The New York Times reports on a new Israeli government investigation that the paper says “casts new doubts” on iconic media images, filmed in September 2000, that have been used by activists, diplomats, journalists, and terrorists to justify attacks against Israelis and Jews.

The images come from a France 2 broadcast filmed by a Gaza correspondent and narrated by the station’s Jerusalem bureau chief Charles Enderlin, in which 12-year-old Palestinian Muhammad al-Dura was described as being targeted and killed by Israeli soldiers. Evidence from unbroadcast raw footage, which seems to show the boy raising his arms after his death, was among the many anomalies cited by the Israeli report.

Although an Israeli general initially told reporters at a news conference that the boy had apparently been hit by Israeli gunfire, as the television report stated, an investigation by the Israeli military found a few weeks later that it was more likely that the boy had been hit by bullets fired by Palestinians during the exchanges of fire in the area. In 2007, an official Israeli document described the assertions that the boy had been killed by Israeli fire as “myth.”

The new findings published on Sunday were the work of an Israeli government review committee, which said its task was to re-examine the event “in light of the continued damage it has caused to Israel.” They come after years of debate over the veracity of the France 2 report, which was filmed by a Gaza correspondent, Talal Abu Rahma, and narrated by the station’s Jerusalem bureau chief, Charles Enderlin, who was not at the present at the scene.

The New York Times links to a comprehensive site compiled by critics citing this and dozens of other inconsistencies. The al-Dura film is identified by those critics as being central to a “lethal narrative” used to incite violence against Jews and the Jewish state. It was linked to the October 2000 lynching of two Israelis traveling through the Palestinian town of Ramallah, and was playing in the background of the Al Qaeda video in which Daniel Pearl was beheaded.

The juxtaposition between the certainty of the original inflammatory France 2 broadcast and the skepticism generated afterward has heightened perceptions of anti-Israel media bias.

[Photo: nytimes.com]