The death of Mohammed al-Dura

Subject: RE: The death of Mohammed al-Dura
From: Teribus
Date: 21 May 03 - 01:53 AM

Art,

Go to Google and type in "Mohammed al-Dura". Obviously quite a large number of articles there. The series of four pictures, plus the photograph of the area appear in the first article listed.

In that fourth picture where the two new bullet marks are seen on the wall (the ones marked with red arrows), one is low and to the left of the boy, the second can be seen just above the boys lower back. The second bullet was the one that killed him, having passed through his body.

Subject: RE: The death of Mohammed al-Dura
From: Nerd
Date: 20 May 03 - 11:46 AM

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.

Subject: RE: The death of Mohammed al-Dura
From: artbrooks
Date: 20 May 03 - 11:23 AM

Terebus, could you link to these photos, please?

Subject: RE: The death of Mohammed al-Dura
From: Teribus
Date: 20 May 03 - 09:16 AM

I originally read through the link in the post opening this thread. I then went to Google for more information regarding the scene of the shooting. In a number of the articles that appeared are a series of still photgraphs covering the actual shooting incident and an aerial picture of the cross-roads where the shooting took place.

Picture 1 -
Shows father and son hiding behind the concrete pipe section. Both are looking towards the IDF position. The up-ended concrete pipe section has what appears to be a flat paving slab on top of it and what looks like a kerb-stone or concrete block on top of that.

Picture 2 -
Shows the boy pressing into his fathers side, while the father's attention has obviously been attracted to something happening off to his right at approximately 90 degrees to any IDF line of fire from their post in the two story building. The shot shows three bullet pock-marks in the wall beside and to the left of father and son hiding behind the pipe section (the IDF are 110m away to the right). The spread, spacing and direction are characteristic of a three round burst from an automatic weapon. As the article describes they are round and appear to have been fired from the direction the father is looking in. The size of the pock-marks would appear to be greater than I would expect from an M-16 (5.56mm), but compatible with a rifle firing 7.62mm ammunition (AK-47 or derivative).

Picture 3 -
Not clear, the video camera has been swung upwards possibly indicating that these shots were fired close enough to the cameramans position to startle him (previous firing had not).

Picture 4 -
Shows the father seated head slightly down and to the left, his son is lying across his lap, in other words Mohammed's body has fallen to the right - towards the IDF position. The fourth photograph indicates with red arrows, two new bullet holes that were not in Picture 2. These pock-marks are lower down on the wall and again the holes are perfectly round and fully penetrate the wall, which indicates the unlikelyhood of them having been fired from the IDF position. The size of the pock-marks of these two bullets is also different from the ones shown in Picture 2, they are markedly smaller and appear to be compatible with what you would expect from a 5.56mm round fired from an M-16.

On first reading, I thought that this could be an inadvertent, or accidental shooting - an accident. But the story told by the photographs taken has the hall-marks of a deliberate act with not one but two gunmen, the first fired a burst that was designed to keep the targets pinned down, the second specifically armed for the job, the second firing from a second position close to the cameraman, did the actual killing.

Subject: RE: The death of Mohammed al-Dura
From: Wolfgang
Date: 20 May 03 - 04:58 AM

The TV documentation makes it clear that friendly fire is the most probable interpretation.

Michael, just for your information, there has been a long-time shooting between the IDF and Palestinians at the time of Mohammed's death. This fact is completely undisputed from both sides. The dispute is not who fired at all, the dispute is who fired the deadly shots.

The situation in Derry is completely different in that respect, for it is under dispute whether there has been even a single shot from republicans before the British army started shooting. You are comparing two different situations.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: The death of Mohammed al-Dura
From: michaelr
Date: 20 May 03 - 02:14 AM

M-hm. I got that, Mary.

As I said -- let's look at likelihood.

I just finished watching the film "Bloody Sunday". Those unarmed citizens of Derry surely sacrificed themselves to make the British paratroopers look bad.

But then, it could be argued that all politics is an elaborate hoax.

Cheers,
Michael

Subject: RE: The death of Mohammed al-Dura
From: mg
Date: 19 May 03 - 09:41 PM

I think the point was not friendly fire but some elaborate hoax.   Or perhaps a martyrdom operation. That the Palestinians sacrificed him somehow. mg

Subject: RE: The death of Mohammed al-Dura
From: CarolC
Date: 19 May 03 - 08:23 PM

I can, Gareth. I think the poster want's people to think that he or she is Jewish and, by association, that all Jews are snide, backhanded, hateful people, who use childish tactics such as posting as Yasser Arafat and using ad hominem attacks on people who post things they don't like, as our two guests have been doing. Well, it's not working. I don't buy any of it.

Subject: RE: The death of Mohammed al-Dura
From: michaelr
Date: 19 May 03 - 08:19 PM

Well, here it is again... the preposterous assertion, designed to shut off debate, that to criticize the policies of the state of Israel makes you a Jew-hater. I thought we'd debunked that one already...

I did read the whole article, and don't see any proof either way. Certainly I'm not prepared to accept that theory as "the truth", as Guest NYC put it.

But let's look at likelihood... if IDF didn't shoot the boy, are you claiming he was killed by friendly fire?

Cheers,
Michael

Subject: RE: The death of Mohammed al-Dura
From: Gareth
Date: 19 May 03 - 06:55 PM

"GUEST,YA, I can't help but think that you and GUEST,New York City are in reality, virulent anti-Semites who are posting this kind of trolling as a way of making Jews look bad." The above post was from CarolC.

Eh ? Can anybody follow this inane logic ??

Gareth

Subject: RE: The death of Mohammed al-Dura
From: Wolfgang
Date: 19 May 03 - 03:43 PM

Ms. Schapira, the author of the German TV documentation about the death of the boy, has been threatened afterwards by some German Muslims (she says one third of all reactions she got was hate mail). The documentation was called a 'libel of the martyr and the whole Palestinian people' and that 'this will not go without punishment' and that each Muslim is called upon to react accordingly.

Some people don't like it if what is truth for them is challenged.

Institutions inviting Ms. Schapira get threats.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: The death of Mohammed al-Dura
From: mg
Date: 19 May 03 - 03:09 PM

I have no trouble at all believing he was killed by bullets from either side..as a tragedy of war...I don't think Israelis deliberately killed him and I don't think he was sent there as a martyr either.

mg

Subject: RE: The death of Mohammed al-Dura
From: CarolC
Date: 19 May 03 - 02:58 PM

P.S. As I said before, I'll accept whatever the Jewish human rights organizations have to say about it.

Subject: RE: The death of Mohammed al-Dura
From: CarolC
Date: 19 May 03 - 02:56 PM

GUEST,YA, I can't help but think that you and GUEST,New York City are in reality, virulent anti-Semites who are posting this kind of trolling as a way of making Jews look bad.

Subject: RE: The death of Mohammed al-Dura
From: Wolfgang
Date: 19 May 03 - 02:55 PM

Ms. Schapira's film has been nominated for the best TV documentation in Germany.

She had set out originally to make a documentation about the feelings of soldiers who know they have killed a child. During the interviews she slowly realised that she had to change the subject for what she had considered to be true beyond doubt was perhaps not true after all.

Her documentation, however, is open-ended in the sense that she does not know for sure what is true. But the best guess, after her research, is that the deadly shots have come from Palestinians.


Wolfgang

Subject: RE: The death of Mohammed al-Dura
From: GUEST,YA
Date: 19 May 03 - 02:42 PM

Thank you, my great American friends CarolC and Michaelr, for rejecting this ridiculous theory being perpetrated by obvious Zionists.

We know that Zionists control the American media and count on friends such as you to set the record straight

Subject: RE: The death of Mohammed al-Dura
From: Ebbie
Date: 19 May 03 - 12:43 PM

Who knows. 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."

In any event, the boy is dead. "WAR is a god that requires human blood."

Subject: RE: The death of Mohammed al-Dura
From: CarolC
Date: 19 May 03 - 12:28 PM

I'd like to see what the Jewish human rights organizations have to say about it before I accept any of it as truth.

Subject: RE: The death of Mohammed al-Dura
From: Nerd
Date: 19 May 03 - 11:01 AM

Let's look at the quote right after Michaelr's, despite his suggestion that his quote is the only significant sentence in the article:

"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. In fact, the Israel Defense Forces, or IDF, seem to prefer to soft-pedal the findings rather than bring any more attention to this gruesome episode. 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."

Now if you wish to suggest that Israeli academics are always bound to find the government innocent, you don't know a lot about Israel or about academics...and a lot of Israeli soldiers and ex-soldiers are sympathetic to the plight of Palestinian Arabs, even to the point of refusal to serve in occupied territories. So I think this is as close to an objective set of findings as there will ever be on the issue.

Subject: RE: The death of Mohammed al-Dura
From: artbrooks
Date: 19 May 03 - 09:49 AM

It is unfortunately true that a few of the most prolific posters here decided long ago that one side in this tragic conflict is always wrong and the other always right.

Subject: RE: The death of Mohammed al-Dura
From: Gareth
Date: 19 May 03 - 09:00 AM

The silence is not just loud but very eloquent!

Gareth

Subject: RE: The death of Mohammed al-Dura
From: GUEST
Date: 19 May 03 - 08:55 AM

Sometimes, it's silence that speaks very loudly. It's very interesting that some people who wrote volumes of anti-Israel tracts in this forum when the event occurred, are now ignoring this issue when the evidence is uncovered that Israel did not kill the boy.

The silence on this thread is very loud indeed.

Subject: RE: The death of Mohammed al-Dura
From: Gareth
Date: 18 May 03 - 07:06 PM

New York City,

I suspect you are correct when you suggest that no matter what the forensic proof, or not, the fanatics will not believe any doubt from the "true party line".

Micheal

- having taken the time to actually read the posted article I am not prepare to dismiss it out of hand. The problem is under no forseable circumstances is it possible to do any objective investigation. Which is a pity.

Gareth.

"Leon Trotsky is a facist,
And I know this for a fact,
'Cos I read it in Pravda,
When they signed the non agression pact."

"Oh my darling, Oh my darling,
Oh my darling Party line,
Don't forsake me, overtake me,
Oh my darling party line,"

Subject: RE: The death of Mohammed al-Dura
From: GUEST,New York City
Date: 18 May 03 - 05:28 PM

Oh, so discount the investigation because it took place in Israel, the only country in the region with a free press and independent judiciary.

michaelr's dismissal reeks of anti-Semitism.

And if he bothered to actually read the report, he'd of seen how balanced it is.

Subject: RE: The death of Mohammed al-Dura
From: michaelr
Date: 18 May 03 - 03:00 PM

Quote: "...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."

No comment necessary, I think.

Cheers,
Michael

Subject: RE: The death of Mohammed al-Dura
From: GUEST,New York City
Date: 18 May 03 - 11:09 AM

My appologies to the music readers. It was my intention to file this as a BS thread.

Subject: The death of Mohammed al-Dura
From: GUEST,New York City
Date: 18 May 03 - 11:07 AM

Remember Mohammed al-Dura, the Palestinian boy who was supposedly killed by the Israelis while in his father's arm. Now you can read the truth about the case in the June issue of The Atlantic Monthly.   Or, you can read it on-line by clicking here.