Killing of Muhammad al-Durrah: Difference between revisions - Wikipedia
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In the months and years following the incident, a number of commentators questioned the accuracy of France 2's report.<ref name=Fallows>[http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200306/fallows Fallows 2003].</ref> A controversial IDF investigation in October 2000 concluded that the IDF had probably not shot the al-Durrahs.<ref>[http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/28/world/28MIDE.html The New York Times, November 27, 2000]. Later accounts of this stress that the IDF could not have shot the boy. See [http://www.aafs.org/pdf/NewOrleansabstracts05.pdf Maurice and Shahaf 2005], p. 46; and [http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1211288137213&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull Rettig Gur 2008]: Citing the report in 2008, Col. Shlomi Am-Shalom of the IDF said: "The general [Samia] has made clear that from an analysis of all the data from the scene, including the location of the IDF position, the trajectory of the bullets, the location of the father and son behind an obstacle, the cadence of the bullet fire, the angle at which the bullets penetrated the wall behind the father and his son, and the hours of the events, we can rule out with the greatest certainty the possibility that the gunfire that apparently harmed the boy and his father was fired by IDF soldiers, who were at the time located only inside their fixed position"; also see [http://www.seconddraft.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=283:stupidity-marches-on&catid=43:the-a-dura-case Haaretz 2000] and [http://web.archive.org/web/20061119084403/http://www.proche-orient.info/images/mbd/Segev_haaretz.htm Segev 2002].</ref> Three senior French journalists who reviewed the raw footage in 2004 argued that it is not clear from the footage alone that the boy died, and that France 2 cut a final few seconds in which he appears to lift his hand from his face.<ref>[http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&sl=fr&tl=en&u=http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3D75hiDGp89Xk&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.com&twu=1&usg=ALkJrhgNTQY5t046F-lHiS1afOf0i612oA Final moments of the footage, not shown by France 2], ''YouTube''; [http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/919557.html Schwartz 2007]: "In the last picture Mohammed al-Dura is seen lifting his head"; [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/07/business/worldbusiness/07iht-video07_ed3_.html Carvajal 2005], p. 2: "When Leconte and Jeambar saw the rushes, they were struck by the fact that there was no definitive scene that showed that the child truly died. They wrote, however, that they were not convinced that the particular scene was staged, but only that "this famous 'agony' that Enderlin insisted was cut from the montage does not exist."</ref> France 2's news editor, [[Arlette Chabot]], said in 2005 that no one could say for sure who fired the shots.<ref name=Carvajal>[http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/07/business/worldbusiness/07iht-video07_ed3_.html Carvajal 2005]</ref> Other commentators, including the director of the Israeli government press office, said the scenes had been staged by Palestinian protesters.<ref>[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7083129.stm Patience 2007]; [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/10/04/MNENSJ5ME.DTL Kalman 2007].</ref> [[Philippe Karsenty]], a French media commentator, was sued for libel in 2004 by France 2 for suggesting this; a ruling against him in 2006 was overturned by the Paris Court of Appeal in May 2008, a decision that France 2 has taken to the French [[Cour de cassation (France)|Supreme Court]].<ref name=latestappeal>''Libération'', May 21, 2008; [http://www.causeur.fr/al-doura-karsenty,2455 Lévy 2008]; [http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/2008/07/02/01003-20080702ARTFIG00002-intifada-cette-video-qui-dechaine-les-passions.php Barluet and Durand-Souffland 2008].</ref>
The footage has acquired what one writer called the iconic power of a battle flag.<ref>[http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/07/business/worldbusiness/07iht-video07_ed3_.html Carvajal 2005]: "But it is the harrowing image of a single terrified 12-year-old boy, shielded in his father's futile embrace, that possesses the iconic power of a battle flag."</ref> For the Palestinians, it confirmed their view of the apparently limitless nature of Israel's brutality toward them.<ref>[http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200306/fallows Fallows 2003]: "His name is known to every Arab, his death cited as the ultimate example of Israeli military brutality."</ref> For the Israelis, the world's willingness to believe they had killed the boy was a modern version of the [[Blood libel against Jews|blood libel]], the centuries-old antisemitic association of Jews with child sacrifice.<ref>[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7083129.stm Patience 2007]. Note: the blood libel was the claim that it was a Jewish custom to sacrifice a Christian child on the eve of [[Pesach]] ([[Passover]]), and to make [[matzo]], or unleavened bread, using the child's blood.</ref> The scene has been evoked in other deaths. It was blamed for the lynching of [[2000 Ramallah lynching|two Israeli army reservists]] in Ramallah in October 2000, and was seen in the background when [[Daniel Pearl]], a Jewish-American journalist, was beheaded by [[al-Qaeda]] in 2002.<ref name=Lauter>[http://jta.org/news/article/2008/07/08/109350/AlDura7608 Lauter 2008].</ref> [[James Fallows]] writes that no version of the truth about the footage will ever emerge that all sides consider believable.<ref>[http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200306/fallows Fallows 2003]. Fallows elaborated on his view on his blog: "I ended up arguing in my article that the ‘official’ version of the event could not be true. Based on the known locations of the boy, his father, the Israeli Defense Force troops in the area, and various barriers, walls, and other impediments, the IDF soldiers simply could not have shot the child in the way most news accounts said they had done ... I became fully convinced by the negative case (IDF was innocent). But I did not think there was enough evidence for the even more damning positive indictment (person or persons unknown staged a fake death — or perhaps even a real death, for ‘blood libel’ purposes": see [http://jamesfallows.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/10/news_on_the_aldura_front_israe.php Fallow's blog post], October 2, 2007, and a discussion of it in [http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/the_unpeaceful_rest_of_mohamme.php?page=all Beckerman 2007].</ref> Charles Enderlin has called it a cultural [[Prism (optics)|prism]], its viewers seeing what they want to see.<ref name=Carvajal/>
==Political background==