More al-Dura: What the Israeli PM's office is saying
According to this new article in Haaretz, the Israeli Prime Minister's office is out-and-out saying that the death of Mohammed al-Dura was staged. Lead of the Haaretz story:
The September 2000 death of Palestinian child Mohammed Al-Dura in the Gaza Strip was staged by a Gaza cameraman, Government Press Office (GPO) Director Daniel Seaman said yesterday.
Seaman made the comments in an official letter, representing the Prime Minister's Office, in response to demands he strip France 2 journalists of their GPO credentials. France 2 had broadcast the original footage of Al-Dura's death on September 30, 2000, the second day of the Second Intifada.
The story does not reveal the basis of this conclusion; nonetheless, the announcement is news. As the story says about the official position until now:
In recent years Israel has avoided relating to the incident, mostly because of the Foreign Ministry's recommendation that renewed handling of the affair would not help Israel's image in any case. In 2005, five years after the shooting, the Prime Minister's Bureau refused Seaman's proposal to publish an official stance denying responsibility for Al-Dura's death.
This is a story worth following, especially with the unfolding legal developments in Paris (explained in Haaretz). Thanks to Moshe Alamaro for this lead.
Background on al-Dura: important web sites, pro and con
Richard Landes, of Boston University, is (to my knowledge) the leading advocate of the idea that the death of Mohammed al-Dura was an elaborately-staged hoax. His blog TheAugeanStables is full of references, updates, videos, forensic reports, and other links supporting his argument that this was in its entirety a "Pallywood" production (Hollywood + Palestine, get it???). A related blog is here, and Natan Sharansky's essay about the latest twists in the case is here.
Charles Enderlin, the long-time Jerusalem correspondent for the TV network France 2* has his own running commentary, in French, at the France 2 blog site. He is a central figure in the story because his initial reports established the idea that the boy Mohammed had been killed by Israeli soldiers. The Landes camp believes that the scenes in his report were staged, and they have pushed relentlessly for release of the full footage France 2 shot that day. Enderlin and France 2 have refused. As any of these blogs will explain in detail, several trials in France have ensued.
My general experience in life makes me skeptical that large-scale conspiracies can be pulled off -- and kept secret for seven years, which is how long it has been since the original event. So based on what I have personally seen (not having devoted myself to the story for the last few years), I am not ready to say: Yes, for sure, this was a huge, big-lie, blood-libel, conspiratorial hoax. But Landes et al seem more fervent about turning up all available evidence and getting to the bottom of things than their antagonists do, which tells me something.
* Yesterday I incorrectly wrote this out "France Deux."
News on the al-Dura front: Israeli finding that it was staged
Four and a half years ago -- during the first weeks of the Iraq war, in fact -- I was in Israel learning about the case of Mohammed al-Dura. He was the young Palestinian boy who, according to worldwide press acccounts, was shot dead by Israeli soldiers as his father desperately tried to shield him, near the Netzarim crossing in Gaza:
(Mohammed al-Dura instants before his death -- as conveyed in worldwide news reports and memorialized, like a Pieta, in stamps, posters, and even statues in many Arab countries.)
Thanks mainly to evidence I was shown by Nahum Shahaf of Tel Aviv, a scientist who has devoted years to investigating the case, 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.
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