Israel’s obsession with the propaganda war

If Israel’s government is to be believed, Palestinians have sunk so low as to be capable of faking their own deaths. Or wait, maybe the Israeli accusation of fakery is itself the indication of a horrifying new nadir. An Israeli report has concluded that Mohammad Al Dura, the 12-year-old Palestinian whose death in 2000 in Gaza was captured by a French public TV channel, was not killed by Israelis — and may in fact not be dead at all.

Back then, a short film of Mohammad and his father, both caught in a shootout, trying helplessly to seek shelter against a barrage of gunfire, was narrated by French Channel 2 correspondent Charles Enderlin and relayed around the world, turning the boy into a symbol of the brutality of the second Intifada and the Israeli occupation. Now, Israel says those same images are yet more proof of a global campaign to delegitimise Israel — and are, additionally, attempts to invoke the blood libel.

And so begins another ugly bout of the endless propaganda disease that is so endemic to this conflict. Israel is reported to have killed 1,397 Palestinian children not involved in hostilities since the start of the second Intifada, according to the NGO, Defence for Children International in Palestine, but there are no investigations into their deaths because none have been as emblematic as Mohammad.

Those images of his terrified face, seconds before his death, were relayed around the world and are now buried deep inside so many hearts: There are postage stamps of him, parks and streets named after him and screen-grab posters of that terrible moment raised on roads across the Arab and Muslim world.

This investigation, commissioned by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last year, seems intended only to give fuel to rightist Israel supporters — any report seeking to get closer to the truth ought to have bothered to speak to Mohammad’s father, or Enderlin, or France’s Channel 2. Instead, what this document provides is a spin and no new evidence. It has cued a flood of commentary, about lying Palestinians and a hostile foreign media, from right-wing Israeli commentators.

However, what stands out, yet again, is the disregard for anything Palestinians may have to contribute to the story. In effect, this report is telling Palestinians: Your words, your pain and your losses are insignificant, erasable bumps in this narrative.

It is no wonder that Mohammad’s father, Jamal Al Dura, said: “What saddens me is that I feel alone in the face of the Israeli propaganda machine ...”, going on to lament a lack of support from either the Palestinian National Authority in Ramallah or the Hamas government in Gaza.

With this investigation, Israel’s government exposes its obsession with trying to win the propaganda war, as though this will magically make everything OK. Netanyahu has called the Al Dura incident part of the “ongoing, mendacious campaign to delegitimise Israel”.

However, the problem is that nothing can possibly delegitimise Israel more than its prolonged and oppressive occupation of the Palestinian people — the escalating deaths; the daily, grinding humiliation. The longer it continues, the more such attempts to obfuscate or detract from this reality — rather than bring about its end — will only make matters worse.

— Guardian News & Media Ltd

Rachel Shabi is the author of Not the Enemy: Israel’s Jews from Arab Lands.