I'm carrying this item a week late, but owing to the number of searches for Muhammed al-Dura that have hit It's Almost Supernatural I decided to include this anyway. It's a painfully sensitive topic. Some things should remain sacred, but the evidence mounting against France 2 news (the French broadcasters who screened the footage and amongst other lies offered it all around the world for free first claiming that they edited out the scene where al-Dura was actually killed and then admitting that they did not actually have the footage) is massive and compels you to wonder if you were duped.
Nidra Poller, writing in Commentary magazine: Myth, Fact, and the al-Dura affair.
It's the latest take on the mystery surrounding the death of Muhammed al-Dura. (Previously carried on IAS here, here and here.)
For anyone perplexed about the murkiness of the al-Dura affair this is compulsory reading.
| This past June, Wafa Samir al-Bis, an aspiring twenty-one-year-old shahida, or “martyr,” was apprehended by Israeli guards at the Erez checkpoint in Gaza and found to be carrying 20 pounds of explosives in her underwear. The young woman intended to make a last trip to the Soroka Medical Center in Be’er Sheva, where she had been receiving medical treatment for severe burns incurred in a domestic accident. Her goal this time was to blow herself up and kill as many young people as possible. Asked why she was aiming specifically at children, she replied that she wanted to retaliate for the death of Muhammad al-Dura. ... [Al Dura's] story, perhaps the single most powerful force behind the Palestinian cult of child sacrifice over the last years, has been dramatized in spots on Palestinian television urging others to follow in his path, retold in a recruitment video for al Qaeda, and immortalized in epic verse by the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. But is it true? |
Poller tells an extraordinary tale of staged theatrical battle scenes, lies from France-2 news, forensic evidence which contradicts the reports from France-2, and non-existent footage that France-2 claimed to have which has led many to charge France-2 Television station with what one French journalist calls 'The Perfect Media Crime'.
I remember being at Wits University in 2000/2001 being constantly bombarded by the al-Dura imagery. Images of al-Dura were cleverly contrasted with the familiar images for South Africans of Hector Peterson (seen below). These posters were powerful and indoctrinated many students into the belief that the situation that faced al-Dura was the exact same situation as the Apartheid one that faced Hector Peterson.
Either way, Mohammed al-Dura was an innocent victim of the Israel-Palestinian conflict. The motivation behind the intrigue into the affair is not to diminish the sorrow that should be directed al-Dura's way. The problem is that many other innocent people have died as a result of the distorted leveraging of the al-Dura affair to indoctrinate and brainwash others into a cult of hatred and suicide. Therein lies the motivation to get to the bottom of this.
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