Killing of Muhammad al-Durrah

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

Muhammad Jamal al-Durrah (Al Dura) 2000 (aged 11–12); Arabic: محمد الدرة), a 12-year-old Palestinian boy, became an icon of the Palestinian uprising on September 30, 2000 when he was filmed crouched behind his father during a gunfight near the Netzarim junction in the Gaza Strip at the beginning of the Second Intifada. The footage of the incident originated with the French public television station, France 2, filmed by Talal Abu Rahma, the network’s Palestinian cameraman, with voice-over by Charles Enderlin, its Jerusalem bureau chief, who attributed the fatal shots to Israel. Enderlin himself was not at the scene. The image of the boy and his father was repeatedly broadcast on television, and continues to appear in Palestinian posters, advertisements and on Arab country postage stamps.

The footage depicted al-Durrah and his father seeking cover during a crossfire between troops at an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) outpost and Palestinian police and gunmen shooting from 7 main locations, including the towers behind the Israeli post. Al-Durrah eventually slumped over; Enderlin's voice-over claimed the boy was killed by Israeli gunfire. "Jamal and his son Mohammed are the targets of gunshots that have come from the Israeli position.... A new burst of gunfire, Mohammed is dead and his father seriously wounded," he stated. The French station provided parts of its footage free of charge to media around the world.

Soon after, questions were raised about the authenticity of the tape, leading to controversy about several aspects of the incident, including the honesty of the Abu Rahma and France 2, the source of the never recovered bullets, whether Palestinian gunmen had shot him rather than the IDF, the identity of the boy, and even speculation as to whether he is actually dead or not.

In late 2007 the Israeli army requested the handover of the raw, 27-minute unedited, footage shot by Talal Abu Rahmeh that day, while it was also demanded to be submitted in front of a French courthouse as part of Philippe Karsenty's legal battle with France 2. Since the raw footage was not turned over voluntarily by the 3rd of October, the court issued a formal request to review the tape on November 14th. At the November 14th hearing, only 18 minutes of the original 27 minute tape was shown and further questions were raised as to the credibility of Enderlin and France 2's insistence that their version of the story is true.

Personal background

Muhammad al-Durrah was in fifth grade when the shooting occurred, living 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 house painter, normally for Israelis in the wealthy suburbs north of Tel Aviv.

His teacher told reporters that he enjoyed swimming, looking after his pet birds, and was an excellent English student. On the day of the incident, the school was closed because of a general Palestinian "protest day" strike.

In an interview for "Three bullets and a dead child" his mother, Amal, stated that Muhammad enjoyed people setting fire to things on such protest days and that three days before the incident, the boy asked her "if you're killed in Netzarim, do you die as a martyr?".

The incident

Muhammad and Jamal under fire.

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

The father is 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 to 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 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 shooting. A final frame shows the father sitting upright, injured, and the boy lying over his legs.

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

Injuries and Report

Muhammad and his father Jamal, were treated in the Shifa hospital in Gaza.

Muhammad was reported by the BBC to have been shot four times. However the examining pathologist, who only made an external examination on the body, reported only three injuries, presumably the most fatal wound was in the abdomen as no autopsy was performed. Talal Abu Rahma referred in his affidavit to one shot to the boy's right leg.

He was buried that night, in accordance with Muslim custom, shortly after being pronounced dead at the hospital he was taken to.

The BBC reported that doctors removed bullets from both Jamal al-Dura's arm and pelvis however, according to the doctors, no bullets were found because they fragmented upon entering the body; yet no fragments were recovered either. The BBC also 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'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 testimony

This diagram of the incident was provided by the cameraman in an affidavit given to the Palestine Centre for Human Rights.

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. 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 Netzarim junction, also called the al-Shohada’ junction. He said he could see an Israeli military outpost at the northwest of the junction, and just behind it, two Palestinian apartment blocks, nicknamed "the twins."

He said he could also see a Palestinian 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 affidavit was given to the Palestine Centre for Human Rights in Gaza on October 3 2000, and signed by the cameraman in front of a lawyer.

Abu Rahma has expressed his anger at being accused of using the incident to further the Palestinian cause. He told On the Media:

I think these people, they don't need me to defend them, you know. I'm professional journalist. I will never do it. I will never use journalism for anything ... because journalism is my religion. Journalism — it's my nationality. Even journalism is my language!

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.

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."

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".

A later, informal IDF investigation concluded that al-Durrah had probably been killed by Palestinian fire, but Israeli officials said it would be a "losing proposition" to reopen the case formally, because they would be "accused of blaming the victim." (See Shahaf/Duriel investigation below.)

Muslim world

File:Muhammad al-Durrah stamp.jpg

A Tunisian postage stamp entitled: The young Palestinian martyr, Muhammad al-Durrah

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; 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, Osama bin Laden warned 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."

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

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

Amnesty International

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

Controversy

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

No autopsy, bullets, or ballistics examination

File:Al-Durrahs-bullets.jpg

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

It was reported that no autopsy was performed, and no bullets appear to have been recovered, either at the hospital or at the scene. In an interview with Esther Shapiro 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 Shapiro should ask a named Palestinian official, a general, about them. The general told Shapiro 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 Shapiro, he replied: "We have some secrets for ourselves ... We cannot give anything ... everything."

Shapiro 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. Shapiro's documentary concluded that the boy could not have been shot by the IDF, and that the shooting and his death were accidental.

What the raw footage showed

The France 2 footage became controversial because Enderlin's report 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 show 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 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 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 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.

Shahaf/Duriel investigation

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

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

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

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

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

— James Fallows, The Atlantic Monthly.

France 2 legal action

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.

Philippe Karsenty

The Palais de Justice in Paris. The court ruled in 2006 that Philippe Karsenty had libeled Charles Enderlin and France 2. Karsenty's appeal opened on September 12, 2007.

The first of the France 2 lawsuits was against Philippe Karsenty, who was charged with defaming Charles Enderlin and France 2's honor and reputations on his website, Media-Ratings, by suggesting their original broadcast was fraudulent and calling for the dismissal of Chabot and Enderlin.

The public prosecutor, Sandrine Alimi-Uzan, recommended that the court rule in Karsenty's favor, arguing that he had acted in good faith and had offered convincing evidence that his allegations might be true. Courts are not obliged to follow the recommendations of the public prosecutor, but usually they do. In this case, 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."

On October 19, 2006, the court ruled that Karsenty had libeled France 2 and Enderlin. He was fined €1,000; €3,000 in legal fees; and a symbolic €1 in damages. His appeal against the judgment opened on September 12, 2007. On September 21 a French appeals court ordered the release of the full unedited video tape.

On November 8, 2007 Enderlin confirmed that France 2 would show 18 (out of 27) minutes of unedited footage filmed that day to the French court. [3]. At the November 14th hearing, only 18 minutes of the original 27 minute tape was shown and further questions were raised as to the credibility of Enderlin and France 2's insistence that their version of the story is true, as the film showed the boy lifting his hand and peering through his fingers moments after Enderlin had narrated his death.

Others

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

Further reading

• Fallows, James. "Who shot Mohammed al-Durra?", The Atlantic Monthly, June 2003.
• Huber, Gérard. Contre-expertise d'une mise en scène. Editions Raphael, 2003. ISBN 2-87781-066-6
• Goldenberg, Suzanne. "Analysis of the shooting", The Guardian, undated.
• Gutman, Stephanie. The Other War: Israelis, Palestinians and the Struggle for Media Supremacy. Encounter Books, 2005. ISBN 1-893554-94-5
• 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
• "Israeli ambassador defends troops". BBC.
• The Israeli Crime That Wasn’t (FrontPage Magazine)
• Myth, Fact, and the al-Dura Affair by Nidra Poller (Commentary magazine)
• CAMERA articles on the Mohammed Al Dura controversy, on the site of CAMERA.

• Mohammed al-Dura lives on, op-ed by Gideon Levi for Haaretz 7 October 2007