13 years too late Defense Ministry concludes Mohammed al-Dura's 'death' was a hoax

In 2007, I reported on Mohammed al-Dura's wedding and made the then-speculative claim that Mohammed al-Dura had not been killed - by the IDF or by anyone else. Now, a secret commission (secret because even our own Leftists would have been outraged by the thought) in the Defense Ministry has concluded that Mohammed al-Dura did not die. In fact, he wasn't even hurt.

A few days ago, MK Nachman Shai met with Ya’alon to give him a copy of his new book, Media War Reaching for Hearts and Minds , which deals with the role of media in cur- rent military conflicts, including the Dura affair. Ya’alon then surprised Shai by saying that an investigation carried out by Israel shows that Dura was never hurt.

This theory has been circulating on the Internet for a few years already, but this was the first time that an Israeli defense minister was stating so publicly.

Today, Dura should be about 25-years-old, alive and kicking somewhere (unless he was killed later in a separate incident).

Kuperwasser confirmed the committee’s conclusion that that Dura had not been hurt at all and that the video clip, which was filmed by France 2 TV and aired around the world, had indeed been staged. This means that the France 2 TV channel report was erroneous, perhaps even knowingly.

Kuperwasser added that the full results of the investigation would be ready in the near future, and that most of the work had already been completed.

The committee was comprised of numerous specialists from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, as well as other academic institutions. The committee also collected information from physicist Nahum Shahaf, who used angles and rate of fire to prove that the scene had been staged. Kuperwasser met with Shahaf a number of times.

Hopefully the lesson has been learned: The IDF doesn't race to take responsibility so quickly for these incidents.