May 27, 2008.
It’s hard to exaggerate the significance of Mohammed al-Durra, the 12-year-old
Palestinian boy allegedly killed by Israeli bullets on Sept. 30, 2000. The iconic
image of the terrified child crouching behind his father helped sway world
opinion against the Jewish state and fueled the last Intifada.
It’s equally hard, then, to exaggerate the significance of last week’s French
court ruling that called the story into doubt. Not just whether the Israeli military
shot the boy, but whether the whole incident may have been staged for
propaganda purposes. If so, it would be one of the most harmful put-up jobs in
media history.
You probably didn’t hear this news. International media lapped up the televised
report of al-Durra’s shooting on France’s main state-owned network, France 2.
Barely a peep was heard, however, when the Paris Court of Appeal ruled in a
suit brought by the network against the founder of a media watchdog group.
The judge’s verdict, released Thursday, said that Philippe Karsenty was
within his rights to call the France 2 report a “hoax,” overturning a 2006
decision that found him guilty of defaming the network and its Mideast
correspondent, Charles Enderlin. France 2 has appealed to the country’s highest
court.
Judge Laurence Trebucq did more than assert Mr. Karsenty’s right to free
speech. In overturning a lower court’s ruling, she said the issues he raised
about the original France 2 report were legitimate. While Mr. Karsenty couldn’t
provide absolute proof of his claims, the court ruled that he marshalled a
“coherent mass of evidence” and “exercised in good faith his right to free
criticism.”
The court also found that Talal Abu Rahma, the Palestinian cameraman
for France 2 who was the only journalist to capture the scene and the
network’s crown witness in this case, can’t be considered “perfectly credible.”
The ruling at the very least opens the way for honest discussion of the al-Durra
case, and coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in general. French media
could stand some self-examination. The same holds for journalists elsewhere.
On that Saturday in 2000, Palestinians faced off against Israeli troops at Gaza’s
Netzarim junction. Two months before, Yasser Arafat had walked out of the
Camp David peace talks. Two days before, Ariel Sharon had visited Jerusalem’s
Temple Mount. The second Intifada was brewing. The French network’s
cameraman, Mr. Abu Rahma, filmed the skirmishes and got the footage to the
France 2 bureau in Israel. Mr. Enderlin edited the film and, relying only on his
cameraman’s account, provided the voice-over for the report. He suggested
Israeli soldiers killed the boy. He didn’t say he wasn’t there.
Along with the Temple Mount incident, the al-Durra shooting was the seminal
event behind the second Intifada. Israel apologized. But nagging doubts soon
emerged, as Nidra Poller recounts here. An Israeli military probe found that its
soldiers couldn’t have shot the father and son, given where the two were
crouching.
Others including Mr. Karsenty asked, among various questions, Why the lack of
any blood on the boy or his father? Or why did France 2 claim to have 27
minutes of footage but refuse to show any but the 57 seconds on its original
broadcast? Mr. Enderlin said, “I cut the images of the child’s agony, they were
unbearable.”
Under pressure from media watchdogs, and after years of stonewalling, France
2 eventually shared the additional film. It turns out that no footage of the
child’s alleged death throes seems to exist. The extra material shows what
appears to be staged scenes of gun battles before the al-Durra killing. For a
sample, check out www.seconddraft.org, a site run by Richard Landes, a
Boston University professor and one of Mr. Karsenty’s witnesses.
Judge Trebucq said that Mr. Karsenty “observed inexplicable inconsistencies
and contradictions in the explanations by Charles Enderlin.”
We don’t know exactly what happened to Mohammed al-Durra. Perhaps we
never will. But the Paris court ruling shows that France 2 wasn’t completely
open about what it knew about that day. It suggests the Israelis may not have
been to blame. It makes it plausible to consider — without being dismissed as an
unhinged conspiracy theorist — the possibility that the al-Durra story was a
hoax.
To this day, Islamic militants use the al-Durra case to incite violence and hatred
against Israel. They are well aware of the power of images. Mr. Karsenty is,
too, which is why he and others have tried to hold France 2 accountable for its
reporting.
