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.Zionist racist propaganda intoxications have suggested that he might have been killed by a Palestinian bullet.

The original reports stemmed from footage recorded by a Palestinian cameraman filming 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.

Three days later, the Israeli army chief of operations said an internal investigation showed that "the shots were apparently fired by Israeli soldiers"; he issued an apology, expressing sorrow and calling the incident "heartrending"; at the same time accusing the Palestinians of the "cynical use" of children in the conflict. A second investigation carried out for the army's southern command two months later called it "a very reasonable possibility" that al-Durrah had been hit by Palestinian bullets, and expressed "great doubt" over Israeli responsibility. In 2002, an investigative report by the ARD German television edited by Esther Shapiro also said there was a "high probability" that the Israelis did not do it. 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 controversy was furthered when commentators began challenging 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.

General background

Map of the Gaza Strip illustrating the locations of Bureij refugee camp, the Netzarim settlement and the Netzarim Junction

On September 28, 2000, two days prior to the incident, the Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon visited the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem. His controversial visit was condemned by the Palestinians as a provocation and the following day, September 29, violence broke out in and around the Old City resulting in seven Palestinians being killed by Israeli security forces and 300 more being wounded.. On September 30, protests against the deaths the previous day escalated into widespread violence across the West Bank and Gaza Strip in which fifteen Palestinians were reported killed, five of them in the Gaza Strip. The clashes included a gun battle between Palestinian police and Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip. It was in the course of this battle, in which Palestinian security forces sided with rioting Palestinian civilians against Israeli soldiers, that al-Durrah and his father were filmed as they sought shelter from the hail of gunfire. Three Palestinians were reported killed by gunfire near the Israeli settlement of Netzarim on that day. The Israeli army and Palestinian security forces in the Gaza Strip agreed a ceasefire in the aftermath of the violence.

The incident occurred at the Netzarim or al-Shohada junction, a crossroads which is situated a few kilometers south of Gaza City (at 31.465129°N 34.426689°E / 31.465129; 34.426689) on Saladin Road, the main route through the Gaza Strip. The al-Durrahs' home at the Bureij refugee camp was several kilometers further south. A short distance to the west lay the Israeli settlement of Netzarim, which was dismantled in 2005 when Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip. The junction was the site of a "heavily fortified" Israeli military outpost codenamed Magen-3 which guarded the approach to the settlement. On the day of the shooting itself, the outpost was manned by eighteen Israeli soldiers from the Givati Brigade Engineering Platoon and the Herev Battalion.

The presence of Netzarim was vehemently opposed by local Palestinians, such that the inhabitants of the settlement were under strict orders to travel only with a military escort. It was the scene of regular confrontations between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian youths. A small post manned by Palestinian policemen stood on the diagonally opposite side of the junction. Palestinian and Israeli security forces had previously mounted joint patrols in the area under interim peace arrangements. In the days leading up to the shooting, there had been a series of violent incidents in the vicinity of Netzarim; according to the Israeli government, "the attacks began with the throwing of stones and Molotov cocktails in the vicinity of the Netzarim Junction on 13 September. This was followed by the killing of an Israeli soldier by a roadside bomb on 27 September, and the murder of an Israeli police officer by a Palestinian policeman in a joint patrol on 29 September."

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 carpenter and house painter who had worked for Israelis in north Tel Aviv for twenty years. On the day of the incident, the school was closed for a general Palestinian "protest day" strike called in memory of those killed by Israeli police on the previous Thursday and Friday, and to protest against Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount.

The incident as reported

Muhammad and Jamal under fire.

The camera goes out of focus as a burst of gunfire is heard in the background.

As the dust clears, the father and son are slumped across each other.

Arrival at Netzarim Junction

According to Amal al-Durrah, the boy's mother, on the evening before the shooting Muhammad had been watching the violence in Jerusalem on television and asked "Can I go to join the protests in Netzarim [on Saturday]?" He had been known in the past to run off to the beach or to watch older boys throwing stone during protests, so to keep him out of trouble his father took him to the weekly used car auction in Gaza City, a few kilometers north of their home at the Bureij refugee camp. They did not buy anything but took a taxi home around lunchtime. By that time the protest had already started and was escalating into a violent confrontation with Palestinian demonstrators hurling stones, petrol bombs and improvised explosive devices at the Israeli position. Their driver refused to cross the junction, so the al-Durrahs attempted to cross on foot to look for another taxi.

The IDF had been responding with rubber bullets and sometimes live ammunition, and the Palestinian police were returning fire with live bullets. The Associated Press reported that "a Palestinian fired shots at an Israeli army outpost from behind a red truck. Soldiers returned fire, and several Palestinians took cover on the ground, covering their heads with their hands, their faces pressed on the asphalt. One Palestinian man screamed in pain when he was shot in the knee. Paramedics ran into the line of fire to drag him to safety." In an attempt to shield themselves from the gunfire, the al-Durrahs crouched behind a cylinder or drum near the Palestinian police post, diagonally opposite the Israeli outpost, with their backs to a cinderblock wall. Israeli troops returned fire with rubber-coated bullets and live rounds which the army said its soldiers fired in the direction of the nearby Palestinian police post, from which fire was being directed at them. Reuters reported that protesters took cover as bullets flew around them, lying flat and in the gutter or behind any semblance of cover from the gunfire. At one point an Israeli helicopter hovered overhead, but did not open fire. According to the Xinhua news agency, the exchange of fire took place at about 11:30 a.m. local time (08:30 GMT).

The shooting

Shooting throughout the day and movements of people at the junction were recorded by cameramen working for several news agencies, although the only one to capture the shooting of the al-Durrahs was Talal Abu Rahma, a cameraman and correspondent for France 2 and CNN who lives in the Gaza Strip. There are considerable differences regarding just how much film was shot. According to Abu Rahma's statement, he filmed the incident for 27 minutes, while the gun battle continued for a total of 45 minutes. An October 1 BBC news report claims the gunfight lasted for 20 minutes, and on the following day ran a story that France 2 had a 45 minute film. When the court asked to see the footage, France 2 explained that the raw footage at Netzarim Junction filmed by Abu Rahma that day runs for a total of 18 minutes, of which under a minute depicted the boy and his father, and was later broadcast by France 2 and others.

The first ten minutes of the France 2 footage show the demonstration at Netzarim junction, with dozens to hundreds of people in civilian clothes throwing stones and Molotov cocktails at the IDF outpost. A shot is heard in minute 10, though its source is unclear. No reaction is visible from the outpost. Two interviews are recorded at the junction itself between minutes 9 and 14, in clear view of the outpost. More frequent shooting is audible by minute 14 and Palestinian policemen in uniform are shown firing their rifles at an off-screen target. Palestinian civilians are seen fleeing from the IDF line of fire. At 14 minutes and 30 seconds, Muhammad and his father are seen for the first time, crouching behind a metal or concrete cylinder against a tall concrete wall at one side of the roadway. The camera pans right and left, not focusing on them. It returns to them occasionally until minute 16 and then focuses on them for the remaining two minutes of the footage. The father is seen waving his hands, and the boy is "trying to take refuge in his lap". There is one final moment of film where the boy is seen lifting his head. At the apparent moment of the shooting, the camera goes out of focus. Shots are heard and dust swirls up. The last frame of the France 2 report shows the father sitting upright, injured, and the boy lying over his legs. The final scene, taken by Abu Rahma, of the boy lifting his head, was not included in the original broadcast or the footage distributed to other news outlets.

In the film, the two appear to be in considerable distress, with the child screaming and the father shielding him. Jamal al-Durrah is shown waving toward the Israeli position, and shouting "Don't shoot!" 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),". Jamal said later, "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."

The tape was edited for broadcast by Charles Enderlin, the French-Israeli journalist and France 2's bureau chief in Israel at the time. The 55 seconds of footage was broadcast with a voice-over by Enderlin in which he said: "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". Enderlin was to write later that he had based his conclusion, that the IDF had targeted al-Durrah, on the testimony of the cameraman Abu Rahma.

Injuries and treatment

Ambulances were called to the scene but were delayed by the intensity of the shooting, with the wounded and dying lying in the road for a long time. 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 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: two lethal wounds to the chest and a "relatively harmless" leg injury. His father spoke of Muhammad being struck in the knee and back. Although no autopsy was performed, doctors who examined the boy's body said that he had been shot from the front in the upper abdomen and the injury to his back that his father had seen was an exit wound. The deaths of al-Durrah, the ambulance driver and a Palestinian policeman were first reported by Shifa hospital; a further thirty people, including six Palestinian policemen, were reported injured in the gun battle at the junction. Muhammad was buried before sundown, in accordance with Muslim tradition, in an emotional public funeral at the Bureij camp in which his body was displayed wrapped in a Palestinian flag. The funeral was attended by thousands of mourners and was televised to millions more.

As part of a Jordanian relief effort to aid Palestinians wounded in the violence, Jamal al-Durrah was evacuated on October 2 by the Royal Jordanian Air Force and taken to the Hussein Medical Centre in Amman, Jordan, where he was treated for wounds to both legs, one arm, and his midsection. He underwent a number of operations and was visited by King Abdullah of Jordan and other members of the Jordanian royal family, as well as the Libyan President, Muammar al-Gaddafi. He underwent four months of treatment in the hospital before returning to Gaza. He was reported to have been struck by twelve bullets, some of which were removed from his arm and pelvis. Jordanian doctors forecast that Jamal al-Durrah's right hand would be permanently paralyzed and stated that he had been psychologically traumatized.

Talal Abu Rahma's testimony

This diagram of the incident is based on one provided by the France 2 cameraman Talal Abu Rahma in an affidavit given to the Palestine Centre for Human Rights.

The France 2 cameraman Talal Abu Rahma stated, in a sworn affidavit given to the Palestine Centre for Human Rights in Gaza three days after the shooting, that he could "confirm that the child was intentionally and in cold blood shot dead and his father injured by the Israeli army." He said he had "spent about 27 minutes photographing the incident which took place for 45 minutes." 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. 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 cameraman 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: According to Abu Rahma:

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.

Abu Rahma saw the al-Durrahs sheltering from the gunfire until "after 25 minutes exactly, he got injured" by bullets which struck before the fatal shots were fired: "I saw the young boy and his father, and I decided to film, you know? I filmed a little bit, then the shooting began really heavier and heavier. Then I saw the boy getting injured in his leg, and the father asking for help. Then I saw him getting injured in his arm, the father. The father was asking the ambulances to help him, because he could see the ambulances."

Shortly afterwards, Abu Rahma "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." On the source of the shots, Abu Rahma stated in his affidavit:

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.

There is a cut in Abu Rahma's footage of the father and son under attack which France 2 later attributed to efforts to preserve a low battery. Abu Rahma also spoke, in his October 1 interview with NPR, of his fears for his own life and the possibility that he might be seen as a threat: "I was sitting on my knees and hiding my head, carrying my camera, and I was afraid from the Israelis to see this camera, maybe they will think this is a weapon, you know, or I am trying to shoot on them." After about an hour, he said, during which time the al-Durrahs were evacuated by ambulance, Abu Rahma and the others 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.

Soldiers' accounts

The Israeli soldiers stationed at the Netzarim junction outpost were later interviewed by Israel Radio and spoke of what they had experienced during and after the shooting of al-Durrah. Second Lieutenant Idan Quris, who was in command of an engineering platoon at the outpost, said: "We didn't know about the death of the kid for three days. Believe me, all of our efforts were aimed at armed Palestinians. We don't know how he was killed." The acting commander of the Netzarim position, Lieutenant-Colonel Nizar Fares, said: "The amount of fire that was directed at the position surprised even us. ... When the kid was killed, no one saw him from the position. It is difficult to command this kind of position which is under massive gunfire for such a long period of time and in the end succeed in the mission, return everyone safely and maintain the position."

Other footage shot at Netzarim junction

Footage shot by a Reuters cameraman further away from the scene shows the gun battle from a different angle. According to Nidra Poller, writing in Commentary, the Reuters footage shows a jeep driving partway up the road, in sight and within range of the Israeli position, stopping near the barrel and helping to evacuate a man wounded in the right leg, which is also seen in the France 2 footage. Two ambulances are also shown standing within 15 feet of the al-Durrahs, and men run down the road, passing in front of the al-Durrahs. there is no sound of gunfire nor any other evidence of combat activity near the al-Durrahs. According to Ed O'Loughlin of The Age, another video, consisting of "spliced-up" footage shot by France 2 and other unnamed Western agencies, shows Abu Rahma and the al-Durrahs in long shot. Two figures dressed like the al-Durrahs can be seen from several angles, sheltering behind an obstruction, and Abu Rahma is visible taking cover behind a white van parked on the opposite side of the road. An ambulance driver and a Palestinian policeman are shown being killed as they attempt to reach the al-Durrahs. Soldiers in the Israeli army base and Palestinian gunmen are seen exchanging bursts of automatic gunfire from opposite ends of the wall against which the al-Durrahs are sheltering.

Circulation of the reports and follow-up reporting

France 2 decided to release an edited portion of its footage without charge to other television networks and news agencies, saying it did not want to profit from the images. The images were subsequently rebroadcast worldwide. Most broadcasters omitted the final frames of the footage, showing Muhammad loosening his grip on his father and the convulsive twitches of Jamal as he was struck by more bullets, on the grounds that they were too disturbing.

The first internationally distributed reports of the shooting came from the Associated Press and Reuters around 20:00 local time. The relevant portion of the unedited AP report stated: "Among those killed was a 12-year-old boy who was caught in the crossfire. The boy, Rami Aldura, and his father, were crouched behind a metal barrel, trying to seek cover and pleading for a ceasefire. The father held his hand protectively over the boy, who was screaming with fear, only to see his son fatally shot in the stomach." Later reports from both agencies corrected the boy's name.

The early reports stated that the al-Durrahs had been caught in a "crossfire". Brian Whitaker, the Middle East editor of The Guardian, commented: "'Crossfire' is inserted into stories by journalists who are not sure who was at fault. The trouble is that it implies that nobody in particular was at fault. It would be much better to say something like: "It was not immediately clear who fired the fatal shots" but professional pride sometimes stops journalists admitting their ignorance." He noted that there was uncertainty among reporters about the source of the fatal shots: "A colleague working on a Sunday newspaper tells me there was a discussion in the office about where the shots that killed Mohammed might have come from. Although the first impression was that he had been shot from in front, the holes in the wall behind him indicated to some people in the office that he might have been hit by bullets passing through the wall from behind."

A number of journalists visited the scene and interviewed the family in Gaza (and in the case of the father, in Amman) shortly after the shooting. Suzanne Goldenberg, The Guardian's Jerusalem correspondent, travelled to Netzarim junction on October 2 and reported seeing "a circle of 15 bullet holes on a cinder block wall, and a smear of darkening blood." She observed that "aside from the circle of bullet holes - most of them below waist level - the expanse of wall is largely unscarred." This suggested to her that "the Israeli fire was targeted at the father and son." She also interviewed the cameraman, who "cast doubt on the Israeli claim that father and son were caught in the crossfire between the two security forces," as well as a Palestinian police general and the boy's mother. Talal Abu Rahma, the France 2 cameraman, interviewed Jamal al-Durrah in Shifa Hospital the day after the shooting. Daily Mail reporter Matthew Kalman also interviewed the bandage-swathed father and the boy's mother in Gaza. Agence France-Presse reporter Hassan Mekki interviewed Jamal a couple of days later after he had been airlifted to a hospital in Amman, where Jordan's King Abdullah and other members of the Jordanian royal family were filmed visiting the injured man.

Initial reactions

Family's reaction

Muhammad's mother, Amal, watched the incident on television and worried that her husband and son had not returned home, but did not initially recognize 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".

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 reactions

Three days after the shooting, the Israeli army's chief of operations, Major-General Giora Eiland, said: "This was a grave incident, an event we are all sorry about. We conducted an investigation, and as far as we understand, the shots were apparently fired by Israeli soldiers from the outpost at Netzarim." 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". In an interview with Israeli television, he asserted that the al-Durrahs had not been shot by the Israeli side in the first place: "I have no doubt that the gunfire, as it appears in the television close-up, was not from Israeli soldiers."

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". Ariel Sharon told CBS News that the footage of the shooting was "very hard to see" and "a real tragedy," but argued that "the one that should be blamed is the only one ... that really instigated all those activities, and that is Yasser Arafat."

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 the incident 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. Israel's actions in the West Bank and Gaza were strongly condemned by Arab political leaders; in Saudi Arabia, Prince Sultan bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud issued a statement describing al-Durrah as "the spark which made the world know about the barbaric acts being carried out by the Israeli aggressors against unarmed Palestinians."

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 honor. 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.

Other international reaction

US President Bill Clinton described the shooting as "heart-breaking", telling journalists of his reaction upon watching the footage of the incident. He said: "You know, the first time I saw it, I didn't know what the result was, and I kept wondering if there was something else that the father could do to shield the child. But he looked -- I mean, I was literally watching it as if it were someone I knew, you know, and I -- it was a heart-breaking thing to see a child like that caught in a crossfire."

Several international human rights groups criticized Israel in the wake of the al-Durrah shooting. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International issued a joint statement on October 4, 2000 expressing grave concern at the high casualty toll and the killing of children and medics.. 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 to support their case that the al-Durrahs had been hit by Palestinian gunfire. The International Committee of the Red Cross issued a rare protest at the killing of the ambulance driver who was shot dead while trying to rescue the al-Durrahs.

Israeli investigation

Major-General Samia commissioned a separate investigation three weeks after the shooting, releasing the conclusions at the end of November 2000. Samia said the results of the report demonstrate that "there is doubt about the possibility that IDF fire hit Mohammed and his father," and "it is probable that the boy was hit by Palestinians." The report claimed that the al-Durrahs had been hit by automatic gunfire, while the Israeli troops, according to their testimony and the available France 2 footage, 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. Other evidence used in reaching these conclusions included bullet angles, measurements, testimony of both Israelis and Gazans, as well as the available French television footage.

The work of the investigators had been hampered by Samia's decision to destroy all of the structures around the junction a week after the shooting to remove any hiding places for snipers. The bullet-scarred concrete wall and the cylinder behind which the al-Durrahs had sheltered were removed along with several surrounding buildings, thereby destroying much of the forensic evidence. The investigators instead carried out engineering and ballistic tests to try to replicate the circumstances of the shooting, building a replica of the wall and cylinder at a site in the Negev Desert. Other problems hampering the investigation included the lack of an autopsy, lack of availability of the video footage, and the fact that no bullets were turned over for ballistics testing.

The investigation and its conclusions provoked immediate controversy. It was headed by a private citizen - Nahum Shahaf, an Israeli physicist, with the involvement of several additional experts and intelligence officers, including among others Meir Danino, a physicist and chief scientist at Elisra Systems; Bernie Schechter, a former police chief superintent and ballistics expert; and Chief Superintendent Elliot Springer from the Israel Police's criminal identification laboratory. The Israeli media questioned the roles of Shahaf and Yosef Duriel, an engineer, who held no official military or police positions at the time . Neither were reported to have had formal forensic or ballistic qualifications or experience ; According to Ed O'Loughlin of The Age, they had met through their roles in a campaign to prove the innocence of Yigal Amir, who assassinated Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. Also according to O'Loughlin, the two asserted that the assassination was the work of a conspiracy headed by Shimon Peres, who was later to become the President of Israel. Shahaf had presented photographs which he asserted "change the picture with respect to Yigal Amir's involvement in the murder."

Two days after the al-Durrah shooting, Duriel wrote an article for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz in which he said "The IDF spokesman deserves a prize for stupidity ... Ten minutes after the incident a normal spokesman for a normal army would have released a categorically formulated statement saying 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 on the al-Durrah investigation and Samia agreed to let them undertake the enquiry.

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, saying in an editorial that "it is hard to describe in mild terms the stupidity of this bizarre investigation" and concluding that it was so shaky that the Israeli public would never accept its findings. It also 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 and questioned whether the investigators had accurately replicated the scene of the shooting. The report's conclusions were also rejected by the Palestinians; Jamal al-Durrah stated: "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." Members of the Knesset Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee criticized the investigators for expressing views about the outcome before their inquiry was completed. In response, the Israel Army's chief of staff Shaul Mofaz distanced himself from the investigation, telling the committee that it was Major-General Samia's personal initiative and not that of 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" and it received little coverage by the Israeli media. Some in the Israel armed forces were also privately critical; a senior army officer quoted by The Times called it a "disgrace that has piled shame on what was a terrible accident".

Al-Durrah and the "media war"

The al-Durrah shooting continued to influence propaganda efforts on both sides of the Arab-Israeli conflict for years after the incident, in what both Israelis and Palestinians described as a "media war". Arab countries frequently invoked Muhammad al-Durrah as a symbol of Palestinian resistance to Israeli rule, periodically issuing commemorations of the incident. 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. 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.

Following his discharge from hospital, Jamal al-Durrah took on the role of what he described as "an ambassador to tell the world about our struggle", travelling to Egypt, Algeria, the United Arab Emirates and South Africa to talk about life in the Gaza Strip and the death of his son.

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."

On the Israeli side, the bad publicity caused by the al-Durrah shooting led to a fundamental change in its approach to media management in response to the demands of the 24-hour electronic media. According to Science, Culture and Sports Ministry Director-General Nahman Shai, who was appointed in October 2000 to coordinate government communications, the al-Durrah footage changed the government's attitude to media relations and necessitated the appointment of a full-time team of spokesmen. The government sought to change the terms of the coverage by providing the media with footage of Palestinian violence to counterbalance footage from Palestinian sources. It also sought to influence the media directly, complaining to broadcasters such as CNN about perceived bias in their coverage.

Groups and individuals who supported the Israeli government line also became involved in "push-back" efforts, seeking to discredit what they saw as hostile foreign media reports, especially those which had produced iconic visual images. The Internet was harnessed with the use of blogs, websites and downloadable software such as the "Megaphone desktop tool" to direct feedback on media articles. The al-Durrah footage and the France 2 reporter Charles Enderlin were particular targets of this campaign, as was the footage of a deadly explosion on a Gaza beach in 2006.

Continuing controversy

A handful of Israeli and foreign commentators continued to pursue the al-Durrah affair after the initial controversy, developing what became known as "minimalist" and "maximalist" narratives. The "minimalist" narrative was essentially the version of events that Maj-Gen had presented in November 2000, that Palestinian gunfire had caused the death of al-Durrah. The "maximalist" narrative asserted that the entire incident had been a hoax that had been staged for propaganda purposes, that the footage did not show al-Durrah being killed (and that al-Durrah might still be alive somewhere), and that the affair had been concocted as a "prime-time blood libel" by Charles Enderlin, the cameraman, the al-Durrahs and other Palestinian and Arab parties. Enderlin and others have criticized this view as a conspiracy theory.

Nahum Shahaf, the author of the report published by Maj-Gen Samia in November 2000, continued to pursue the case, leaving his other work to concentrate full-time to analyse the footage of the incident. His work was to prove influential. In March/April 2002, the German broadcaster ARD screened "Red Square", a three-part series of documentary films reviewing major news events of the recent past to "understand the truth behind the pictures we see on television." One of the films, "Three bullets and a dead child", was a reassessment of the al-Durrah case.

Its producer, Esther Shapira, collaborated with Shahaf in researching the program and was given extensive access in Gaza where she interviewed several of the key players, including the al-Durrah family. According to Shapira, she went into the project believing that the Israelis shot Muhammad al-Durrah but became convinced that evidence supporting that hypothesis was missing. Although her film did not unequivocally conclude that al-Durrah had been killed by Palestinian fire, it cast significant doubt on the likelihood that Israeli shots had caused his death. She told IBA English News: "According to our findings, it is much more likely it was a Palestinian bullet, not an Israeli bullet, that killed him." The film attracted a mixed response; according to Shapira, "The media reviewers were very positive, the audience reaction on the other hand, was very divided. Praise, thoughtfulness, outrage."

Critics and campaigns

Several groups and individuals in France also campaigned on the issue. The French broadcasting rights to Shapira's film were purchased for €80,000 by Pierre Rehov, a French-Israeli businessman who had been campaigning against France 2 since it broadcast the footage in September 2000. However, he was unable to persuade any French or Israeli television channels to screen the documentary. He sued France 2 and the French government for "defamation of the State of Israel" but, according to Rehov, the case was dismissed after only six weeks.

The Jewish Defense League staged a demonstration outside the headquarters of France 2 on October 2, 2002 in which it "awarded" Charles Enderlin with a "Goebbels prize for disinformation." Enderlin received death threats and his house had to be guarded by the police; he was eventually forced to move home.

Gérard Huber, a French psychoanalyst, took up the case with the publication in March 2003 of a book called Contre expertise d'une mise en scène ("Re-evaluation of a Re-enactment") in which he argued that the al-Durrah shooting had been staged. He credited Nahum Shahaf with convincing him of this scenario. Philippe Karsenty, a financial consultant, promoted similar claims on his "Media Ratings" website, on which he rated news reports based on how biased against Israeli he considered them to be. He demanded the resignations of Enderlin and France 2's deputy director general, Arlette Chabot, offering a "prize" of €10,000 "to a charity chosen by France 2 if the chain can demonstrate to us and a panel of independent experts that the Sept. 30, 2000, report shows the death of the Palestinian child."

In Israel, Pierre Lurçat, the president of an association called Liberty, Democracy and Judaism, published statements on the French Jewish Defense League website urging readers to "Come demonstrate against the lies of France 2" and promoting the "Goebbels award" which the JDL had "given" to Charles Enderlin. An Israel-based news website, the Metula News Agency (MENA), also campaigned on the issue, accusing France 2 of staging the al-Durrah shooting. MENA's head Stéphane Juffa wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal in 2004 that argued that the al-Durrah shooting was "nothing but a hoax."

In the United States, the hoax hypothesis was promoted by Richard Landes, a professor of medieval history at Boston University who had previously participated in demonstrations against alleged French inaction on anti-Semitism. According to Landes, he concluded that the incident had been faked after watching the al-Durrah footage "three times". He told the New York Times that "Palestinian cameramen, especially when there are no Westerners around, engage in the systematic staging of action scenes" and asserted that the al-Durrah footage was an example of what he called "Pallywood cinema."

France 2 legal actions

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 libel case

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 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, strongly criticized 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."

Karsenty appeal

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, for the first time , asked to see the full set of images of the clashes at Netzarim, which according to the cameraman had totaled 27 minutes. France 2 presented the court with just 18 minutes of footage, stating that the rest had been destroyed because it did not concern the incident in question. France 2 was represented by the public prosecutor, Antoine Bartoli, who argued that Karsenty had not conducted a "serious investigation" and that his claims were "undoubtedly defamatory".

The 18 minutes of footage was shown to a packed courtroom with Enderlin explaining each segment of the footage. According to the Ha'aretz news service, the footage showed "street battles with dozens of people throwing stones and Molotov cocktails at an IDF outpost, an interview with a Fatah official, and the incident involving Mohammed al-Dura and his father in the last minute of the video." The total video of the al-Durrah incident was seen to comprise about one minute of the 18 minute film. It was noted that the boy moved after the cameraman said he was dead, and that there was no blood on the boy's shirt.

Also for the first time, the court also appointed an independent ballistics expert, Jean-Claude Schlinger, an advisor on ballistic and forensic evidence for the French courts for 20 years. He reviewed the ballistics evidence, including Karsenty's 90-page ballistics report, and concluded that "they could not have come from the Israeli position, from a technical point of view, but only from the direction of the Palestinian position." He also reported "...there is no objective evidence that the child was killed and his father injured. It is very possible, therefore, that it is a case [in which the incident was] staged." In fact, according to his report, there is no evidence that the boy was wounded in his right leg or in his abdomen, as originally reported.

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.

Other libel cases

The other two lawsuits were brought against Pierre Lurçat of the Jewish Defense League and 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.

Main issues

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".

Other Criticism of France 2

The principals, Charles Enderlin and France 2, were issued a warning by the French government's media regulatory council, the Conseil superieur de l'audiovisuel (CSA) to "identify sources and use more caution when reporting on international conflicts". Pope John Paul 2nd also spoke to the issue, saying "a bad use of communications can cause an unspeakable evil..."

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,, widely known as fanatic pro-israeli and anti-arab. '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, always defending pro-israeli and anti-arab versions.

Shahaf/Duriel

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.

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?"

In February 2005, Shahaf presented a summary of his views in a presentation to the American Academy of Forensic Sciences in New Orleans, making nine key assertions: that ballistic evidence indicated that al-Durrah had not been in the line of fire of the Israeli outpost; that the spread of stone particles caused by the impact of bullets on the wall behind al-Durrah indicated a less oblique angle of fire, consistent with Palestinian positions; that the shooting might have been a deliberate act by the Palestinians; that some of the bullet holes were made artificially after the shooting; that al-Durrah's injuries were more consistent with a knife than a bullet; that the evidence of the doctors was not consistent with photographs of al-Durrah's body, suggesting that the dead boy in the photographs was not al-Durrah; that the body had reached the hospital before the incident was reported to have started; that blood was not visible on the boy's body at Netzarim junction; and that "manufactured incidents" were shown in the television footage.

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"