In Case You Missed It...

A French (!) appeals court has finally ruled, bottom line, that the Al-Dura footage was faked.

Just a re-cap, in short:

1. You probably recognize the photo, even if you don't recognize the name.

2. The photo was taken from a video filmed on 30 September, 2000 -- Just two days after what is considered the beginning of the "Second Intifada." Because of the timing, poor little Mohammed Al-Dura became the symbol for the so-called victims of "Israeli agression."

The press all over the world ran with the story about how terrible it was that this little boy was caught in the cross-fire and killed by the IDF.

3. The filming was done by Talal abu Rahme, an Arab Palestinian cameraman who works for French TV and CNN. The footage was sent to French Channel 2, and broadcast with commentary by Charles Enderlin, the Middle East Correspondent stationed in Jerusalem (He was not present at the filming.)

4. Enderlin and French2 distributed the film footage, which had been edited to remove a few seconds of footage, to anyone who asked for it -- free of charge.

5. Between 2000-2004, evidence began piling up that the footage had been faked, and Enderlin had been lied to about the truthfulness of the video.

6. In 2004, a French media critic, Philip Karsenty, publicly called for the dismissal of Enderlin and his boss for having not cleared the record even after having discovered that the original footage had been faked.

7. In order to clear his name, Enderlin sued Karsenty for libel. The original court that "heard" the case did a clearly shoddy job of trying to find the truth, and the case went to appeals.

There are probably hundreds of websites with claims that each side is true, but if one simply views the evidence, it is CLEAR that the entire thing was faked. Faked. FAKED.

And since this video was one of the first faked videos out there, and it did such an effective job of making Israel look bad, other "journalists" have followed by faking other photos and video.

What really stinks is that there really are at least some poor Palestinian people out there who want to live in peace, at least I hope there are, yet they are unfortunately calling "Wolf!" long after most of their original sympathizers stopped believing the cry for help.