When France 2 invited two independent journalists to view previously unreleased, raw footage of the death of Mohammed al-Dura, the network sought to bolster the credibility of the controversial video. Instead, the veracity of the original France 2 report — blaming the IDF for al Dura’s death — continues to crumble.
CNSNews reports that the two journalists said that IDF fire could not have killed the 12-year-old boy during a fierce firefight at Gaza’s Netzarim Junction.
What’s more, the two — Denis Jeambar, editor-in-chief of the French news weekly l’Express, and filmmaker Daniel Leconte, of the film company Doc en Stock — also indicated that many Palestinian casualties appeared to be staged:
“The only ones who could hit the child were the Palestinians from their position,” Leconte told Cybercast News Service. “If they had been Israeli bullets, they would be very strange bullets because they would have needed to go around the corner.”
France 2 earlier tried to explain the situation by claiming that the gunshots that struck al-Durra were bullets that ricocheted off the ground, but Leconte dismissed the argument.
“It could happen once, but that there should be eight or nine of them, which go around a corner? They’re just saying anything,” Leconte said….
They also found that the first 20 minutes or so of the cassette showed scenes of young Palestinians “playing at war” in front of the camera, falling as if wounded and then getting up and walking away.
The two go on to note that they were surprised that the unedited video contained no footage of the child’s death throes. Charles Enderlin, the France 2 reporter who provided voice over for the video (he wasn’t present at Netzarim) had previously claimed that images of Dura’s “agony” were too unbearable for viewers.
Questions about the video’s veracity have lingered ever since the fateful September 30, 2000 shootout.
* First, Esther Shapira produced on German TV “Three Bullets and a Child: Who Killed Mohammed Dura?” The hour-long documentary was the first media investigation. Shapira found that it wasn’t possible that Dura was killed by IDF fire. James Fallows in The Atlantic subsequently came to the same conclusion.
* Later reports in Readers Digest and the Wall Street Journal suggested that much of the footage was faked.
France 2 continues to maintain that the footage, for which cameraman Talal Abu Rahma received an award, is genuine. But one French MP is calling for a government inquiry into the affair.
