Israel Matzav

NBC reporters link murder of Iranian icon to al-Dura case

On Saturday June 20, 27-year old Neda Agha Soltan (pictured with her fiancee Caspian Makan) was murdered by Basij thugs on the streets of Tehran. Soltan has become an icon for the dissidents in Iran and her cold-blooded murder has galvanized support for the revolutionaries around the world.

Incredibly, on Keith Olbermann's Countdown on Monday night, NBC's Richard Engel compared Soltan's murder to the Mohamed al-Dura Pallywood hoax. And of course, the uber-Leftist Olbermann agreed.

Let's go to the videotape (Hat Tip: Newsbusters via Gateway Pundit). The Engel interview starts around 3:25 and the part about al-Dura is at the 6:00 mark and runs until about the 7:00 mark.



Here's a transcript of the exchange between Olbermann and Engel. Note that both assume the al-Dura story to be undisputed:

KEITH OLBERMANN: To the point of Neda Soltan, I don’t know that there’s ever been a revolution, or even a near revolution, that did not have an identifiable face, a martyr, you think of everything from Tiananmen Square to Lexington and Concord-

RICHARD ENGEL: I was thinking more, remember Mohammed al-Dura, the boy who was shot in Gaza-

OLBERMANN: Yes, yes.

ENGEL: -in his father’s arms-

OLBERMANN: Yes.

ENGEL: -and who became a symbol of injustice? I think this is a similar moment.

OLBERMANN: Does putting the human face on this equation change it even in Iran, even in such a tightly scripted culture as Iran?

ENGEL: It, in many ways, does change it because I spoke to an analyst tonight who had an interesting point. He said, thirty years ago, the face of the revolutionary in Iran was a bearded young man, and now it is of a dying, young educated woman wearing a veil, unarmed, who was standing near a protest, and may have been associated with protesters, but it would be hard to call her a terrorist, and that is what the government is doing, is labeling them provocateurs and rioters and terrorists. And nobody who’s seen that video would have that association.

But the entire al-Dura story is very likely to be a hoax. This is from a JPost article I linked at the time of the French court verdict last year.

"The verdict means we have the right to say France 2 broadcast a fake news report, that [al-Dura's shooting] was a staged hoax and that they duped everybody - without being sued," Karsenty told The Jerusalem Post shortly after the verdict was issued at 1:30 p.m. Paris time.

...

Karsenty's claims are based on inconsistencies in the footage, including a publicly-available video-taped admission by Abu Rahma that there are untold secrets related to the case, the fact that only seven bullet holes are seen behind al-Dura despite Abu Rahma's repeated statements that the child survived 45 minutes of continuous shooting by Israeli forces directed at the boy, footage clearly showing pretend gun battles and faked ambulance runs at the junction that day, testimony of the IDF soldiers stationed at the junction who said they did not participate in any firefight that day, and the lack of footage of al-Dura's actual shooting.

Despite France 2's playing down of the verdict, some analysts believe it is significant. According to Gross, "today's ruling shows there are serious doubts about France 2's version of events, and that the entire world press was irresponsible in being so quick to take at face value the claims of a local Palestinian cameraman, who has admitted his partisanship."

Several months ago, the deputy commander of the IDF Spokesman's Office, Col. Shlomi Am-Shalom, wrote to France 2 asking for the entire unedited 27-minute film shot by France 2's Palestinian cameraman on September 30, 2000, as well as footage the cameraman filmed on October 1, 2000. Am-Shalom stressed that the IDF had "ruled out" the notion that al-Dura was killed by Israeli fire.

Citing the findings of the IDF's probe into the incident, ordered by then-OC Southern Command Maj.-Gen. Yom Tov Samia, Am-Shalom wrote, "The general has made clear that from an analysis of all the data from the scene, including the location of the IDF position, the trajectory of the bullets, the location of the father and the son behind an obstacle, the cadence of the bullet fire, the angle at which the bullets penetrated the wall behind the father and his son, and the hours of the events, we can rule out with the greatest certainty the possibility that the gunfire that apparently harmed the boy and his father was fired by IDF soldiers, who were at the time located only inside their fixed position [at the junction]."

Newsbusters has several transcripts of American news shows that discussed al-Dura. Jim at Gateway Pundit adds:

It must be proper protocol...

If the state-run media is not bashing Republicans or Christians, they're bashing Jews.

Indeed.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:18 AM