In an announcement to the press: @bogie_yaalon: We're sorry for the death of Abu Ein. We will investigate & continue coordination with PA
— Peter Lerner (@LTCPeterLerner) December 10, 2014
You would think that by now, the government of Israel and the IDF would have learned not to take responsibility and apologize every time a 'Palestinian' (seemingly) dies. And as you can see from the tweet above, you'd be wrong. The Minister of Defense is apologizing for the death of 'Palestinian' terrorist Ziad Abu Ein at a demonstration earlier on Wednesday, and promising to investigate Abu Ein's death in the name of continued coordination with the 'Palestinian Authority' - the same coordination that the 'Palestinians' announced that they were cutting earlier today.
In a live report for the UK’s Sky News broadcaster, Middle East
correspondent Tom Rayner reported that Ziad Abu Ein, a convicted
terrorist who was appointed by the PA to organize campaigns against
Jewish settlements in the West Bank, was lying on the ground
“unconscious” after the clash – although separate footage shot by Kremlin broadcaster RT displayed Abu Ein conscious and sitting up after his altercation with the IDF officers.
“When he’s on the floor, an Israeli medic does come up to him, she
tries to clear an area around him, but Palestinians pick him up and take
him straight to a vehicle,” Rayner said, in footage viewed by The Algemeiner.
The medic was “not able to deliver any first aid,” Rayner continued,
and Abu Ein was “declared dead when he got to a hospital in Ramallah.”
As The Algemeiner reported today, Rayner had earlier said on Twitter that
“When Abu Ein is unconscious on ground, Israel medic attempts to
assist, asks crowd to make space, Palestinians rush him to a vehicle
instead.” Rayner also reported that Abu Ein repeatedly asked the Israeli officer he clashed with for his name, calling him a “dog.”
As a result of Abu Ein’s death, the PA announced that it was
suspending security cooperation with Israel. PA President Mahmoud Abbas
lauded Abu Ein as a “martyr,” while PA official Hanan Ashrawi accused
Israel of having carried out an “extrajudicial killing.”
We're apologizing for this? Have we learned nothing?
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman let the US and the European Union have it on Wednesday over demands for an investigation into the deaths of two 'Palestinians' at a Naqba Day demonstration in Beitunia on Thursday.
“"We don't need an American request to inquire the subject,” Liberman
said on Wednesday during a visit to Ariel University in the Samaria
region of the West Bank.
“I reject any request and the hypocrisy we see worldwide,” Liberman said.
...
In response to a reporter’s question about the incident in
Washington, US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said that America
expected Israel to conduct a prompt and transparent investigation.
The
European Union missions in Ramallah and Jerusalem also spoke of the
need for a more thorough investigation and denounced the use of lethal
force. “We reiterate the need for security forces, whether Israeli or
Palestinian, to refrain from the use of lethal force, except in cases
where there is a real and imminent threat to life,” the missions said.
Liberman said in response, “the IDF is the most moral military in the world, and the IDF is checking his actions continually.
“I
only wish that this sort of requirements will appear in other cases, in
Syria around 170,000 people were killed and I didn't see any request
from the international community to inquire these killings.
“Hamas
has executed two men in the Gaza strip after accusing them of spying
for Israel, without a lawyer or a fair trial. I didn't see any request
to investigate that.
“We will inquire this event do to our obligation to the moral code of the IDF,” Liberman said.
“Furthermore,
I find it odd that the video was published with a large gap from the
occurrence of the events in question, and all of these things will be
examined,” he said.
The IDF has also attacked the authenticity of the video footage published, including those from B’Tselem.
The
NGO had taken footage from security cameras used by store owners on the
street where the teens were shot and produced two short videos that
showed the moments of their death.
It said that it had 12 hours of footage, from the incident, which are available to those who are interested.
Well, yeah. Except that the full videos are only being made available to 'the media' rather than being publicly posted. So the video that's posted (I'm embedding one of them below) shows the shooting in isolation. It's not clear who shot, and it may not have been the IDF. The IDF says that it only used rubber bullets, which are not usually lethal. And the 'Palestinian police' just happened to be at the demonstration.
Let's go to the videotape.
By the way, anyone think that running toward someone who has been shot is a normal reaction? Shades of al-Durah....
Unreal: US State Department issues condolences over killing of Hamas terrorist
.@StateDept spox exp. condolences to families of 2 Palestinian teens killed in W Bank; calls for investigation. http://t.co/LmDrlYRBHd
— Richard Buangan (@RichardBuangan) May 21, 2014
As you can see in the tweet above, Richard Buangan of the US State Department has issued condolences to the 'Palestinian Authority' over two 'teenagers' who were allegedly killed in 'Nakba day' demonstrations last week. One of the 'teenagers' (Were they really teenagers? How does anyone know?) was buried wrapped in a Hamas flag.
There is plenty of reason to believe that what we have here is Pallywood II (recall the al-Durahfraud from 2000).
Report: IDF had full al-Dura video the entire time, left defenders to fight France 2 on their own
Who decided to let the IDF shoot the country in the foot? This is simply beyond belief.
It turns out that while Phillippe Karsenty, Dr. Yehuda David and others were defending the IDF against charges that it shot Mohamed al-Dura, the IDF had the full video that proved the death was staged and didn't bother to tell anyone.
Now [Israel Police Weapons Lab director Elliot Springer] has revealed that just weeks after the alleged shooting,
senior IDF officials met and watched the entire video, rather than the
edited version presented by France’s Channel 2 that sparked the
accusations against Israel.
"Despite the media reports based on edited and doctored video
footage, we watched the original, and all sounds of IDF fire was muffled
- far away in the background. When the barrage fired at al-Dura was
fired, the audio was suddenly close by - in other words Arab gumen right
beside the camera near al-Dura fired them, not the IDF,” he reported.
Springer’s testimony strengthens those of other witnesses and experts
who have declared the IDF innocent of shooting Al-Dura. However, it has
also raised a disturbing new question: if the IDF had the original,
full footage of the shooting, why did it not share it with Dr. Yehuda David, French media analyst Philippe Karsenty, or others who attempted to advocate on Israel’s behalf?
Both David and Karsenty fought in court to force France’s Channel 2
to reveal the full footage. Both needed it to help their own cases:
Karsenty was sued for accusing French media of deliberately staging the
video, while David was sued by Al-Dura’s father, Jamal, for revealing
that scars Jamal had claimed were the result of bullet wounds sustained
in the shooting were in fact from an incident years earlier in which Jamal had been attacked by an Arab gang.
Both men fought lengthy legal battles over their attempts to defend
the IDF from libel – and yet the IDF apparently did not offer them help
when it could, by making the full video available to them.
It is also not clear why the IDF did not make the whole video public
in order to boost the growing body of evidence showing the IDF did not
cause Al-Dura’s death.
Yes, you guessed it. With the exception of Yaalon, who took over three months ago, every single one of them belongs to the Left (don't let the Likud next to Mofaz's name fool you - he's belong to Kadima since late 2005). In fact, Ehud Barak's two terms add up to nearly 8 of the 13 years in question. Do you think he knew about this? I would bet on it. So why didn't he tell anyone?
I leave speculation about that question to the reader rather than making my blood boil.
This week the Paris Court of Appeals disgraced itself and revealed the
dark side of France’s arcane laws of defamation, elevating the principle
of French honor above the value of truth-telling for French
journalists. The appellate court’s sentencing of Philippe Karsenty to a fine of 7,000 Euros
for the “crime” of speaking truth to power telegraphs how France has
decided to treat whistle-blowers who have the temerity to demand that
state-sponsored media outlets differentiate between theater and news.
Perhaps this second panel of the appellate court was not entirely at
fault for its misstep. It operated with blinders, since the French
Supreme Court forbade it from viewing the relevant evidence that led the
first panel of the court to acquit Karsenty. For the French legal
system, the facts of what happened at Netzarim were and are essentially
irrelevant. This case was not about getting at the truth, but about
protecting the honor of French institutions.
Here's Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler for Thursday, June 27.
Karsenty, Accountability lose
A few weeks ago Israel's government released a critique
of the Al Dura case. During the so-called "Aqsa intifada," Mohammed
al-Dura was allegedly killed by the IDF during a shootout at the
Netzarim Junction in Gaza. Or so it was reported by France's Channel 2
and its reporter Charles Enderlin. Al-Dura became a cause in the Arab
world. His image was put on postage stamps to inflame the "Arab street" against Israel. The Palestinian Authority released a video starring "Al-Dura" encouraging other children to become martyrs.
When the report was released, the Jerusalem Post's diplomatic correspondent Herb Keinon wondered:
But still. Israel, by releasing this report 13 years on, has put this
picture back into people’s minds, and it is not entirely clear whose
interests are served by resurrecting this potent image.
What I’m afraid Keinon and the many others like him might be saying
here is, in addition to our enemies, who will never drop that bone as
long as there’s the most remote trace of the taste of blood on it – al
Durah as symbol of Israeli evil – they also fear that the should-be
rational people in the West, the liberals who should care about the
truth, the journalists whose job it is to care about the truth – who
won’t listen either.
But it’s these folks who are our target audience. They are the people –
especially the journalists – who need to learn, when they see that
image, that it is a symbol not of Israeli desire to kill children as
Osama bin Laden and other blood libelers interpreted it, but a symbol
of the incompetence of the media and the devastating impact of that
incompetence, fortified with a stubborn, honor-shame reflex to deny any
fault. Because we – and here I speak on behalf of democracies around
the world, indeed all peoples who wish to live in peace and tolerance
of the “other,” – we cannot afford the destructive impact of lethal
journalism. We cannot afford to have our public sphere become the
sewage dump of toxic, hate- and war-mongering lies, especially those of
our enemies.
I agree. It wasn't simply about setting the record straight, but about
holding the media accountable. Israel's decision to take a look at the
case was a sign that Israel wasn't going to let the media get away with
broadcasting straight propaganda anymore.
Yesterday, however, a French court disagreed. In 2008 media critic, Philippe Karsenty was vindicated
of the charge that he had libeled Enderlin and France 2. Apparently a
major factor in that verdict, was the Enderline was ordered to release
the all the footage of the incident, but refused. But the case was
appealed and yesterday Karsenty was found guilty of defamation. The AP reports:
In a report issued in 2004, Philippe Karsenty said the footage was
orchestrated and there was no proof that the boy had been killed.
France-2 sued for defamation, and after a long legal battle, a Paris
court fined Karsenty 7,000 euros Wednesday. He called the verdict
“outrageous.”
Over the past decade Karsenty has amassed hours of video about the day
of the shooting. At the heart of his claim is the fact that, according
to the reporting by France-2, father and son received a total of 15
high-velocity bullets but in the video, neither appears to be bleeding.
He says the firefight is real, but the shooting of the man and boy was
staged for the camera.
At the end of the article, the AP gets reactions. Here's one:
Gaza’s militant Hamas rulers said the ruling confirmed that Israel and
their supporters lied about the military’s practices in the coastal
territory.
“They deceive and cover their crimes in front of the media and the world,” said spokesman Fawzi Barhoum.
A spokesman for Hamas?!?!!?
Hamas is a terrorist group committed to Israel's destruction and that's who the AP gets a reaction from! Jonathan Tobin addressed statements like this that is encouraged all too often in the media:
The al-Dura myth is significant not so much because it annoys Israelis
and their friends but because it reinforces the way Palestinians think
of themselves and gives them carte blanche to commit any outrage.
Debunking it is not pointless. It is the starting point for any effort
to answer the lies about Israel that have become the foundation for
efforts to isolate and boycott the Jewish state. Friends of Israel
ignore it at their peril.
There is no libel against Israel that is too outrageous not to be published uncritically.
Perhaps the best debunking of the report comes from James Fallows who wrote Who Shot Mohammed al-Dura? in the Atlantic ten years ago.
The footage of the shooting is unforgettable, and it illustrates the
way in which television transforms reality. I have seen it replayed at
least a hundred times now, and on each repetition I can't help hoping
that this time the boy will get himself down low enough, this time the
shots will miss. Through the compression involved in editing the
footage for a news report, the scene acquired a clear story line by the
time European, American, and Middle Eastern audiences saw it on
television: Palestinians throw rocks. Israeli soldiers, from the slits
in their outpost, shoot back. A little boy is murdered.
What is known about the rest of the day is fragmentary and additionally
confusing. A report from a nearby hospital says that a dead boy was
admitted on September 30, with two gun wounds to the left side of his
torso. But according to the photocopy I saw, the report also says that
the boy was admitted at 1:00 P.M.; the tape shows that Mohammed was
shot later in the afternoon. The doctor's report also notes, without
further explanation, that the dead boy had a cut down his belly about
eight inches long. A boy's body, wrapped in a Palestinian flag but with
his face exposed, was later carried through the streets to a burial
site (the exact timing is in dispute). The face looks very much like
Mohammed's in the video footage. Thousands of mourners lined the route.
A BBC TV report on the funeral began, "A Palestinian boy has been
martyred." Many of the major U.S. news organizations reported that the
funeral was held on the evening of September 30, a few hours after the
shooting. Oddly, on film the procession appears to take place in full
sunlight, with shadows indicative of midday.
Fallows critique is important. He is not, in any way pro-Israel. He
also refuses to believe that Mohammed al-Dura is alive. Still he
carefully reviewed all the available evidence and concluded that
Enderlin didn't tell the correct story.
That is what any reasonable critic should have concluded. Unfortunately
many in the media simply don't care.
They would rather see their
preconceived narratives confirmed rather than examining their
prejudices, premises or procedsses. Yeterday's verdict was a victory for
continued media malpractice.
A Paris court fined Philippe Karsenty 7,000
euros (NIS 33,000) in the defamation case filed by network France
2. Karsenty accused the network’s Jerusalem bureau chief, Charles
Enderlin, of fabricating parts of the segment.
The 55 seconds of edited footage, broadcast on
September 30, 2000, showed the terrified boy, Mohammed al-Dura, and his
father amid a furious exchange of fire in the Gaza Strip. It then cut
to the boy slumped in his father’s lap. The report blamed Israeli forces
for the death.
Karsenty called the verdict “outrageous.” A lawyer for France 2 said it was a victory for journalists.
Karsenty was convicted of libel in 2006, a
judgment that was overturned on appeal in 2008.
France 2 subsequently
appealed that appeal at the “Cour de cassation,” France’s highest court.
Last year, the Cour de cassation annulled the ruling acquitting
Karsenty of libel in 2008.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who
commissioned the report in 2012, said the accusations aired on France 2
were “a manifestation of the ongoing, mendacious campaign to
delegitimize Israel.”
I sure hope this can be appealed. The fine is small but it's outrageous.
Ten years ago, we suspected that al-Dura was a fraud
Ten years ago, James Fallows wrote a seminal piece in the Atlantic, which raised serious doubts as to the authenticity of the Mohamed al-Dura killing. On Monday, Fallows' former colleague, Jeffrey Goldberg, retweeted the piece. Reading it, I can recall having read it then. Maybe you will too.
Please read it here. It explains the warped thinking that led the State of Israel to ignore all evidence of fraud for the last ten years.
Melanie Phillips argues that Israel's suddenly stepping up to the plate and admitting that the Mohamed al-Dura 'killing' was a fake - after the evidence had been available for years - is too little, too late.
Originally, the IDF actually accepted responsibility for the boy's
death. After an internal inquiry, it claimed instead that father and son
had probably been hit by Palestinian gunfire. But anyone looking at the
broadcast footage could see that neither father nor son was wounded in
any way. Did no one in the IDF or foreign ministry ask why there was no
visible wound on a boy who had allegedly just been killed by snipers, no
blood anywhere?
The fact is that at no stage did Israel want to get to the truth.
After its gross incompetence in taking responsibility for a killing that
never happened, it looked the other way as the facts emerged. The
result is that this tale has been suppurating poison for 13 years.
France 2 has never been called to account. Untold numbers of Israelis
have been murdered as a result of this footage. And Israel has been
libelled as a nation of child-killers.
So why did it stay silent until now? The foreign ministry seemed to
believe it was all just water under the bridge and no good would come of
stirring it up again. This "heads down" attitude is sometimes called
"ghetto mentality". What the scandal surely tells is that you can take
the people out of the ghetto, but you cannot always take the ghetto out
of the people.
And now, 13 years too late, Israel has published the results of a
government inquiry, which the rest of the world won't believe. Why now?
Why produce this without the all-important independent element to
guarantee its credibility? Why do so without even putting on the web for
all to see the critical unbroadcast footage showing the child moving?
Why is the Israel government so monumentally incompetent?
It's not that the government is incompetent. It's that the Leftist-dominated (for most of the last 20 years) Foreign Ministry has a kind of death wish - a Samson complex. Quite simply, Israel's Left would rather self-destruct and take the Jewish state with it than see the Jewish state be 'too Jewish.'
And so, for 13 years, we have pretended that Mohamed al-Dura really died. We took responsibility without investigating first, and then buried our collective heads in the sand so as not admit our incompetence.
Video: Dr. Yehuda David (Jamal al-Dura's surgeon) v. the al-Dura libel
Here's an interview with Dr. Yehuda David. As you might recall, Dr. David operated on Jamal al-Dura, the father of Mohamed al-Dura, and was later sued by al-Dura for libel when Dr. David claimed Jamal al-Dura's injuries came from an attack by Hamas.... Al-Dura lost that lawsuit.
'Human rights watch's vulture an expert in fiction
Peter Bouckaert, the 'human rights watch' official who was quoted prominently trashing Israel in a 'private' Facebook page conversation among a group called the Vultures, is an expert in fiction. Bouckaert wrote 'human rights watch's coverage of the Second Lebanon War in 2006, which in a prelude to the even more toxic 2009 Goldstone Report took uncorroborated testimony of Lebanese as absolute truth.
This was sent to me by email:
EXPERTS OR IDEOLOGUES?
PETER BOUCKAERT
NGO MonitorSeptember 08, 2009NGO Monitor Monograph Series
Peter Bouckaert, “Emergencies Director” for HRW,38
has a background in research in South Africa. His one-sided approach to
the Arab-Israeli context may be the result of drawing a false analogy
between the two very different conflict situations of South Africa and
Israel. Bouckaert worked at the Constitutional Litigation Unit of the
Legal Resources Centre in South Africa 1994-1995 and the South Africa
Department of Land Affairs 1996-1996. 39 He
holds a law degree from Stanford University and received a fellowship
at HRW after graduation in 1997. In his position, Bouckaert “is
responsible for coordinating [HRW’s] response to major wars and other
human rights crises.”40
An interview with Bouckaert described his “maverick style,” his “urgent
headline grabbing activism,” and, as with many other activists at HRW,
his anti-establishment approach (Case 2005).
Boukaert
has authored a number of tendentious op-eds directed exclusively at
Israel during and after the Second Lebanon War. An August 5, 2006
report from Tyre, For Israel, Innocent Civilians Are Fair Game,
claimed that “Time after time, Israel has hit civilian homes and cars
…killing dozens of people with no evidence of any military objective./My
notebook overflows with reports of civilian deaths…” (Bouckaert Aug.
5-6, 2006). Another op-ed inThe Guardian described the
“carnage in Qana” and Israel’s actions as “war crimes” (Bouckaert July
31, 2006). As noted below in the case study on the Lebanon War, HRW
amplified and distorted the events in Qana by publicizing a false
casualty figure and repeating claims of indiscriminate attacks.
Bouckaert also wrote HRW’s September 2007 report on the Second Lebanon War, Why They Died.
This pseudo-research publication followed HRW’s pattern of highly
selective analysis, unprofessional methodology, unverifiable
allegations, and grossly disproportionate criticism of Israel that
includes 122 pages on alleged Israeli abuses, and just 23 pages on
alleged abuses by Hezbollah. This report also reexamines and corrects
some of the most blatant errors in the case studies from HRW’s earlier
report, Fatal Strikes which Bouckaert co-authored (NGO Monitor Digest Oct. 1, 2007). For example, in Fatal Strikes an airstrike on Aitaroun on July 17 is presented as an example of the killing of civilians at a time when “Hezbollah was not operating in the area.” Yet in Why They Died,
the details are changed. Different witnesses report that “The night of
the attack, Hezbollah was firing from inside the village. …At 10:15 p.m., they were firing rockets from near our house. We heard the missiles going out.”41
Commenting
on Jenin in 2002, following the international campaign to accuse Israel
of a massacre and war crimes, Bouckaert alleged that “very serious
violations of the laws of war took place” and claimed that Israel
“clearly failed in [the] important obligation [to minimize suffering to
civilians] by causing the significant loss of civilian life and massive
damage to civilian property.” This assertion erased Israel’s decision to
send soldiers to fight house to house against terrorist infrastructure,
instead of relying on airstrikes, due to the civilian presence in
Jenin.
In the picture above, Mohamed al-Dura is seen in his role as the patron saint of Durban, the internationally coordinated political and economic campaign against the existence of a Jewish state.
'Human rights watch' official, AP and AFP reporters, trash Israel in private Facebook group
A 'human rights watch' official, and several foreign correspondents for AP and AFP, trashed Israel in a private Facebook group after the Israeli government released a report exposing Muhammad al-Dura's 'death' as a fraud.
A “secret” Facebook group of foreign correspondents and human rights
activists quickly devolved into an anti-Israel hate-fest on Tuesday
following the release of a new Israeli government report that cleared
the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) of wrongdoing in the 2000 death of a
Palestinian boy.
The Israeli government report
contests the claim that the IDF killed a Palestinian boy, Muhammad
al-Durrah, in a famous 2000 incident in Gaza that helped ignite the
Second Intifada.
Journalists and activists mocked the report, attacked the IDF, and
claimed pro-Israel lobbyists were influencing the media coverage, in a
private Facebook group for foreign correspondents known as the “Vulture
Club.”
Peter Bouckaert, a senior official at Human Rights Watch, dismissed the report as “typical IDF lies.”
“As usual, it takes them a long time to really build up the falsehood,” wrote Bouckaert.
Bouckaert also blasted the New York Times for its coverage of the report.
“It really isn’t good journalism to write this up as if these are credible allegations when it is a pack of lies,” he wrote.
Correspondents from numerous outlets, including the Associated Press and the Agence France-Presse, also piled on.
According to my sources, Bouckaert was the direct supervisor of Marc Garlasco at 'human rights watch.' Garlasco was the organization's senior military analyst until he was suspended in September 2009 after his hobby of collecting Nazi memorabilia was uncovered by bloggers.
Read the whole thing. It includes a screen cap of the Facebook page in question.
The Vulture Club has about 3,500 members. It's not a small group.
Jamal al-Dura challenges Israel to an international commission
Jamal al-Dura, the father of fake martyr Muhammad al-Dura, has challenged Israel to agree to an 'international commission' to investigate his son's 'death.'
Jamal al-Dura, the father of 12-year-old Gazan Muhammad al-Dura who
became a symbol of the second intifada, is willing to exhume his son's
body to prove that Muhammad was killed, and that he was killed from
bullets fired by IDF soldiers.
...
"Are they willing to do an international investigation? Is Israel
willing? I'm not saying the people of Israel, I mean the government, and
IDF soldiers," Jamal told Army Radio.
Dura claimed he had
contacted Israel asking for such an investigation, but he has yet to
receive an answer, leading him to accuse Israel of being afraid of such
an inquiry.
"Israel now has a black stain on it in the eyes of the
world," Dura said, claiming the Israeli government is now lying in
order to clear itself of all blame.
A little bit late to try to clear that stain, don't you think?
When 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.
Actually, we do know who injured Jamal al-Dura. It wasn't Israel and it happened long before the incident at Netzarim in September 2000. He lost a libel lawsuit on that one... in France. Are they impartial enough for him?
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.
Yeah.... Sure....
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.
Sure, let's dig him up... if they can find him. The problem is that even if an international commission finds that Muhammad al-Dura's death was a fake, it won't change the 'Palestinian' claim.... Ask the Turks.
It's official: Government inquiry finds al-Dura 'killing' was a hoax
As I reported last week, a government commission of inquiry has concluded that the Mohammed al-Dura 'killing' was a hoax. The official report has now been released.
The
government review committee of the incident and its implications found
that "the France 2 report's central claims and accusations had no basis
in the material which the station had in its possession at the
time…There is no evidence that the IDF was in any way responsible for
causing any of the alleged injuries to Jamal or the boy."
Prime
Minister Netanyahu directed then-minister of strategic affairs Moshe
Ya'alon to set up the governmental review committee in September 2012.
According to the Prime Minister's Office "the purpose of the committee
was to examine the al-Dura affair in light of the continued damage it
has caused to Israel, and to formulate the Government of Israel's
position with regards to it."
Upon receiving the report on
Sunday, Netanyau stated that "It is important to focus on this incident –
which has slandered Israel's reputation. This is a manifestation of
the ongoing, mendacious campaign to delegitimize Israel. There is only
one way to counter lies, and that is through the truth. Only the truth
can prevail over lies."
International Affairs Minister Yuval
Steinitz, who presented the report to Netanyahu, called the al-Dura
affair "a modern-day blood libel against the State of Israel, alongside
other blood libels like the claims of an alleged massacre in Jenin. The
France 2 report was utterly baseless."
The committee determined
that, " 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."
In
addition, the review revealed that "there is no evidence that Jamal or
the boy were wounded in the manner claimed in the report, and that the
footage does not depict Jamal as having been badly injured. In contrast,
there are numerous indications that the two were not struck by bullets
at all."
The committee added: "The review showed that it
is highly-doubtful that bullet holes in the vicinity of the two could
have had their source in fire from the Israeli position, as implied in
the France 2 report."
The review committee criticized France 2,
stating that the television station's report was "edited and narrated in
such a way as to create the misleading impression that it substantiated
the claims made therein."
I'm sure you're all shocked.
But 13 years later, with Israel having already 'confessed,' who is going to believe it?
UPDATE 8:04 PM
The government report (in English) is here. The evidence that was before the government commission may be found here.
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.
Here's Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler for Friday, April 12.
1) How to fight asymmetric warfare
Charles Enderlein and Philipe Karsenty are back in court. Enderlein was
the reporter who created the story of Mohammed al-Dura. Karsenty is the
media critic who had the temerity to question the much honored
"journalist." Back in 2008 Karsenty successfully fended off a libel suit brought by Enderlein. For reasons, I don't understand the case is back in court with a verdict due May 22.
All asymmetrical wars take place primarily in the cognitive arena, with
the major theater of war the enemy’s public sphere. The goal is to
convince your far more powerful enemy not to fight. In defensive cases,
from the Maccabees to the Vietnamese, this has meant getting imperial
powers to “go home.” But Islamists who want to spread Dar al Islam
conduct an offensive campaign: how to get your targets to surrender on
their own home ground? In this seemingly absurd venture, they have had
remarkable success.
The mainstream news media – their journalists, editors, producers –
constitute a central front of this cognitive war: the “weak” but
aggressive side cannot have success without the witting or unwitting
cooperation of the enemy’s journalists. The success of global Jihad in
eliciting our media’s cooperation with their goals
If we are to collect lessons from this war, one of them would have to be
that a closed society can control the image and the message that it
wishes
to convey to the rest of the world far more effectively than can an open
society, especially one engaged in an existential struggle for
survival.
An open society becomes the victim of its own openness.
During the war, no Hezbollah secrets were disclosed, but in Israel
secrets were leaked, rumors
spread like wildfire, leaders felt obliged to issue hortatory appeals
often based on in complete knowledge, a nd journalists were driven by
the fire of
competition to publish and broadcast unsubstantiated information. A
closed society conveys the impression of order and discipline; an open
society, buffeted by the crosswinds of reality and rumor, criticism and
revelation, conveys the impression of disorder, chaos and uncertainty,
but this
impression can be misleading.
It was hardly an accident that Hezbollah, in this circumstance,
projected a very special narrative for the world beyond its kin—a
narrative that depicted a selfless movement touched by God and blessed
by a religious fervor and determination to resist the enemy, the
infidel, and ultimately achieve a “divine victory,” no matter the cost
in life and treasure. The narrative contained no mention of Hezbollah’s
dependence upon Iran and Syria for a steady flow of arms and financial
resources.
For Hezbollah, the 2006 summertime war was more than a battle against a
mortal enemy; it was a crucial battle in a broader, ongoing war, linking
religious fundamentalism to Arab nationalism. Will victory be defined
as an open door to modernity or to a new caliphate? That is a key
question. The
whole Arab world is often framed as a “politically traumatized region,”
wrote Washington Post columnist Jim Hoagland, caught in the “morbid
interim between the dying of an exhausted political and social order and
the birth of a still-unknown way of life.” Hezbollah saw itself as a
resolute leader in shaping the Arab future.
In addition to changing perceptions about the region, cognitive warfare also had an effect on the battlefield.
How to balance military needs, international humanitarian law, and the
reality of facing an enemy whose tactics are not restrained by accepted
conventions are challenges to which Israel and other Western nations
need to devote serious thought. The asymmetry of battle that Israel
faces requires a rethinking of strategy to deal with threats from forces
whose ideologies allow them not just to frustrate many Western military
advantages but to use the openness of Western societies—especially
their print and image media, and the organizations through which the
Western penchant for self-criticism is expressed—to their own advantage.
Ideology, including the perception of right versus wrong, becomes part
of the discussion. Ultimately, non-Islamists, such as Israel, need to
win the ideological war as well as the military one.
In the short-term, Israel can take the lead by repeatedly and forcefully
asserting the moral high ground by pointing out that civilian
causalities are never intentional but, given the cynical tactics of the
enemies it must fight, are regrettably inevitable. Israeli spokespersons
must further assert that the culpability for civilian casualties lies
with the terrorists who have deliberately chosen to wage war against
Israel from within civilian populations precisely because of the
propaganda benefits of such tactics. While this is not likely to appease
those who seek to paint Israel as a serial violator of human rights,
the evidence will show that, given Israel's military arsenal, any
premeditated policy of targeting civilians would most certainly have
resulted in massively higher death tolls than have actually taken place.
From a human rights perspective, the tables need to be turned by
arguing that states such as Israel are victims of a capricious and
cynical policy of civilian exploitation and that militant Islamists are
intentional violators of international conventions that seek to protect
civilian lives.
In the long term, though, defeating an ideologically-based movement may
not be possible without defeating the ideology itself. For Islamists,
any move toward moderation will be a political tactic or a forced
concession rather than an actual political or ideological reform or
accommodation. What should Western societies do when fighting Islamist
groups? In order to defeat the political ideology behind Islamism,
Muslim civilians must develop a viable and practical alternative to the
Islamist organizations that claim to represent the broader Muslim
community.[56] While the ideology is immutable, if the civilian
population withdraws its support, Islamist movements will be rendered
impotent.
Their conclusion is correct but it appears to be easier said than done.
Whether at a time of war or not asymmetric warfare is going on,
especially against Israel. Whether or not they're aware, much of the
media assist in this war against Israel. Vigilance against manufactured
and false narratives remains an important check on this warfare.
If you doubt the effectiveness of the cognitive warfare being waged against Israel, ask yourself how many of Barry Rubin's snapshots have you read about in your local paper or seen on the nightly news?
Since the outbreak of hostilities in Syria between the Assad regime and
opposition forces, the war has spilled over into Lebanon. Sunnis in the
Bab al-Tabbaneh neighborhood support the rebels trying to oust Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad while the Alawites of Jabal Mohsen stand
loyally by him. It is fitting that the street which forms one of the
major frontlines between both is called Syria Street.
This division dates back to the early 1980s when the Syrian Army
attacked Tripoli’s Bab al-Tabbaneh during the Lebanese Civil War. Since
then, the fighting between residents has been directly related to Syrian
affairs. Both neighborhoods being among Tripoli’s poorest and most
densely populated areas, the high number of unemployed men also means a
glut of ready and willing fighters each time the clashes erupt.
Tony Badran's analysis of Iran and Hezbollah shows that the conflict in Tripoli is a microcosm of the primary conflict in the Middle East.
In the 1990s, there was an attempt to cover up the overt sectarianism of
the previous decade. Hezbollah posed as the ultimate banner carrier of
Palestine and of ‘resistance’ against Israel. It crafted and perfected
an image of itself as a pan-Islamic and pan-Arab resistance movement and
as big brother to other – Sunni – ‘resistance’ movements. While this
was important image management, one that conferred more legitimacy on
the group and its Iranian patron, it also opened the door operationally
to spread Iranian influence to other militant groups in the region.
Hezbollah’s training of Iraqi Shiite groups, to say nothing of Hamas, is
one example.
By 2005, this image had already begun to fade and by 2008 it was, for
all intents and purposes, finished. However, while the heyday of
‘resistance’ stardom is now gone, the operational infrastructure built
over the last two decades is not.
The difference is that the sectarian underpinnings are once again clear.
As analyst Jonathan Spyer put it, “a Sunni-Shiite arc of conflict,
centered on the rival interests of Tehran and Riyadh is now bisecting
the Middle East.” It’s now recognized that Hezbollah is actively on the
ground on all these fronts, advancing Iran’s strategic interests. Aside
from its combat role in Syria, Hezbollah/Quds Force cells have been
active in the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and probably Bahrain, in
addition to cases such as the busted cell in Saudi Arabia. In fact, the
Saudi cell appears to resemble another cell disrupted in Kuwait in 2010,
where a Lebanese man was the key liaison between the locals and the
Iranians. But the case of Yemen perhaps best illustrates the original
conception Iran had for Hezbollah’s role.
Yet another trial gets underway in a French court on Wednesday with French maverick Phillipe Karsenty facing trial for allegedly libeling France 2 newscaster Charles Enderlin by disclosing that the Mohamed al-Dura 'killing' was an elaborate fraud. Richard Landes reports that the French chattering classes are circling the wagons to defend Enderlin and France 2.
For the sixth time in as many years, the courts will hear accusations by
France2 against citizen Philippe Karsenty for accusing them of having
run “staged” footage as news in the case of Muhammad al-Dura. To his
devotees, “le petit Mohamed,” as he’s known in France, is “martyr of the
world” because, thanks to France2, “the whole world saw” him shot dead,
the “target of fire from the Israeli position,” dying in his father’s
arms. Except that no one saw him die on film, much less in his father’s
arms. On the contrary the overwhelming evidence suggests that it was a
scene staged by France2’s cameraman, Talal abu Rahmah, which Charles
“Scoop” Enderlin, unknowingly or not, turned into sensational news.
Indeed, few stories better embody the lethal secret de Polichinelle
that haunts France today. France2 (and everyone else, as Enderlin is
quick to point out), runs staged footage – Pallywood – all the time:
it’s a public secret that they openly admit in private but deny in
public. “They do it all the time,” Enderlin and his bosses confided
privately when confronted with the extensive evidence of staging in his
cameraman’s work. But publicly Enderlin insists, especially when
confronted with claims that he staged the al-Dura footage, “I have 100
percent confidence in my cameraman, so much that I wouldn’t even think
of questioning him.” And yet, when the judges in the last trial saw the
footage shot by the key “witness,” France2’s Palestinian cameraman, they
dramatically reversed the lower court’s finding, with harsh criticism
of Enderlin’s journalistic standards. “And to think I asked for that
footage as a favor to France2,” one of the judges later remarked off the record.
Rather than provoke an “aha” moment among the
broader profession, however, this decision inspired Enderlin’s
colleagues to close ranks. The prestigious Nouvel Obs sponsored
a petition in defense of both his honor, and of journalistic right to
report freely, without the “chilling” criticism of lay citizens “sapping
the energies of good journalists.” The reactions combined medieval
honor-driven guild solidarities with medieval credulity: “I don’t care
if it’s the Virgin Birth affair, I would tend to believe him. Someone
like Charles [Enderlin] simply doesn’t make a story up.”
Meanwhile Charles’ employer, the state-owned
media giant France2, appealed to the highest court, which, despite a
strong opinion against from the “Parquet,” (which vigorously defended
the value to civil society of allowing such criticisms), ruled that the
appeals court had no right to demand the footage, nullified their
opinion, and sent the case back to appeals court where it arrives today,
same room, same “Palace of Justice” in Paris.
Here's Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler for Friday, February 17.
1) Revenge or MO? After the wife of an Indian diplomat was injured by a bomb, Ethan Bronner of the New York Times reported in Israel say Iran is behind the bombs:
The wife of an Israeli defense envoy to New Delhi was hurt along with several other people when her car was destroyed by an explosive device placed on it by a motorcyclist at a red light. In Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, a similar device was discovered on the car of a local staff member of the Israeli Embassy, but was defused by the police. Both resembled attacks that have killed five of Iran’s nuclear scientists in recent years, most recently last month. Iran has attributed the assassinations to Israeli agents and has vowed to take revenge. The scientists’ assassinations — along with sabotage of Iran’s nuclear program through cyberwarfare and faulty parts — are aimed at delaying what the West believes is Iran’s drive to build a nuclear weapon. If actually carried out by Iran, the attacks would be another indication that the leadership in Tehran was willing to reach beyond its borders against its enemies and expand its attacks to civilians. The United States has charged that Iran was behind a plot to assassinate a Saudi ambassador on American soil, and Israel has said that Iran has planned to attack its citizens in various countries, but that those plots were stopped.
The strong implication of the middle quoted paragraph is that the attack was a revenge attack. But what if it wasn't payback, but a signature?
Leaders of the Brotherhood have said that they would respect the American-brokered 1979 treaty, and the seriousness of their new threats is hard to assess. Many analysts, as well as some Brotherhood leaders here, have cited internal domestic reasons to respect the treaty, mainly because it ensures peaceful borders at a time when Egypt can ill afford the cost of a military buildup and its economy teeters on the brink of collapse. But at the same time, Egyptians have long considered American aid as a kind of payment for preserving the peace despite the popular resentment of Israel over its policies toward the Palestinians, widely seen here as a violation of the treaty.
"[W]idely seen here as a violation of the treaty." Really? How does Kirkpatrick know this? I know that there's deep resentment of Israel in Egypt. I know that the pretext for this resentment is Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, but is it really viewed as a violation of Camp David. I'm skeptical, but if that's how the failure to make peace with the Palestinians is viewed in Egypt, isn't it the reporter's job to set the record straight? Here's a relevant paragraph from the Camp David Accords:
Egypt, Israel, and Jordan will agree on the modalities for establishing elected self-governing authority in the West Bank and Gaza. The delegations of Egypt and Jordan may include Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza or other Palestinians as mutually agreed. The parties will negotiate an agreement which will define the powers and responsibilities of the self-governing authority to be exercised in the West Bank and Gaza. A withdrawal of Israeli armed forces will take place and there will be a redeployment of the remaining Israeli forces into specified security locations. The agreement will also include arrangements for assuring internal and external security and public order. A strong local police force will be established, which may include Jordanian citizens. In addition, Israeli and Jordanian forces will participate in joint patrols and in the manning of control posts to assure the security of the borders.
The following paragraph does talk about the "legitimate right of the Palestinian peoples," (and not explicitly of statehood) but the quoted paragraph seems to have been fulfilled by Israel. Does it make a difference to Kirkpatrick that Egyptian groups regularly boycott sectors of Israel's society and economy despite a commitment to "abolishing economic boycotts" of Israel?
For 45 minutes, Muhammad's father tried in vain to shield him from gunfire as they crouched against a concrete wall near Netzarim in the Gaza Strip. The whole scene was caught on camera by a France 2 cameraman, and has been played repeatedly on Palestinian television. The footage shows the boy's father, Jamal al-Durrah, waving desperately to Israeli troops, shouting: "Don't shoot". But the terrified boy is hit by four bullets, and collapses in his father's arms.
Today the army did not rule out the possibility that one of its soldiers had killed the boy. But General Samia said the army had ''great doubt'' that it was responsible and believed that the evidence indicated ''a very reasonable possibility'' that the boy ''was hit by Palestinian gunfire.'' ... But Palestinians reacted immediately and angrily. Since the shooting, on Sept. 30, was filmed in excruciating detail by a France 2 television crew, the boy's death has become the dominant image of the conflict throughout the Arab world.
(An image released by the IDF soon after the shooting illustrated how unlikely it was that the IDF had shot al-Dura.)
In 2003, James Fallows wrote the definitive account of the doubts about the story.
Mohammed al-Dura and his father looked as if they were sheltering themselves against fire from the IDF outpost. In this they were successful. The films show that the barrel was between them and the Israeli guns. The line of sight from the IDF position to the pair was blocked by concrete. Conceivably, some other Israeli soldier was present and fired from some other angle, although there is no evidence of this and no one has ever raised it as a possibility; and there were Palestinians in all the other places, who would presumably have noticed the presence of additional IDF troops. From the one location where Israeli soldiers are known to have been, the only way to hit the boy would have been to shoot through the concrete barrel. This brings us to the nature of the barrel. Its walls were just under two inches thick. On the test range investigators fired M-16 bullets at a similar barrel. Each bullet made an indentation only two fifths to four fifths of an inch deep. Penetrating the barrel would have required multiple hits on both sides of the barrel's wall. The videos of the shooting show fewer than ten indentations on the side of the barrel facing the IDF, indicating that at some point in the day's exchanges of fire the Israelis did shoot at the barrel. But photographs taken after the shooting show no damage of any kind on the side of the barrel facing the al-Duras—that is, no bullets went through. ... In short, the physical evidence of the shooting was in all ways inconsistent with shots coming from the IDF outpost—and in all ways consistent with shots coming from someplace behind the France 2 cameraman, roughly in the location of the Pita. Making a positive case for who might have shot the boy was not the business of the investigators hired by the IDF. They simply wanted to determine whether the soldiers in the outpost were responsible. Because the investigation was overseen by the IDF and run wholly by Israelis, it stood no chance of being taken seriously in the Arab world. But its fundamental point—that the concrete barrel lay between the outpost and the boy, and no bullets had gone through the barrel—could be confirmed independently from news footage.
Then in 2008, media critic Philippe Karsenty won a dismissal of his conviction for defamation of Charles Enderlin and Channel 2 for their false report on Mohammed al-Dura.
More details to follow. But word from Paris is that the court dismissed charges against Philippe Karsenty today. Now we get to see how the French (and Western) MSM handle this. It’s a stunning victory for Karsenty and loss for Enderlin and France2 who initiated this case when they didn’t have to. In order for an appeals court to reverse a decision, they must have strong evidence to the contrary. The fact that they did indicates that their written decision will be very critical of France2. The implications of this decision are immense. We’ll be following up in the days, weeks and months to come.
A French appeals court Wednesday overturned the libel conviction of Dr. David Yehuda, an Israeli physician who was sued by the father of Mohammed al-Dura, the boy whose shooting death in September 2000 became a powerful symbol of the second intifada. Jamal al-Dura had displayed to international media outlets scars on his body he claimed were caused by bullets fired by Israel Defense Forces soldiers. In a 2008 interview with a French Jewish weekly, Dr. Yehuda, an orthopedic surgeon, said the scars were the result of an assault on Dura by Hamas militants who accused him of collaborating with Israel, as well as subsequent surgery performed by Yehuda himself in 1994. The photos of the Duras, father and son, taking cover behind a barrel during an exchange of gunfire between Israeli forces and Palestinian militants in Gaza, remains one of the most enduring images of the second intifada. Israel initially apologized for the boy’s death but issued a retraction when subsequent investigations indicated the boy was most likely killed by Palestinian fire.
So now will media outlets - like the BBC and New York Times - acknowledge that they played a role in fanning the violence of the intifada by credulously spreading a false story instead of acting to debunk it? Will they acknowledge that they slandered Israel's army? Don't the media want us to know the truth?
Fake 'martyr's father loses libel lawsuit in France
In 2007, I reported on a story that claimed that the scars that Jamal al-Dura - fake martyr Mohamed's father - claims that he received during the same incident in which Mohamed was killed - were in fact the results of an attack by a gang of 'Palestinians' in 1992 and subsequent surgery from 1994 which grafted a tendon from his foot into his right arm. The story included an interview with the Israeli surgeon who treated al-Dura in 1994, and who says that there is no way those scars game from gunshots.
According to the Metula release (link in French), Jamal al Dura declared on medical records in 1992 that Palestinian militia had attacked him with axes. Doctors at Gaza’s Shifa Hospital* were able to save his life but he lost the use of his right hand because they could not repair a ruptured tendon in the forearm. Palestinian doctors referred Jamal to Tal Hashomer [should be Tel Hashomer. CiJ] hospital in Tel Aviv in March 1994. Dr. Yehuda performed reconstructive surgery, grafting a tendon taken from the foot, and restoring almost normal use of the hand. The medical record of that operation also refers to the removal of “foreign bodies,” suggesting that other instruments besides axes were used in the 1992 attack.
Alerted by the Ména [Metula News Agency] to the film of Jamal’s wounds produced in 2004 by Talal Abu Rahma at the demand of France 2 news director Arlette Chabot, to silence investigators, Dr. Yehuda and his colleagues declare that the scars shown in that film were incurred in 1992 and result from axe blade wounds and definitely not from gunshot. They are ready and willing to testify to this in any court.
The Metula release promises further revelations in the near future.
You will note in the picture above that Jamal is cradling his son with his right hand - the same one restored by Israeli surgeons. Probably free of charge.
A French appeals court yesterday overturned the libel conviction of an Israeli physician who was sued by the father of Mohammed al-Dura, the boy whose shooting death in September 2000 became a powerful symbol of the second intifada.
Jamal al-Dura had displayed to international media outlets scars on his body he claimed were caused by bullets fired by Israel Defense Forces soldiers.
In a 2008 interview with a French Jewish weekly an Israeli orthopedic surgeon, Dr. David Yehuda disputed the elder Dura's claim. Yehuda said the scars were not related to the incident in which Mohammed al-Dura, who was 12 years old, died.
Rather, Yehuda said, they were the result of an assault on Dura by Hamas militants who accused him of collaborating with Israel, as well as subsequent surgery performed by Yehuda himself in 1994.
Yehuda, together with the reporter and editor of the French publication, were convicted of libel by a French court in April and ordered to pay thousands of euros in compensation.
Yesterday's ruling was the result of Yehuda's appeal of his conviction.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
