The end of a lie

The pictures went around the world, taken by the cameraman of French Israel correspondent Charles Enderlin (France 2) in September 2000. They show how twelve-year-old Mohammed al-Dura, whom his father tries in vain to protect, dies in a hail of bullets from the Israeli army. The correspondent's original quote: "Jamel and his son are the target of Israeli gunmen. Another volley, Mohammed is dead and his father seriously injured." Al-Dura has since been revered in the Arab world as a martyr of the intifada, and schools and squares in Arab countries are named after him. His likeness is printed on postage stamps.

In an initial phase, Israel apologized for the boy's death and trusted the correspondent, who is a respected journalist. In Paris, however, Philippe Karsenty, who runs a media monitoring agency, soon described the report as a fake. He used polemical words - and Charles Enderlein sued for defamation. As early as 2003, German journalist Esther Schapira filmed "Three bullets and a dead child" and also cast doubt on Enderlein's account.

There are countless oddities in this case and very little evidence. Enderlin's broadcaster France 2 only released the unused sequences under threat from the Paris court. Karsenty was convicted and acquitted on appeal, but the verdict was overturned by the Court of Cassation following an appeal by Enderlin. The final verdict was to be announced in May.
But the Israeli government beat the court to it: it published the report by its experts, which had only been announced for the summer. It states: Charles Enderlin's account is false. Prime Minister Netanyahu demanded a rebuttal and an apology. He spoke of a propaganda staging to "justify terrorism".

The fact that Israel only began investigating the case a year ago is one of its oddities. Just like the fact that Charles Enderlin himself now claims that the boy survived, at least directly: he was operated on in Jordan and visited by the king. That would be proof of injuries. He calls the report biased and says he himself was not even heard.

The way she has been treated since then remains worse than the reporting back then. For years, Enderlin refused to tell the truth in a desperate struggle to "save his honor" and served up "lie after lie", writes Luc Rosenzweig, long-time Germany correspondent for Le Monde. France 2 had put all French broadcasters "including Arte" under massive pressure not to show Esther Schapira's film: "Worse still, ARD was threatened with the termination of cooperation agreements if the film was sold abroad." The attempt at blackmail was unsuccessful: the documentary was shown in Israel and many other countries. In France, Esther Schapira was at least admitted as a witness by the court, which postponed its verdict again - until the end of June.

In the meantime, the French Jewish Central Council is also calling for an investigation that goes further than the court's inventory. "We only want the truth," explains its president Richard Pasquier. "We have neither suspected nor accused Enderlin and the broadcaster France 2. But the many ambiguities listed in the Israeli report raise the question of whether they were unwitting victims of a fake staged for propaganda purposes."