Journal for the Study of Antisemitism

164 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:139
them, and threw at least one bloodied body out of a second-floor window to
rioters below, who proceeded to rip it apart. 97
The incident had been videotaped by an Italian television network,
which released it to an international feed. The tape was shown on worldwide
television. A still photo of one of the demonstrators, raising his bloody
hands in exultation, was published widely. The Palestinian Journalists’
Union issued a stern reproach to the Italian network, which promptly apologized
to the Palestinian Authority. 98 The union also warned the Associated
Press bureau in Israel that if its coverage did not improve, the group would
adopt “all necessary measures against AP staffers.” 99
It was not long before the image of Muhammad al-Dura resurfaced.
The video of his apparent death continued to be televised throughout Arab-
Islamic countries and Europe, inciting anti-Israel hatred. The boy’s
wounded father, giving interviews from his hospital bed in Amman, Jordan,
became a regional celebrity. Arab poets and songwriters composed dozens
of tributes to his memory; postage stamps were issued in the boy’s honor;
streets were named after him. 100
Besides the fact that the murder of the Israeli reservists received much
less media attention, noticeably lost in the coverage of the al-Dura incident
was the surfacing of empirical evidence that strongly suggested that the boy
could not have been shot by the IDF.
In June of 2003, the Atlantic Monthly ran a cover story by James Fallows,
a respected investigative journalist, analyzing the incident in great
detail, and concluding that al-Dura–if he died at all–was most likely the
victim of an errant gunshot from Palestinian gunmen. Fallows reported that
Palestinian Arabs had staged some alleged shootings near the site of the al-
Dura incident, and only the Palestinian stringer for French television, of all
the cameramen nearby that day, got the footage. 101
Fiamma Nirenstein, a veteran Italian journalist and Jerusalem correspondent
(and now a member of Parliament), suggested that the failure
went well beyond simple media bias. Using the repeated images of the al-
Dura tragedy, certain intellectuals and journalists, she wrote, reflected contemporary
antisemitism:
97. See Barbara Demick, “Wrong Turn Took Soldiers Into Angry Crowd’s
Clutches,” Philadelphia Inquirer, October 13, 2000, p. A1.
98. Judy Lash Balint, Journalists Describe Constant Palestinian Intimidation,
EretzYisroel.org http://www.eretzyisroel.org/~jkatz/intimidation.html.
99. See Fallows, supra note 95.
100. E.g., the avenue in Cairo where the Israeli Embassy is situated was renamed
Muhammad al-Durrah Street. Orme, supra note 96.
101. Fallows, supra note 95.