page_title: Muhammad al-Durrah incident
section_title: 2000: Shahaf report
hierarchical_section_title: Muhammad al-Durrah incident / Controversy / Israel's inquiries / 2000: Shahaf report
caption_attribution_description: Yom Tov Samia
context_page_description: The Muhammad al-Durrah incident took place in the Gaza Strip on 30 September 2000, on the second day of the Second Intifada, during widespread protests and riots throughout the Palestinian territories against Israel's military occupation. Jamal al-Durrah and his 12-year-old son, Muhammad, were filmed by Talal Abu Rahma, a Palestinian cameraman freelancing for France 2, as they were caught in crossfire between the Israeli military and Palestinian security forces. The footage shows the pair crouching behind a concrete cylinder, the boy crying and the father waving, then a burst of gunfire and dust. Muhammad is shown slumping as he is mortally wounded by gunfire, dying soon after.
  Fifty-nine seconds of the footage were broadcast in France with a voiceover from Charles Enderlin, the station's bureau chief in Israel. Based on information from the cameraman, Enderlin told viewers that the al-Durrahs had been the target of fire from the Israeli positions and that the boy had died. After an emotional public funeral, Muhammad was hailed throughout the Muslim world as a martyr.
  The Israel Defense Forces accepted responsibility for the shooting at first but later retracted.
context_section_description: Major General Yom Tov Samia, the IDF's southern commander, set up an inquiry soon after the shooting. According to James Fallows, Israeli commentators questioned its legitimacy as soon as it started; Haaretz called it "almost a pirate endeavour." The team was led by Nahum Shahaf, a physicist, and Joseph Doriel, an engineer, both of whom had been involved in the Yitzhak Rabin assassination conspiracy theories. Other investigators included Meir Danino, chief scientist at Elisra Systems; Bernie Schechter, a ballistics expert, formerly with the Israeli police's criminal identification laboratory; and Chief Superintendent Elliot Springer, also from the criminal identification lab. A full list of names was never released.
  Shahaf and Doriel built models of the wall, concrete drum and IDF post, and tried to reenact the shooting. A mark on the drum from the Israeli Bureau of Standards allowed them to determine its size and composition. They concluded that the shots may have come from a position behind Abu Rahma, where Palestinian police were alleged to have been standing.
  On 23 October 2000, Shahaf and Doriel invited CBS 60 Minutes to film the reenactment. Doriel told the correspondent, Bob Simon, that he believed the boy's death was real, but that it had been set up to damage Israel. Those in the know, he said, included Abu Rahma and the boy's father, though the latter had not realized the boy would be killed. When General Samia heard about the interview, he removed Doriel from the investigation. The investigators' report was shown to the head of Israeli military intelligence; the key points were published in November 2000 as not ruling out that the IDF had shot the boy, though describing it as "quite plausible" that he had been hit by Palestinian bullets aimed at the IDF post. The inquiry provoked widespread criticism. A Haaretz editorial said, "it is hard to describe in mild terms the stupidity of this bizarre investigation."
caption: Major General Yom Tov Samia
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