Impact of The Footage
Doreen Carvajal wrote that the France 2 footage acquired the power of a battle flag, with Helen Schary Motro arguing that it took its place alongside other iconic images of children under attack: the boy with raised hands in the Warsaw ghetto (1943), the Vietnamese girl doused with napalm (1972), the firefighter carrying the dying baby away from the Oklahoma City bombing (1995). Arab countries issued postage stamps bearing the images, parks and streets were named in Muhammad's honor, and Osama bin Laden mentioned Muhammad in a "warning" to President George Bush after 9/11. The images were blamed for the lynching of two Israeli reservists in Ramallah on October 12, 2000, and a rise in antisemitism in France, and could be seen in the background when journalist Daniel Pearl, an American Jew, was beheaded in February 2002.
Like other battle images, the authenticity of the footage was questioned precisely because it was so potent. Both sides invoked the idea of the "blood libel"—the ancient allegation against the Jewish people that they are willing to sacrifice other people's children. According to James Fallows, a small minority of Palestinians interpreted the killing as proof of anti-Jewish "blood libel" conspiracy theories. From the Israeli perspective, the world's willingness to accept it at face value was an example of antisemitism. French philosopher Pierre-Andre Taguieff compared the situation to the Dreyfus affair in 1894, when a French-Jewish army captain in Paris was found guilty of treason based on a forgery, but this time with Philippe Karsenty, Israel, and the Jewish people in Dreyfus's place.
The French news program Jeudi Investigation attributed the controversy to radical pro-Israeli commentators and their determined use of the Web to undermine Enderlin, because Muhammad is "an unbearable symbol" for them. Mid-East expert Jonathan Randal said: "Charles Enderlin is an excellent journalist! I don't care if it's the Virgin Birth affair, I would tend to believe him." Other journalists say Enderlin made a mistake but can't admit it. "Guy sends him pictures from Gaza, tells him the Israelis shot the kid, he believes him—I mean, even the Israeli Defense Forces spokesman believed it!" Jean-Ives Camus said. "But you can't own up one, two years after the fact." French journalist Catherine Nay (FR) wrote that Muhammad's death "cancels, erases that of the Jewish child, his hands in the air before the SS in the Warsaw Ghetto," arguing in effect that anti-Arabism or Islamophobia are the new antisemitism.
In 2012, journalist Doha Shams interviewed Jamal Al-Durrah, who maintains that he holds pride in his son as a "martyr": "I am proud of him not just as my son, but as a son of the Arab and Islamic nation. Muhammad’s cause and the images of his martyrdom moved the entire world, even people with little conscience...His cause is still out there, every day there are arguments over it". In the same interview, he criticized supporters of Israel over perceived contradictions in their version of the events of his son's death.
Read more about this topic: Muhammad Al-Durrah Incident
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