"The France Two news report is a blood libel. It's a hoax. Fabrication. And that's it."

CAMERA/Snapshots
15 November '10

The image of a young Palestinian boy, Mohammed Al Dura, hiding behind his father during a gunfight in Gaza in 2000 helped generate several years' worth of violence during the Second Intifada. The boy's alleged death at the hands of Israeli soldiers in October 2000, confirmed what many extremists wanted everyone to believe -- that Israel, the Jewish state, was a monstrous nation. In light of this image, anything that happened to Israelis during the ensuing years seemed understandable because well, they killed that little boy, what do they expect?

The image - and the story it told - was, in the words of Nidra Poller, a "lethal narrative."

It took a while, but because of the work of Phillipe Karsenty, people have come to understand that the image, initially broadcast by France 2 Television, was a fake. It had to be. The little boy who was allegedly struck by numerous bullets, did not bleed. Neither did his father. There was no blood at the scene after they were taken away. A close inspection of the video reveals Al Dura lifting his arm up to see events unfold -- after he was allegedly killed.

By repeatedly raising questions about the footage, Karsenty convinced most reasonable people that indeed, the footage was fake. He did not purport to know what actually happened to Al Dura, but merely demonstrated that the 50 seconds of video shown throughout the world by France 2 during the early days of the Second Intifada was not to be believed.

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