We have written several times, including here and here, about the al Dura case. Mohammed al Dura was a boy who was apparently caught in a crossfire between Israeli troops and Palestinian rioters in Gaza in 2000 and allegedly shot by the Israelis. The incident was recorded by a French film crew and gained enormous notoriety throughout the Muslim world. Several countries issued postage stamps commemorating the event, like this one:
It was the television channel France 2, whose film crew recorded the apparent shooting of al Dura, that produced the incendiary program that gave rise to much anti-Israel propaganda. Philippe Karsenty wrote that France 2’s report was a fraud, and was accused of libeling the station and its reporter. Karsenty was found liable by the trial court, but that verdict was reversed by a French appellate court in May 2008. The appellate court also ordered France 2’s raw video footage released to the public.
Today, Mr. Karsenty sent out an email on a documentary that was broadcast on German television last week. He included links to commentary in German and French, neither of which was very helpful to me. But here is Mr. Karsenty’s synopsis of the German program:
The German public TV, ARD, broadcast, on March 4, 2009, a documentary which confirms that the news report, narrated by Charles Enderlin and broadcast by France 2 on September 30, 2000, is a fraud.
Here is the evidence revealed, and confirmed, by this documentary:
* Thanks to a biometric analysis of the faces, it has been proven that the boy who was filmed by France 2 is not the boy presented at the Gaza morgue and buried later. The eyebrows and the lips are very different.
* The German TV used the lip-reading technique to read the father’s lips. They discovered that Jamal al Dura gave instructions to the people who were behind France 2’s cameraman during the filming of the scene.
* The boy filmed by France 2 moves a red piece of cloth down his body for no specific reason.
* In France 2’s news report, there is no blood – neither on Mohammed nor on Jamal al Dura’s body, whereas the two were supposed to have received 15 bullets altogether.
* The boy shown at the funeral as Mohammed al Dura arrived at the hospital before 10am, whereas France 2’s news report was filmed after 2:30pm.
The al Dura controversy continues, but, regardless of whether the story told by France 2 can be definitively refuted, the damage already done is irremediable.
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