Naomi Ragen is an American-born novelist and playwright who has lived in Jerusalem since 1971. She has published seven internationally best-selling novels, and is the author of a hit play.
Fri Dec 23, 2005 11:10 am Brand new video: The big al Durah fake exposed!
Brand new video: The big al Durah fake exposed!
By Naomi Ragen
December 22, 2005
Friends,
My friend, Professor Richard Landes, who brought you Pallywood, has added an amazing documentary to his Second Draft website showing never before seen raw footage of what really happened to Mohammed el Dura, the ultimate blood libel of our century. You are not going to believe
your eyes when you see the two cameramen SITTING DIRECTLY NEXT TO THE FATHER AND SON WHILE THE BULLETS ARE SUPPOSEDLY FLYING. Or the whole crowd who "cleared the set" while the al Durah's sat there,
ready to do a second take. Or the mumbling Palestinian cameraman for France 2, who made up the whole thing, lying through his teeth when he gets caught. Devastating and remarkable. A brilliant expose.
The footage of al Durah peeking after he has already supposedly been shot dead is really conclusive. What is even more incredible is the incompetence of the Israeli government to force this issue and kick France 2 reporters out of Israel until France 2 comes clean with this fraud. The Israelis have never quite understood the depths of deception and lies the Palestinians are projecting to the already poisoned world opinion. Israel does not seem to understand that every Palestinian atrocity is minimized ten fold by the media and every Israeli counter move to protect its citizens is enhanced ten fold so that we get a two orders of magnitude (100 times) discrepancy in reporting to start with . Similarly, this is why almost all media in the world can say with no shame the phrase “ extremists on both sides” although you have 1 Baruch Goldstem vs 145 suicide bombers or several instances of settlers attacking Palestinians vs. 26000 terror attacks of Palestinian attacks against Israelis in the last 5 years. So the discrepancy is more like 3 to 5 orders of magnitude!
Sat Dec 24, 2005 11:10 pm Doing more harm than good
Do you really think it helps Israel to have this by now forgotten episode dragged out again? And that putting video of Palestinians being shot by Israelis, as is clearly shown in one of the clips, is good PR?
I think that showing al Durah ALIVE after he had been supposedly shot deal is as effective as the video as the scene from the Israeli drone of the Palestinian corps running back into the stretcher. I do not think that this whole video should be shown because it is stretched out, and you might and up with the opposite effect similar to what happened with an anti Reagan video showing the president with American flags and the net effect turned out to be pro Reagan. But it is time to counter the essence of the fraud once and for all
You’ve got to hand it to the Palestinian Arabs. Even though most of the Arabs who may have lost homes in an Arab instigated war against the Jews in 1948 as the United Nations founded Israel have long since died, have started businesses or built homes elsewhere, they are still crying they are “refugees” who need to live in the same spot their ancestors lived—a Palestinian state next to Israel simply will not do. According to UN figures, there were 420,000 Arab refugees in that first war, many of whom left by choice.
Israel quietly repatriated about 150,000 from 1952-82. From 1949-1950 the Arab League created the refugee camps with the help of the UN and began admitting other Arabs who could sign on as “refugees” even if they had a home and a job. No need to live in the camps, you could just come and get free food and clothes. Refugee status, denoted by a card, could be handed down from father to son also, assured freebies from the US taxpayer and the UN. The Arab League contributed little.
To be sure, there are some impoverished Arabs in refugee camps such as in Lebanon that the Arab world insisted Arabs from the Palestine Mandate must live in—they were not allowed to assimilate into any other Arab countries and forced to tithe to Yasser Arafat as the “festering wound” to “take back” the land of Israel. Today, the “camps” are the in fact cities. But the same welfare scam has paid off in spades. At the height of Oslo the PLO was getting on average 125 million US dollars a month for 3.5million Arabs in the Palestinian Authority. The Arabs claim Palestinians are living today on two dollars a day; maybe they should sell those $1,5000 Kalashnikovs we see them parading in the streets to pay the rent? An Al Aksa Martyrs Brigade terrorist gets $50,000 US a year from the PA government, a sum many Americans and Canadians would covet.
The fact is enough handouts have been given to the Palestinian Authority that every one of those Arabs could have a nice condo with a new Toyota in the garage and still feed his family. The Palestinians scream that “genocide” is being conducted on them, yet that original 420,000 number of refugees now they claim is 5 million. And of course they need MORE money for “humanitarian reasons.” Believe it or not, Israel provides 70% of their budget, at the same time Palestinian front groups in the US and Canada call for divestment and boycotting Israel.
To perpetuate the Palestinian Arab welfare scam, they use media very wisely. Mohammed al Durra, a 12 year-old Palestinian boy was allegedly cut down by Israeli soldiers in Gaza during the Intifada. A French TV crew ran the segment shot by a Palestinian Arab cameraman, who recently recanted what happened. It seems the whole thing was staged. A German film crew, then an American group investigated the story and even got hold of the outtakes–faked. One of the films revealing this was titled “Pallywood” and can be viewed here. The boy’s body was never found.
An Arab boy throws a rock at a parked Israeli tank. The caption of course read that he was facing the tank down.
The caption read “An Israeli soldier stops a Palestinian child at a road block outside the West Bank town of Qalqiliya.” In actuality, she is just approached and is talking to him and he is talking to her, note his facial expression, raised eyebrow: “Oooooooohhhh……really?”
The simple truth is the PLO and their ISM stooges in the West stage things all the time for cameras and on the Internet.
There are 19 propaganda ministries in the Palestinian Authority just for these purposes. The other day while researching an article I happened onto this photo:
A Palestinian Arab woman poses melodramatically in front of some demolished cars. She’ll ask the photographer for money afterward.
And here brave Palestinian Arabs defy an Israeli army bulldozer and tank (that are parked and vacant).
This one from the ISM. That’s Rachel Corrie on the right who helped Arabs smuggle weapons through tunnels to kill Israelis. She forgot to pose in front of a vacant tractor like her Arab counterparts did above (not too bright that girl). But the PLO and ISM created a photo to show her “protecting” a house from a bulldozer later:
This one is my favorite. Gaza, just after an “Israeli attack.” A friend of mine who does make up for Hollywood films laughed at this photo. Aside from the melodramatic pose of the Arab in lab coat in the background with his hand over his mouth worthy of a silent film award, the man in the foreground is not dead. The wound on his sweater is not real. Shrapnel and bullets implode through material. The wound in the foreground is designed to look like a wound produced by a squib, a fake bullet strike used in films. For dramatic effect in movies they usually explode outward while real bullets pass right through. The above shot was also staged, the “victims” not really dead.
Let’s send the Arabs more money. After all, they need it to do better special effects and create more photos and hold the world hostage in a perpetual state of war and terrorism so they can ask the world for still more money, and, well, you know, we owe it to them, and they are dispossessed, and, well, we owe it to them and….. Duh.
Lee Kaplan is senior intelligence analyst with the Northeast Intelligence Network and a contributor to Front Page Magazine, as well as a columnist for the Israel National News. He is also the national director of Dafka.org and heads Stop the ISM. He appears frequently on radio and television to discuss the War On Terror and security issues. he can be reached at: Letters “at” canadafreepress.com
I am in Paris where I have attended the Court of Appeal special session called to witness the 27 minutes of hitherto unseen footage of the ‘killing’ of Mohammed al Durah which the court had required France 2 to produce. For readers who are unfamiliar with this scandal, I wrote about it here, here and here.
Suffice it to say here that the iconic image of the child Mohammed al Durah, pictured crouching with his father behind a barrel next to a concrete wall in an apparently vain attempt to shelter from the gun-battle between Israel and the Palestinians that was raging around them before he was allegedly shot dead by the Israelis, served to incite terrorist violence and atrocities around the world after it was transmitted by France 2 at the beginning of the second intifada. Yet it is clear to anyone looking at this in detail that the whole thing was staged, not least from the devastating evidence here which shows the boy raising his arm and peeping through his fingers seconds after the France 2 correspondent Charles Enderlin said he had been shot dead.
After Philippe Karsenty, founder of the French online media watchdog, Media Ratings, accused France 2 of staging the al Durah ‘killing’ and called for the resignation of both Charles Enderlin and France 2’s News Director, Arlette Chabot, France 2 and Enderlin sued Karsenty for defamation, and won. In a disgraceful piece of judicial cronyism after the gratuitous intervention of the then French President Jacques Chirac, the court decided against Karsenty and in favour of France 2 and Enderlin. Karsenty appealed; the judge ordered France 2 to produce the unscreened footage of this incident; today it did so.
Well, sort of. What it actually produced was 18 minutes out of the 27 it was required to bring forward. From this footage, which according to France 2’s Palestinian cameraman was filmed during an implausible 45 minutes of continuous shooting by Israeli soldiers, there is no evidence that anyone at all was killed or injured -- including Mohammed al Durah who by the end of the frames in which he figured seemed to be still very much alive and unmarked by any wound whatsoever.
The drama of today’s hearing was enhanced by the appearance of Enderlin himself, who until today had not graced this case with his presence. As the film was shown to a packed and overheated (in every sense) courtroom, Enderlin and Karsenty offered rival interpretations of the images on the screen. If Enderlin thought he would thus demonstrate the inadequacy of Karsenty’s case, he was very much mistaken. On the contrary, parts of his commentary were so absurd that the courtroom several times burst into incredulous laughter.
Enderlin offered only a vague, rambling and unconvincing explanation of why he had only produced 18 minutes of footage rather than the 27 he claimed to have received from his cameraman in Gaza (Enderlin himself was not in Gaza when these events occurred). After the hearing Professor Richard Landes, one of the people who had already seen the contested footage, said that two scenes had been cut out which clearly showed that the violence had been staged -- including one in which a Palestinian preparing to throw a missile is suddenly picked up and carried into an ambulance despite showing no signs of injury. This scene, said Landes, was filmed by Reuters, who actually filmed the France 2 cameraman filming it. Yet there was no sign of it today.
What struck me very forcibly about the 18 minutes overall was that, although this was supposed to have been filmed during continuous firing by the Israelis for 45 minutes, much of the footage consisted merely of a violent demonstration by stone throwing youths, many of whom who appeared to be enjoying the exercise. One child was pictured riding a bicycle through the melee. There was no evidence of any of them being killed or injured. From time to time, to be sure, youths were dragged onto stretchers and into ambulances – but there was no sign of anyone actually being shot, no-one falling under fire, no sign of any blood or injuries whatever. The nearest it got to an injury was a sequence in which a young man coyly pulled his shirt open a little to provide a glimpse of a neat red circle on his stomach, which he claimed was a (rubber?) bullet wound. But since he appeared to be in no pain whatever and was grinning throughout his turn for the camera, this seemed an eminently implausible way for someone who had just been hit by gunfire to behave.
There were many very strange things about this footage which just didn’t add up. When it came to the footage of the ‘killing’ of Mohammed al Durah, the following stood out:
* This sequence was not a continuous narrative but was repeatedly broken up and spliced onto footage of other scenes from the demonstration
* Although the France 2 cameraman had told a German film-maker, Esther Shapira, that he had filmed six minutes of the al Durah father and son under continuous Israeli fire, the footage of them lasted for less than one minute
* There was a camera tripod next to them
* There was no evidence of the boy actually being hit
* At one point, people in the crowd dried out that the boy was dead, while he was sitting up large as life clinging onto his father with his mouth wide open
* After he was said to be dead, he moved his arm (the sequence I have already reported which has been available on the web for years).
The Appeal Court is not due to give its verdict in this case until next February. As of today, such are the fresh contradictions and questions thrown up by the showing of this footage it would seem that France 2 has painted itself into a corner from which it will find it increasingly hard to escape.
But this scandal goes far beyond France 2. Soon after it transmitted the 55 seconds which showed the ‘killing’ of Mohammed al Durah, it helpfully sent various news agencies three minutes of the footage of this incident – including the frames in which the ‘dead’ child is seen moving, but which of course it had not broadcast. For reasons which invite speculation, not one of these agencies broadcast it either. Had they done so, there would have been no ‘killing’ of Mohammed al Durah and untold numbers of subsequent deaths would have been avoided.
It is therefore not surprising, but no less shocking, that with a couple of heroic exceptions the mainstream media has until very recently ignored the evidence suggesting that a monumental and deadly fraud was perpetrated here, indicators which have been around for years. As of today, the Karsenty case has been totally ignored by the mainstream French media. It is also deeply troubling that the Israel government ignored this evidence for seven years, that it is only very recently that its press spokesman Danny Seaman said the incident was staged, and that even now certain representatives of the Israel government are playing a most ambiguous role in defending their country against this modern blood libel.
The ‘killing’ of Mohammed al Durah was swallowed uncritically by the western media, despite the manifold unlikeliness and contradictions which were apparent from the start, because it accorded with the murderous prejudice against Israel which is the prism through which the Middle East conflict is habitually refracted. This scandal has the most profound implications not just for the media, not just for the Middle East conflict but for the western world’s relationship to reason, which seems to grow more tenuous by the day.
Jamal al Dura, who claims that Israelis fired at him and his son in 2000, was in fact injured by axe blade and not bullets in 1992, according to an Israeli surgeon who performed reconstructive surgery on the wounds two years later. PJM’s Nidra Poller reports on the latest startling development in the mother of all fauxtography cases.
By Nidra Poller
The wounds purportedly sustained on September 30 2000 by Jamal al Dura “target of gunfire from the Israeli positions”—in the words of France 2 bureau chief Charles Enderlin—were in fact incurred in 1992. Jamal, identified as the father of the shahid [martyr] Mohamed al Dura, is one of the two living witnesses to the incident that triggered the “Al Aqsa Intifada.” The al Dura news report has been the subject of controversy for seven years.
Philippe Karsenty, who is appealing his 2006 defamation conviction—for declaring on his Media-Ratings site that the al Dura news report was a blatant fake—obtained medical records <javascript> proving that Jamal’s wounds were treated by an Israeli surgeon in 1994. Now the surgeon, Yehuda David, has confirmed this information on a December 12 newscast on Israel’s Arutz 10 TV. Jean Tsadik of Metula News Agency <http> resumed the Hebrew-language newscast <http> for French-speaking readers.
According to the Metula release, 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 hospital in Tel Aviv <javascript> 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.
Pajamas Media will try to solicit reactions from French journalists Denis Jeambar and Daniel Leconte who were granted the exceptional privilege, in 2004, of viewing a bit over 20 minutes of raw footage <javascript> filmed by Talal Abu Rahma at Netzarim Junction in the Gaza Strip <javascript> on September 30, 2000. After publicly declaring that there was no evidence in the footage to sustain the accusation that Jamal and his son Mohamed were hit by Israeli gunfire <javascript> , they backed off from the controversy. Convinced by the film of Jamal’s wounds, produced expressly to spin their almost courageous conclusions, they opted for the crossfire explanation of the unfortunate incident.
The day after the alleged shooting Jamal, filmed on his hospital bed wrapped up in bloody bandages, described the ordeal in a critically wounded voice. A few weeks later, in an Israeli TV interview, he declared plaintively, with his hand resting on a crutch, that the Israelis fired at him and his son for 45 minutes, clearly recognizing them as innocent civilians <javascript> .
Now we learn that Jamal used the arm restored by Israeli surgeons to act out the blood libel that provoked the murderous rage that killed countless Israeli civilians, including courageous doctors who had treated Palestinians with the same generosity he experienced.
On November 14th Charles Enderlin stood before a French court <javascript> and walked the judges through 18 minutes of raw footage filmed by Talal Abu Rahmah, including the 59-second al Dura shots. He had an explanation for every incongruity. When will he realize that he is walking down a gangplank?
* Images of a dead child <javascript> “identified” as Mohamed al Dura but brought in several hours before the alleged shooting occurred, were shot at Shifa Hospital.
——
Pajamas Media has an AL DURA CHONOLOGY <http> to give background on the.
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