Killing of Muhammad al-Durrah

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

Muhammad al-Durrah (Arabic: محمد الدرة; born in 1988) was reported to have been killed by gunfire on September 30, 2000 near the Netzarim junction in the Gaza Strip at the beginning of the Al-Aqsa Intifada. The report was based on video footage provided by a local freelance cameraman, Talal Abu Rahma, who was working alone for France 2.

The footage shows al-Durrah and his father seeking cover from crossfire between the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Palestinian gunmen. Al-Durrah eventually slumped over, apparently killed by gunfire. The French station provided parts of its footage free of charge to media around the world. The broadcast of the tape led to international outrage against the IDF and the Israeli government.

Soon after, questions were raised about the authenticity of the tape, leading to controversy about several aspects of the incident, including the source of the bullets, the identity of the boy, whether the Palestinian gunmen had shot him, and whether he is actually dead.

Family background

Muhammad al-Durrah lived with his four brothers, two sisters, his mother, Amal, and his father, Jamal, in the Bureij refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. His father worked as a general contractor.

The New York Times reported that Muhammad was in fifth grade, enjoyed school, and was an excellent English student. He also enjoyed swimming at Gaza beach and looking after his pet birds. On the day of the incident, the school was closed because of a general strike.

Incident as initially reported

Muhammad and Jamal reportedly under fire.

The camera goes out of focus at the moment of the reported shooting.

The father appears to be injured. His son is lying across his legs. Shortly after this frame, the boy is seen to move his hand. The reporter later said the boy was moving in agony or was in his death throes ("agonie"), which he said he cut to spare the audience. Critics say the boy was peeking at the camera. Two senior French journalists who viewed the rushes say they show no death throes, but that they do not believe the scene was staged.

Background

In an interview the day after the shooting with Talal Abu Rahma, the cameraman who filmed the incident, Jamal al-Durrah said that he and Muhammad had been out that day looking at cars at a used car dealer. Having failed to buy anything, they decided to take a cab home, which was two kilometers away.

At around lunchtime, they arrived near the Netzarim junction where Palestinians were throwing stones and Molotov cocktails at Israeli soldiers protecting a nearby Israeli settlement. With the cab driver unwilling to go further because of the rioting, Jamal decided to cross the junction on foot and look for another cab.

According to Matt Rees of Time, Palestinian gunmen started shooting at the Israeli soldiers from a nearby orange grove. Muhammad and his father crouched behind a cylinder or drum, with their backs to a cinderblock wall, to escape the fire.

The reported shooting

The incident was recorded by Talal Abu Rahma, a freelance Palestinian cameraman who lives in the Gaza Strip, and who was working alone in the area for France 2. Abu Rahma captured on tape 27 minutes of the reported 45-minute exchange of fire.

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 voiceover provided by Enderlin. Enderlin was not present during the shooting itself.

The tape as broadcast shows Muhammad and his father crouching behind the cylinder, situated between the Israeli and Palestinian positions, the child screaming and the father shielding him. According to Matt Rees writing in TIME, Muhammed told his father "Don't worry, Daddy, the ambulance will come and rescue us." The father is shown waving toward the Israeli position, shouting "Don't shoot!" The camera goes out of focus at the moment of the reported shooting. A final frame shows the father sitting upright, appearing to have been injured, and the boy lying over his legs.

In his voiceover, Enderlin stated that the IDF had killed the boy.

Injuries

Muhammad was reported by the BBC to have been shot four times. Talal Abu Rahma referred in his affidavit to one shot to the boy's right leg. TIME said the boy received a fatal wound to the abdomen. Doctors removed bullets from the father's pelvis and arm, according to the BBC, which reported that the father's right hand was paralyzed permanently.

Father's story

In an interview with the father, the BBC reported that Muhammad had pleaded with his father for protection. "For the love of God protect me, Baba (Dad)," the boy is reported to have said. The boy's father told the BBC that Israeli troops had fired relentlessly, and had shot at an ambulance that tried to rescue the pair, killing the ambulance driver, Bassam al-Bilbeisi, and injuring another.

The father 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."

Cameraman's story

File:Durrah-map-2.jpg

This diagram of the incident was apparently provided by the cameraman in an affidavit given to the Palestine Centre for Human Rights. Although initial news reports were based on the cameraman's story, and the affidavit was quoted in an Amnesty International report, the cameraman later denied having made one of the statements in the affidavit — that the IDF had targeted the boy — casting doubt on its authenticity.

Charles Enderlin, the France 2 correspondent, later wrote in Le Figaro that he had based his initial allegation that the IDF had shot al-Durrah on the claim of the cameraman, Talal Abu Rahma.

According to the Palestine Centre for Human Rights, Abu Rahma said in a sworn affidavit that he believed the IDF had shot the boy, and had done so intentionally. France 2's communications director later said that Abu Rahma denied making this statement. Suzanne Goldenberg, writing in The Guardian, also quoted Abu Rahma as saying of the IDF: "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".

In his affidavit, the cameraman said he had been alerted to the incident while at the northern part of the road leading to the Nezarim junction, also called the Al-Shohada’ junction. He said he could see an Israeli military outpost at the northwest of the junction, and just beind it, two Palestinian apartment blocks, nicknamed "the twins."

He said he could also see a Palestinian National Security Forces outpost (police station), located south of the junction, just behind the spot where the father and boy were crouching. He said that shooting was coming from there too, but not, he said, during the time the boy was reportedly shot. The Israeli fire was being directed at this Palestinian outpost, he said. There was another Palestinian outpost 30 meters away.

Abu Rahma said 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.

Regarding the reported shooting of the boy, Abu Rahma's affidavit said:

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 Mohammed 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 Mohammed 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.

The authenticity of this affidavit is unclear. It was apparently given to the Palestine Centre for Human Rights in Gaza on October 3 2000, and signed by the cameraman in front of a lawyer, Raji Sourani. France 2's communications director, Christine Delavennat, later said that Abu Rahma "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."

Amnesty International allegation

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 show that al-Durrah had been killed in crossfire.

Reaction

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.

Amal told reporters: "My son didn't die in vain. This was his sacrifice for our homeland, for Palestine." According to the BBC, after hearing President Clinton say he had been moved by the footage, she asked: "But if he was really moved, why doesn't he intervene and stop the Israelis killing Palestinian children?" The Guardian reported her saying that "[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."

Israel

The IDF initially stated that it was "probably responsible" for killing al-Durrah and expressed sorrow at his death. IDF operations chief Giora Eiland announced that "there had been an investigation by the major-general of the southern command and apparently [al-Durrah] was killed by Israeli Army fire at the Palestinians who were attacking them violently".

The IDF initially apologized for the boy's death but later held an investigation that concluded that al-Durrah had probably been killed by Palestinians. Israeli officials said it would be a "losing proposition" to reopen the al-Durrah case, because they would be "accused of blaming the victim."

Muslim world

Enderlin's statement that the IDF had killed the boy was widely accepted as fact in the Islamic world and his death became a symbol of opposition to Israel.

Egypt and Tunisia issued postage stamps depicting him as a martyr. Egypt re-named the street on which the Israeli embassy is located in his honor. The Palestinian Authority gave the same name to a street in Jericho, and Saddam Hussein similarly named a main thoroughfare in Baghdad "Martyr Mohammed al-Dura 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. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai, composed a poem in his honour.

On October 7, 2001, al Qaida leader Osama bin Laden warned American President George W. Bush that he "must not forget the image of Mohammed al-Dura and his fellow Muslims in Palestine and Iraq. If he has forgotten, then we will not forget, God willing."

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."

Controversy

What the raw footage showed

The France 2 report became controversial because it showed only 59 seconds 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 showed the boy being killed.

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 reported 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 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 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 and Jeambar did not conclude that the boy's death was faked. They wrote: "To those, like Mena, who wanted to use us to support the thesis of that the death of the child was faked by the Palestinians, we say that they are misguided, and are misguiding their readers. Not only do we not share this point of view, but we affirm that based on the knowledge of the file we have today, nothing allows us to affirm this, much to the contrary."

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 saying anything."

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 shot around one million bullets, and killed 118 Palestinians, included 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, hallucinating. 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 from 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

Shafah/Duriel investigation

Nahum Shahaf, a physicist, and Yosef Duriel, an engineer, were commissioned by IDF Southern Commander Major General Yom Tov Samia to begin a second investigation of the case. On October 23, 2000, a re-enactment of the shooting was conducted on an IDF shooting range, in front of a CBC 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 refused to publicize it because the results were "explosive".

The results of this 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.

A 2002 documentary on Germany's ARD television network titled Three Bullets and a Child: Who Killed the Young Muhammad al-Dura?, based on the IDF findings and a ballistic analysis of the scene, supported Shahaf's conclusion that al-Durrah could not have been killed by gunfire from the Israeli outpost. The documentary stated that the boy's death was accidental and he was not purposely targeted by either side.

James Fallows, in a June 2003 article in The Atlantic Monthly titled Who Shot Mohammed al-Dura? cited a number of unanswered questions raised by Shahaf during his investigation:

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

To defend itself against the charges that its reporting of the incident had not been accurate, France 2 filed a series of defamation suits against some of its critics in October 2004. On October 19, 2006, a court in Paris ruled that Philippe Karsenty, who runs the Media-Ratings Agency, was guilty of libeling France 2 and Charles Enderlin for alleging that they had faked their report.

The public prosecutor had recommended that the court rule in Karsenty's favor, but the judges argued that Karsenty's allegations could not be regarded as credible because "no Israeli authority ... have ever accorded the slightest credit" to them. According to The Jerusalem Post, Israeli officials have explained their silence by saying it was a "losing proposition" to reopen the al-Durrah case, because they would be "accused of blaming the victim." Karsenty was fined €1,000; €3,000 in legal fees; and a symbolic €1 in damages to both Enderlin and France 2.

Further reading

• Anat, Cygielman. IDF keeps shooting itself in the foot", Haaretz, November 7 2000.
• 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
• Goldberg, 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
• Juffa, Stephane. "The Mythical Martyr", Wall Street Journal Europe, November 26 2004.
• Schary Motro, Helen. Maneuvering Between the Headlines: An American Lives through the Intifada. Other Press, 2005. ISBN 1-59051-159-X
• Shenker, Cinnamon. "Will France denounce a Muslim icon?", WorldNetDaily, May 24 2006.
• "Israeli ambassador defends troops". BBC.
• The Israeli Crime That Wasn’t (FrontPageMagazine.com)
• Myth, Fact, and the al-Dura Affair (CommentaryMagazine.com)
• BACKGROUNDER: Mohammed Al Dura, or Anatomy of a French Media Scandal, on the site of CAMERA.
• World Net Daily: Terrorists' 'poster boy' exposed as media fraud: 5 years late, Los Angeles Times reveals Palestinian hoax inspired 'bestial crimes', September 13, 2005