The Pallywood hoax still endures.
Al-Dura: a lethal narrative that just won’t die
This Wednesday, April 3rd, The French Supreme Court will render its decision in a case pitting the state-owned France 2 News Agency and one of its senior news producers, Charles Enderlin against media critic Philippe Karsenty, a citizen media critic, 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 occurred 12 years ago but 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.
