In the photo: A sketch on an IDF aerialphoto describing the exchange
of fire at the Netzarim junction in which a Palestinian child was killed,
according to Palestinian reports.
The sketch marks the location of the father and son who took cover adjacent
to a Palestinian shooting position at the junction. After Palestinian policemen
fired from this position and around it toward an IDF position opposite,
IDF soldiers returned fire toward the sources of the shooting and during
the exchanges of fire the Palestinian child was apparently hit and killed.
Source: IDF Website
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An IDF investigation and re-enactment appears to show conclusively that
the 12-year-old boy from Gaza, Muhammad al-Dura, was not shot by Israeli
soldiers - but was rather the victim of a cruel plot staged by Palestinian
sharp-shooters and a Palestinian television cameraman.
BULLETS FIRED FROM THE DIRECTION OF THE CAMERA
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The incident in question occurred on Oct. 6, when the boy and his father
happened to be walking past the scene of a major battle between Palestinian
snipers and Israeli soldiers. Former IDF sniper Yosef Doriel, who initiated
the re-enactment, said that he had several reasons to suspect that it was
not the Israelis who shot the boy. "For one thing, the boy and his
father were hiding behind and to the left of a barrel that was between
them and the Israeli forces," he told Arutz-7 today. "In the video clip,
you see four clean bullet holes to the side of them. These were not
shot by the Israelis - they are 'clean' and full holes, not mere grazes
that would have been formed by the 30-degree angle of the Israelis - but
rather by Palestinians (stationed more directly in front of the father
and son) to make sure that the two would stay put. |
Suddenly,
you see the boy lying down in his father's lap, with another bullet hole
in the wall directly behind him - again, it could not have come from the
IDF position, which was behind the barrel and to the side, but only from
the Palestinian position, which was more directly in front of the father
and son... At that point in the video, you can hear the firing - but the
Israeli position was far away! Rather, what happened was that a Palestinian
advanced to a spot very close to the photographer, and shot the fatal shot.
You can also notice that at that moment of the fatal shots, the photographer
suddenly 'shook' and the picture was blurred - a signal that the shots
came from close to him."
Images that shook the world
Images from the video footage of 12-year-old Muhammad al-Durrah being
shot dead in the Gaza Strip. The scene was filmed by a Palestinian Cameraman,
Talal Abu Rachmah.
Muhammad and his father cower behind a concrete wall
Muhammad's father, Jamal, tries to shield him (Israeli troops to
far right)
"Don't shoot", Jamal shouts towards Palestinian cameraman
A shot rings out and camera shakes
Muhammad collapses in his father's arms
Muhammad dies and the father is badly wounded
Doriel and a fellow physicist, Nachum Shachaf, proposed that O.C.
Southern Command Yom Tov Samiyeh oversee a re-enactment of the entire incident,
complete with the barrel and life-size dummies. Doriel concludes: "The
Palestinian forces staged the event. The Israelis were firing, for sure
- but the fatal shots came not from them, but from the Palestinian position
in front of the boy, behind the cameraman."
Source: Israel
National News, 31 October 2000
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An Analysis of the Incident at Netzarim
According to analysis, any shots coming from an angle of 110m and 30 degrees
would be deflected by the cement barrel and block placed on it. In
the diagram to the left you can see that the cement barrel fully protected
both the father and the son. This means the Israeli position had
no visibility to the either the boy or his father's position, and could
not have fired the shots.
The four large bullet holes were fired from an automatic weapon.
Because the holes climb the wall and go to the right, we can assume that
the gunman was left handed. The weapon was also fired from across the street,
either next to the Palestinian cameraman's location or in bushes at the
back of the cameraman. Had the bullets been fired from the Israeli
position far to the right, the holes in the concrete would have an elliptical
shape that fans out in the opposite direction from where the shot was fired.
The killing bullet-hole could be caused only by a sniper facing the
boy from the front (behind the bushes at the back of the cameraman), and
the noise recorded by the cameraman before the boy was seen dead was of
a very near-by weapon, with a sound quite different from the shooting heard
before, from distanced Israeli outposts.
If Jamal was shouting "Don't shoot" in the direction of the gunman,
it would appear that the sniper would not have been in the bushes behind
the camera man, rather he would have been next the cameraman on his right
side (Jamal is looking slightly to the right of the camera), possibly explaining.the
camera shift first to the right and then compensate to the left, based
on motion artifacts in the video and the strength of the noise of the gunshot.
If the noise had been from behind him, the camera effects probably would
have been different.
The single
hole behind the father's arm may or may not have been from the same weapon.
The hole was probably not made after it past through the boy. This can
be deduced because if the bullet had entered there would be evidence of
blood on the wall behind them, and there is no evidence of this in the
video photo. It appears that the bullet hit the wall and expelled
a large quantity of cement rubble in the reverse direction. The Palestinian
cameraman mentions the area was "filled with debris dust". Because
the father was pressing his son down and behind him, the boy was particularly
vulnerable to this ricochet material. It was probably this debris
that killed Muhammed and wounded his father. When the camera shook, Jamal
falls foward, and the final picture shows blood splattered away from the
wall.
It appears that the shot was aimed at specifically at the boy, as Jamal's
hand was shielding him. Why is the father leaving his son in such a dangerous
position? Most fathers would have put the boy between them and the concrete.
It must be that Jamal did not expect danger from the Palestinians, vans
and trucks across the street.
In the Australian 60 Minutes Interview with Talal Abu Rahma, Richard
Carleton suddenly said to Rahma, regarding what happened at Netzarim, and
the shooting, "It was Murder, wasn't it" Rahma was visibly startled, and
stammered a non committal response.
Based on: Incident
at Netzarim
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What Really Happened When Muchmud Al-dirah, the 12 Year-old Was Shot Dead
The Jerusalem weekly, Kol Ha'zman, published in its Oct. 6 issue an interview
with Talal Abu Rachmah, the TV photographer who filmed the death of Muchmud
Al-dirah, the 12 year-old child shot dead at Netzarim Junction on the third
day of Arab rioting.
This is what he said:-
"I was in my Gaza City office when we received notice that there was
shooting at Netzarim Junction...when I arrived there was already heavy
shooting...the shots came from all over, heavy shooting from every direction,
many shots from automatic weapons. It was terrible and I was forced to
take cover inside the van...the shooting intensified and then, for the
first time, some 15 meters in front of me, I saw the Reuters photojournalist
hiding there and next to him, a man and a child...after a few minutes,
the photojournalist managed to get out and the father and son crouched
and compressed themselves between the low block wall and a large metal
barrel. I heard him shouting and waving his hands in the direction of the
shots...he continued shouting but wasn't heard. Maybe he was trying to
attract attention that they would know that he was there with the child...I
thought that if I would move [in the direction of Al-dirah & son] then
I would endanger the lives of the four other people with me.
Until that moment, it was clear to me that the [Israeli] soldiers did
not notice that someone was hiding there...afterwards, I saw that he took
out a mobile phone and spoke to someone, but he wasn't successful in conversing
and then he took a bullet in the hand...an ambulance pulled up...and the
soldiers continued shooting. The driver was hit and was killed. This lasted
for a long time and then there was quiet for a few seconds and then, 'boom',
I heard another sound, different, louder than what I heard previously.
The area where they were taking cover filled with debris dust, we didn't
see a thing and when it disspated, I saw that the child who was all the
time close to his father, was lying on the ground, his face in the earth".
Source: Israel:
Behind the News
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The Killing of a 12 Year Old Child:
Another Perspective
Gal Luft
On Sept. 30, 2000, the news agency Agence France Presse had a cameraman
filming during an exchange of gunfire between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian
gunmen/rioters. The cameraman focused in tightly on a father and son who
were trapped behind a piece of concrete and the camera caught the gunshots
which eventually killed the boy and wounded the father.
This film has been shown over and over again and used as a demonstration
of the heartlessness and cruelty of the Israeli soldiers who were said
to have fired the killing shots. But neither Agence France Presse nor any
other news agency or medium has bothered to explain or show the context
in which that shooting took place. So an enterprising person who isn't
as automatically anti-Israel as Agence France Presse appears to be (not
to mention all the other news outlets -- both television and print -- which
showed this event without any explanation or context), obtained a broader
view of the scene of that shooting and has made it available to anyone
whose
mind isn't already closed. It's attached to this email and bears a close
look.
If you do that what you'll see is that the scene is a highway junction
in the middle of wide open fields, near a Jewish town which was the target
of a band of Palestinians, and an Israeli military outpost stationed on
that road -- in the lower right hand corner of the picture. Directly to
the north and south of the Israelis are two Palestinian locations from
which shots were being fired at the Israelis, and diagonally across the
intersection from the Israelis is another Palestinian position from which
shots were fired at the Israelis.
In other words, the Israeli position, designed to guard the road into
the Jewish town, was surrounded and being fired upon from three sides by
Palestinian gunmen. For reasons which none of the media has thought worth
exploring, the unfortunate father and son are caught in the line of fire
between the Israelis and the Palestinians across the intersection. However,
the Israelis cannot see the father and son because they're crouched behind
the concrete protection right alongside the Palestinian firing position.
Once you've absorbed the physical situation, a couple of questions have
to be asked:
1) Since there are no Palestinian homes or towns in the area, what were
the father and son doing there to begin with? There are no stores there.
No playgrounds. Nothing.
2) Why didn't the Palestinian gunmen, who were right next to the father
and son and who had to be aware of their presence, do anything to protect
them or at least signal to the Israelis that there were innocent civilians
caught in the crossfire?
The answers to these questions are frightening. The Palestinian father
and son were undoubtedly there as part of the original confrontation with
the Israelis. The Palestinians use children routinely because a) the Israelis
are reluctant to shoot when they know kids are there and if the kids get
killed, it makes fabulous anti-Israel propaganda -- witness the use to
which this incident has been put already. To give you an idea of what I
mean, read this
short article from the Jerusalem Post of October 6, 2000:
IDF: Palestinians offer $2,000 for 'martyrs' By Margot Dudkevitch
HEBRON (October 6) - The IDF Hebron area commander Col. Noam Tivon suggested
yesterday that the Palestinian Authority is encouraging children to participate
in clashes with the IDF by offering their families $300 per injury and
$2,000 for anyone killed.
The main goal of the Tanzim, or Fatah militia activists, is to continue
perpetrating attacks, to kill soldiers and settlers, he said.
He noted the cynical use by Palestinians of their children, who are
pushed to the forefront of the clashes.
Senior IDF commanders met with Palestinians security officials on Wednesday
night and yesterday morning in an attempt to quell the violence.
Tivon also met with his Palestinian counterpart yesterday morning. He said
that "the meeting took place after a night of severe, intense fighting,
with armed Tanzim later joined by armed Palestinian policemen who perpetrated
scores of shooting attacks, firing at the buildings of the Jewish community
and IDF soldiers. It is about time that the public understand that the
Tanzim are directly linked to PA Chairman Yasser Arafat - he is the only
one that can control the situation." Tivon said it was up to Arafat
to issue clearcut orders to his security forces and armed Fatah activists.
From the numerous meetings with Palestinian preventive security officials
he has conducted in the past week, it is clear they have no control over
the situation and the Tanzim, Tivon said.
"It's a game - one hand operates the Tanzim, the bad guys, and the other
hand the security services. But both hands are held up by the same body
and head. The Palestinian security officials are fully aware that they
have no control and are facing a difficult situation, but without a doubt
everything is orchestrated by Arafat."
He said the soldiers have acted with the utmost restraint and have not
initiated any shooting attacks or violence.
So that's the context in which you have to understand not only the death
of this child, but the participation of all of the kids you see in the
news every day.
These kids are taught in school that the best thing that can happen
to them is to die as martyrs for the Palestinian cause while killing or
attacking Jews. The hatred is so deep and pathological that the possibility
of a real peace process with these people right now will one day in the
future be thought by historians and psychologists to have been an interesting
case of mass self-delusion.
Sadly, there are still many Jews, and a whole lot of others in the media
(whose motives may be neither delusional or objective), who continue to
insist on the need to run after the Arabs and beg them to sit down, talk
and make peace. Their continuing blindness or anti-Israel hostility (take
your pick) will surely result in even more deaths and disaster as the Arabs
milk this cynical tactic for all it's worth while their politically correct
and anti-Israel friends and allies cheer them on and attack the Israelis
for defending themselves. Watch it with this in mind and I'll bet it will
all look different to you from now on.
The writer, a senior IDF research official, is a senior research fellow
at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy Policy Studies.
Source: Israel:
Behind the News
For further information see:
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