A child is dead: Charles Enderlin on the ‘Al-Durrah incident,’ 10 years later

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.

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24 Comments so far (Add 1 more)

Great post from Ms. Lisa Goldman and I have listened to the full broadcast. I’m quite impressed by the Israeli French Jew and journalist, Mr Charles Enderlin. Quite disturbing interview and only shows that one must always read both sides of the story. One is touched by the fact that it would seem that where the bullet came from is more of an issue than the death of the child itself or the fact the “they were shooting”. May Allah bless the young soul and give him eternal peace and rest!

1. Joan-Carles Martí
on October 11th, 2010 at 5:22 pm
Lisa this is really disingenuous. France’s Channel 2 has admitted in court that of the approximately 28 minutes of footage Talal shot that day, every single second of it EXCEPT the approximately 3 minutes of footage of Al Dura was staged. There were numerous other camera crews on site (even within 2 feet of Al Dura and his father) and not a single one of them caught the shooting or a single image of the boy wounded? Please back up your claim by links to media reports from that day showing that “several other children were killed that day.”

2. Yael
on October 11th, 2010 at 5:35 pm
Yael, you would be well-advised to think very carefully before calling me disingenuous.

I don’t need to “back up” my claim to anything. You can find all the information with a quick glance at the statistics available on the B’tselem website.

France 2 “admitted in court that 28 minutes of footage was staged”? That’s a new one for me. Do you have a link for that bit of information?

3. Lisa Goldman
on October 11th, 2010 at 5:40 pm
Didn’t a French court rule that the footage was a hoax?

4. Michael W.
on October 11th, 2010 at 6:19 pm
Michael – No.

5. Lisa Goldman
on October 11th, 2010 at 6:21 pm
The French court found that Philippe Karsenty was not libelling Enderlin by claiming publicly that the footage was faked. This overturned a lower court decision that found that he was. It did not find that Karsenty’s charges were true, but that was not the issue before the court. It was only adjudicating on the libel issue.

Personally, I think the incident was faked. I don’t think Talal’s footage shows the boy was killed, and I don’t think he and his father were under Israeli fire. But then I’m influenced by Richard Landes’ work on this. You can find all the arguments at his website to balance the ones at B’tselem.

I found Enderlin most unconvincing. He did not answer, nor was he asked to answer, the major charges against him and his cameraman; not least, that the child moved his hand and peeked under his arm after he was allegedly dead.

I also agree with Yael that the footage from the rest of the rushes was obviously of staged tableaux. The cameramen just wanted some safe, stock footage of youths rioting in Gaza ahead of the expected spill-over of the intifada, and the locals were happy to oblige. It was so obvious that the fakery was not contested in the court hearings. No-one, AFAIK, even bothered to defend it.

Nice to see you blogging again, Lisa, even if I think you’re backing the wrong horse this time.

6. Rob
on October 12th, 2010 at 11:38 am
I just find it sad and incredible that intelligent people really believe that prominent veteran journalists with sterling reputations would – or could! – stage manage the death of a child.

Worse, that intelligent people would invest so much time and effort in attempts to prove a conspiracy theory that smacks of paranoia bordering on psychosis.

‘Safe, stock footage of youth rioting’?!

Come on, Rob.

7. Lisa Goldman
on October 12th, 2010 at 7:31 pm
Simple, the child was shot by the IDF, if you like it or not.

8. J.P.
on October 12th, 2010 at 9:20 pm
Of course it matteres where the alleged bullet came from and whether the child died. This has been one of the main events that has been used to delegitimize the State of Israel over the past decade. That doesn’t mean we don’t mourn the death of the child. Of course we do. But to deny that this hasn’t been used for political purposes, and that use is not meaningful and destructive and in my opinion based on lies, is just silly.

In writing about this so passionately, have you considered Professor Landes’ research?

http://www.theaugeanstables.com/category/al-durah-affair/

If so, do you consider it lacking credibility and why? If not, then the red herring argument you present here, that questioning the “facts” you seem so willing to accept suggests indifference to the life of a child, would indeed be disingenuous.

Bruce Levine

9. Bruce Levine
on October 15th, 2010 at 9:16 pm
Was my prior comment deleted? If so, why?

10. Bruce Levine
on October 16th, 2010 at 3:29 am
Sorry, I didn’t see my prior post. One other thing–several posters have pointed to what is written on the B’tselem website on this alleged killing. I looked on the website and saw nothing. Does someone have the link to B’tselem’s take? Forgive me, I’m done.

11. Bruce Levine
on October 16th, 2010 at 3:34 am
Thanx Lisa for enlightening us all, I didn’t realize that this journalist has been attacked for reporting the truth. Am definitely interested in his book.

12. Halla
on October 19th, 2010 at 5:27 am
A rueful ‘thanks’ for the (implied) ‘intelligent’, Lisa. Bear with me, please.

My problem, I guess, is that having seen the rushes a couple of times, it seemed to me pretty well inconceivable that the IDF would have spent 45 minutes firing at a father and son, as claimed by Abu Rahma, who were invisible, being concealed behind a concrete barrel, and who posed no possible threat to them. I suppose if you subscribe to the theory that nothing is too vile for the IDF, you could buy it, but otherwise it’s not so easy.

At the same time, as the rushes show clearly, any number of Palestinian kids were fronting up to the fence around the police post throwing rocks at it, and it was also being targeted with petrol bombs and burning tyres. There is no indication of fire from the police post and the kids went about their fun and games with complete impunity. That being so, why would the Israelis waste 45 minutes of ammunition on the invisible al-Durrahs?

On the information available, I still believe that on that day of 30 September, 2000, out of sight and out of the line of fire of the local Israeli police post, Palestinian kids and some adults were playing games. They were acting out a series of tableaux for the benefit of attendant cameramen, who wanted library footage to accompany stories of ‘violent’ clashes in (then) occupied Gaza — film which they could safely retrieve from their databases and include as real-life footage, without having to venture into harm’s way to get it.

One of them, a Palestinian stringer named Talal Abu Rahma, shot some footage of a boy and his father acting out the scene ‘crouching terrified under withering Israeli fire, boy then agonisingly killed’. He recognised its particularly powerful impact, notwithstanding it was staged, and sent it off to France2′s Jerusalem editor, Charles Enderlin, as coverage of a real event. Enderlin had it broadcast, the world picked it up, and the rest is history.

It’s worth pointing out a couple of things in addition. The first is that two veteran French journalists at the appeal hearing testified that, on the basis of the footage shot by Abu Rahma, Enderlin had no valid journalistic reason for claiming on air that (a) the child was dead or (b) that the Israelis had killed him.

The second is that when the appeal came on one of the Palestinian leaders was quoted by the BBC as saying, IIRC, that even if a Palestinian bullet had killed the boy it was still Israel that was culpable because without the occupation the incident at Netzarim junction would not have happened. I took that as (at least) a half-admission.

Sorry to be so argumentative. But the alleged killing of al Durrah was a hoax, like the ‘genocide’ at Jenin and the ‘bombing’ of the ambulance at Qana. Not a conspiracy, then, but a simple lie.

13. Rob
on October 25th, 2010 at 4:44 am
Thank you Rob. I was wondering if you could share some links in connection with what you’ve posted. In so many of these situations, the only folks who are challenging the “internationally accepted givens” in connection with the I-P conflict are Israel right or wrongers with as much bias as that displayed by Ms. Goldman in this particular case, and Mr. Enderlein on whom she so unquestionably relies.

This is an excellent comment from you, and I’m still so utterly disappointed in the blogger’s decision here to perpetuate the non-sequitur that questioning this incident connotes indifference to the life of a child. How eminently stifling.

14. Bruce Levine
on October 25th, 2010 at 8:17 pm
Bruce, I would not want to go too far into it – that would abuse Lisa’s hospitality. I’m not wimping out; I have genuine regard for Lisa as a blogger, even if I disagree with her sometimes.

The BBC report I mentioned is at

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7083129.stm

In part, it reads:

“The majority of Palestinians would not believe the court if they said the killing was fake,” says Dr Eyad Sarraj, the head of the Gaza Community Health Programme. “They would see it as some sort of conspiracy.”

“All Palestinians see the Israelis as guilty in this. Even if Muhammad al-Durrah was killed by a Palestinian bullet, if it hadn’t been for the Israeli occupation in Gaza he would be still alive today.”

15. Rob
on October 26th, 2010 at 9:08 am
Well thanks Rob. I admire Ms. Goldman as well, and I’m always a bit uneasy about dominating a comment thread. The premise of the thread affected me, as you can undoubtedly surmise. Cheers.

16. Bruce Levine
on October 26th, 2010 at 5:10 pm
Thank you for this post. Here are some thoughts in response to comments above:
1) No, someone saying that Palestinians would still consider Israel at fault for the death of the child in no way implies that ‘they’ were admitting culpability. What it means is presumably that people wouldn’t be having a shoot out there otherwise. I think you’re conflating social commentary with factual statements.
2) I don’t think anyone is saying the IDF shot the child on purpose, so the long string of theory about why they would do so, when other kids were directly taunting the IDF and throwing rocks, is moot. The father and son were caught in a crossfire. It wasn’t deliberate, so you can’t apply a ‘why would they’ rationale to it.
3) If Enderlin was on the radio with his colleague Abu Rahma, who was describing the scene to him live as it happened, then of course he had a right to publish that story. Calling the Palestinian journalist a stringer doesn’t make him less of a journalist, either.
4) Any government, and any society, that wants to call itself civilized has to be willing to accept criticism without going nationalist. As a Jew, I know it’s hard to be open to criticism of Israel when so much of it goes straight to Antisemitism. But a lot of it is valid, and pulling the Holocaust card every time something negative comes out only damages the discourse, our reputation, and the likelihood of coming together as human beings to resolve our issues.

17. Bachlet
on October 28th, 2010 at 2:32 pm
Bachlet:

Your response is precisely the kind of reflexive response you are accusing those other Jews, not you of course, but those other ones behind the tree, of having. The notion that you cannot question this story unless you are indifferent to the life of a child is a silly and hurtful argument, just as the notion that you propagate here–that legitimately questioning the story of what happened ten years ago connotes an attitude that any criticism of Israel is antisemitim–is silly, frustrating and flawed at the core. This story is full of holes and if I assert that I’m not saying that I’m an anti-semite because have frequently and regularly criticized Israel (and have encouraged my three adult children to do the same).

18. Bruce Levine
on October 28th, 2010 at 4:51 pm
I’m a bit reluctant to re-engage with this, but also reluctant to leave it.

As to Bachlet’s 1), I think your point ignores the quote “Even if Muhammad al-Durrah was killed by a Palestinian bullet, if it hadn’t been for the Israeli occupation in Gaza he would be still alive today.”

Now it’s possible I’m over-extrapolating, but that seems to me to be a statement worth some parsing.

As to 2), precisely what people were saying, and have been for the last ten years, is that IDF deliberately killed the boy. I am not aware that any of the Palestinian propaganda around this issue makes the ‘crossfire’ claim. 45 minutes of directed IDF fire against the child and his father does not constitute being caught in a crossfire, nor was it represented as such. Nor does Lisa or Enderlin make that case.

Re. 3), I am not aware of any claim that Enderlin and Abu Rahma were in radio contact at the relevant time. It’s certainly not apparent from the rushes. I always understood that Abu Rahma sent the tape to Enderlin, who recognised its dramatic force, and broadcast it.

I am more troubled by 4). This is matter of truth or falsehood. I have not argued that Israel should be exempt from criticism in this matter or any other, nor invoked the Holocaust. Wherever you’re coming from, Bachlet, it’s not from anything I’ve said.

It may be that the Palestinians killed the boy. It may be that he was not killed at all. But what was alleged to be a killing by the IDF was not. It was a lie.

AFAICS, it is as simple as that.

19. Rob
on November 2nd, 2010 at 8:41 am
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/news.aspx/138052

20. tsedek
on November 27th, 2010 at 11:45 pm
The balance of evidence is certainly that the israelis killed the boy and went to elaborate lengths to cover it up, among other things, by completely removing the bullet ridden wall behind the child and conveniently “losing” the ballistic evidence.

The study commissioned by the government to prove the IDF was not responsible was conducted by two completely inept individuals and the report was so clumsily compiled that the IDF quickly disavowed any connection with it. That’s how embarrassing it was.

The israelis ruthlessly murder children all the time, (as NY Times Mid East bureau chief Chris Hedges reports, this is often “for sport”) so the only exceptional aspect of the crime was the fact that it was captured on video.

Finally, whenever the Israelis launch into their hysterics about a “blood libel” it is generally a sign that they are guilty as hell, as in the recent exposure of an international Israeli organ trading mafia in the Swedish press. “Anti-Semites!!! Blood libel!!! Boycott IKEA!!! Recall the ambassador!!” the Israelis howled. The story has since been voluminously verified and the chief Israeli pathologist running this ghoulish, far-flung enterprise, has since been indicted along with various Jewish mafiosi in New Jersey and New York.

21. anti-Israeli
on December 30th, 2010 at 5:22 am
I read your entire blog and was very disturbed not only by the stories of the Occupation, which I believe is Israel’s Vietnam, but especially by your photo of your tear-gassing and the stun grenade incident.

Could you at least buy yourself a gas mask? Putting yourself so close to the violence may rob your family of ever having the chance of seeing you again.

P.S. Your website gave me encouragement to pursue the story of fires at Bat Ayin, and was able to throw a biased story back into the face of Honest Reporting. Ask me or Adina for the research I did and the emails I wrote. It’s not much, but it gave me satisfaction.

Dad

22. stan goldman
on January 19th, 2011 at 12:49 am
This “interview” was terrible. The correspondent did not challenge or question the crux of the story: 1. Was this incident a fabrication?, 2. What was the main arguments and points of his accusers and how did he respond to them, and 3. What would he do differently now in reporting the story. It was a very sympathetic and softball interview. The only thing I got out of it was that the France II reporter approaches his reporting from an anti-Israeli perspective. Dennis Ross, Bill Clinton’s special Middle East negotiator during the Oslo process pointed out in his book that Israel made a “generous” offer to Arafat which was rejected out of hand with no counters. This interviewer should have asked about this. Real bad piece.

23. Jerry Levy
on August 8th, 2011 at 1:32 am
Thanks, Lisa, for writing about Charles Enderlin’s book “Un Enfant est Mort”. It is a dispassionate acount of the shooting of Mohammed al-Dura along side which the conspiracy theories proposed by the likes of Philippe Karsenty, Richard Landes and Yehuda David are mere wishful fantasy.
I for one never thought that the above three were honestly interested in looking for the truth. They found the powerful symbolism associated with the image of a Palestinian boy shot brutally by Israeli soldiers intolerable.
Both Karsenty and David were sued by respectively France 2/Charles Enderlin and Jamal al-Dura for defamation. Karsenty had claimed that the shooting of Mohammed al-Dura was a fake and David had called Jamal al-Dura a liar. Karsenty was initially found guilty, but was acquitted by an appeal court, that ruled, that he had the right to express his opinion. Yehuda David was found not guilty of defamation for the same reason, namely that he had the right to express his opinion. Both Karsenty and David then hailed this as if the court had ruled that the Mohammed al-Dura shooting and the shooting of Jamal al-Dura had been a fake, which was not at all the case. The French courts had not ruled on whether the shooting of Mohammed al-Dura was fake or not. This underlines the disingenuity of Karsenty, David and Landes.
That is why I am very glad that on Tuesday February 28 2012 the Cour de Cassation, the Supreme Court in France, reversed the acquittal of Philippe Karsenty and ordered a retrial.
I am very confident that a rational weighing of the evidence within the proper context will result in the unmasking of the phony conspiracy theories.
I have looked at all the available footage shot at Netzarim junction on 30 September 2000. I have looked at the claims of Landes and Karsenty: that because of impossible angles Mohammed and his father could not have been shot from the Israeli positions, that the child and his father were play acting (!), and that the other Palestinians at Netzarim junction on 30 September 2000 were also engaged in massive acts of theater play, to make it look as if Israelis shot a Palestinian child.
I declare an interest, because I have worked in Palestinian hospitals in the Gaza Strip, the Westbank and Lebanon. I am a medical professional and looked at the images with a medically trained eye.
What becomes obvious is that Landes, Karsenty and David only see what they want to see. I find it astonishing that Landes omits to mention the large blood stain on Mohammed’s sweater, which appeared after the hail of bullits, that threw up dust in the street, resulting in the fatal shooting. Only a blind person would have missed this. Landes claims that in the last images he sees a boy play acting (“peeking at the camera”).
My medically trained eye saw a critically injured child, hit in the abdomen by high velocity munitions, in medical shock and slowly exsanguinating. I have dealth myself with people who were shot in the abdomen and were exsanguinating. These people may move while they exsanguinate until they die. This is what I saw in the last images. Indeed, Talal, the Palestinian cameraman was too early when he shouted that the boy had died.
The photographs from al-Shifa showing the abdominal wound of Mohammed with bowels protruding make clear what happened.
Jamal, Mohammed’s father was hit in the right hand and arm and suffered tendon, bone and nerve injurie. He was also shot in the right hip area, which was exposed.
Also Landes’ claim of all the Palestians play acting is easily refuted by studying the images closely. The same goes for the so-called impossible angles.
The fact is that only rightwing Zionists and their supporters will support the conspiracy theories. They only see what they want to see and ignore anything that contradicts their observations.
That is why I am glad that Karsenty’s acquittal has been overturned and a retrial will take place.
Enderlin’s book will be very helpful to refute all the wild conspiracy theories.

24. Ben Alofs
on March 9th, 2012 at 3:25 am