Eye-witness’ remark to the Al-Durra Dispute
Open Letter, a Not-Unfriendly one, Re: Larry Derfner’s considered reply to Maurice Ostroff
By Endre MOZES*
2008 June 5
Dear Maurice, dear Larry –
Your exchange became sincere and inspiring, thanks to you both. My kudos, Larry, for the long way you made in your “considered reply” relative to your “Rattling the Cage…” article in the JPost on May 28. Sorry if my response is a bit late; I offered this first for publication to The Jerusalem Post, which chose not to publish it.
I add factual remarks to your dispute; for one who follows the case for years and was present in the Paris court at its last three meetings: on 2007 Nov 14 – the screening and cross-investigation of the France 2 TV film’s raw footage shown first ever, on 2008 Feb 27- the argumentations of the two sides, and on May 21 – to hear the verdict.
I eye-witnessed this first public screening of the raw footage – and of course not the event in Gaza and the making of the film; these were witnessed by one person only: Talal Abu-Rahmeh, the Palestinian cameraman. (One witness only, and what a witness…)
I watched the raw footage carefully from a good position in the courtroom, and scrutinized details, using my forty plus years of experience in learning, practicing and teaching engineering – a discipline working with facts only.
I save you from hearing my dozen, partly complex, partly indicative-only arguments, and am presenting you one argument only, which is clear, reproducible and sufficient to prove Israeli non-involvement and most probable Palestinian staging.
Let’s leave aside “clouds of dust” which fly away and are difficult for explanations. Let’s see bullet-holes. There are nine in the wall behind the Al-Durras, seen very well in full screen (in close-ups only 3 to 7 are seen). These bullet-holes are perfectly round on the head-on film/photos taken, meaning they hit also head-on, exactly from the direction of the cameraman. (More exactly: the holes are not smoothly round but ‘centrally symmetrical’.)
Larry, you are mistaken; the father does wave, ‘ya’ani’ – ‘as if’ – toward the Israeli position which is to his left at a sharp angle (seen both on Yom-Tov Samia’s map and on the raw footage). From there it is absolutely impossible to shot round holes into that wall. And there is not one trace of a lateral shot on that wall, so the Israelis didn’t fire there at all. Talal filmed head on, where the Palestinian position was located – as the known Yom-Tov Samia map shows.
For a very short study and geometrical illustration about the round holes watch the only 2-minutes long YouTube movie “Al-Dura Verdict”, available from our site (with Russian, Finnish and other introductions, etc). Into this film we inserted 7 seconds of the original France-2 movie, where you see online the Nr.2 overhead bullet hitting the wall!
In the 55 seconds published France-2 film there are two and later abruptly four holes in the wall. Did the cameraman stop filming in the midst of history’s greatest photo op? So he missed bullets nr.2 and nr.3. In the 18 minutes raw footage presented in the court there is not one more frame, related to the shooting at the Al-Durras. So Talal filmed one minute only out of 45 minutes of shooting. Do you believe it? Or this whole film is another product of Palestinian Hollywood.
For a longer study watch it on YouTube and then the adjacent 13 minutes long movie. There you’ll see footages taken by others, showing how the scene was prepared and how, as if to command, tens of people left the stage running, only the Durras didn’t move. Why?!
By the way, since I saw the elbow-moving and alertly looking Mohammed frames (10 seconds which France-2 CUT OUT before publishing the film!!) I do believe that the boy lived at the end of the filming. The probable Palestinian marksman helping to stage the film, didn’t kill the boy, only shot new holes (round, head on) into the wall above the al-Durras’ heads, to make the story real (easy for an average marksman from filming distance, without shooting the boy.)
The Paris judgement says not only that Karsenty ‘is not guilty’, but also that France-2′s work is flawed all along, and also that although PK didn’t prove beyond doubt it was ‘hoax’ but “presented a coherent mass of evidence to that” (Nidra Poller quotes in WSJ) and discusses positively Karsenty’s 14 arguments.
Larry, when you quote Shapira and other early expertise, don’t forget that those experts back then did not, or only partly and hastily saw the raw footage, not in long and repeated stils, discussing it bi-laterally, as we saw it in the court.) .
I suggest that you do these studies. Then you can decide what to do. But consider this: even the best debaters are not making great impression upon the public or the media experts if their views are always predictable along their political views. You can stand out if you dare to write about the Al-Dura case according to evidence and logic, instead of automatically according your side of the barricade. Then I’ll bravo you sincerely.
Call me, I’d willingly help you. You hardly believe in conspiracies - so do I.
Enderlin and France-2 did not co-operate originally in creating the hoax; they only failed to do their elementary due diligence before disseminating accusations of a capital crime. Later they objected the truth, i.a. by hiding the raw footage for 7 years and by brutally intimidating any criticism.
If you are interested I tell you my hypothesis – implicitly supported by the judgement – why Talal and Jamal cooperated in the Al-Dura film’s production by Pallywood.
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*Endre Mozes is founder chairman of Take-A-Pen www.take-a-pen.org , an international multilingual(18) grassroots organization for truth about Israel
**This letter was first published on TheAugeanStables website of Richard Landes with this title
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