Good grief — Israel has finally woken from its seven-year trance and asked France 2 to provide it with the entire unedited 27-minute film that was shot by France 2’s Palestinian cameraman Talal Abu Rahma, from which a 55-second excerpt was broadcast round the world that convinced people a Palestinian child, Mohammed al Durah, had been shot dead by Israeli forces as he cowered with his father behind a barrel to avoid the cross fire in a gun battle raging between Israel and the Palestinians in 2000. That iconic image, which triggered untold terrorist acts of violence and murder, is at the centre of a drama (about which I wrote here) in which a French media watchdog, Philippe Karsenty, was successfully sued for libel in a highly suspect French court case after he claimed that France 2 had connived in a sensational (and murderous) fraud since Mohammed al Dura had participated in a staged atrocity and had not been killed at all.

Tomorrow Karsenty’s appeal, which started with legal argument last week, gets properly under way. Until now the Israelis, who initially accepted responsibility for al Durah’s death but then after an investigation concluded that it was physically impossible for him to have been killed by Israeli gunfire, have refused to protest this appalling scandal, despite the mounting evidence that a major journalistic fraud took place as a result of which the Arab and Muslim world was inflamed to butcher yet more Israelis, slaughter the journalist Daniel Pearl and incite the west to yet more demonisation of Israel. For reasons at which one can only guess, but which almost certainly have to do with that unique cocktail of arrogance, bone-headed belief in the self-evident justice of its cause and self-fulfilling fatalism which causes Israel as a matter of routine to fail to clear its name when it is traduced, it did not demand to see the footage shot on that fateful day, which France 2 has never made available for inspection and which may solve the mystery of what actually happened to Mohammed al Durah.

But now international protest has been steadily mounting. Thousands of people have signed a petition calling on France 2 to release this footage, and articles have appeared in various blogs and other outlets (not of course in the mainstream French or British media) — in particular, a savage piece by Caroline Glick in the Jerusalem Post which tore into the Israelis for their shocking indifference. Now, as Glick reports, the Israelis have finally stirred. The deputy commander of the IDF’s Spokesman’s Office, Col. Shlomi Am-Shalom, has asked to see the missing footage plus footage from the following day, and disputed the French judges’ version of events:

The court also stressed that ‘no Israeli authority, neither the army - which is nonetheless most affected, nor the Justice [Ministry] has ever accorded the slightest credit to [Karsenty’s] allegations’ regarding the authenticity of the France 2 report. In his letter to Enderlin, Am-Shalom disputes the judges’ assertion. ‘It is my duty to note,’ he wrote, ‘[that their claim] does not correspond to repeated attempts made by the IDF to receive the filmed materials, and with the conclusions of the IDF’s committee of inquiry [into the purported shooting] that were widely publicized in the international and French media.’

Am-Shalom discussed at length the findings of the IDF’s probe into the incident. That inquiry was ordered by then-OC Southern Command Maj.-Gen. Yom Tov Samia. Citing Samia, Am-Shalom wrote, ‘The general has made clear that from an analysis of all the data from the scene, including the location of the IDF position, the trajectory of the bullets, the location of the father [Jamal al-Dura] and the son behind an obstacle, the cadence of the bullet fire, the angle at which the bullets penetrated the wall behind the father and his son, and the hours of the events, we can rule out with the greatest certainty the possibility that the gunfire that apparently harmed the boy and his father was fired by IDF soldiers, who were at the time located only inside their fixed position [at the junction].’ Am-Shalom further notes that ‘Gen. Samia emphasized to me that all his attempts to receive the filmed material for the purpose of his inquiry were rejected.’

It is essential that this footage is released, and that this monstrous betrayal by France of the Jewish people is finally held up to the light for all to see.