New Evidence against the Al Dura Fraud provided by surgeon

By Endre MOZES, 2007 December 17

More and more experts have arrived at the conclusion during these years, in 2007 in particular, that the famous TV video showing the death of Palestinian boy Muhammad Al Dura on September 30, 2000, is a fraud. Actually, no independent expert is left who still believes that this film is a totally genuine, un-manipulated document. In the hearing of the Al-Dura trial at the Appeal Court of Justice in Paris, on 14 November 2007, the panel of judges and myself in the courtroom heard or saw nothing what convincingly protected the films authenticity. I learned what I could before the hearing. Now, after watching carefully the 18 minute long raw footage, what the France 2 TV channel finally had to present to the judges upon their previous instruction, I became firmly convinced that the film had been manipulated, probably fully staged.

But to prove it, is a different matter.

That is why it is so significant that one more item has been added to the list of tangible proofs that the France-2 movie and the commentaries about Israel's guilt in the boy's killing are parts of a fraud.  Or at least, as probably in the case of the voiceover of France 2's Charles Enderlin, unfounded accusations were irresponsibly presented as facts, by someone who had not been on the spot but was too easily mislead due to his political pre-conceptions. (It still astonishes how a senior media professional like Enderlin, and a TV station of France 2's stand, could state and repeat such capital accusations against Israel, based on a sole eye-witness, the heavily involved Gazan Palestinian cameraman, Talal Abu Rahma).

The new counter-evidence to the Al-Dura film was provided by senior Israeli orthopedic surgeon Dr Yehuda David, interviewed by Israeli TV Channel 10 on December 12 evening. He told to the camera that his attention was called recently to the fact that he had operated Jamal Al Dura, the father of the boy Mohammed, years before the ominous incident at Netzarim on September 30, 2000, where Jamal was allegedly wounded.

Dr David checked this and found full documentation: he really operated Jamal in 1994. The operation was needed because Palestinian thugs had beaten up Jamal brutally, both with blunt tools and with a hatchet, cutting certain tendons, among others on his arm, paralyzing parts of his body. The operation was successful, gave back most of Jamal's mobility, and was documented as usual. In all these years since September 2000 many skeptics about the authenticity of the France-2 film asked how Mohammed's and Jamal's alleged shot wounds and the IDF bullets were never seen, never shown. Now Jamal's wounds were, but how! Dr David was surprised to see, how pseudo-analysts presented on a propaganda film the cuts of his own operation on Jamal's hand and the old hatchet wounds on his arms and legs, as if traces of IDF bullets. Photos of these wounds had been in the hospital's files since 1994! Any expert, Dr David explained, can see at first sight that the exactly straight thin cuts are of surgical origin and no bullet could cause them. 

This is further factual evidence against the minuscule remnant credibility of the Al Dura film and the death cult created around it.

An interesting and important new hypothesis arises. The recently known documented previous brutalization of Jamal Al Dura by a Palestinian gang may lead to an understanding, why might Jamal have co-operated in staging the fraud. Jamal Al Durra had been known in Gaza as a believer in peace between his people and Israel. The boy Muhammad wore an Arab-Israeli youth peace camp's T-shirt. Now, tragically, such people were not once threatened by torture and street execution as alleged collaborators with Israel, unless they co-operate in crimes against Israelis, to prove their innocence.  This scenario is worth to be studied.

But what, even if the whole Al Dura film is a fraud, as most experts believe today? Some people ask why to wake up now this old ghost. Why? because this case is not an airy ghost but an actively aggressive icon of hatred and murder, which provides pretexts for hate crimes against Jews and Israel until today.  Its significance can not be overestimated. Hundreds of millions have seen, heard and been influenced repeatedly for seven years by the fake accusation of the Israeli army with murder of the boy.

The Al Dura accusation has turned out recently to be totally unfounded, possibly deliberately forged. Professional work and perseverance can turn now this case from the accusation of the uninvolved to the accusation and at least moral conviction of the forgers. This may help the return of a more honest global main-stream media we so badly need. Particularly when about Palestinians and Israel.

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* Endre MOZES is founder chairman of Take A Pen, an international, multilingual grass-roots letter-writing network, since 2001.