PARIS (EJP)---The head of the French state-owned television has accepted a demand from a Jewish community leader to set up an independent working group of experts to examine a controversial tv broadcast about the death of a Palestinian boy in 2000.
The agreement came after a meeting between Patrick de Carolis, president of France Télevisions, and Richard Prasquier, head of CRIF, the umbrella group of French Jewish organizations.
Earlier this year, Prasquier had called for the creation of an independent multidisciplinary commission of inquiry "to establish the reality of the facts" in the so-called Mohammed Al Dura tv broadcast.
On 30 September 2000, a broadcast by France 2 television station showed the killing of the 12-year-old Mohammed Al-Dura in the arms of his father during an exchange of gunfire between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian gunmen at the Netzarim junction, in the Gaza Strip.
The report by France 2’s longtime Jerusalem correspondent Charles Enderlin, which was based on footage taken by the station’s Palestinian cameraman in Gaza, accused Israeli troops of killing the boy as he and his father took cover.
The France 2 images shocked the world, made al-Dura an icon in the Arab world and provoked widespread Palestinian and Arab anger against Israel.
But the head of French media watchdog “Media-Ratings”, Philippe Karsenty, later questioned the veracity of the tv report and accused Enderlin, who was not on location during the fighting, of having manipulated the footage that showed Al-Dura’s dead. He said the killing of the boy was staged.
An Israeli army investigation had concluded that it was not responsible for Al-Dura’s death.
France 2, which stands behind its correspondent and the Palestinian cameraman who made the report, had sued Karsenty for libel.
Authenticity questioned
In May, in a reversal of an October 2006 ruling against Karsenty, a Paris appeals court judge found the media critic “exercised in good faith his right of criticism against the power of the press. “He didn’t exceed the limits of freedom of expression recognized by the European Human Rights Convention,” the court said.
It said examination of the footage shown at a hearing in February did not dispel questions over its authenticity.
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Richard Prasquier, President of CRIF.
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Karsenty had presented judges with new evidence including a ballistics report and footage from other sources, which he said proved the boy’s death had been staged.
France 2 appealed against the latest ruling to France’s Supreme Court.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a New York-based Jewish group fighting anti-Semitism in the world, had expressed support for CRIF’s call for an independent investigation into the tv report "to determine its authenticity."
The working group of independent experts, to be set up probably in November, will be headed by Patrick Gaubert, chairman of Licra, the International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism, who is also a member of the European Parliament.
Richard Prasquier told EJP he expects the group would "give an answer to a certain number of questions."
Philippe Karsenty hailed the agreement to set up the group of experts as “good news” but said he would particularly pay attention to the composition of the group and to the material which will be presented to it.