Killing of Muhammad al-Durrah

Muhammad al-Durrah and his father, Jamal, on September 30 2000. The scene, now iconic, was recorded by Talal Abu Rahma for France 2.

Muhammad Jamal al-Durrah (1988-2000) Arabic: محمد جمال الدرة) was a Palestinian boy reported to have been killed by gunfire from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) during a clash between the IDF and Palestinian Security Forces in the Gaza Strip on September 30 2000, in the early days of the Second Intifada. Subsequent investigations have suggested that he might have been killed by a Palestinian bullet, and a number of people believe that the entire incident was staged.

The original reports stemmed from 59 seconds of a 27-minute tape recorded by a freelance Palestinian cameraman filming solo for the French public television network France 2. The footage shows al-Durrah and his father taking cover from crossfire behind a concrete cylinder, then apparently being hit. The scenes were broadcast with a voice-over from Charles Enderlin, the channel's bureau chief in Israel, who was not present during the incident; he told viewers that the father and son had been the "target of fire coming from the Israeli position." France 2 made three minutes of the tape available without charge to other television stations, and the scenes were aired around the world. The boy quickly became a martyr in the Arab world and a symbol of Palestinian grievances against Israel.

Shortly afterwards, the Israeli army chief of operations said an internal investigation had shown that "the shots were apparently fired by Israeli soldiers"; he issued an apology, while condemning what he called the Palestinians' "cynical use" of children. A later army investigation suggested al-Durrah had been hit by Palestinian bullets, and in 2002, a German documentary film suggested the same. France 2's news editor, Arlette Chabot, said in 2005 that no one could say for certain who might have fired the shots, although Enderlin stands by his report.

The incident became the subject of controversy when commentators challenged Enderlin's reporting, asking why the France 2 footage did not show the actual shooting or the moment of the boy's death, and why no forensic evidence was available. Denis Jeambar, a former editor of L'Express, and Daniel Leconte, a documentary producer, were given access to France 2's raw footage in 2004, and later wrote in Le Figaro: "At the time when Charles Enderlin presented the boy as dead, he had no possibility of determining that he was in fact dead, and even less so, that he had been shot by IDF soldiers." Other commentators — including Daniel Seaman, the Israeli government's chief press officer — have gone further in their criticism, alleging that the entire incident was staged with the knowledge of the cameraman. In 2004, France 2 sued Philippe Karsenty, a French media watchdog, after he called the incident a "hoax". France 2 won the initial defamation case, the court ruling that Karsenty had "seriously failed to meet the requirements expected of an information professional." In May 2008, that judgment was set aside by the Paris Court of Appeal, which ruled that Karsenty had presented a "coherent mass of evidence" and had "exercised in good faith his right to free criticism." France 2 has said it will appeal the decision to the Cour de cassation, France's highest court.

Personal background

Muhammad al-Durrah was in fifth grade in September 2000, living with his four brothers, two sisters, his mother, Amal, and his father, Jamal, in the United Nations-run Bureij refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. His father was a house painter who worked for Israelis in north Tel Aviv. On the day of the incident, the school was closed because of a general Palestinian "protest day" strike.

The incident as initially reported

Muhammad and Jamal under fire.

The camera goes out of focus as the gunfire reported to have killed al-Durrah is heard in the background.

As the dust clears, the father and son are slumped across each other. Shortly after this frame, the boy is seen to move his hand and leg. The reporter said the boy was moving in agony or was in his death throes ("agonie"), which he said he cut to spare the audience. Two senior French journalists who viewed the rushes say they show no death throes, but that they do not believe the scene was staged. Some critics of the original broadcast have argued the boy was peeking at the camera.

Background

According to Jamal al-Durrah, he and Muhammad had been out that day looking for cars at a used car dealership. Having failed to buy anything, they decided to take a cab home, which was two kilometers away.

Around lunchtime, they arrived near a road junction where Palestinians were throwing stones and Molotov cocktails at Israel Defence Forces (IDF) soldiers protecting the nearby settlement of Netzarim, which was later dismantled following the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005. With the cab driver unwilling to go further because of the rioting, Jamal decided to cross the junction on foot to look for another cab.

An exchange of gunfire broke out when Palestinian gunmen started shooting at the Israeli soldiers from a nearby orange grove, which was situated diagonally across from where the boy and his father were hiding. The al-Durrahs crouched behind a cylinder or drum, with their backs to a cinderblock wall, to shelter from the gunfire.

The shooting

The incident was recorded by Talal Abu Rahma, a veteran freelance Palestinian cameraman, who lives in the Gaza Strip and who had worked for France 2 for many years. Working alone, he filmed for 27 minutes, several minutes of which captured the events that were later televised by France 2. He later said that the firing had continued for a total of 45 minutes.

The tape was edited for broadcast by Charles Enderlin, a French-Israeli journalist who was France 2's bureau chief in Israel at the time. The original tape was edited down to 59 seconds, with a voice-over provided by Enderlin. Enderlin was not present during the shooting itself.

The tape as broadcast shows Muhammad and his father crouching behind a concrete cylinder against a tall concrete wall at one side of the roadway, situated between the Israeli and Palestinian positions. The two are shown in considerable distress, with the child screaming and the father shielding him. Muhammad was reported to have told his father, "Don't worry, Daddy, the ambulance will come and rescue us" and to have pleaded with his father for protection: "For the love of God protect me, Baba (Dad),".

The father is shown waving toward the Israeli position, shouting "Don't shoot!" The camera goes out of focus at the moment of the shooting. A final frame shows the father sitting upright, injured, and the boy lying over his legs. According to the father, "Muhammad was hit in the knee by a bullet. I tried to defend him with my body, but another hit him in the back. I cried and shouted for help. The shooting continued even as Muhammad bled. Suddenly a bullet hit me in the shoulder, and it was followed by another and then a third. I stopped counting the bullets and could not tell what had happened to Muhammad. I regained consciousness in the ambulance and felt the body of my son. It was cold."

In his voiceover, Enderlin stated: "Here is Jamal and his son. They are the target of fire coming from the Israeli position. ... The child signals - but [there is] a new burst [of gunfire]. The child is dead and his father is injured".

Injuries and treatment

Two ambulances were called to the scene of the shooting but were delayed by the ongoing fighting; according to the cameraman Abu Rahma, "It took about 45 minutes for the ambulance to reach the two, because of the heavy Israeli firing on everyone who dared to reach the young boy and his father." When the first ambulance arrived, according to one of the volunteers, "there was still some breath left in [Muhammad] when we reached the ambulance, but when we opened the doors, they started shooting again." Bassam al-Bilbeisi, the driver of the first ambulance, was shot dead as the fighting continued. A second ambulance took the boy and his father to the nearby Shifa hospital in Gaza, where Muhammad was pronounced dead on arrival. There were conflicting reports on the injuries sustained by the two. Muhammad was reported to have been shot four times, though other reports stated that the pathologist had identified three injuries. Talal Abu Rahma referred in his affidavit to one shot to the boy's right leg. No autopsy was performed and Muhammad was reported to have been buried that night.

Jamal al-Durrah was airlifted to the Hussein Medical Centre in Amman, Jordan, He underwent a number of operations and was visited by King Abdullah of Jordan, undergoing four months of treatment in the hospital before returning to Gaza.

The elder al-Durrah was reported to have been struck by twelve bullets, some of which were removed from his arm and pelvis; though other reports stated that no bullets were found because they fragmented upon entering the body, and that no fragments were found either.

The father's right hand was paralyzed permanently, and a journalist who interviewed him in 2003 reported that "there is a web of deep scarring around his groin area. There is scarring on his legs and around his right elbow area. His right hand is withered and he is unable to move some fingers because of nerve damage. He limps."

In 2007, Dr. Yehuda David, who works in the Tel HaShomer Hospital near Tel Aviv, asserted in an interview with Israel's Channel 10 news that the injuries to Jamal al-Durrah's right hand stemmed from 1994, six years before the reported shooting, allegedly as the result of an axe attack by a group of Palestinians. David asserted that al-Durrah's right hand had been paralyzed after the attack but that that he had restored the use of it.

Cameraman's testimony

This diagram of the incident is based on one provided by the cameraman in an affidavit given to the Palestine Centre for Human Rights.

Charles Enderlin, the France 2 correspondent, later wrote that he had based his initial conclusion that the IDF had shot al-Durrah on the testimony of the cameraman, Talal Abu Rahma. Abu Rahma stated in a sworn affidavit given to the Palestine Centre for Human Rights in Gaza in October 2000 that he believed the IDF had intentionally shot the boy. According to Rahma, "They were cleaning the area. Of course they saw the father, they were aiming at the boy, and that is what surprised me, yes, because they were shooting at him, not only one time, but many times".

The cameraman stated in his affidavit that he had been alerted to the incident while at the northern part of the road leading to the Netzarim junction, also called the al-Shohada junction. He said he could see an Israeli military outpost at the northwest of the junction, and just behind it, two Palestinian apartment blocks, nicknamed "the twins." He could also see a Palestinian Security Forces outpost (police station), located south of the junction, just behind the spot where the father and his boy were crouching. He observed shooting coming from there too, but not, he said, during the time when the al-Durrahs were shot. The Israeli fire was being directed at this Palestinian outpost. There was another Palestinian outpost 30 meters away. His attention was drawn to the child by Shams Oudeh, a Reuters photographer who was sitting beside Muhammad al-Durrah and his father. The three of them were sheltering behind a concrete block.

The violence began with the throwing of stones but quickly escalated, with stones being replaced by improvised bombs. The Israeli troops initially responded with rubber bullets and tear gas before gunfire erupted:

Shooting started first from different sources, Israeli and Palestinian. It lasted for not more than 5 minutes. Then, it was quite clear for me that shooting was towards the child Muhammad and his father from the opposite direction to them. Intensive and intermittent shooting was directed at the two and the two outposts of the Palestinian National Security Forces. The Palestinian outposts were not a source of shooting, as shooting from inside these outposts had stopped after the first five minutes, and the child and his father were not injured then. Injuring and killing took place during the following 45 minutes.

I can assert that shooting at the child Muhammad and his father Jamal came from the above-mentioned Israeli military outpost, as it was the only place from which shooting at the child and his father was possible. So, by logic and nature, my long experience in covering hot incidents and violent clashes, and my ability to distinguish sounds of shooting, I can confirm that the child was intentionally and in cold blood shot dead and his father injured by the Israeli army.

According to Abu Rahma, the al-Durrahs had been sheltering from the gunfire for about 30 minutes before they were shot: "I heard something go boom and a cloud of dust. I was filming at that point so you can see it. When the dust cleared, I saw the boy lying down on his father's legs, bleeding from the stomach. We were screaming like crazy, 'The boy is dead! Ambulance, ambulance!' But nobody could hear us. They kept on shooting. It was not far away, maybe 30 metres. One of my colleagues said, 'Let's jump and see what's going on'. We tried to cross the street, but we couldn't because of the bullets." After about an hour, during which time the al-Durrahs were evacuated by an ambulance, Abu Rahma and the others sheltering with him managed to escape from the scene. The footage was sent to France 2's Jerusalem office, where Charles Enderlin compiled his report and transmitted it by satellite to Paris.

Initial reactions

Family's reaction

Muhammad's mother, Amal, watched the incident on television, worried that her husband and son had not returned home, but without recognizing the two figures she saw sheltering from the gunfire. It was only when she watched the scene in a later broadcast that she realized who it was. Her children said she screamed at the sight, then fainted.

She told reporters, "My son didn't die in vain. This was his sacrifice for our homeland, for Palestine," and "[n]othing good will come of this. We will have many more martyrs, and nothing will change." One of Muhammad's brothers, Iyad, told TIME magazine: "He's a symbol not only for Palestinians. He left his impact on the whole world. It was shaken by his death."

Speaking from hospital, Muhammad's father Jamal said: "I appeal to the entire world, to all those who have seen this crime to act and help me avenge my son's death and to put on trial Israel ..." He said he planned to take Israel to the international courts. In another interview, he said his son had died for "the sake of Al-Aqsa Mosque," which was the subject of Palestinian protests at the time following a controversial visit by the Israeli politician Ariel Sharon.

The shooting was reported to have had a profound effect on the al-Durrah family. According to Muhammad Mukhamier, a clinical psychologist who was involved in counseling Muhammad's brothers and sisters, the family was severely traumatized by the shooting and also by the intense media attention and the repeated replays of the incident on Palestinian television. The children were described as suffering from the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder - wetting their beds at night, suffering from recurring nightmares, denying that Muhammad had been killed and becoming more isolated and withdrawn. Many other Palestinian children who had seen the footage on television were reported to be suffering from similar post-traumatic stress, acting out the shooting in their playgrounds or expressing a fear of being killed in the same way.

Israeli investigations

Three days after the shooting, the Israeli army's chief of operations, Major-General Giora Eiland, said that "We conducted an investigation, and as far as we understand, the shots were apparently fired by Israeli soldiers from the outpost at Netzarim" and issued an apology. Eiland noted that the soldiers at the outpost had been shooting from small slits in the wall and did not have a clear field of vision. Major-General Yom Tov Samia, the chief of the army's southern command, told Israel Radio: "I am very, very sorry from deep in my heart about this kid" but asserted that "we are sure they were not there by accident. They were throwing stones and Molotov cocktails." He stated that his troops had only fired live ammunition because they had been attacked "from four or five directions". The army's deputy chief of staff, Major-General Moshe Yaalon, called the boy's death "heartrending", but accused the Palestinians of making "cynical use" of children in clashes with Israeli troops. He told France 2 that "The child and his father were between our position and the place from which we were shot at. It is not impossible - this is a supposition, I don't know - that a soldier, due to his angle of vision, and because one was shooting in his direction, had seen someone hidden in this line of fire and may have fired in the same direction." The Deputy Defense Minister, Ephraim Sneh, told reporters that "it was a mistake which was not caused by intention" to kill and that he lamented the loss of "an innocent life"..

Major-General Samia commissioned a separate investigation following the shooting, releasing the conclusions in November 2000. The investigation found that it was "quite plausible that the boy was hit by Palestinian bullets in the course of an exchange of fire". Samia asserted that the al-Durrahs had been hit by a volley of gunfire, while the Israeli troops at the scene had been firing only single shots. He showed a press conference footage from the scene of the shooting that showed a Palestinian with an assault rifle firing a volley of gunfire towards the Israeli position and the sheltering al-Durrahs, but declined to say that he was sure that the Palestinians had been responsible for the shooting.

The investigation and its conclusions provoked immediate controversy. It was authored by two private citizens - Nahum Shahaf and Yosef Duriel - with the involvement of several additional unnamed experts and intelligence officers. The involvement of Shahaf and Duriel, who held no official military or police positions or forensic or ballistic qualifications, was questioned by the Israeli media after it emerged that the two had previously been involved in a campaign to prove the innocence of Yigal Amir, who assassinated Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. The two promoted a conspiracy theory which asserted that Rabin had been murdered on the orders of Shimon Peres, who was later to become the President of Israel.

Two days after the al-Durrah shooting, Duriel wrote an article for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz in which he asserted that "provocateurs opened fire against IDF soldiers, behind the back of a child, and made sure he would be killed in front of cameras; and after the boy, they killed the ambulance driver who tried to save him. All this was done to score propaganda points by depicting murderous behavior on the part of IDF soldiers." Shahaf contacted Duriel after reading the article to propose that they collaborate again on the al-Durrah case and persuaded Samia to let them undertake an enquiry for him.

The general agreed but fired Duriel during the progress of the investigation after he gave an interview saying that the inquiry would prove that the Palestinians had deliberately shot the al-Durrahs for propaganda reasons. Samia refused to endorse Duriel's views and presented no evidence to support them. Haaretz criticized the investigation, concluding that it was so shaky that the Israeli public would never accept its findings, and characterized Duriel's separately-published findings as unprofessional. In response, Duriel filed a libel suit against Haaretz journalist Ron Hauftman but lost; the court ruled that his investigation had been "amateurish, not meticulous, not objective and unprofessional" and had failed to employ scientific methods.

The investigation was also criticized by the France 2 reporter Charles Enderlin. He told Haaretz that Shahaf had misrepresented himself as a "media professional" without mentioning the IDF investigation and had requested a copy of the full, unedited version of the footage on the grounds that it was "likely to be presented to professional media forums, including film schools". He noted that the investigators had failed to interview the cameraman who had filmed the incident. Its conclusions were also rejected by the Palestinians; Jamal al-Durrah stated that "Everybody knows the truth. The bullets of the Zionists are the bullets that killed my son", and Palestinian Authority spokeswoman Hanan Ashrawi charged that the findings were a "falsified version of reality (that) blames the victims".

The Knesset member Ophir Pines-Paz, who was later to serve as Interior Minister under the Ehud Olmert government, questioned whether the investigation was not biased from the start: "One gets the impression that instead of genuinely confronting this incident, the IDF has chosen to stage a fictitious re-enactment and cover up the incident by means of an inquiry with foregone conclusions, the sole purpose of which is to clear the IDF of responsibility for al-Durrah's death." In response, the Israel Army's chief of staff Shaul Mofaz distanced himself from the investigation, saying that it had been put together by Major-General Samia and not the army general staff. The public reaction to the investigation was lukewarm; its findings were said to have been "given little credence, even in Israel".

Islamic world

File:Al dura stamps.jpg

Jordanian commemorative postage stamps issued in September 2001 captioned The martyr Mohammed al Dorra.

The Al-Durrah incident had an immediate impact in the Islamic world, galvanizing popular support for the Palestinian uprising. Media outlets asserted that Israeli forces had murdered al-Durrah and portrayed it as archetypal of Israeli brutality; the Palestinian commentator Khalid Amayreh wrote: "The haunting specter of the murder, which, more or less, epitomizes Israel's long standing treatment of the Palestinians, Lebanese and other Arabs ... testifies to the brutal ugliness of the Zionist mentality and its callous disregard for the sanctity of human life". Al-Durrah's grave in Gaza presents a similar theme of a murdered martyr: "This is the tomb of the martyred child Muhammad Jamal al-Durrah, murdered September 30, 2000, at the age of 12. To heaven goes your soul, Muhammad." In the days following the shooting, the footage was repeatedly broadcast on Palestinian television along with patriotic songs and calls to arms against the Israeli aggressor.

Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Yemen issued postage stamps on the first and second anniversaries of the shooting, describing him as a martyr and juxtaposing images from the France 2 footage with images of the Dome of the Rock. Egypt re-named the street in Cairo on which the Israeli embassy is located in his honor. The Palestinian Authority gave the same name to a street in Jericho; similarly a main thoroughfare in Baghdad was named "Martyr Muhammad al-Durrah Street"; and Morocco created an al-Dura Park. The Iranian Ministry of Education developed a website to commemorate him, and the Iranian foreign ministry suggested renaming a street in Tehran in his honor. By the end of 2000, more than 150 Iranian schools had been renamed after al-Durrah.. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai, composed a poem titled To the soul of the child martyr, Mohammed Al Durra in his honour. Talal Abu Rahma, the cameraman who filmed the incident, was awarded the Arab Media Award in Dubai in April 2001 for best coverage of breaking news. In Lebanon, the musician Charbel Rouhana and actor Julia Kassar recorded a song titled Lest We Forget Mohammed Durra, with proceeds in aid of Palestinian hospitals and medical centers.

Osama bin Laden has invoked the al-Durrah affair several times. On October 7, 2001, he warned President George W. Bush that he "must not forget the image of Muhammad al-Durrah and his fellow Muslims in Palestine and Iraq. If he has forgotten, then we will not forget, God willing." Two months later, he asserted that "what is happening in Palestine - what is happening today - is the intentional murder of children. ... Slaying children is infamous for being the height of injustice, disbelief and Pharaonic aggression, but the Children of Israel have used the same style against our sons in Palestine. The whole world looked on and witnessed the Israeli soldiers as they killed Muhammad al-Durrah and many like him."

In May 2004, the Kuwaiti investment company Global Investment House created the "Al-Durra Islamic Fund" with the investment objective of seeking "capital growth through investing in Sharia'a-compliant local shares."

Jamal al-Durrah is reportedly dismayed by the way that images of Muhammad's death have been commercialized. He told On the Media:

I had very bad feelings when I saw some toilet paper — they put the picture of the killing of Mohammed with me on the cover just to sell it. I didn't like it, because this is a symbol and a martyrdom. The next day people took the roll cover and threw it in the garbage.

Amnesty International

Citing the cameraman's statement that the IDF had killed the boy deliberately, a November 2001 Amnesty International report entitled "Broken Lives — A Year of Intifada" said that photographs taken by journalists showed a pattern of bullet holes indicating that the father and son were targeted by the Israeli post opposite them. AI also stated that, on October 11, 2001, the IDF spokesperson in Jerusalem had shown AI delegates maps that purported to prove that al-Durrah had been killed by Palestinian crossfire.

Controversy

The controversy over al-Durrah's death centers on two main areas. First, neither Palestinian nor Israeli officials appear to have conducted a full investigation. No bullets appear to have been recovered; there was no autopsy; and no ballistics tests were conducted at the scene to determine the angle of the shots. Second, there is controversy regarding the way the France 2 footage was shot, edited, and reported.

No autopsy, bullets, or ballistics examination

File:Al-Durrahs-bullets.jpg

Bullet holes can be seen in the wall behind the al-Durrahs. It was reported that no bullets were collected by the Palestinians, and that the IDF demolished the wall before ballistics tests could be carried out.

It was reported that no autopsy was performed, and no bullets appear to have been recovered, either at the hospital or at the scene. In an interview with Esther Shapira for Three Bullets and a Child, a 2002 documentary for Germany's ARD channel, Talal Abu Rahma, the cameraman, said that bullets had been recovered; he said that Shapira should ask a named Palestinian official, a general, about them. The general told Shapira that he had no bullets, and that there had been no Palestinian investigation into the shooting because there was no doubt about who had shot the boy. "It was the Israeli side who committed this murder," he said.

When told the general had no bullets, Abu Rahma said instead that France 2 had collected the bullets at the scene. When questioned about this by Shapira, he replied: "We have some secrets for ourselves ... We cannot give anything ... everything."

Shapira also reported that the wall the al-Durrahs sheltered behind, in which bullet holes are visible in the footage, had been destroyed by the IDF before a ballistics examination could be conducted. Shapira's documentary concluded that the boy could not have been shot by the IDF, and that the shooting and his death were accidental.

Father’s injuries

Questions were raised with regards to Jamal al-Durrah’s claims that he sustained bullet wounds to his arms and legs. On December 13, 2007, Israel’s Channel 10 aired an interview with a doctor, Yehuda David of Tel Hashomer hospital, who treated al-Durah for knife and ax wounds to his arms and legs, sustained during a 1994 Palestinian gang attack. David stated the scars that were presented as evidence of bullet wounds are clearly scars from a tendon repair operation, as they are neat, long and slender. Dr. David submitted a sworn testimony to the French court reviewing Karsenty’s appeal, stating the same.

What the raw footage showed

The France 2 footage became controversial because Enderlin's report showed only 59 seconds out of 27 minutes of raw footage, and did not include the scene of the boy's death. Just over three minutes of footage was provided to other news organizations and to the Israeli army. France 2 provided the footage free of charge to the world's media, saying it did not want to profit from the incident. None of the distributed footage shows the boy dying.

Independent journalists view the footage

Charles Enderlin, the France 2 bureau chief in Jerusalem, said that he had cut the death scene from his original report, and from the footage supplied to other media, because it showed the boy in his death throes ("agonie"), which he said in an interview with Télérama in October 2000 was "unbearable."

In October 2004, in response to criticism that the footage may have been edited inappropriately, executives at France 2 allowed three senior French journalists to view all 27 minutes of the raw footage. The three were Daniel Leconte, a former France 2 correspondent; Dennis Jeambar, the editor-in-chief of L'Express; and Luc Rosenzweig, a former editor-in-chief of Le Monde, and a Metula News Agency (Mena) contributor.

Shortly after the viewing, Mena's editor-in-chief Stéphane Juffa asserted that the footage did not show the boy's death. Leconte and Jeambar wrote about the footage in an article co-authored a few weeks after viewing it, although it was first published five months later on January 25 2005 by Le Figaro, allegedly only after it had been offered to, and rejected by, Le Monde. In their article, Leconte and Jeambar write that there is no scene in the France 2 footage that shows the child had died. They wrote that they did not believe that the scene had been staged, but that "this famous 'agony' that Enderlin insisted was cut from the montage does not exist."

They also wrote that the first 20 minutes or so of the film showed young Palestinians "playing at war" for the cameras, falling down as if wounded, then getting up and walking away. They told a radio interviewer that a France 2 official had said "You know it's always like that." In an interview with Cybercast News Service, Leconte said that he found France 2's statement disturbing. "I think that if there is a part of this event that was staged, they have to say it, that there was a part that was staged, that it can happen often in that region for a thousand reasons," he said.

Leconte did not conclude that the shooting of the boy and his father was faked; in his view "At the moment of the shooting, it's no longer acting, there's really shooting, there's no doubt about that."

In February 2005, France 2 also showed the raw footage to the International Herald Tribune. The reporter, Doreen Carvajal, writes that the footage of the father and son lasts several minutes, but does not clearly show the child's death. She also writes there is a cut in the scene that France 2 executives say was caused by the cameraman's efforts to preserve a low battery.

Leconte asks France 2 to correct its report

On February 15, 2005, Leconte said in an interview with the Cybercast News Service that al-Durrah had been shot from the Palestinian position. He said: "The only ones who could hit the child were the Palestinians from their position. If they had been Israeli bullets, they would be very strange bullets because they would have needed to go around the corner." He dismissed an earlier claim by France 2 that the gunshots that struck al-Durrah were bullets that could have ricocheted off the ground, stating "It could happen once, but that there should be eight or nine of them, which go around a corner? They're just talking nonsense."

Leconte also told the Cybercast News Service that the cameraman had retracted his testimony. France 2's communications director Christine Delavennat said that Abu Rahma had not retracted his testimony, but rather "denied making a statement — falsely attributed to him by a human rights group [the Palestine Centre for Human Rights] — to the effect that the Israeli army fired at the boy in cold blood."

Leconte said that because the pictures had "devastating" consequences, which included the public lynching of two Israeli soldiers and a rise in antisemitism among French Muslims, France 2 or Enderlin should admit that their report may have been misleading. "Who will say it, I don't know, but it is important that Enderlin or France 2 should say, that on these pictures, they were wrong — they said things that were not reality," he said.

Enderlin's response

Enderlin responded to Jeambar and Leconte's charges in a January 27, 2005 article in Le Figaro. He wrote that he had alleged the bullets were fired by the Israelis for a number of reasons: first, he trusted the cameraman who, he said, had worked for France 2 for 17 years. It was the cameraman, he said, who made the initial claim during the broadcast, and later had it confirmed by other journalists and sources. The initial Israeli statements also played a role, he said.

Enderlin said "the image corresponded to the reality of the situation, not only in Gaza but also in the West Bank," where, he wrote, in the first month of the Intifada, the IDF had already fired around one million bullets, and killed 118 Palestinians, including 33 children, compared to the 11 Israelis killed. Enderlin attributed these figures to Ben Kaspit of Maariv.

Leconte responded: "I find this, from a journalistic point of view, mind-boggling. That a journalist like him can be driven to say such things is very revealing of the state of the press in France today."

Enderlin also wrote that a journalist does not have to take note of "possibly dishonest" later uses by "extremist groups," and accused Jeambar and Leconte of promoting "censorship".

Allegations that the incident was staged

Richard Landes

Richard Landes, a Boston University professor specializing in medieval cultures, and founder and director of the Center for Millennial Studies, studied full footage from other Western news outlets shot on the day of the shooting, including the pictures of the boy, and concluded that the shooting had probably been faked.

He called the footage an example of "Pallywood" cinema, writing: "I came to the realization that Palestinian cameramen, especially when there are no Westerners around, engage in the systematic staging of action scenes." Landes went on to found the website Second Draft, dedicated to gathering evidence on the al-Durrah case and other controversies in journalism.

Shahaf/Duriel investigation

Nahum Shahaf, a physicist, and Yosef Duriel, an engineer, were informally commissioned by IDF Southern Commander Major General Yom Tov Samia to begin a second investigation of the case. Shortly after the shooting, the IDF acknowledged that there was "a high probability" that IDF gunfire had killed al-Durrah. Ha'aretz writes that Deputy Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon expressed his sorrow over the tragedy, assuming that "the damage to Israel's reputation was irreversible, and knowing that Israel faced the reality of more children dying ..." Senior officers in the Southern Command were allegedly bitter about what they saw as this hasty capitulation, which is why Shahaf and Duriel's offer to help investigate was accepted. The two were already familiar with one another after being involved in attempts to develop alternative theories about the assassination of Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995.

On October 23, 2000, Shahaf and Duriel arranged a re-enactment of the shooting on an IDF shooting range, in front of a CBS 60 Minutes camera crew. Duriel told 60 Minutes that he believed al-Durrah was killed by Palestinian gunmen collaborating with the France 2 camera crew and the boy's father, with the intent of fabricating an anti-Israel propaganda symbol. Samia immediately removed Duriel from the investigation, but Duriel continued to insist that his version was accurate and that the IDF were refusing to publicize it because the results were "explosive".

The results of the investigation were released on November 27, 2000. Samia stated: "A comprehensive investigation conducted in the last weeks casts serious doubt that the boy was hit by Israeli fire. It is quite plausible that the boy was hit by Palestinian bullets in the course of the exchange of fire that took place in the area." IDF Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz later insisted that this investigation was a private enterprise of Samia's. Yossi Almog, a retired senior police officer who specializes in evidence-gathering, told Ha'aretz: "I don't believe the IDF would release a conclusion revising a previous declaration without first conducting a thorough examination, using the best professionals in the security establishment. I wouldn't rely on an approach made by some anonymous person. I might welcome that person's initiative, but I certainly wouldn't accept his conclusions without conducting a systematic, orderly examination, under the best possible conditions. Anything less than that isn't serious."

James Fallows, in a June 2003 article in The Atlantic Monthly titled Who Shot Mohammed al-Dura? characterized Shahaf's evidence for his conclusion as follows:

The reasons to doubt that the al-Duras, the cameramen, and hundreds of onlookers were part of a coordinated fraud are obvious. Shahaf's evidence for this conclusion, based on his videos, is essentially an accumulation of oddities and unanswered questions about the chaotic events of the day. Why is there no footage of the boy after he was shot? Why does he appear to move in his father's lap, and to clasp a hand over his eyes after he is supposedly dead? Why is one Palestinian policeman wearing a Secret Service-style earpiece in one ear? Why is another Palestinian man shown waving his arms and yelling at others, as if 'directing' a dramatic scene? Why does the funeral appear — based on the length of shadows — to have occurred before the apparent time of the shooting? Why is there no blood on the father's shirt just after they are shot? Why did a voice that seems to be that of the France 2 cameraman yell, in Arabic, 'The boy is dead' before he had been hit? Why do ambulances appear instantly for seemingly everyone else and not for al-Dura?"

— James Fallows, The Atlantic Monthly.

France 2 legal action

The Palais de Justice in Paris, where France 2's lawsuits were heard

France 2 filed a series of defamation suits against some of its critics in October 2004, to defend itself against the charges that its reporting of the incident had not been accurate. It sought symbolic damages of €1 from each of the defendants, suing them for a "press offence" under the Press Law of 1881. The law obliges the court to determine whether an accusation is defamatory, whether it is being made in good faith and whether a defendant has undertaken at least a basic verification of the source(s) for the accusation. Truth is not an absolute defence and the law forbids the court from investigating the truth of an accusation.

Philippe Karsenty

The first of the France 2 lawsuits was against Philippe Karsenty, who was charged with defaming Charles Enderlin's and France 2's honor and reputation on his website, Media-Ratings. Based on reporting by the Israeli Metula News Agency (MENA), Karsenty he had claimed that Enderlin's original broadcast was fraudulent and called for the dismissal of Chabot and Enderlin. He asserted that the events filmed by the France 2 cameraman had been faked, that al-Dura had not been killed in front of the camera, and that the boy was in fact still alive.

Responding to the claims, Enderlin told the Jerusalem Post that "I don't mind people elaborating any conspiracy theory about me and France 2 and writing about it. Another French guy even made a fortune by writing a book about 9/11 saying that it was a missile that hit the Pentagon. I can accept any polemic; what is unacceptable is to be publicly insulted and be called a liar. This is why we sued Karsenty, not for his eccentric theories."

Karsenty called four witnesses in his defence, including Richard Landes. The defence was bolstered by support from Sandrine Alimi-Uzan, the procureur de la République (a lawyer appointed by the court to represent the interests of civil society), who argued that although Karsenty had defamed Enderlin, it would be in the public interest for him to be exonerated.

The case was heard before the 17th Chamber of the Correctional Court of Paris on 7 September 2006. In a judgement released on 19 October, the court convicted Karsenty of libel and ordered him to pay €1,000 in costs and €1 in damages to the plaintiffs. The presiding judge, Joel Boyer, was scathing about Karsenty's actions. Noting that Karsenty had relied on a single source, the judge stated that "primarily based on extrapolations and amalgams, [the argument of the defendant] depends on peremptory assertions of authority which no Israeli official - nor the army, however concerned in the highest degree, nor justice - has granted the least credit." Judge Boyer commented that "the accused, [by] showing in his account, without distance or critical analysis of his own sources, the idea that scenes have been staged for the ends of propaganda has seriously failed to meet the requirements expected of an information professional."

Following an appeal by Karsenty, the case was transferred to the 17th Chamber of the Court of Appeal of Paris in November 2007 and a further hearing was held in February 2008. The court asked to see the full set of images of the clashes at Netzarim, totalling some 27 minutes. France 2 presented it with 18 minutes of footage, stating that the rest had been destroyed because it did not concern the incident in question. France 2 was supported by the public prosecutor, Antoine Bartoli, who argued that Karsenty had not conducted a "serious investigation" and that his claims were "undoubtedly defamatory".

On 21 May 2008, the court overturned Karsenty's libel conviction. It found that his claims had clearly been "undoubtedly damaging [to] the honor and reputation of information professionals". However, the court found that his claims were nonetheless within the boundaries of permissible expression in the context of media criticism. The judge commented, "it is legitimate for a monitoring agency to investigate the media, because of the impact of the images which were reviewed across the world, [and] on the conditions in which the report was filmed and broadcast." The court ruled that the evidence presented by Karsenty "did not allow it to rule out the opinion of [France 2] professionals", but rejected Bartoli's assertion that Karsenty's evidence was "neither complete nor serious". Although the court did not endorse Karsenty's views, it stated that "the examination of [the] rushes [makes it] no longer possible to dismiss the views of professionals heard during the case" and had put in doubt the authenticity of the reporting.

Karsenty told the press shortly after the verdict was issued, "The verdict means we have the right to say France 2 broadcast a fake news report, that al-Dura's shooting was a staged hoax and that they duped everybody - without being sued".

In response, France 2 pledged to take the case to the Cour de cassation, France's highest court.

A petition in support of France 2 has been signed by 80 senior French writers and journalists. Elie Barnavi, historian and former Israeli ambassador in France, has criticized the petition and called for an independent inquiry in the journal Marianne.

Others

The other two lawsuits were brought against Pierre Lurçat, of the group "Liberty, Democracy and Judaism" whose website, "Ligue de Défense Juive," urged people to attend a rally where France 2 and Charles Enderlin were "awarded' the "Prize for Misinformation"; and against Dr. Charles Gouz, whose blog republished an article by Stéphane Juffa in which Enderlin and France 2 were criticized and accused of disseminating misinformation. Lurçat's case was dismissed on a technicality and Dr. Gouz received a "mitigated judgement" for allowing the word "misinformation" to be used on his blog with respect to France 2 and its staff.

Further reading

• Fallows, James. "Who shot Mohammed al-Durra?", The Atlantic Monthly, June 2003.
• Huber, Gérard. Contre-expertise d'une mise en scène. Editions Raphael, 2003. ISBN 2-87781-066-6
• Goldenberg, Suzanne. "Analysis of the shooting", The Guardian, undated.
• Gutman, Stephanie. The Other War: Israelis, Palestinians and the Struggle for Media Supremacy. Encounter Books, 2005. ISBN 1-893554-94-5
• Karsenty, Phillipe. French Court Vindicates Al-Dura Hoax Critic, Pajamas Media, May 21, 2008
• Schary Motro, Helen. Maneuvering Between the Headlines: An American Lives through the Intifada. Other Press, 2005. ISBN 1-59051-159-X
• "Israeli ambassador defends troops". BBC.
• Mohammed al-Dura lives on, op-ed by Gideon Levi for Haaretz 7 October 2007
• Mohammed Al-Durra footage may have been a hoax, op-ed by Piers Akerman for Daily Telegraph Aus May 29, 2008
• Defner, Larry. "Rattling the Cage: Get real about Muhammad al-Dura" a Jerusalem Post columnist criticizes "conspirary theories" regarding the shooting while defending the IDF's conduct
• Schapira, Esther: "Propaganda against Israel: The Mohammed Al Durah Case and Staging Reality in the Media"
• Moshelian, Michelle: "Mohammed al-Dura: The Farce that Launched a Thousand Suicide Bombers"