|
- Direction of the bullets indicating purpose: The bullets
come from the Palestinian position across the road, and,
as determined by ballistic experts, could have only come
from across the road. Furthermore, since there was no
crossfire at this time and the bullets were clearly single
bullets (see scenario
3 discussion), the shots must have been intentionally
fired.
- Evidence that the scene was deliberately set up:
- Photographic evidence from three cameramen show the
boy and father behind
the barrel well before the shooting begins, suggesting
a much greater probability that they were deliberately
placed there, rather than chance pedestrians
caught in a crossfire.
- Bullet direction suggests setting the scene for filming.
(Scenario
3)
- At funeral, the mourners already have posters of the
boy: In order for them to have this, they would have
had to go to his home in El-Bureij, get a picture, make
the poster and copy it for distribution all in approximately
one to two hours. In the meantime, his mother claims
that she didn't find out about his death until the later
evening news.
- Motive: Immense PR victory for the Palestinians. This
image provides the Palestinians with superb material for
scapegoating Israel which they rapidly exploited. It permits
them to:
- Culture of martyrdom among Palestinians: This horrific
scenario, unthinkable to Liberal Cognitive
Egocentrism is quite thinkable to the "cult of death"
with which Palestinians
indoctrinate their children. The highest honors are
bestowed upon a shahid,
both in the world he left
behind and the world to which he ascends. There is
certainly cynical use
of children among Palestinians.
|
- Morally abhorrent position: Morally, this is a difficult
position to take. This is unthinkable behavior for even
one's worst enemy. Gabriel Weimmann, a professor at the
Israeli Military Academy, who had his students try to
prove the Israelis did not commit the murder, hesitates
to believe this: "Maybe
even it was staged-although I don't think my worst enemy
is so inhuman as to shoot a boy for the sake of publicity."
To believe this, one could easily fall into the trap of
cynical and conspiratorial hatred, without regarding any
contrary evidence. Fortunately we have a credible alternative
to the notion that this was a "snuff film." The most compelling
evidence against this approach lies in evidence that the
boy was never shot.
- No blood: Talal
claimed the boy was bleeding for 15 or 20 minutes from
a stomach wound (which normally proves fatal from
loss of blood)), but the tape does not show any blood
on the ground where he lay, even the next day there is
blood under the father’s place at the barrel, but not
where Muhammed lay. Why would Talal not have gotten even
a few seconds of the boy bleeding on the ground?
- No ambulance evacuation: Given how valuable ambulance
evacuations are as footage and how quickly the ambulances
tend to arrive, and the fact
that we know an ambulance
is in waiting just behind the boy and the father,
one would expect a real case of evacuating the wounded
to be extremely valuable. Given Talal's perfect positioning
for filming an especially bloody scene of the wounded
father and dead son, it seems incomprehensible that Talal
has not one frame of an ambulance evacuation. Asked why
not by Nahum Shahaf over the phone, he responds evasively:
"because the ambulance driver was shot." Asked why he
didn't take a picture of that, he responded, "because
he was shot before he got to the boy." That of course
does not explain why he did not photograph the eventual
evacuation. Enderlin replies to both anomalies by claiming
that Talal told him that he was running out of batteries,
although if that were the case, why did he not just run
out his camera on the scene in front of him rather than
film a later, undistinguished
ambulance scene?
- No shot of the boy arriving at the Hospital: And even if his camera battery were dead, Talal could have called ahead to Shiffa hospital to make sure that the arrival of the father and son would get filmed some half an hour later. But we have no shots from Shiffa hospital.
- No bullets recovered: Shiffa hospital, despite allegedly
treating two people with a total of 8-12 bullet wounds,
produced no bullets or
bullet fragments. Nor did the Palestinian
police who examined the site the next day. Perhaps
aware that the lack of bullets made his case weak, Talal
told Esther Schapira "we have the bullets, the kind
of the bullets, I photographed them." When Schapira asks
where the bullets are Talal tells her to "consult the
general… he could tell you." When Schapira points out
that the General does not have any bullets, Talal, the
only employee of France2 at the scene at that time claims:
"France2 collected…". "So you're doing a better job than
the investigators," Schapira responds as Talal registers
the realization that his claim has no credibility. "No,
no, no" Talal answers with a smile as he realizes that
story won't work, "We…we… we have our secrets… we cannot
give anything… just anything."
|