Charles Enderlin is a Franco-Israeli journalist, specialising in the Middle East and Israel. He is the author of a number of books on the subject, including Shamir, une biographie, Shattered Dreams: The Failure of the Peace Process in the Middle East, 1995–2002, and The Lost Years: Radical Islam, Intifada and Wars in the Middle East 2001–2006. He was awarded France's highest decoration, the Légion d'honneur, in August 2009. Enderlin came to international public attention in September 2000, when he provided the voice-over for a France 2 report on the killing of 12-year-old boy Muhammad al-Durrah by soldiers of the Israeli army. The event was important at the start of the Second Intifada. Few months after Enderlin's report, a small group of people in France launched a controversy with legal suits against France 2, and various accusations, from the contestation of the origin the bullets that killed young al-Durrah to the allegation of a "staging" of the whole scene.
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. 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. He was awarded the Chevalier de l'Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur on August 12, 2009 In August 2015, he retired from his post in the Jerusalem office where he was replaced by Franck Genauzeau.
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, Enderlin stated that al-Durrah had been targeted and killed by shots fired from Israeli positions. Over time, he came under criticism from a number of commentators, who asserted first that the bullets that killed the boy were not fired by the Israeli army, and that Enderlin participated to the making of the staged scene.
Books
Les Juifs de France entre république et sionisme,, Le Seuil, 2020
Le grand aveuglement : Israël et l'irrésistible ascension de l'islam radical,, Albin Michel, 2009
Par le feu et par le sang. Le combat clandestin pour l'indépendance d'Israël 1936–1948,, Albin Michel, 2008
The Lost Years: Radical Islam, Intifada and Wars in the Middle East 2001–2006 , Other Press 2007
Les années perdues : Intifada et guerres au Proche-Orient, 2001–2006, Fayard 2006
Shattered Dreams: The Failure of the Peace Process in the Middle East, 1995–2002
1997: Paix ou guerre,les secrets des négociations israélo-arabes 1917–1997
