User:SlimVirgin/Leconte

A list of some of the responses of the three senior French journalists who were invited to view the Muhammad al-Durrah raw footage from France 2 on Oct 22, 2004. The journalists were:

Denis Jeambar, the editor-in-chief of L'Express
Daniel Leconte, head of news documentaries at Arte, the state-run Franco-German television network, and a former France 2 correspondent
Luc Rosenzweig, a former managing editor of Le Monde.

Jeambar and Leconte concluded the shooting was real, but that there is nothing on the footage to show that the child died; that Enderlin could not have known the boy was dead when he announced it; that there is nothing to show that the Israelis shot him, and in fact Leconte believes the Palestinians did; there was play-acting by Palestinian demonstrators on the same footage; and that the final scene in which the boy moves—which Enderlin said he cut because it showed the boy's agony or death throes— does not show what Enderlin said it did.

Rosenzweig disagreed. He declared the shooting a fraud, and a "perfect media crime."

Leconte views

From Doreen Carvajal, New York Times, Feb 2005. "Last week, the issue gained fresh momentum after a prominent French editor and an independent television producer broke ranks in the country's media circles and published a cautious article in the center-right national daily, Le Figaro, expressing some doubts about the original reporting.

"That image has had great influence," said Daniel Leconte, a former France 2 correspondent. "If this image does not mean what we were told, it is necessary to find the truth."

When Leconte and Jeambar saw the rushes, they were struck by the fact that there was no definitive scene that showed that the child truly died. They wrote, however, that they were not convinced that the particular scene was staged, but only that "this famous 'agony' that Enderlin insisted was cut from the montage does not exist" [referring to Enderlin's statement that he cut the final scene only because the child was in agony or his death throes].

Leconte said, "I think that if there is a part of this event that was staged, they have to say it, that there was a part that was staged, that it can happen often in that region for a thousand reasons."

In an interview with the Cybercast News Service on Feb 15, 2005, Leconte said al-Durrah had been shot from the Palestinian position. He said: "The only ones who could hit the child were the Palestinians from their position. If they had been Israeli bullets, they would be very strange bullets because they would have needed to go around the corner." He dismissed an earlier claim by France 2 that the gunshots that struck al-Durrah were bullets that could have ricocheted off the ground, stating, "It could happen once, but that there should be eight or nine of them, which go around a corner? They're just saying anything."

Jeambar and Leconte in Le Figaro

In Le Figaro, Jan 25, 2005, they wrote (google translation): [1]

In the minutes before the shooting, Palestinians seem to have organized a staging. They "play" at war with the Israelis and simulate imaginary injuries. The full viewing of dailies also demonstrates that when Charles Enderlin says the boy is dead, killed by the Israelis, there is nothing to suggest that he is really dead, and even less that he was killed by Israeli soldiers. Then, "Tout, bien au contraire, à commencer par l'emplacement des uns et des autres sur le terrain, incriminerait plutôt une ou des balles palestiniennes."

Given this last point, our colleagues from France 2 acknowledge that nothing actually does say that the child was hit by Israeli gunfire.^[1] "Anyway," concluded one of them, you can never tell where the shots came."

Rosenzweig

Gelertner 2005 and Rosenzweig 2007: Rosenzweig concluded that the shooting had been staged, calling it "an almost perfect media crime." [2] Rosenzweig told Mena, an Israeli news agency, about his views after having watched the footage. In 2007, he wrote an article for Mena; see here; Google translation here. In it, he talks about the boy raising his leg and "looking furtively at the camera," in the final scene that France 2 cut.

Jeambar and Leconte fell out with Rosenzweig because he spoke to Mena about the viewing of the raw footage. The three had agreed not to go public until they had all agreed. They distanced themselves from Rosenzweig's conclusion. They wrote in Le Figaro in 2005: "To those who, like Mena, tried to use us to support the theory that the child's death was staged by the Palestinians, we say they are misleading us and their readers. Not only do we not share this point of view, but we attest that, given our present knowledge of the case, nothing supports that conclusion. In fact, the reverse is true": see Enderlin, France 2 v. Karsenty, 2006.

Notes

^ Leurs experts ont même démontré, nous assurent-ils, que l'enfant a été touché par des éclats ( ?) ou par des balles qui auraient ricoché sur la chaussée, des balles qui en tout état de cause ne visaient ni l'enfant ni son père. « De toute façon, conclut l'un d'entre eux, on ne pourra jamais savoir d'où venaient les tirs.

[1] Leurs experts ont même démontré, nous assurent-ils, que l'enfant a été touché par des éclats ( ?) ou par des balles qui auraient ricoché sur la chaussée, des balles qui en tout état de cause ne visaient ni l'enfant ni son père. « De toute façon, conclut l'un d'entre eux, on ne pourra jamais savoir d'où venaient les tirs.

[1]