SUNDAYS TWO-CENTS WORTH- #18

Hoax Murder of 12 year-old

Do any of you remember the story that appeared all over the news in 2000, about an incident in Gaza where a 12 year old Palestinian boy named Mohammed al-Dura was caught with his father in the middle of a firefight between Israeli military and Palestinian gunmen? Both the boy and his father were both shot, the boy fatally, by Israeli soldiers?

Perhaps these following pictures may remind you.

The whole thing was “caught on video” and shown around the world, which inflamed countless numbers of Arab youths to seek martyrdom.

Now the question, “did Israeli soldiers shoot the defenseless boy cradled in the arms of his father as claimed by the French state-owned TV network France 2, which broadcast the video footage world wide after the Sept. 30,2000 incident in Gaza? Or was the entire incident staged on the part of the Palestinians to enflame widespread hatred against Israelis and spur on the murderous “al-Aqsa Intifada” that eventually led to the deaths of hundreds?

Finally, after seven years of heated controversy, the truth has finally come out after a French judge issued an order last month demanding that France 2 submit to the court the original 27 minutes of footage shot by its Gaza stringer, Palestinian cameraman Talal Abu Rahman.

Yesterday was the big day that people had been waiting seven years for, to see the full 27 minutes of raw footage-rather than the 55 seconds of sensationally edited and narrated film broadcast internationally.

Surprise, surprise, there were only 18 minutes of tape. What happened to the other 9 minutes? Israel correspondent for France 2 Charles Enderlin, whose voiceover to the edited video had declared the boy dead at the hands of the Israelis, had in the past explained that parts of the video were too gruesome and heart wrenching to release to public view. But, there were no gruesome or graphic parts in the 18 minutes shown to the court. France 2 claimed that the missing 9 minutes of tape were of other material not related to the al-Dura killing. Hmmm!

After viewing the video incredulous witnesses, one of these being Richard Landes, an American historian, author and associate professor at Boston University, claimed that what was evident is that two scenes were “clearly staged”

The Jerusalem Post reported today that “Toward the end of the video, after the boy had been pronounced dead, the tape showed al-Dura briefly putting his hand to his forehead to check what was happening around him, and moving his leg.” The whole thing was nothing more than a finely crafted piece of Palestinian Street Theater, similar to the dramatic Palestinian funeral processions that were observed after the Israeli incursion into the Jenin refugee camp. During this public spectacle which was shown on news programs around the world, a “martyred corpse” twice fell off the stretcher, only to hop back up and retake his place in the procession. The wonderful Palestinians claimed that there were 3,000 deaths in Jenin, caused by the Israelis – the actual number turned out to be 52.

Check out what some of the witnesses in the French court had to say in the following interview shown on U Tube.

It turns out that many Palestinians were playing to the camera on the day that Mohammed al-Dura was “martyred”. According to the account of Israeli commentator Amnon Lord, of the larger scene at Netzarim Junction when the boy was supposedly shot to death, he describes “incongruous battle scenes with wounded combatants and screeching ambulances played out in front of an audience of laughing on-lookers, while makeshift movie directors do retakes of botched scenes.”

And these are the kinds of lying s.o.b’s that Bush is forcing the Israelis to negotiate with, and whom the Democrats want the U.S. to sit down with and negotiate?

The official decision of the French court won’t be reached until February 27, 2008.