Faked killing
I found this on another blog (eclectecon), and decided it was worthy of mention.
Remember this story? (From Melanie Phillips
On September 30 2000, two days after Ariel Sharon, then the leader of Israel’s opposition Likud Party, went for a walk on Temple Mount, Palestinians mounted a demonstration at Gaza’s Netzarim Junction. A 55-second piece of video footage of that demonstration, transmitted that day by the French TV station France 2, was to cause unprecedented violence in the Middle East and throughout the world.
The footage, with a voice-over by France 2’s Jerusalem correspondent, Charles Enderlin, showed what was said to be the killing of 12-year-old Mohammed al-Dura by Israeli marksmen. Viewers saw the child crouching in terror behind his father, Jamal, as they sheltered next to a barrel under what Enderlin said was Israeli gunfire, and then slumping to the ground as Enderlin pronounced that he was dead.
FAKED.
Melanie goes on to say:
When al-Qaeda decapitated the journalist Daniel Pearl, the video of this atrocity was punctuated with references to al-Dura. After September 11 2001, Osama bin Laden said: ‘Bush must not forget the image of Mohammed al-Dura.’ Several Arab countries issued postage stamps with his picture. On Palestinian Authority TV and in its school books, al-Dura’s example is used to encourage other children to emulate his spirit of ’sacrifice’.
But we now know that this whole fiesta of violence and incitement was based on a lie. For whatever people think they saw in those 55 seconds, it was not the death of that boy. He was not killed by Israeli bullets; he was not killed at all. At the end of France 2’s famous footage, he was still alive and unharmed. The whole thing was staged, a fantastic piece of play-acting, an elaborate fabrication designed to blacken Israel’s name, and incite the Arab and Muslim mobs to mass murder.
It was, in short, a modern-day blood libel, an updated version of the medieval calumny that the Jews target gentile children for murder - which itself caused the murder of thousands of Jews over the centuries.
How do we know the footage was a lie? Because many of us have seen the evidence for ourselves in a French courtroom. Ironically, this blood libel was only exposed to public view because France 2 and its correspondent Enderlin brought a libel suit against a French media watchdog, Philippe Karsenty, for saying that the ‘killing’ was ‘pure fiction’ and that al-Dura wasn’t dead at all.
To begin with, a Paris court ruled in favour of the TV station. But in May this year, the appeal court ruled that Karsenty had every right to say what he said in the light of the evidence. This included the ‘inexplicable incoherence’ of footage, whose images did not correspond to Enderlin’s commentary; the ‘inexplicable inconsistencies and contradictions’ in Enderlin’s explanation; and the lack of credibility of France 2’s Palestinian cameraman Talal Abu Rahma, upon whose account of the events at Netzarim Enderlin - who was in Jerusalem at the time - had depended.
Denis Jeambar, the director of L’Express, and TV producer Daniel Leconte saw the untransmitted rushes and subsequently wrote in Le Figaro: ‘In the minutes that precede the gunfire, the Palestinians seem to have organised a staged scene. They “play” at war with the Israelis and simulate, in most of the cases, imaginary injuries.’ At the moment when Enderlin declared the boy to be dead: ‘Nothing permitted him to affirm that he was really dead and even less that he was killed by Israeli soldiers.’
The implications for France 2 are shattering. The state-funded TV station is now appealing to the highest court in France. Enderlin has blustered that Karsenty is backed by US and French ‘right-wing’, pro-Israel organisations. This is the desperate flailing of a journalist whose reputation now lies in shreds. For he never imagined that his attempt to silence Karsenty would lead the court to order France 2 to produce the evidence it had hitherto refused to make public - the untransmitted 27 minutes of footage that Abu Rahma claimed he had filmed.
I was in the Paris court on the day France 2 reluctantly complied and I saw the footage (minus a few minutes that Enderlin had excised and which are said to be even more explosive). This showed clearly that the whole thing was a set-up from start to finish.
The cameraman said the Israelis had fired continuously for 45 minutes. Yet the footage did not show people falling under fire. It showed instead Palestinians demonstrating, throwing rocks and so forth, in a positively carnival atmosphere. Youths strutted about, giving declamatory interviews and grinning at the camera; boys rode by on bicycles. And no one showed any sign of injury. There were no wounds; there was no blood. From time to time, demonstrators were pushed on to stretchers and into ambulances - but with no evidence of any disturbance to their anatomy.
Enderlin said he had cut out the scenes of al-Dura’s actual death agony because ‘it was unbearable’. But when the footage was shown, it became clear no such scenes existed. There was no agony and no death. Al-Dura and his father showed no sign of any wound or injury throughout. Supposedly riddled with bullets, their bodies remained totally unmarked. There was no blood anywhere. A red stain on the child turned out to be a piece of red cloth, which suddenly materialised.
And it goes on from there.
The whole thing - faked.
Remember this story? (From Melanie Phillips
On September 30 2000, two days after Ariel Sharon, then the leader of Israel’s opposition Likud Party, went for a walk on Temple Mount, Palestinians mounted a demonstration at Gaza’s Netzarim Junction. A 55-second piece of video footage of that demonstration, transmitted that day by the French TV station France 2, was to cause unprecedented violence in the Middle East and throughout the world.
The footage, with a voice-over by France 2’s Jerusalem correspondent, Charles Enderlin, showed what was said to be the killing of 12-year-old Mohammed al-Dura by Israeli marksmen. Viewers saw the child crouching in terror behind his father, Jamal, as they sheltered next to a barrel under what Enderlin said was Israeli gunfire, and then slumping to the ground as Enderlin pronounced that he was dead.
FAKED.
Melanie goes on to say:
When al-Qaeda decapitated the journalist Daniel Pearl, the video of this atrocity was punctuated with references to al-Dura. After September 11 2001, Osama bin Laden said: ‘Bush must not forget the image of Mohammed al-Dura.’ Several Arab countries issued postage stamps with his picture. On Palestinian Authority TV and in its school books, al-Dura’s example is used to encourage other children to emulate his spirit of ’sacrifice’.
But we now know that this whole fiesta of violence and incitement was based on a lie. For whatever people think they saw in those 55 seconds, it was not the death of that boy. He was not killed by Israeli bullets; he was not killed at all. At the end of France 2’s famous footage, he was still alive and unharmed. The whole thing was staged, a fantastic piece of play-acting, an elaborate fabrication designed to blacken Israel’s name, and incite the Arab and Muslim mobs to mass murder.
It was, in short, a modern-day blood libel, an updated version of the medieval calumny that the Jews target gentile children for murder - which itself caused the murder of thousands of Jews over the centuries.
How do we know the footage was a lie? Because many of us have seen the evidence for ourselves in a French courtroom. Ironically, this blood libel was only exposed to public view because France 2 and its correspondent Enderlin brought a libel suit against a French media watchdog, Philippe Karsenty, for saying that the ‘killing’ was ‘pure fiction’ and that al-Dura wasn’t dead at all.
To begin with, a Paris court ruled in favour of the TV station. But in May this year, the appeal court ruled that Karsenty had every right to say what he said in the light of the evidence. This included the ‘inexplicable incoherence’ of footage, whose images did not correspond to Enderlin’s commentary; the ‘inexplicable inconsistencies and contradictions’ in Enderlin’s explanation; and the lack of credibility of France 2’s Palestinian cameraman Talal Abu Rahma, upon whose account of the events at Netzarim Enderlin - who was in Jerusalem at the time - had depended.
Denis Jeambar, the director of L’Express, and TV producer Daniel Leconte saw the untransmitted rushes and subsequently wrote in Le Figaro: ‘In the minutes that precede the gunfire, the Palestinians seem to have organised a staged scene. They “play” at war with the Israelis and simulate, in most of the cases, imaginary injuries.’ At the moment when Enderlin declared the boy to be dead: ‘Nothing permitted him to affirm that he was really dead and even less that he was killed by Israeli soldiers.’
The implications for France 2 are shattering. The state-funded TV station is now appealing to the highest court in France. Enderlin has blustered that Karsenty is backed by US and French ‘right-wing’, pro-Israel organisations. This is the desperate flailing of a journalist whose reputation now lies in shreds. For he never imagined that his attempt to silence Karsenty would lead the court to order France 2 to produce the evidence it had hitherto refused to make public - the untransmitted 27 minutes of footage that Abu Rahma claimed he had filmed.
I was in the Paris court on the day France 2 reluctantly complied and I saw the footage (minus a few minutes that Enderlin had excised and which are said to be even more explosive). This showed clearly that the whole thing was a set-up from start to finish.
The cameraman said the Israelis had fired continuously for 45 minutes. Yet the footage did not show people falling under fire. It showed instead Palestinians demonstrating, throwing rocks and so forth, in a positively carnival atmosphere. Youths strutted about, giving declamatory interviews and grinning at the camera; boys rode by on bicycles. And no one showed any sign of injury. There were no wounds; there was no blood. From time to time, demonstrators were pushed on to stretchers and into ambulances - but with no evidence of any disturbance to their anatomy.
Enderlin said he had cut out the scenes of al-Dura’s actual death agony because ‘it was unbearable’. But when the footage was shown, it became clear no such scenes existed. There was no agony and no death. Al-Dura and his father showed no sign of any wound or injury throughout. Supposedly riddled with bullets, their bodies remained totally unmarked. There was no blood anywhere. A red stain on the child turned out to be a piece of red cloth, which suddenly materialised.
And it goes on from there.
The whole thing - faked.