Well, if you read carefully you'll find some other things that throw a lot into doubt. First: there is little evidence (beyond a general facial resemblance) that the boy who was declared dead on that day was the boy in the video, and some evidence that he was not. To wit: the hospital records show the boy having died before the shooting apparently occurred. Thus, the martyrdom could indeed have been faked, using a boy who had already died, either from Israeli aggression, or in some other way. They would simply have the living boy feign being shot and then substitute the dead boy later. Although cameras were rolling on the site for hours and hours, only one cameraman got footage of the shooting, and the total footage of the Al-Duras amounts to only a minute or so. So they had plenty of time "off-camera" to do anyhting they wanted, which is itself suspicious considering the heavy media coverage of the event. Some people who were apparently shot in the crossfire also apparently leapt to their feet and exited the ambulances a few moments later, after the cameras they were playing to were trained elsewhere. They were caught on other cameras, but media-savvy as they were, they knew the footage of them "being shot" would be used by the stations that got such footage, while the footage of them getting out of the ambulance would not signify anything unless juxtaposed with another station's footage, and hence would never be seen on TV. They were, of course, correct. This all suggests that Palestinians were indeed pretending to get shot for the cameras, and using sophisticated knowledge of the news industry to get their points across. There's the suspicious matter of the ambulances themselves, which seemed to arrive a few seconds after each shooting, EXCEPT for Al-Dura's shooting.

In light of all this, Ebbie's contention:

I don't suppose the consensus is that the father and the son agreed to having the event be staged? "OK, now. You crouch down here and the boy huddles behind you. We'll be over here so we can make it look like the Israelis did it; at a strategic moment we'll fire... It will only take a moment, so be patient."

is thrown into doubt.

The extent to which the incident was staged simply cannot be easily determined. What has been determined by many observers is that the Israeli soldiers who were blamed for the shooting could not possibly have done it. That does not rule out other Israeli soldiers sneaking around behind the cameraman, it does not rule out accidental friendly fire, it does not rule out brutal murder by Palestinians seeking publicity, and it does not rule out a staged event in which the boy feigned death and then was swapped for an already-dead boy at the hospital. I suspect we'll never know the truth.