A blood libel that is a hideous stain on the honor of France. Suprised?

The video is a fake. The boy shown there was not "killed" in the incident. But according to France's "official truth," he was "killed." He will therefore be considered "killed" by French political leaders, the French media, and probably, in a few weeks, the French judiciary. In France, no one can question "official truth" without incurring huge risks.

Probably helps book sales

Guy Millière..
Gatestone Institute..
05 June '13..

On September 30, 2000, at the beginning of the Palestinian terrorist offensive against Israel called since then the "second intifada," a particularly violent clash took place at the Netzarim junction in the Gaza Strip. As shots were exchanged between Arab militiamen and Israeli soldiers, cameramen from various television channels were nearby, filming news reports. One of these reports quickly spread around the world and became a ubiquitous tool for anti-Israeli Arab propaganda. It showed a young boy huddling against his father, the two unsuccessfully trying to protect themselves from gunfire: the son appeared to have been killed. The commentary accompanying the images was overwhelming. The last words of the voice-over, uttered in a stricken tone, were: "The child is dead".

The child, Mohammed al-Dura, immediately became a "martyr" -- and a symbol. The Israeli army clearly dared to kill defenseless people, even children!

The report was considered indisputable: it had been broadcast on the main French public channel, France 2, and validated by a noted journalist, Charles Enderlin.

Very soon, Israeli columnists and military experts thought that the report had all the appearances of a crude forgery. In the images, the "dead" child was still lifting his arm after his "death". Neither father nor son showed any trace of blood, nor was there any blood on the wall behind them. The bullet holes on the wall behind the father and son had round forms, showing that they could not come from the angled Israeli position.

A few weeks later, an Israeli website, the Metula News Agency, made a short film demonstrating in detail that the report was indeed a fake. An Israeli scientist, Nahum Shahaf, conducted a reconstruction and a scientific demonstration in support of the short film. In 2002, a German filmmaker, Esther Schapira, directed a documentary reaching the same conclusions: Drei Kugeln und ein totes Kind ("Three Bullets and a Dead Child").

It was soon revealed that the footage had been shot by a Palestinian Arab cameraman, Talal Abu Rahma, and sent to Charles Enderlin, who had not been present at the scene. And it became apparent that Enderlin had added a commentary without first conducting any verification.

At this point, Enderlin could have replied with further explanation. France 2 could have admitted a mistake. But they stuck to their positions: Enderlin swore that he had "proof" that the images showed the reality and that his commentary was correct; and France 2 fully supported Enderlin. Neither the short film made by Metula News Agency, nor the documentary directed by Esther Schapira was broadcast in France. The Israeli government, for its part, remained silent.

The case has grown. A courageous and tireless French entrepreneur, Philippe Karsenty, head of a news media watchdog group, Media Ratings, understood the lasting harm of the fraud and saw in this deception an opportunity to expose the workings of the Palestinian propaganda machine and the complicity in it of many in the Western media.

In 2004, Karsenty posted all the information available to him, including irrefutable evidence of missing footage, and wrote that the truth had to be unearthed. He was accused by Enderlin and France 2 of defamation, and dragged to court.

The Al-Dura Affair and Its Enablers, J'Accuse!

Emmanuel Navon..
For the Sake of Zion..
04 June '13..

Emile Zola’s open letter published on the front page of L’Aurore on 13 January 1898 has become the epitomic expression for denouncing State lies. This expression fits perfectly to denounce the French Republic for sacrificing truth in the name of raison d’État in the Al-Dura Affair. In February 2004, French President Jacques Chirac sent a letter to Charles Enderlin, the author of the Al-Dura report, praising his faithfulness to truth. In 2008, French journalists published an open letter to express their support for Charles Enderlin. In 2009, President Sarkozy granted Enderlin the légion d’honneur, France’s highest decoration. The French State has behaved in the Al-Dura Affair the way it behaved in the Dreyfus Affair –except for the fact that in the Dreyfus Affair, the State eventually admitted that it had orchestrated a lie. And during the Dreyfus Affair, many French “intellectuels” (the word was coined at the time) took personal risks in the name of truth. In the Al-Dura Affair, by contrast, most French journalists and public figures have circled the wagons around Enderlin.

The behavior of the French establishment in the Al-Dura affair is shameful, but not surprising. What is surprising is the fact that the Israeli establishment also circled the wagons around Enderlin.

The “Affair” started on September 30, 2000, when French state television France 2 broadcast images showing a boy and his father (Mohammad and Jamal Al-Dura) supposedly caught in gunfire between the IDF and PA forces at Gaza’s Netzarim junction. France 2’s Israel correspondent Charles Enderlin did not personally witness the incident but he claimed, while commenting the images filmed by his Palestinian cameraman Talal Abu-Rahmah, that the boy had been intentionally killed by Israeli bullets. Enderlin’s words were that the boy and his father were the target (“la cible” in French) of the IDF. The message was clear: the IDF had intentionally killed a helpless Palestinian child (Enderlin later claimed that he hadn’t meant that Israel intentionally killed the child, but that is nevertheless what could unmistakably be understood from his words).

In 2004, France 2 sued French politician and media analyst Philippe Karsenty for claiming that Enderlin’s report was a forgery. In 2008, the Paris Appellate Court acquitted Karsenty of defamation, concluding that the defendant had grounds for questioning the authenticity of Enderlin’s report. France 2 appealed to France’s highest court, and a final verdict is expected next month.

The images broadcast by France 2 and Enderlin’s claim had a devastating effect. They inflamed the “Second Intifada” as well as anti-Israel demonstrations around the world. Horrendous crimes such as the lynching of Israeli soldiers in Ramallah in October 2000 or the beheading of Daniel Pearl in February 2002 were justified by their perpetuators as a revenge for Mohammad Al-Dura’s death.

And yet, Mohammad Al-Dura could not possibly have been killed by Israeli bullets. Worse, there is strong evidence that the whole scene might have been staged in the first place. Which means that Charles Enderlin and France 2 are responsible for a blood libel that caused the death of hundreds of Jews and that had devastating consequences on Israel’s international image.

The World of Palestinian Fairytales

...The father of photojournalism, Henri Cartier-Bresson once said, “Our job is to view events with a clinical eye and to record them, but not to distort them by means of tricks, either while shooting or in the darkroom.” It is our job to hold the media to this proper and correct standard.

The famous Cottingley fairies
fake picture. Photo ByWikipedia

David Katz..
Times of Israel..
21 May '13..

In 1917 in a village in the north of England, two young cousins named Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths borrowed the quarter plate camera of Elsie’s father Arthur Wright – one of England’s earliest qualified electrical engineers.

When he went to develop the pictures, Mr. Wright got more than his daughter playing with her friends, instead, he saw fairies. A rational man, he dismissed them as fake, and banned his daughter from using the camera again, however Elsie’s mother had very different ideas.

In 1919 when she made the images public, the famous writer of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyal wrote in a leading magazine of the picture’s authenticity. And so, with popular distribution, and recognized approval of leaders of the day – the legend was set, and the fairytale became a reality.

It was not until the early 1980’s that the cousins admitted that the pictures were fakes; Frances said ‘I don’t see how people could believe they’re real fairies. I could see the backs of them and the hatpins when the photo was being taken.”

Fast forward 83 years to September 30, 2000, and the start of the second Palestinian ‘Intifada.’ France2 TV broadcast footage of an episode that occurred earlier that day at Netzarim Junction in the Gaza Strip. The footage was by a Palestinian stringer — a freelancer — named Talal Abu Rahma, who claimed that even though the incident occurred over the course of an hour and numerous other cameramen were around who had not witnessed it, he alone had captured footage of a young Palestinian boy cowering behind his father, being shot to death by the Israeli army.

Charles Enderlin, France2 Jerusalem bureau chief, who during the incident had been more than 100 kilometers away in Ramallah, edited and added commentary to the piece that went out that night on France2, and then on networks and news outlets across the world, as the tale of Mohammed al-Dura went from being legend to history.

Yet even then, doubts over the authenticity of the footage were raised, as American professor Richard Landes labeled it a classic case of Palestinian media manipulation, or ‘Pallywood’.

This is a brief description of the events that took place that have led to where we are 13 years later.

Indeed, the research into and debate around the incident has filled the web and even impacted upon the French legal system. The website aldurah.com chronicles the incredible efforts of Prof. Landes and French media analyst Philippe Karsenty to prove this modern day blood libel was a staged fake.

However, as a photographer and imagery consultant, this image and its use over the past 13 years has been key to my motivation to use every bit of knowledge and experience I have to show how imagery is being used so effectively in the campaign to delegitimize the State of Israel.

It is said that the camera never lies. Whoever coined that term could not have been more misinformed. As a photographer of nearly 30 years, I can tell you that any half decent photographer can make a camera do anything he or she wants.

The lethal narrative that just won’t die - Al-Dura

The Al-Dura incident and the questions surrounding it raise matters extending far beyond the events of that day and the geographic boundaries of the Middle East. At issue are the bedrock rights and responsibilities of the media as it reports on events, especially in cases where it assigns motive and blame.

Elihu D. Stone..
Times of Israel..
30 March '13..

The Supreme Court in France this week will render its decision in a case pitting state-owned France 2 television and one of its senior news producers, Charles Enderlin, against media critic Philippe Karsenty whom they seek to convict of criminal defamation. The legal action, winding its way through the French legal system for eight years, involves an event that still reverberates mightily today.

On September 30, 2000, at the start of the second Intifada, France 2 broadcast approximately one minute’s edited footage of an episode filmed by its Palestinian stringer Talal Abu Rahma at Netzarim Junction in Gaza. Abu Rahma was the only one of the scores of cameramen filming at Netzarim that day to record the incident, which he claims occurred over the space of a full hour. Charles Enderlin, France 2′s Jerusalem correspondent – who did not witness the scene – broadcast the footage informing his viewers that 12-year-old Mohammed al-Dura and his father, Jamal were “the target of fire from the Israeli position” as they took cover behind a barrel near a wall at the Junction. In later interviews, Abu Rahma accused the Israeli soldiers of murdering Mohammed “in cold blood,” firing “hundreds of bullets” while the boy bled to death of a stomach wound.

The “lethal narrative” that Israeli troops wantonly killed Mohammed became a clarion call for Jihadists and other foes attacking Israel, Jews and Western democracies. Bin Laden featured images of al-Dura prominently in his recruiting videos; Pakistani jihadis beheaded Daniel Pearl on camera invoking the image of Mohammed al-Dura.

The tragic legacy of lethal journalism - The Al-Dura affair

Richard A. Landes..
Times of Israel..
14 January '13..

The French have a saying for the idea of a public secret, un secret de Polichinelle dans le tirroir – a humiliating fact still hidden in the drawer that will eventually come out, like an unwanted pregnancy. And France has one of those secrets, but rather than a life, this particular one gives birth to hatred, vengeance, and death. The drawer rattled recently when Mohamed Merah, native-born of Algerian parents, killed seven people, including three Jewish children in cold blood (he filmed himself), to avenge the way “the same Jews” kill his “Muslim brothers and sisters in Palestine.” And many in the French Muslim community considered him a hero, imitating rather than drawing back in horror from his violence. The prognosis for a civil society with such an “enmity movement” in its midst is not encouraging.

And the secret in the drawer is the colossal failure of the French media in the case of Muhammad al-Dura from its original occurrence in 2000 to this very day. Al-Dura was the 12-year old boy whose alleged death from Israeli bullets in his father’s arms shocked the world and became the emblem of the Oslo Intifada, an image, it turns out, as false as it was powerful. So, for many good reasons, the French, indeed every civic-minded citizen of the global community, should pay attention to what is happening today in France’s Court of Appeals in Paris.

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.

Poller - The Muhammad al-Dura Hoax and Other Myths Revived

Nidra Poller
Middle East Quarterly
Fall 2011, pp. 71-78

http://www.meforum.org/3076/muhammad-al-dura-hoax

On September 30, 2000, a day after Yasser Arafat launched his war of terror, euphemized as the al-Aqsa intifada, state-owned France 2 Television broadcast a news report, filmed by a Palestinian cameraman, of the fatal shooting of a 12-year-old Palestinian identified as Muhammad al-Dura. The dramatic voice-over commentary by the station's long-time Jerusalem correspondent, Charles Enderlin, described how the boy and his father Jamal were pinned down by Israeli gunfire at Netzarim Junction in the Gaza Strip. The father pleaded frantically with the soldiers to stop shooting, to no avail. "A last burst of gunfire," intoned Enderlin, "the boy is dead, his father critically wounded."

Despite a mountain of evidence disputing the charge of his intentional killing by Israeli soldiers in 2000, 12-year-old Muhammad al-Dura, seen cowering with his father, became the poster child of the "Second Intifada." As seen in this billboard, his image soon attained iconic status in the Arab world and helped refuel myths of bloodthirsty Jews.

The bloodless images of Jamal and Muhammad al-Dura were instantly seared into the public mind. Distributed free of charge to international media, repeated endlessly like a raucous war cry, the Dura video provoked anti-Jewish violence in Israel and, on a scale not seen since the Holocaust, throughout Europe.[1] The recently-created al-Jazeera television—founded in 1996—was significantly boosted by exploiting the Dura death scene.

Poller - France 2 TV Markets a 'Palestinian State'

Nidra Poller
American Thinker
23 October '11

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/10/france_2_tv_markets_a_palestinian_state.html

Eleven years after the al Dura hoax -- produced and broadcast by state-owned France 2 TV -- the same outfit treats us to a ludicrously staged Palestinian State promotional film. Was the 2½ -hour "documentary" aired on October 3 in the geopolitical magazine Un œil sur la planète (An Eye on the Planet), a chef d'oeuvre in the campaign to destroy the Jewish State or a last gasp of shopworn Palestinianism?

Looking at the world through keffieh-colored glasses, MC Etienne Leenhardt disingenuously asks: "Is the creation of a Palestinian state still possible?" First stop, Ramallah. Chic, modern, bustling with business and a humming bureaucracy that maintains law and order...everything you need to make a state. How did Ramallah get so shiny and peaceful? What keeps it from tumbling into the maw of the Islamists who rule Gaza? Who is financing its prosperity, and what does the "wall" have to do with it? Don't ask. Leenhardt and cohorts know why the Palestinians don't have the state they've been yearning for since the days of Adam and Eve: it's because the cruel, heartless, murderous, land-grabbing, gun-slinging Israelis colonize their land!

One brief scene sums it up. A Palestinian in the West Bank (Judea-Samaria) points to a clump of trees in the near distance and laments: "You see that fertile land over there? That's what the colonists [Israelis] took for themselves. They left us this arid stuff."

The indictment builds and incriminates. The Israelis/Jews stole the land, siphon off the water, erect a wall between a man and his fields, expropriate the very holiness, and, one could assume, took all the fertile intelligence for themselves, colonizing the Nobel prizes and leaving the Palestinians with nothing but bile.

Actually, this docu-hoax could be used to help the Zionist cause. It is so grotesque, so crudely fabricated, so false and so dishonest that it sheds light on the subtle twists of more sophisticated products that weave their way through public discourse, gradually bending minds and condoning atrocities. We who have been working tirelessly to expose the Mohamed al Dura hoax can take some comfort in observing that this long-drawn out genocidal hate speech exercise doesn't seem to have the electrifying effect of the September 2000 blood libel. Unfortunately, this does not rule out a potential increase in thuggery against French Jews.

Navon - France’s state television is launching the third Intifada

Emmanuel Navon
For the Sake of Zion
06 October '11

http://navonsblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/frances-state-television-is-launching.html


Until Mahmoud Abbas delivered his speech at the UN General Assembly on September 23, 2011, there was some mystery about the Palestinian state applying for UN membership. Abbas did not proclaim statehood before his UN bid, so how could a state that was not proclaimed apply for membership? Abbas provided the answer to that question: the Palestinian state applying for membership was the one proclaimed by Arafat in Alger in November 15, 1988.

The proclamation of the “State of Palestine” in Alger did not specify its borders; it did not designate the former armistice lines between Israel and Jordan (often and wrongly called today “1967 borders”) as the borders of the proclaimed state. Rather, the proclamation spoke of a “State of Palestine on our Palestinian territory with its capital Jerusalem.” The proclamation’s reference to the 1947 Partition Plan might have been interpreted as a de facto acceptation of the Plan’s suggested (and moot) separation lines as the borders of the Palestinian state. Aware of this ambiguity, Arafat’s deputy, Salah Khalaf, declared in his keynote closed-session speech on November 14, 1988 that “at first [the Palestinian state] will be small … God willing, it will expand eastward, westward, northward and southward … I am interested in the liberation of Palestine, but step by step.”

On the very day Abbas delivered his speech at the UN on September 23, one of his deputies, Fatah Central Committee members Abbas Zaki, declared on Al-Jazeera that “the greater goal cannot be accomplished in one go … If Israel withdraws from Jerusalem, evacuates the 650,000 settlers and dismantles the wall, what will become of Israel? It will come to an end. If we say that we want to wipe Israel out, it’s not acceptable to say so. Don’t say these things to the world. Keep it to yourself.” Unfortunately for Abbas Zaki, it is hard to keep things to yourself at the age of the Internet, especially after you’ve admitted your true intentions on TV.

In his speech to the General Assembly, Mahmoud Abbas declared that “The goal of the Palestinian people is the realization of their inalienable national rights in their independent State of Palestine, with East Jerusalem as its capital, on all the land of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.” On the face of it, the borders of the Palestinian state claimed by Abbas, “only” encompass the West Bank, Jerusalem, and Gaza. But the Palestinian state envisioned by Abbas will emerge next to a Jewish state that will cease to be Jewish through the implementation of the “right of return.”

More Support for Those Calling Al Dura Broadcast a Hoax

Ricki Hollander
CAMERA
15 June '10

Posted before Shabbat

On April 24, 2008, just a few weeks before the appeals court was to deliver its judgement on whether internet media monitor Philippe Karsenty was guilty of defaming France 2 (see "France 2 vs. Philippe Karsenty: The Appeal"), the French television pay channel, Canal+, broadcast a documentary defending Charles Enderlin/France 2 and impugning Philippe Karsenty. Broadcast on its weekly investigative program, Jeudi Investigation and entitled "Rumeurs, intox: les nouvelles guerres de l'info" ("Rumors, Brainwashing: The New Information Wars"), filmmaker Stéphane Malterre equated Philippe Karsenty's dissection of the France 2 broadcast and the conclusion that it was staged with the allegations of U.S. "truthers"—who argue that the 9/11 attack in New York was an "inside job" carried out by the U.S. government against its own citizens — and those of anti-Semites who accuse Zionists and Jews of being behind the 9/11 attack. The documentary accused Karsenty of manipulating information to support the "radical and extremist" perspective that the broadcast of Mohammed Al Dura's death on France 2 was staged.

Karsenty sued for defamation, and on June 10, 2010, Canal+ and the film production company were found guilty of slandering Karsenty. The judges concluded that filmmaker Stephane Malterre had ignored relevant evidence about the Al Dura hoax and demonstrated a lack of objectivity in sullying Karsenty's reputation.

This is another judicial win for Karsenty and the viewpoint that the footage of a 12-year-old Palestinian boy purportedly killed by Israelis was a media hoax.

For more details on the Al Dura affair, see "Mohammed Al Dura: Anatomy of a French Media Scandal" or "Timeline of the Al Dura Affair: A French Media Scandal"

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