Israel’s Al Dura probe a shame

Israel has long wanted to escape the blame for the murderous shooting by its armed forces that killed 12-year-old Palestinian boy, Mohammad Al Dura. Therefore, it is not surprising that an Israeli government-produced investigation has concluded that a French news report that had blamed Israeli troops for shooting dead Al Dura, was baseless.

Israel has a history of launching mischievous investigations to exonerate itself from any responsibility for its barbaric actions against the Palestinians. However, this latest report is a new low even for Israel: The Israeli investigation has now come up with the nonsense that “the committee’s review of the raw footage showed that in the final scenes, which were not broadcast by France 2, the boy is seen to be alive”.

Initially, Israel had apologised for the killing. Then it claimed that the Palestinians had killed Al Dura. Now, it claims that the boy was alive at the time the pictures were taken! All this misses the vital point that Israel does not want a truthful answer. It wants to dodge any blame for the boy’s murder.

And to prove that Israeli investigations are nothing short of propaganda warfare, the investigators of this report never spoke to or interviewed Al Dura’s father, who of course tried to shield his son from the deadly exchange.

Pretending that it is the victim in all this is ludicrous and Israel should not waste time in spinning such lies for the international community. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a past master at putting up successive issues for the world to focus on, in the hope that the international community will go running after such distractions and miss the core issue that the war with Palestinians continues because Israel is occupying Palestine. Throughout its history, Israel has suppressed the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people. This latest Israeli report on a French TV programme is simply another evidence of how desperate Israel is to justify its racist policies against Palestinians and distract attention from its ongoing occupation and land grabs.