Tuesday, October 17, 2006
The Mohammed al-Durah slaying: a fake?
Remember this?
And this?
If you were sentient at the time, you surely will.
The shocking images of the young Palestinian boy apparently slain by Israeli soldiers pulsated around the globe and stoked a huge fire of righteous hatred to fuel a then-nascent Islamist jihad.
The incident happened just days after Ariel Sharon sparked Palestinian riots - and his push to become Israeli Prime Minister - by visiting the super-sensitive religious tinderbox that is both the Jewish Temple Mount and the Muslim Dome of the Rock.
A few months later, Usama Bin Ladin recruiting videos featured footage of al-Durah. So did the video put out by the beheaders of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
Now a Boston University History Professor, Richard Landes, writes persuasively in The New Republic that the shocking imagery was faked, that there appears to have been no slaying, that al-Durah couldn't have been killed by Israelis and, most damning of all: that French TV was complicit in the libel!
Here are extracts from the article, firstly regarding the dubious footage telegraphed around the world:
... I saw the raw footage in the summer of 2003-- ... (Charles) Enderlin (Al Durah beat chief for the France 2 television network) had cut (a scene) wherein the boy (allegedly shot in the stomach, but holding his hand over his eyes) picks up his elbow and looks around--I realized that this was not a film of a boy dying, but a clumsily staged scene.More damning even than this is the apparently open complicity of newsmen in faking the scene:
On October 31, 2003, ... I saw the raw footage ... France2 still refuses to release for public examination. I was floored. The tapes feature a long succession of obviously faked injuries; brutal, hasty evacuation scenes; and people ducking for cover while others stand around. One fellow grabbed his leg in agony, then, upon seeing that no one would come to carry him away, walked away without a limp. It was stunning. That was no cameraman's conspiracy: It was everyone--a public secret about which news consumers had no clue.
... (N)one of the dozen cameraman (sic) present filmed anything that could substantiate the claim that the father and son had been hit, much less that the Israelis had targeted them ...
But the real shock came when ... Enderlin ... said (re the footage of faked scenes):Regarding factual events surrounding the incident Landes says:
"They always do that," he said. "It's a cultural style."
So why wouldn't they have faked Al Durah?
"They're not good enough," he said.
A year later, the higher-ups at France2 made the same remark to three French journalists who also noted the pervasive staging: "You know well that it's always like that," they said.
I tried unsuccessfully to interest the mainstream press in this obvious fakery, but nobody was interested.
- The raw footage from that day reveals pervasive staging;
- (There is) no evidence ... of Israeli fire directed at the barrel, much less of Israelis targeting the pair;
- (G)iven the angles, the Israelis could scarcely have hit the pair at all, much less 12 times (indeed the only two bullets that hit the wall above them came from the Palestinian side, inexplicably 90 degrees off target);
- (T)here was no sign of blood on the ground where the father and son reportedly bled for 20 minutes;
- (T)here was no footage of an ambulance evacuation or arrival at the hospital;
- (T)here was no autopsy;
- (N)one of the dozen cameraman present filmed anything that could substantiate the claim that the father and son had been hit, much less that the Israelis had targeted them.
Why is a historian concerned with this? Landes is being called to testify at hearings in France acusing France 2 of libelously slandering Israel in a documentary concerning the al-Durah affair. Landes' interest and involvement, he says, stems from his expertise in similar libels throughout history.
