"...peekaboo ..."
Some will say this is no case for levity but sometimes the eternal comedy of the universe just demands a moment of it. Where is Muhammed al-Durah? He would be twenty-four or perhaps twenty-five if he is still alive. I've got no idea. You would have to ask his father or Hamas or perhaps France 2 and they for sure will never tell you. They will take that information to their graves. Apparently it's a French thing. But I've already made an educated guess about where he was on the night of 30 September 2000. He was home with his family watching himself on CNN. Chances are they were eating KFC. It's finger-lickin' good.
Two days ago an Israeli Government enquiry delivered its report on the affair. Twelve years after the event. Hallelujah. Better late than never as the Archbishop said to the Inquiry Into Child Abuse In Religious Organisations. (sorry. Australian joke). First of all he was not shot by the IDF. Ahuh. I recall saying exactly that the first time I saw the clip on the ABC News at about the same time as young Muhammed as we now know was watching himself on CNN and every other station that broadcasts into Gaza. Again and again and again.
There were many reasons to conclude that. It was more convincing the closer you looked at it. This was something else entirely. There was no question about it.
Nevertheless I was grievously duped. I thought I was looking at something that might be even worse than what we were being invited to perceive. Something sinister beyond imagination. Something new. It seemed to me the shooting of this child had to be deliberate. And if it wasn't the Israelis who else could it be?
There was no doubt this thing gurgled quickly into a blood libel in classic form but if the killing was deliberate, or even a stage accident, what horror was this? An ideology with a hold over a population, and a man, the bosses can do this to a son and a regard for human life so scant they do it with a careful plan. A martyrdom operation. To what end? To create a blood libel as ugly as they get to launch a war of racist hatred against Israel and the Jews.
Was this a snuff film? Probably the only one ever made of the genre that wasn't apocryphal and it was being broadcast into every home in the world with the television news for a purpose that was the antithesis of life itself.
Peekaboo. I see you. That's a childish trick too far. Perhaps Muhammed will debut next week in a heat of the French version of The Voice singing the Brahm's Lullaby and clear up the mystery for all as soon as the court has delivered its verdict on the latest appeal.
We know now there is not a shred of evidence that the child was killed. He was not shot by anyone; as this blog and others have been saying for twelve months and more. This was an elaborate and rehearsed hoax that needed the active participation of Hamas, the "Palestinian" foreign press stringers at the scene and especially the France 2 man, the PA police, hospital staff, the extras and "the street" and something else absolutely critical besides.
For this terrible deception I blame the Australian media but that's only because I'm Australian. Like just about everyone I believed the boy was dead. I bought the prissy explanation that the last seconds of his life were just too terrible to show. No need to see. We are the ABC and what you are seeing is the best professional journalism your money can buy. Trust us. He's dead. France 2 tells us so.
That critical something else needed, apart from the active conspirators themselves, and they were legion, was the open ended acquiescence of France 2 and the rest of the Western media in the narrative. Take the story and run. It needed the media to consent to being duped and therefore to dupe the rest of us. This near perfect media crime had to have a complicit media anxious to take and carry the story and this thing got that in spades. It's almost as if the conspirators at the center of this evil thing seemed to know they could count on that.
People are still writing books about the Dreyfus Affair and they will be writing books about this affair as well a hundred years from now and for much the same reason. Those who think this will be quietly dropped don't understand Jews. For that reason it is fitting that the legal part of this drama is being played out in the French courts. The imminent decision turns on a narrower legal point than whether this was the outright fraud it obviously is and it will be interesting to see whether the court will grab what wiggle room it can to avoid a politically unpopular decision. Richard Landes certainly has these concerns.
Whatever happens this will not be the end of it.
Judicial cowards will always find a way if they have to and perhaps now more than ever. This will be a measure of how far the French legal system has buckled and even decayed under the pressure of this nasty crowd ideology. Perhaps very seriously. Perhaps not all. There are many closely watching.
This site provides all the background needed on this affair. The Elder has started collecting al-Dura stamps. And the excellent CiF Watch has been bringing up the Guardian's disgusting role in this racist libel in excellent detail and ungentlemanly style. Australian media take note. There is a point where being duped becomes willing and another where electing to stay duped crosses to joining the conspiracy.
cross posted Geoffff's Joint