My friend Dubai Pauli, an avid news junkie and Times reader, is on the job again. Because he lives in the Emirates, with the eight hour time difference, I get early warnings of items of interest from the “paper of record.’
Pauli sent me early notification of this Shmuel Rosner NY Times blog post on the Israeli al-Dura report. Rosner says he now believes (sort of) the report after years of questioning Israeli attempts to debunk the original French news story. But the Rosner post sheds little light on why he or anyone would now believe the Israelis.
The conclusion of the Rosner’s post is interesting because the writer is basically a shill for the his country’s right-wing, but even he cannot fully swallow the hasbara hook.
This evolution [from skeptism to belief in Israeli version of al-Dura video] brings me relief: I want to be able to trust what my government says. But that carries its own problem: what about my own motivations? Have I really been swayed by the new evidence, or am I finally giving in to a deep desire of letting Israel off the hook?
Yesterday the online Times removed Isabel Kershner’s controversial pro-Israel piece on the al-Dura report from the news section and placed it in the “Lens” blog. This seemed like an attempt to distance the news department from Kershner’s advocacy journalism. However with today’s inclusion of the Rosner post, it seems more like pro-Israel advocacy is alive and well at the Times.
Jamal al-Dura, Mohammed’s father, has called for an international investigation of the incident and is willing to open his son’s grave and exhume the body for an autopsy. Neither Kershner nor Rosner mentioned al-Dura’s offer in their pieces.
Maybe these writers should get on Dubai Pauli’s news mailing list.
Or they should read this Facebook post by Palestinian Authority spokesperson, Nour Odeh:
I will not dignify the report purporting that the brutal murder of Mohamad Al-Dura thirteen years ago was a Palestinian hoax – so I will not share it on my timeline. I will say this however: This panel and its fantastical report is a reflection of a revolting and senseless attitude of supremacy and racism against Palestinians; to have the audacity to claim that a Palestinian father faked the shocking images of his son’s killing and to maintain this lie for 13 years with the supposed active participation of the entire society, is a statement of the dehumanization and demonization of the Palestinian as a human being and of the entire society. Mohamed Al-Dura was killed with chilling inhumanity; that image will haunt the perpetrators always and all the panels and so-called experts cannot and will not change the fact: Thirteen years ago, we all lost a piece of our humanity when that boy died in his father’s helpless arms. On a professional note, it is dismaying and so very disappointing that media should be involved, directly or indirectly, in disseminating this kind of preposterous propaganda whose racism cannot be ignored, without so much as questioning the validity or motive of these false claims. Final note: the dark history of this on-going belligerent military occupation of Palestine does not need any hoax or staged incidents to expose its brutality; that evidence is clear for those who refuse to be blinded or side-tracked by hate, propaganda, and spin. May God rest your soul Mohamad….
Dutch posted this link in the “Reporters Without Borders” article.
https://mondoweiss.net/2013/05/investigation-questionable-impression.html#comment-564613
Devastating article about how completely wrong Dr. David (no bullet wounds). Wrong AND compensated by the Israeli government for his troubles.
The Israeli report is starting to come apart at the seams – see Haaretz front page story
‘Man behind Israeli report on infamous killing of Mohammed al-Dura has right-wing ties” – ‘worked with the notorious Shurat HaDin lawfare office’
http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/man-behind-israeli-report-on-infamous-killing-of-mohammed-al-dura-has-right-wing-ties.premium-1.525464
‘The man (Kuperwasser) behind a recent government report calling into question Israel’s responsibility for the iconic death of a Palestinian boy at the start of the second intifada worked for a right-wing group that sought to prevent the reporter who broke the story from continuing to work in Israel.
Brig. Gen. Yossi Kuperwasser, the director general of the Strategic Affairs Ministry, was employed by Shurat HaDin – Israel Law Center, which has pressed the Supreme Court to revoke the press passes of French journalist Charles Enderlin and his employer, the France 2 television network, for alleged ethical violations in reporting the incident. The report does not fully disclose this information, despite mentioning Enderlin. Further, it does not include the testimony of the only Israeli official to say the army fired on the boy and is unclear about the nature of the committee that wrote it.’
RE: “This evolution [from skeptism to belief in Israeli version of al-Dura video] brings me relief: I want to be able to trust what my government says. But that carries its own problem: what about my own motivations? Have I really been swayed by the new evidence, or am I finally giving in to a deep desire of letting Israel off the hook?” ~ Shmuel Rosner
MY COMMENT: Yes, it brings Shmuel Rosner relief from the cognitive dissonance associated with thinking that his county’s army shot and killed an innocent civilian child, and then had the chutzpah to lie about it!
FROM WIKIPEDIA [Defence mechanisms]:
SOURCE – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_mechanisms
The father is willing to dig up his son’s body for autopsy. I guess the dna in the corpse would establish if it was the remains of his son? If so, why was that not mentioned?
A corpse can be identified even after being dead and buried for some time. Also, the cause of death, including bullets, etc. More: http://www.exploreforensics.co.uk/exhuming-a-corpse-for-forensic-analysis.html
Ira,
I’ve been following the re-emergence of the al-Dura story fairly closely, agonizing as it is. I haven’t read the 50 pg GoI report yet and I don’t know anything about this Rosner, but I thought this guy’s NYT piece was well done.
Israel and nuttos like Nahum Shahaf and Richard Landes have managed to kick up a cloud of doubt over the years with various points of “evidence” attacking Chas. Enderline’s 2000 France2 report on the al-Dura murder. With years of aggregated bad evidence, GoI is able to grab the microphone and try to make a case that this killing was a fake.
Given the timing this seems to be an attempt to help the French Israel-firster ignoranus Philippe Karsenty who has been sued by Enderline and France2 for calling the story a hoax and whose defense is being backed by Israeli money.
So in the face of this new sh*tstorm raised by Israel, I don’t think Rosner’s position or doubts are out of line. He says that after years of refusing to believe that the video is anything other than what it purports to be, he “accept[s] the possibility that the Israel government’s take might be correct after all.” Accepting a possibility is something any open minded person would do.
Rosner’s article strikes me as a genuine person trying to decide what the truth is and being open minded about the evidence, even that which comes from GoI.
Rosner does get a couple of important facts wrong.
1. “France 2 aired some 60 seconds of footage allegedly showing the killing of a Palestinian boy in the Gaza Strip” – wrong. France2 aired just a portion (I think it was 28 seconds) of the raw footage, which was 60 seconds. The link Rosner provides is to the raw footage, not to the France2 version. This is a part of the whole controversy – why did Enderline edit out the last few seconds where the boy is moving, which contradicts his voice-over seconds before saying the boy was dead.
2. “Israel did not accept responsibility” – Israel initially accepted responsibility for the boy’s death and then started down a long road of spin.
Off topic: did you see the Church of Scotland’s revised report on the holy real estate transaction with the Jews? You were partly right about them modifying that one section.