Sloppy myths

The reporting on the death last Friday of Abir Aramin shows how sloppiness and laziness can count for so much in particular circumstances. The 10-year-old Palestinian girl from the West Bank town of Anata, near Jerusalem was struck in the head during a clash between stone-throwing Palestinians and Israeli border police, who responded with rubber bullets. She had evidently gone out to watch during a school break.

AP stated that she had died because of an Israeli rubber bullet. Agence France Presse said she had been "wounded in her head by shrapnel from a stun grenade fired by the Israeli force". The New York Times was less specific: she died from wounds sustained when "she was hit by fire from the Israeli border police".

This Monday, however, Ha'aretz reported that the autopsy "with a pathologist hired by Aramin's family in attendance" had ruled out rubber bullets as the cause of death.

No bullet wounds were found on her body, and the skull injury that caused her death was a large one, whereas rubber bullets, even if they do not penetrate, usually make small wounds.

That is, she may have been hit by a (Palestinian) rock, just as Mohammed Al-Dura was probably hit by a Palestinian bullet.

What I find interesting is not what the three Western news outlets reported (what the relatives had said, basically), but that in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz on the same day that they published the results of the autopsy, there was an article that, in passing, mentions the little girl's death and assumes that the Border Police were responsible.

So, not only do the Western news outlets not correct their story, but an Israeli journalist accepts the 'witness' account despite what his own newspaper was printing that day to contradict it. Out of such things are made fatal myths.

All this and more from CAMERA.

(via Augean Stables)

Icon of Hatred - The impact of al-Dura

I have posted many times on the case of Muhamed al-Dura and the France2 footage showing his death "at the hands of the Israeli army", of the impact of the footage, and the recent trials in France. (For a quick summary of the controversy surrounding the footage, go here).

Richard Landes of Second Draft, a site dedicated to the case, produced a film analysing the al-Dura footage, which, if you haven't seen it, should be watched first: The Birth of an Icon (.wmv 13.52). First, that is, before you watch this new film Icon of Hatred (.wmv 17.39). Both are available here. Icon of Hatred focusses on the effect of the al-Dura footage, the use it has been put to by Jihadists, Islamists, the Palestinians, and usual mouths of the Western Left. It's powerful and unremitting. (Perhaps the worst clips are those with children, their eyes alight at the prospect of martyrdom.)

Al-Dura Trial 3

This took place on Thursday; the decision is expected in January. From Richard Landes' brief report, it sounds like a reply of the Karsenty trial with solid arguements and evidence from the defense and virtually nothing from the plaintif. And there's a fourth trial to come, though Landes says nothing about it except that it is "really bizarre".

France2 lose second al-Dura trial

France2 has lost the second al-Dura trial, though the grounds for the decision have nothing to do with the authenticity of the film.

Judging that France 2 did not provide proof for the allegation that Pierre Lurçat is the director of the site on which the incriminated statements were published [League de Défense Juïve], the court rejected the plaintiff’s case without further consideration.

I must confess that I have given little attention to this second trial on the assumption that it would be another stitch-up. Obviously, I was mistaken.