The tightening conspiracy theories about Muhammad al-Dura

There's a bit of an edit battle going on over at Wikipedia about Muhammad al-Dura, the little boy that came to symbolize the anti-Israeli side in the second intifadah. One very stubborn editor doesn't want to accept the premise that al-Dura even existed, let alone died, or was shot by Israelis.

To be sure, the closer you look at all this, the more iffy it sounds. But it takes a little nerve to just simply go ahead and assume that the whole thing is a fraud from beginning to end. But the editor does make one good point, which is this: if the whole thing were staged, why assume that anyone was killed? And for that matter, if it were staged, why not at least speculate that the boy was an actor?

Of course, for those who believe that al-Dura was a real 12-year old boy who was killed in an exchange of fire between Israeli and Palestinians, such a supposition is grotesque and obscene. And certainly, those who hold his victimhood up as a symbol for the intifadah, the idea is almost blasphemous. Such is the power of symbols.

Charles Enderlin, who provided much of the drive concedes as much when he writes that the inaccuracies in the reporting of the al-Durah story matter less than the larger truth the story conveys: that of Israeli brutality and oppression.

This is sloppy thinking, of course. If each individual symbolic case doesn't hold up to scrutiny, then the pattern doesn't exist. It only appears that way because the events are interpreted a certain way.

The al-Durah story is important, because it has become part of the anti-Israeli foundation, the foundation for the movement to denounce, disassemble, and replace a regime that can do such things as kill a 12-year old in cold blood.

The problem is that absolutely none of the evidence would support the assertion that al-Dura was killed in cold blood. Even if you believe that the footage and reporting are absolutely true, it is clear that al-Durah and his father were caught in a cross-fire. It is of course possible that someone in an Israeli position took careful aim and shot at them, but it is a far-fetched explanation.

So what we are left with - in the worst case - is this horrible thing called "collateral damage" - the awful luck of someone being killed simply because he lived in a war zone. And that is of course awful too, but it doesn't automatically make one side in the conflict more culpable than the other.

So the al-Durah event is misused as a symbol for the anti-Israeli cause in any event. What it would illustrate rather well is the awfulness of war and why it should be avoided.

Comments

[honda-radio]

Thx! :)