HOAX

The Israeli Crime That Wasn’t By Alyssa A. Lappen
More than four years have passed since the picture of Mohammed Al Durrah was aired across the world, but the public still imagines the boy's Sept. 30 2000 presence at Netzarim junction in terms described by President Clinton in My Life:

As the violence persisted, two vivid images of its pain and futility emerged,” he writes: “a twelve year old Palestinian boy shot in the crossfire and dying in his father's arms, and two Israeli soldiers pulled from a building and beaten to death, with their lifeless bodies dragged through the streets and one of their assailants proudly showing his bloodstained hands to the world on television.

In short, Al Durrah should never have been juxtaposed with a lynching, much less by the leader of the free world. Two weeks after the Al Durrah tapes aired, two Jewish soldiers lost their way in Ramallah, where they were savagely beaten to death, their innards eaten by hysterical and frenzied crowds screaming Allah Akbar--God is great--and seeking revenge for the supposed death of the boy. Indeed, the Al Durrah case is nothing more than a classic Islamic incitement to jihad.

But evidently, the shooting was merely photographic. “The violence erupted after the Al Durrah incident,” notes Daniel Seaman, director of Israel's Government Press Office, who openly calls the incident a hoax, a staged forgery.

Since Seaman made this charge publicly in late 2002, few mainstream news media picked up the story. These include the European Wall Street Journal and New York Sun, which both ran columns in November, respectively by Stephane Juffa, the Metula Press Agency (MENA) chief in Israel and Nidra Poller, an expatriate writer in France.

Nearly two years ago, France 2 Jerusalem bureau chief Charles Enderlin -- also the vice president of Israel's foreign press association -- threatened to sue. On January 2, 2003, the legal adviser to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon wrote to Enderlin, noting that Israel is a free country. Seaman named neither Enderlin nor France 2. But if he felt injured by Seaman's remarks, Enderlin was more than welcome to take appropriate legal action. The counsel advised Enderlin, Israel has “reliable information” that the case was indeed a fraud, the counsel advised Enderlin, however. At long last, in November, attorneys of France 2 and Enderlin have sued in France -- not Seaman, not Israel, not Metula, not the Wall Street Journal, but “X.”

Before detailing French statutes making such a preposterous case possible, a brief recap of the Al Durrah hoax is in order.... READ ON