Bill
 
The Zionist militant network has been working overtime ever since the death of Mohammed al Dura to shift the blame for his death away from the IDF to the Palestinians themselves.
 
I looked at this WorldNetDaily/Whistleblower story a while back.  The key here, this " journalistic investigation", is that just about everyone cited, including "Palestinian journalist Sami El Soudi", is linked to the Metula News Agency which seems to be the French equivalent of Arutz 7 and World Net Daily in churning out spin and distorted news for the sake of the cause.  I don't have the patience to analyze all the claims again but what I remember is that all the names of authorities, etc. cited in the stories interlock and they tend to cite each other.  Check out the names using a web search.
 
As for the details of Mohammed al Dura's death these spinners are mostly relying on the Esther Shapira film which was promoted as concluding that the bullets came from Palestinians.  Tom Segev examined that claim in the article below and found it wanting.
 
John Allan
 
http://www.proche-orient.info/images/mbd/Segev_haaretz.htm
 
Who killed Mohammed al-Dura?
A new report by German television tells us more about the media and
the failures of the IDF spokesman than it does about the death of a
young boy
Segev Tom

Published date - 22/03/02
 
Mohammed al-Dura , a Palestinian boy, was shot and killed at the
Netzarim junction in the Gaza Strip on September 30, 2000. His death
was captured by France 2 television and he immediately became the
symbol of the nascent intifada. The footage created the impression
that the boy was shot by Israeli army fire, and that may be so, but
possibly not. The Israel Defense Forces, which initially expressed
its regret over the incident and thus implicitly assumed responsibility
for the boy's death, claimed afterward that he had been hit by
Palestinian gunfire.
This week, the German channel ARD broadcast a report on the incident,
and the Israeli media were quick to state ARD's "investigative report"
had found that the boy was apparently shot by the Palestinian side
and not by the IDF. These are trying times for Israeli Foreign
Ministry staff, who have to "explain" what the IDF is doing to the
residents of the territories, so there was great joy in the ministry
at this windfall. At last the truth had come to light.
The German television report was entitled "Three bullets and a dead
boy." It has nothing new to tell us about the boy's death; it does,
though, have something to tell us about the media and propaganda,
about the power of myths and the failures of the IDF Spokesman's
Office.
The reporter, Esther Shapira, speaks in a dramatic alto voice, but
she does not succeed in citing even one detail that rules out the
possibility that the boy was killed by the Israeli army. All that
she did - as many have done before her - was to assert that on the
basis of the footage taken by the French television cameraman it is
impossible to say for certain that the boy was hit by Israeli fire,
nor can this be ruled out. He may have been shot by Palestinians who
were on a high floor of a building that at the time still stood behind
the IDF position. Or maybe not.
The difficulty in determining who killed the boy stems from the fact
that no autopsy was performed on his body; a Palestinian physician
showed the reporter photographs of the body and said the boy was shot
from high up and from the front. A narrator-interpreter repeated these
words with heavy emphasis, as though they could prove something. The
photographs do not prove a thing. Both Israelis and Palestinians were
shooting from high up and from the front. The reporter did not examine
bullets that were removed from the boy's body or from his father's
body, nor is it clear whether they were removed at all. What the father
has said on this point contradicts what the doctors said.
The wall in front of which the tragedy occurred was knocked down
at the order of the IDF, though photos of it remain, on which the
bullet holes can be seen. There is an argument over whether they were
caused by rifles that were in Israeli use or by rifles that were in
Palestinian use. There is nothing new in this argument, and it's
doubtful whether a court would accept either of the versions. The
father and his son hid behind a barrel on which there was a block.
The reporter discovered that someone had replaced the original block
with one that was flatter - perhaps to conceal the fact that the father
and son could not have been seen from the Israeli position, because
the block hid them, whereas the flatter block would have made it
possible to see them. There is no proof that the block actually hid
the two from the soldiers in the position.
In the absence of concrete evidence, the reporter tries to guess:
Why would the Israelis want to kill a boy? How is it possible that
they fired for 45 minutes without hitting him? And what were they
doing there in the first place, the boy and his father: For an instant,
the victim becomes the criminal. What is the France 2 photographer
- a Palestinian from the Gaza Strip named Talal Abu Rahma - hiding?
(Are the media to blame?)
The reporter tries to make a case out of the suspicion that France
2 is hiding material that supposedly undermines the contention that
the IDF is to blame for the boy's death. On this point there seems
to be a contradiction between what the photographer says and what
his superiors say; that, too, is not definitive proof. All the
questions were asked in the past, and they do not prove that the IDF
killed the boy, nor do they prove the opposite.
Major General (res.) Yom Tov Samia, who was the head of Southern
Command, shows for the umpteenth time the measurements he made using
his laptop computer, which are supposed to prove that the soldiers
in the position could not have shot the boy. The measurements were
made on a wall and using a Hollywood-style replica of the original
site, so they are of no value as evidence. The IDF Spokesman's Office
issued an aerial photograph and subsequently a quasi- "in-depth
investigation." It was all done too late and too slowly and it didn't
prove anything.
The reporter lets us listen to the voices of three people whose faces
we don't see. She says they are soldiers who were at the position
and identifies them by their first names only, "for reasons of
security," as she says in a mysterious tone: "Ariel," "Alexei" and
"Idan" say that they did not kill the boy. According to earlier
reports, the soldiers who manned the position were Druze. This new
information also proves nothing. The IDF Spokesman's Office was
represented in the report by an officer with the rank of major named
Olivier Rafovic. He had no concrete information to offer.
The interesting sections of the report document the propaganda use
that the Palestinians make of the boy's death on television and in
schools. The father is taken on visits to other countries, where he
tells his story and gives autographs. The good guy in the report is
an Israeli contractor named Moshe Tamam. He employed the boy's father
and still keeps in touch with him. He is the only one who had a scoop
for the reporter: a video film made at his son's bar mitzvah party
showing Mohammed's father among the guests.

 
----- Original Message -----
From: William Friend
To: Bill Friend
Sent: Sunday, April 27, 2003 10:36 PM
Subject: [PalestineDiary] Fw: This may be a big story
 

Make of this what you will.
 
 
-----Original Message-----
From:
To: undisclosed-recipients: ; <undisclosed-recipients: ;>
Date: Sunday, April 27, 2003 8:03 PM
Subject: This may be a big story
 

 http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=31363

WHISTLEBLOWER MAGAZINE
Report: 12-year-old Palestinian boy's martyrdom 'staged'
French media complicit in perpetuating 'myth' of Mohammed al-Dura
Posted: March 5, 2003
1:00 a.m. Eastern

© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com
The "martyrdom" death of 12-year-old Palestinian Mohammed al-Dura at the hands of Israeli soldiers – which received widespread international news coverage and spurred on the current intifada, inspiring countless "suicide bombers" to attack Israel – was actually a "staged" piece of street theater, according to an in-depth report in the current issue ofWND's monthly magazine, Whistleblower.
The entire world was transfixed as news broadcasts played the sensational video footage of the 12-year-old Palestinian boy and his father, pinned down in crossfire between Arab snipers and Israeli Defense Forces in Gaza's remote Netzarim junction on Sept. 30, 2000. The image of the boy crouching in terror behind his father, both of them struggling in vain to protect themselves from Israeli gunfire, only to be shot – the boy apparently dying in his father's arms – became immortalized in posters that were later plastered up and down the streets of the West Bank and Gaza.
Although the Israeli military initially assumed responsibility for the incident, it soon became apparent that the IDF could not have shot the boy, due to a large barrier between the Israeli military outpost across the remote junction and the location of the boy and his father.
Now, a just-completed, long-term journalistic investigation conducted in France concludes that the Mohammed al-Dura affair was actually a piece of Palestinian theater – similar to the dramatic Palestinian funeral processions last April after the Israeli incursion into the Jenin refugee camp. During that public spectacle, a martyred "corpse" twice fell off the stretcher, only to hop back up and retake his place in the procession. The Palestinians had claimed 3,000 deaths in Jenin – the actual toll was 52.
The groundbreaking investigation and its conclusions are spelled out in "Contre-expertise d’une mise en scène" published by Éditions Raphaël, and translated into English for Whistleblower by Nidra Poller. In the book, Gérard Huber, a psychoanalyst and permanent Paris correspondent of the Israel-based Metula News Agency, reports on the investigation conducted by a team of journalists, including Huber and Stéphane Juffa, Metula's editor in chief.
"What really happened at Netzarim junction?" asks Huber. "One thing is certain: Given the position of the protagonists during the firefight it is impossible that the child was hit by Israeli bullets. Mohammed al-Dura was not killed by Israelis. And the bigger question remains: Was Mohammed really killed?"
Street theater
Whistleblower cites stunning reports of Palestinians playing to the camera, including Israeli commentator Amnon Lord's account of the larger scene at Netzarim Junction when al-Dura was supposedly shot to death. He describes "incongruous battle scenes complete with wounded combatants and screeching ambulances played out in front of an audience of laughing onlookers, while makeshift movie directors do retakes of botched scenes."
Palestinian journalist Sami El Soudi echoes Lord's observation, who discloses that "Almost all Palestinian directors take part more or less voluntarily in these war commissions, under the official pretext that we should use all possible means, including trickery and fabulation, to fight against the tanks and airplanes the enemy has and we don’t. … Our official press reported 300 wounded and dead at Netzarim junction the day when Mohammed was supposedly killed. Most of the cameramen there were Palestinians. … They willingly took part in the masquerade, filming fictional scenes, believing they were doing it out of patriotism. When a scene was well done the onlookers laughed and applauded."
"It is incredible," says Huber, "how many people were calmly filming the battle of Netzarim on September 30th, 2000. Not only professionals – some of them standing no more than ten meters away from the al-Dura incident – but amateurs as well.
"The rushes [video clips] are full of surprising incongruities: Children smile as ambulances go by. A 'wounded' Palestinian collapses and two seconds later an ambulance pulls up to take him to the hospital. It looks as if the driver had been cued in, knew in advance where the Palestinian was going to fall, or was waiting in the upper right hand corner just out of the photographic field ready to zoom in on signal (there is a scene like this in the France 2 report.)
"In another rush we are startled to hear a Palestinian shouting: 'It's a flop! We have to do the whole thing over again!'"
The French close ranks
Even more disconcerting, says the Whistleblower report, is the fact that France 2, the news organization that broke the story of Mohammed al-Dura's supposed "martyrdom" at the hands of Israeli soldiers, adamantly refuses to release all the raw footage taken by its Palestinian cameraman. For instance, journalist Charles Enderlin, who narrated the original story of the shooting, claims his employer, France 2, holds onto images of the child’s death throes – which he says he took out of his report for ethical reasons – because they were just too terrible to view.
To this day, says Huber, it remains unproven whether Mohammed al-Dura is dead or alive.
Meanwhile, every French television station to this day refuses to broadcast a film by German director Esther Schapira, titled "Three Bullets and a Child: Who Killed the Young Mohammed al-Dura?" Nominated for best TV documentary in Germany, it also concludes Israelis did not kill the boy. Although she understands why the Palestinians are not interested in further investigation, Schapira, a staff filmmaker for German public television, wonders why the West should be so resistant to a solid, impartial investigation.
And French author and Whistleblower translator Nidra Poller asks some probing questions about the French media's behavior:
"Of course the Palestinians won't allow any investigation on the evidence they hold," Poller tells Whistleblower. "However, France 2 is not the Palestinians. It is a public service TV station in a democratic country. And Huber makes a convincing case for the collusion of France 2 in this stunt.
"How is it possible that France 2 refuses to cooperate with the investigation? If they have nothing to hide, wouldn't it be to their interest to come forth, even partially? Would the American media sit back and allow this kind of enormous question to remain in the box? If CNN cheats, does Fox News back them up? Well, that's what happens in France."
"The truth," says Huber in the Whistleblower report, "is, first of all, that the child shown on the screen is not dead. He plays dead."
But what about Mohammed al-Dura's funeral?
"The badly wounded corpse of a child was shown by doctors at the Shifa hospital in Gaza," says Huber. "[That] child was dead, but he is not the child seen in the famous TV newscast."
The sensational 5,000-word report by WND Managing Editor David Kupelian, titled "Mohammed al-Dura martyrdom a media myth?" is published in the March edition of Whistleblower.

To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
PalestineDiary-unsubscribe@egroups.com
 
 

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.

Yahoo! Groups Sponsor
 
 

To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
PalestineDiary-unsubscribe@egroups.com
 
 

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.