Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu received today the report of the Government Review Committee on "The France 2 Al-Durrah Report, its Consequences and Implications." The report was presented by the Minister of International Affairs, Strategy and Intelligence Yuval Steinitz, in the presence of Director General of the Ministry of International Affairs and Strategy, Yossi Kuperwasser.
Prime Minister Netanyahu directed then Minister of Strategic Affairs Yaalon to set up the governmental review committee in September 2012. The purpose of the committee was to examine the Al-Durrah affair in light of the continued damage it has caused to Israel, and to formulate the Government of Israel's position with regards to it.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: "It is important to focus on this incident – which has slandered Israel's reputation. This is a manifestation of the ongoing, mendacious campaign to delegitimize Israel. There is only one way to counter lies, and that is through the truth. Only the truth can prevail over lies."
Minister of International Affairs, Strategy and Intelligence Yuval Steinitz: " The Al-Durrah affair is a modern-day blood libel against the State of Israel, alongside other blood libels like the claims of an alleged massacre in Jenin. The France 2 report was utterly baseless."
The Al-Durrah affair has its origins in a media report first aired by the French public television channel France 2 on September 30, 2000. The report claimed to show the killing of a Palestinian boy, targeted along with his father, according to the report, by fire from an Israeli position. The story was quickly relayed worldwide by the international media, which repeated the report's claim. The report had the immediate effect of harming Israel's international standing and fanning the flames of terror and hate.
Since that day, the narrative spawned by the France 2 report has served as an inspiration and justification for terrorism, anti-Semitism, and the delegitimization of Israel. The echoes of the Al-Durrah report, both in terms of accusations against Israel and in terms of media reports adopted uncritically by the international media which are later revealed to be false or misleading, have continued to resonate in the media coverage of Israel's operations against terrorist organizations.
This news is only 13 years too late.
The incompetence of the extraordinarily late Israeli response to this modern blood libel would be laughable if it wasn't so dangerous.
One appendix of the report shows stamps issued in Arab countries playing up the hoax as a means of inciting the world against Israel, from Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Morocco and Tunisia:
And Yemen's:
And Saudi Arabia's:
And a second stamp from Morocco:
At least nine Muslim countries - including "moderate" countries like Jordan and Morocco - commemorated a death that was nothing more than a hoax, for the sole purpose of inciting hundreds of millions of Muslims and Arabs against the Jewish state.
If you want to see all the Al Dura evidence yourself, this website has tons of materials, including videos and maps showing the impossibility of Israeli fire hitting the boy.