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On 30 September 2000, the second day of the Second Intifada, 12-year-old Muhammad al-Durrah (Arabic: محمد الدرة, romanized: Muḥammad ad-Durra) was killed in the Gaza Strip during widespread protests and riots across the Palestinian territories against Israeli military occupation. Jamal al-Durrah and his son Muhammad were filmed by Talal Abu Rahma, a Palestinian television cameraman freelancing for France 2, as they were caught in crossfire between the Israeli military and Palestinian security forces. Footage shows them crouching behind a concrete cylinder, the boy crying and the father waving, then a burst of gunfire and dust. Muhammad is shown slumping as he is mortally wounded by gunfire, dying soon after. Fifty-nine seconds of the footage were broadcast on television in France with a voiceover from Charles Enderlin, the station's bureau chief in Israel. Based on information from the cameraman, Enderlin told viewers that the al-Durrahs had been the target of fire from the Israeli positions and that the boy had died. After an emotional public funeral, Muhammad was hailed throughout the Muslim world as a martyr. Initially, the Israel Defense Forces accepted responsibility for the shooting, but claimed that Palestinians used children as human shields, but later retracted responsbility. In 2000, the IDF commissioned Nahum Shahaf to investigate, but that report provoked widespread criticism. One of the Israeli investigators even claimed the incident had been staged by Palestinian gunmen, cameraman and Muhammad's own father. The report eventually concluded that Muhammad was possibly killed by Palestinian fire. However, a Palestinian investigation that same year concluded Muhammad was killed by bullets that came from the Israeli post. In 2012, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu commissioned another investigation. In 2013, that report concluded that not only was Muhammad not hit by IDF fire, Muhammad was perhaps never shot nor killed. Jamal al-Durrah rejected the idea that his son was somehow not dead and offered to exhume Muhammad's grave. The report was criticized by Charles Enderlin and France 2, Reporters Without Borders and Barak Ravid. In France, Philippe Karsenty, a media commentator, also alleged that the scene had been staged by France 2; France 2 successfully sued him for libel in 2006, with Karsenty ordered to pay symbolic damages of €1, while in 2013 Karsenty was convicted for defamation for the allegation and fined €7,000 by a Paris court. The footage of the father and son acquired what one writer called the power of a battle flag. Postage stamps in the Middle East carried the images. Abu Rahma's coverage of the al-Durrah shooting brought him several journalism awards, including the Rory Peck Award in 2001. Background On 28 September 2000, two days before the shooting, the Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon visited the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem, a holy site in both Judaism and Islam with contested rules of access. The violence that followed had its roots in several events, but the visit was provocative and triggered protests that escalated into rioting across the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The uprising became known as the Second Intifada; it lasted over four years and cost around 4,000 lives, over 3,000 of them Palestinian. The Netzarim junction, where the shooting took place, is known locally as the al-Shohada (martyrs') junction. It lies on Saladin Road, a few kilometres south of Gaza City. The source of conflict at the junction was the nearby Netzarim settlement, where 60 Israeli families lived until Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in 2005. A military escort accompanied the settlers whenever they left or arrived at the settlement, and an Israeli military outpost, Magen-3, guarded the approach. The area had been the scene of violent incidents in the days before the shooting. People Jamal and Muhammad al-Durrah Jamal al-Durrah (Arabic: جمال الدرة, romanized: Jamāl ad-Durra; born c. 1963) was a carpenter and house painter before the shooting. Since then, because of his injuries, he has worked as a truck driver. He and his wife, Amal, live in the UNRWA-run Bureij refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. As of 2013 they had four daughters and six sons, including a boy, Muhammad, born two years after the shooting. Until the shooting, Jamal had worked for Moshe Tamam, an Israeli contractor, for 20 years, since he was 14. Writer Helen Schary Motro came to know Jamal when she employed him to help build her house in Tel Aviv. She described his years of rising at 3:30 am to catch the bus to the border crossing at four, then a second bus out of Gaza so he could be at work by six. Tamam called him a "terrific man," someone he trusted to work alone in his customers' homes. During the 2023 Israel–Hamas war, both of Jamal Al-Durrah’s brothers were killed by Israeli airstrikes, and he was seen mourning next to their body bags. Muhammad Jamal Al-Durrah (born 1988) was in fifth grade, but his school was closed on 30 September 2000; the Palestinian Authority had called for a general strike and day of mourning following violence in Jerusalem the day before. His mother said he had been watching the rioting on television and asked if he could join in. Father and son decided instead to go to a car auction. Jamal had just sold his 1974 Fiat, Motro wrote, and Muhammad loved cars, so they went to the auction together.: 54  Charles Enderlin Charles Enderlin was born in 1945 in Paris; his grandparents were Austrian Jews who had left the country in 1938 when Germany invaded. After briefly studying medicine, he moved to Jerusalem in 1968 where he became an Israeli national. He began working for France 2 in 1981, serving as their bureau chief in Israel from 1990 until his retirement in 2015. Enderlin is the author of several books about the Middle East, including one about Muhammad al-Durrah, Un Enfant est Mort: Netzarim, 30 Septembre 2000 (2010). Highly regarded among his peers and within the French establishment, he submitted a letter from Jacques Chirac, during the Philippe Karsenty libel action, who wrote in flattering terms of Enderlin's integrity. In 2009, he was awarded France's highest decoration, the Légion d'honneur. According to French journalist Anne-Elisabeth Moutet, Enderlin's coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was respected by other journalists but was regularly criticized by pro-Israel groups. As a result of the al-Durrah case, he received death threats, his wife was assaulted in the street, his children were threatened, the family had to move home, and at one point they considered emigrating to the United States. Talal Abu Rahma Talal Hassan Abu Rahma studied business administration in the United States, and began working as a freelance cameraman for France 2 in Gaza in 1988. At the time of the shooting, he ran his own press office, the National News Center, contributed to CNN through the Al-Wataneya Press Office, and was a board member of t.... Discover the Georg M Hafner Esther Schapira popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Georg M Hafner Esther Schapira books.