknowledged that the report she had published had indeed been "exaggerated." "Not exaggerated, but fabricated," insisted Weyl and threatened that if she did not publish his letter he would share the correspondence not only with the directors of major museums around the world but even with the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai Brith in the U.S. Apparently the frightening name of the ADL did the job: ARTnews published Weyl's letter. The summer passed and autumn came, and Somers Cocks did not rest content until she had done what should have been done before the publication of the report on the mosque: She sent a reporter to Nablus, to check out the situation on the ground. It was important to her that the reporter be neither an Israeli nor a Palestinian, she wrote to Weyl, and the person she finally found, Robert Bevan by name, ruled that both she and Weyl had erred: The ancient mosque itself had indeed been damaged and some of the damage has since been repaired, but it could not be said that 80 percent of it was destroyed. Real destruction, however, had been caused to the new wing of the mosque, which had been demolished to its foundations. The editor of ARTnews did, however, celebrate a small victory: The correspondent she sent out to Nablus found that the picture Martin Weyl had received from the IDF Spokesperson's Office was not a photograph of the Al Khader Mosque. Is it possible that there are two mosques in Nablus that have the same name, wondered Somers Cocks with chilling politeness. Weyl was overwhelmed with embarrassment: He feels like a total idiot, he said this week. He thinks that all of Israel should feel the same. He hastened to send the editor a letter of apology: The IDF Spokesperson's Office had misled him, he wrote. Lior Yavne, spokesperson of B'Tselem, The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, was found to be a more informed source: Within two hours after he was asked about it, Yavne could provide information about the state of the mosque: The structure had been severely damaged, was unusable, and this week it is still unfit to be used as a place of worship.