One of the iconic images of the death of Muhammad al-Durrah.

Almost exactly 10 years ago, on the second day of the Second Intifada, a 12 year-old Palestinian boy named Muhammad al-Durrah was shot and killed during an exchange of gunfire between Israeli and Palestinian forces in Gaza. Several other Palestinian children were killed by gunfire that day, and hundreds more in the months and years since, but only the name and image of Muhammad al-Durrah have become iconic, because only he died in front of a television camera, in his father’s arms. Today, there are streets and monuments named for him around the Arab world.

According to the unusually well-written Wikipedia entry on the Muhammad al-Durrah incident,

…the footage of the father and son acquired what one writer called the power of a battle flag. For the Palestinians, it confirmed their view of the apparently limitless nature of Israel’s brutality toward them, while for sections of the Israeli and Jewish communities the allegations were a modern blood libel, the ancient antisemitic association of Jews with child sacrifice.

The boy’s death was filmed by Talal Abu Rahma, a Palestinian cameraman who freelanced for France 2. Charles Enderlin, veteran bureau Jerusalem bureau chief of France 2, narrated a 1-minute edited clip of the footage, in which he stated that Muhammad al-Durrah died after he and his father were targeted from Israeli positions. And thus Enderlin’s troubles began.

For the following decade, the veteran French-Israeli journalist came under attack from several directions – primarily from Jewish community organizations and bloggers in France and the US. Enderlin’s attackers claimed that he had no way of knowing that al-Durrah died from Israeli gunfire, since he was not present when the incident took place. Critics scrutinized the footage, frame-by-frame, magnifying every possible inconsistency. Enderlin received death threats. Lawyers for the settlement movement went to court in an attempt to have Enderlin stripped of his Israeli press credentials. One prominent French-Jewish blogger wrote that Enderlin had created a hoax.

The al-Durrah footage became Exhibit A in what the conspiracy theorists call Pallywood – i.e, news coverage that is allegedly manipulated or staged in order to advance the Palestinian cause at the expense of Israel.

Even those who eschew conspiracy theories were influenced by James Fallows’ 2003 article for The Atlantic. Fallows interviews several Israeli experts and concludes that there is no way of proving that Muhammad Al-Durrah died from Israeli bullets. Writes Fallows:

Whatever happened to him, he was not shot by the Israeli soldiers who were known to be involved in the day’s fighting—or so I am convinced, after spending a week in Israel talking with those examining the case. The exculpatory evidence comes not from government or military officials in Israel, who have an obvious interest in claiming that their soldiers weren’t responsible, but from other sources…The research has been done by a variety of academics, ex-soldiers, and Web-loggers who have become obsessed with the case, and the evidence can be cross-checked.

In the grand clash of narratives, the fact that Muhammad al-Durrah had been killed came to seem less important than determining the provenance of the bullet that killed him.

Ten years after the most controversial death of the Second Intifada, Charles Enderlin has written a book about the incident. It is called Un Enfant est Mort (A Child is Dead).

A Child is Dead, by Charles Enderlin.

In an article about the book for French website Rue89, Pierre Haski, who was Jerusalem correspondent for Libération during the 1990s, writes that he came to know Enderlin in Israel and describes him as ‘an excellent journalist’ who has written some important books about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. (the Rue89 page includes an embedded video showing Enderlin’s original television report about the death of al-Durrah).

Haski also notes that Enderlin has, ironically, come under attack from colleagues who accused him of pro-Israel bias because he continued to serve his annual reserve duty in the IDF, as Israeli citizens are required to do (Enderlin, who is Jewish, became an Israeli citizen in the early 1970s).

To mark the publication of Un Enfant est Mort, Enderlin was interviewed a few days ago by Annette Young of France 24′s English service. I think it’s a fascinating interview – unusually long and thoughtful – that makes some important points and provides really good insight. How can a journalist vouch for the authenticity of footage that was shot when he was not present? How did the controversy affect Enderlin’s career? Does he think that his being Jewish made the controversy worse? Did he or does he ever think of leaving Israel as a result of the fallout following the al-Durrah incident? And what role did bloggers play in creating or publicizing the controversy? Take a look (below) and let me know what you think.