Feb 27 Pre-Courtroom Primer - Al-Dura: What Really Happened?

In anticipation of Philippe Karsenty’s upcoming court hearing on the Muhammad al-Dura affair, Middle East and Media expert Tom Gross re-examines the original coverage of the famous incident in light of questions that emerged over the past seven years.

Karsenty was convicted of libel in 2006 for claiming France 2 Television’s coverage of al-Dura’s apparent killing was fraudulent. The next hearing in his appeal trial is scheduled for Wednesday, Feb. 27.

Tom Gross places the France 2 broadcast in a broader context, including: 

• The problem of Palestinian cameramen reporting from war zones

• Video footage of Palestinians filming fake ambulance evacuations on the same day and in the same place al-Dura was reportedly killed

• France 2’s failure to produce all of the raw footage at an earlier hearing in the trial

• A map depicting the battle scene, showing that al-Dura was not in the line of fire of Israeli soldiers.

• Examples of Palestinian and Arab efforts to manipulate media coverage

Click on the image above to view the video or here for more al-Dura resources.

Read the full Tom Gross interview transcript and comment on this video on our Backspin blog.