YNET The committee, formed in 2012, was first headed by now Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon,
and concluded its inquiry recently under the chairmanship of Yuval
Steinitz. The report itself focuses on the controversial September 2000
France 2 broadcast – in which the boy is seen hiding behind his father
while the two were under IDF gunfire – and conclude that al-Dura was
still alive at the end of the video.[...]
According to the
Steinitz-Ya'alon committee findings, in contrary to what had been
published before, there was no evidence that the boy or his father were
even injured at the time the video was shot.
In addition, the committee noted there was reasonable doubt whether
the IDF was responsible for the bullet holes seen in the wall behind the
two.
Furthermore, the Israeli report points a blaming finger at the France 2 news report.
[...]
NY Times
The new findings published on Sunday were the work of an Israeli
government review committee, which said its task was to re-examine the
event “in light of the continued damage it has caused to Israel.” They
come after years of debate over the veracity of the France 2 report,
which was filmed by a Gaza correspondent, Talal Abu Rahma, and narrated
by the station’s Jerusalem bureau chief, Charles Enderlin, who was not
at the present at the scene.
The Israeli government review suggested, as other critics have,
that the France 2 footage might have been staged. It noted anomalies
like the apparent lack of blood in appropriate places at the scene, and
said that raw footage from the seconds after the boy’s apparent death
seem to show him raising his arm.
“Contrary to the report’s claim that the boy is killed, the committee’s
review of the raw footage showed that in the final scenes, which were
not broadcast by France 2, the boy is seen to be alive,” the review
said. “Based on the available evidence, it appears significantly more
likely that Palestinian gunmen were the source of the shots which appear
to have impacted in the vicinity” of the boy and his father.
so where is he now?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/Al-Dura-says-he-is-willing-to-exhume-sons-body-313686
DeleteWhen asked by Army Radio when did Muhammad die, Jamal insisted his son died on the spot. "In my opinion, he died on the spot. Yes, yes, he died next to me. If Muhammad didn't die, who injured me?" he asked.
When presented with the findings of an Israeli doctor that operated on him and determined his scars predated the incident, Jamal dismissed it as lies. When pressed further, he avoided answering the question. "You can ask my lawyer in France. He'll tell you. Me, I'm not allowed to talk about this. At court, he will talk about it," he said.
Dura further said he never received compensation - not from Israel nor from the Palestinian Authority - for the death of his son, that he claims is buried in al-Bureiz refugee camp.
Despite the lack of official recognition, Dura says his son is viewed as a martyr in Gaza. "Muhammad is not just my son, he's the son of the entire Palestinian nation."
I find this two-pronged approach a bit strange. First, Muhammad al dura never died, and second, if he died, it was not our bullets...
Deletethey should decide what they want. This kind of strategy lacks credibility.
It was already proven in French court that it was not the IDF who shot the kid.
DeleteWhy do you think that Jamal wouldn't kill his son to 'prove' that he's dead?
ReplyDeleteI studies a lot of the material about that case. I think they should have gone for one version: either: the child died, but it was not us, or the child never died. Mixing both is not very convincing. And that is what they did.
DeleteInterestingly, the IDF was originally willing to go along with the France 2 narrative. It took outside forces to change that. One important force was historian Richard Landes. His main website, theaugeanstables.com, contains links to his work on the Al Dura affair, as well as some interesting efforts to describe and classify the sort of intellectual errors that leads respected institutions such as the New York Times to accept the material coming from the Palestinian propaganda industry, including martyrdom videos. Some of these videos included such clumsy staging as a bloody corpse jumping up and hopping back on the stretcher when the bearers accidentally dropped him. The production of these videos has been referred to as "Pallywood;" I think Landes coined that name.
ReplyDeleteLandes' main professional interest has been millennialist movements. The Amazon blurb on his book says:
"Millennialists through the ages have looked forward to the apocalyptic moment that will radically transform society into heaven on earth. They have delivered withering critiques of their own civilizations and promised both the impending annihilation of the forces of evil and the advent of a perfect society. And all their promises have invariably failed. We tend, therefore, to dismiss these prophets of doom and salvation as crackpots and madmen, and not surprisingly historians of our secular era have tended to underestimate their impact on our modern world. Now, Richard Landes offers a lucid and ground-breaking analysis of this widely misunderstood phenomenon.
'... as Landes examines the explicit millennialism behind such recent events as the emergence of Global Jihad since 1979, he challenges the common notion that modern history is largely driven by secular interests. By focusing on ten widely different case studies, none of which come from Judaism or Christianity, he shows that millennialism is not only a cultural universal, but also an extremely adaptive social phenomenon that persists across the modern and post-modern divides. At the same time, he also offers valuable insight into the social and psychological factors that drive such beliefs."
It would be useful to know what Dura actually said which led to the Post's staff to write "Despite the lack of official recognition[!], Dura says his son is viewed as a martyr in Gaza." If that accurately reflects Dura's words, then they fall into the sort of thinking that has interested Landes: Gaza views my son as a martyr which proves he is dead.
When an individual applies that sort of thinking to a matter of objective reality (the boy is or is not dead, belief doesn't prove or disprove that) we question his mental health. When entire societies embrace it, it can be very dangerous.
Jonathan Tobin at Commentary reminds us that this type of propaganda is aimed both externally and internally:
ReplyDelete"The “Pallywood” productions, of which the al-Dura hoax is the most prominent, haven’t just deceived the West. They’ve also reinforced the Palestinian myths about themselves...."
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/05/19/why-the-mohammed-al-dura-blood-libel-still-matters-israel-palestinians/
See the mind boggling 14 minute vidio at you tube - nimdod the שקר of the arabs- french is VERY great.
ReplyDelete