Brit Tzedek v’Shalom

Jewish Alliance for Justice and Peace

The Jewish Advocate

January 27, 2006
Shayndi Raice

A Boston University professor has established a Web site devoted to challenging the authenticity of media footage of Palestinians being killed by Israeli soldiers.

Coining the term “Pallywood” to refer to staged Palestinian violence, Professor Richard Landes claims that many scenes of violence picked up by the Western press implicating Israel in horrific violence against civilians is faked.

Since the medieval historian started www.seconddraft.org three months ago, he has been trying to alert the Jewish community and mainstream press to what he sees as inaccuracy of violent footage of the Middle East. His Web site has received more than 30,000 hits.

Lande’s primary claim is that the famous September 2000 shooting of a man and his 13–year–old Palestinian son, Muhammad al–Durrah, was affected. The event was captured on film by a Palestinian cameraman and broadcast on France 2 television. After being broadcast all over the world, al–Durrah became a poster child for the intifada. Seconddraft.org provides video footage, frame by frame, claiming to demonstrate that the murder of al-Durrah was false, as the clips show that the child falls and continues to move after being shot.

Although Israel initially claimed responsibility, officials later denied after an investigation that their bullets were responsible for al–Durrah’s death. They argued that the angles of the Israeli and Palestinian gunmen made it impossible for Israel to be responsible. However, the Israeli government has not claimed that the entire event was a sham.

“Not only am I confirmed in the belief that this [al–Durrah] was staged, but the other footage indicates that staging is the norm,” said Landes.

According to Landes, his submitted documentation to mainstream media outlets has been rejected. He attributes the lack of interest to multiple factors, including the media’s need to create moral equivalency between Palestinians and Israelis. “The poison is the evenhandedness,” he said. “If they can’t accuse the Israelis of the same thing as the Palestinians, then they will make up stuff to balance it.”

Landes also claimed that some journalists have admitted to him that if they reveal the inaccuracy of Palestinian footage, their colleagues will not be safe in Palestinian areas or may be denied access. “There’s no price to being critical of the Israelis,” said Landes. “If you challenge an Israeli, he’s going to try and reason with you, but if you challenge a Palestinian, none of your journalists will go back there again.”

He pointed out that the female journalist responsible for the October 2000 lynching of Israeli soldiers in Ramallah by Palestinians has been in hiding ever since.

The local Jewish community has had mixed reactions to Lande’s new project. Andrea Levin, executive director of CAMERA, a pro-Israel media watchdog, said that a significant amount of footage has proven to be false. “It was absolutely clear that there was a staging underway,” she said, although she did not specify the extent to which the al-Durrah footage was staged.

However, other members of the Jewish community are somewhat cynical of Landes and his goals. David Matz of Brit Tzedek v’Shalom, an American organization that supports a negotiated two–state solution, said that there is no new information on Lande’s Web site that proves or disproves the allegations about the accuracy of al–Durrah footage. “There are a lot of people who are very critical of the press and they’re just taking their shots,” he said. “My guess is that with something as inflammatory as that, the mainstream press would have picked it up a long time ago if they had anything.”