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INCIDENT, AS INITIALLY REPORTED
Muhammad al-Durrah left home that morning to accompany his father, Jamal al-Durrah, on a day's outing to shop for a car. On the return trip home, the father and son crossed a main street in the Bureij refugee camp when heavy shooting broke out between Palestinian militiamen and an Israel Defense Force (IDF) outpost near Netzarim junction. Muhammad and Jamal al-Durrah sought sanctuary in vain between a concrete cylinder and a low cinderblock wall as bullets rained down around them for about 45 minutes, of which 27 minutes were filmed. "He stayed close to me, clutching me from my back while I was trying to keep him away from the bullets," said his father. "But one bullet hit him in the leg. I started screaming and crying, hoping that the bullets would stop, but to no avail." Edited television footage showed Jamal al-Durrah waving desperately, shouting, "Don't shoot!" but Muhammad was eventually hit by four bullets and collapsed in his father's arms. Jamal al-Durrah was also shot and suffered critical injuries but survived after receiving emergency surgery in Jordan . He suffered a permanently paralyzed right arm. "It is the worst nightmare of my life... My son was terrified, he pleaded with me: 'For the love of God protect me, Baba (Dad).' "I will never forget these words." An ambulance driver who tried to reach the trapped pair was reported shot and killed. A second ambulance driver was reported as wounded. REACTION The killing was captured on film by Talal Abu Rahma, a freelance . "My son didn't die in vain," said Muhammad's mother, Amal. "This was his sacrifice for our homeland, for Palestine." The IDF initially stated that it was "probably responsible" for killing Muhammad al-Durrah and expressed sorrow at his death. IDF operations chief Giora Eiland announced that a preliminary investigation revealed that "the shots were apparently fired by Israeli soldiers from the outpost at Netzarim". On , 2000 . Accessed 5 February 2006 . In 2000 and 2001 he received a number of prizes and awards for the footage (primarily from organizations in Arab and Muslim countries), including the 2000 Festival Scoop Prize, Angers, France ; Qurtaj Cinema Festival, Tunisia; Palestine Prize for Arts, Literature and Human Sciences; Qatar Honoring Prize, Doha, Qatar ; Alexandria Honoring Prize, Alexandria , Egypt; Research Fund for the Study of Future of North-South Cultural Communication in Rabat , Morocco ; Iran Prize for the Palestinian Intifada; Medal of Bravery, Palestinian Journalists' Association, Jerusalem ; Arab Journalism Prize (Best News Scoop), Dubai; Journalist of the Year, ADC, Washington DC ; Jordanian Syndicates' Complex Prize, Amman ; Radio & TV Festival Prize, Cairo , and the Rory Peck Trust Sony International Impact Award. On October 7 2001, Al Qaida spokesman Sulaiman Abu Ghaith , speaking for Osama Bin Laden , warned American President George W. Bush that he "shouldn't forget the image of Mohammed al-Dura and his fellow Muslims in Palestine and Iraq" and promised that "The storms of planes will not stop until you drag your defeated tails from Afghanistan, not until you raise your hands from the Jews in Palestine, not until you lift the embargo on the Iraqi people, not until you leave the Arabian peninsula, not until you stop supporting the Hindus against the Muslims in Kashmir." In May, 2004 the Kuwait i investment company Global Investment House created the "Al-Durra Islamic Fund" with the investment objective of seeking "capital growth through investing in Sharia'a -compliant local shares." CONTROVERSY The initial footage immediately led some to conclude that the whole incident had been staged. 2006 ., studied full footage from other Western news outlets three times that day, including the pictures of the boy, and concluded that it had probably been faked, along with footage on the same tape of separate street clashes and ambulance rescues. "I came to the realization that Palestinian cameramen, especially when there are no Westerners around, engage in the systematic staging of action scenes," he said, calling the footage " Pallywood cinema".http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/07/business/worldbusiness/07video.html?pagewanted=2&oref=login ''New York Times'' (URL requires registration). Landes went on to found the website Second Draft SecondDraft.org , dedicated to gathering evidence on the al-Durrah case and other controversies in journalism. Nahum Shahaf, an Israeli physicist, known mainly as an inventor and the tenth person to receive a medal from the Israeli Ministry of Science, and Yosef Duriel, an Israeli engineer he met during an investigation Shahaf earlier undertook into 2006 .] Samia immediately removed Duriel from the investigation, but Duriel continued to aver that his version was accurate and that the IDF refused to publicize it because the results were "explosive".Anat Cygielman, '' Haaretz '', November 7 2000 . The results of this investigation were released on 2006 . Though the IDF did not support Duriel's thesis, some supporters of Israel such as ). Reprinted from WorldNetDaily.com, April 1, 2003. Accessed 5 February 2006 . A , 13 November 2001 . Link is to summary, full report is available as a series of PDF files. A , 2002 . Accessed 5 February 2006 . James Fallows, in a June 2003 article in '' The Atlantic Monthly '' titled ''Who Shot Mohammed al-Dura?'' cited a number of unanswered questions raised by the Israeli physicist Nahum Shahaf during the second IDF investigation: "Why is there no footage of the boy after he was shot? Why does he appear to move in his father's lap, and to clasp a hand over his eyes after he is supposedly dead? Why is one Palestinian policeman wearing a Secret Service-style earpiece in one ear? Why is another Palestinian man shown waving his arms and yelling at others, as if 'directing' a dramatic scene? Why does the funeral appear — based on the length of shadows — to have occurred before the apparent time of the shooting? Why is there no blood on the father's shirt just after they are shot? Why did a voice that seems to be that of the ''France 2'' cameraman yell, in 2006 . In '' (the department presiding over all French state-operated TV networks including ''France 2''), had stated that Abu Rahma (the cameraman) had retracted his testimony that the Israelis had shot al-Durrah in cold blood. To defend itself against the charges, in the fall of 2004 ''France 2'' filed a series of defamation complaints against some of its critics, by a French judicial settlement called "''plainte contre X''". The station's lawyer, Bénédicte Amblard, said that ''France 2'' followed this strategy because of the difficulties of legally identifying the owners of Web sites. In October 2004 the station filmed the boy's father in an Amman hospital showing scars on his right arm and upper right leg, but critics like Rosenzweig demanded an independent medical expert's opinion. The station also held a news conference in November 2004, with enlarged pictures of al-Durrah and his father, in order to answer questions of critics who claimed no blood was visible. According to Chabot, the station's deputy general director, "It's a crazy story. Every time we address one question, then another question surfaces. It's very difficult to fight a rumor. The point is that four years later, no one can say for certain who killed him, Palestinians or Israelis." On January 25 , 2005 , in '' Le Figaro '', Jeambar and Leconte (like Rosenzweig) refuted Enderlin's longstanding explanation of why the footage of the killing was brief and apparently truncated, stating that the "unbearable" images of al-Durrah's "death throes" did not exist. Instead they noted that in the 27 minutes of tape "Palestinians seem to be organizing a staged event. They 'play' at war with the Israelis and simulate, in most of the cases, imaginary injuries." The ''New York Times'' Buries al Dura Story On the site of , 2005 . Accessed 5 February 2006 . However, Jeambar and Leconte indicated that, although questions were indeed raised as to why Enderlin accused the Israeli Army of shooting the boy, and spoke of images showing his agony, the film produced by ''France 2'' did not allow one to conclude that the death of the boy was faked: "To those, like ''Mena'', who wanted to use us to support the thesis of that the death of the child was faked by the Palestinians, we say that they are misguided, and are misguiding their readers. Not only do we not share this point of view, but we affirm that based on the knowledge of the file we have today, nothing allows us to affirm this, much to the contrary." In a 2006 . In a February 1 , 2005 radio interview Jeambar and Leconte described the original reports that Israelis shot al-Durrah as "false", though they reiterated their earlier statements that there was no reason to believe the death of Muhammad al-Durrah had been faked. Jeambar did note, however, that 24 minutes of the footage consisted of nothing but Palestinian youths faking being wounded and then running off, and ambulances evacuating uninjured people., but he explained that this part was minutes before the death of al-Durrah. In response to Enderlin's statement that the credibility of his claim was supported by "the reality of the situation not only in Gaza, but also in the West Bank", Leconte's reply was "I find this, from a journalistic point of view, worrying. I have the feeling that the facts are forced to support a viewpoint". On , 2005 . Accessed 5 February 2006 . NOTES SEE ALSO
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