Great article, Melanie, just the facts, as always. Here's more: http://sheikyermami.com/2008/07/02/pallywood-exposed-al-doura-affair-sho...

Boaz, The "ultra" Orthodox Jews are anti-Zionists but hardly anti-Semites (they justify their position, after all, by reference to a commonsensical interporetation of some passages in the Talmud). Also, the vast majority of world Jewry was explicitly Anti-Zionist when Herzl was promoting the idea, and remained so for a long time. As to facts (which you don't cite) - you have yet to refute any of the human rights organisations findings, a survey of which I referred you to. Unless you believe that all (including Israeli ones) are involved in a vast anti-Israeli conspiracy, you have to accept that an awful lot of Palestinian children have been killed in reckless operations where their resultant deaths, if not deliberately intended, were the result of their lives being accorded such minimal value in the light of often ill-focused military operations (and often amounting to near indiscriminate killing) that we are dealing with acts morally simlar too deliberate killing (i.e. acts always morally wrong). Certain IDF chiefs and leading rabbis have been very open about the justice of collective punishment. Little surprise then that we get the figures we do. Levy is not the issue. If France 2 lied that is disgraceful. If you use that incident to imply that the IDF doesn't child kill - or goes to great lengths to avoid it - then you too are behaving disgracefully. Please refute the studies referred to in a previous email. Otherwise I suggest that you keep your peace.

France 2 lied - people died France 2 delenda est

Mel, I wasn't talking about anti-semitism, but yes, "anti-zionism" is one of most filthy hypocritic forms of anti-semitism. Your words about "mass killings of Palestinian children" is an ultimate proof for that. You don't know what is going on there, you take your opinions from the crooks like Gideon Levy. His is not a brave trooth speaker but a coward lier and conformist. I have facts. To understand that it takes more profound knowledge of the Israeli reality, then one might obtain by using sewage pits like 'haaretz' and 'guardian' as a sources of information. And more: the palestinian symbol Muhammad A-Dura wasn't killed, it was a staged event, like a common movie. It is prooved by scientific tools, as I already wrote, not by general words. There were more occurances of that kind. Some children were murdered in a clushes beteween Arab families, some died from deseases or accidents - PA registered them as "shahids" killed by IDF. Some were killed by IDF accidently when fighting terrorists, but none were murdered. Actually, there no true statistics. The number you gave (944) is hot air. And depicting the situation as "mass killing of Palestinian children" reminds of blood libel and Catholic inqusition.

@Boaz – you shouldn’t put anti-Zionism on a level with anti-Semitism. Gideon Levy is an astute observer and I’m glad, that there is some decency left in Israel. It takes a great deal of guts to speak the truth that few dare to speak. Another great fellow is: Tony Judt http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/feb/11/religion.uk 'What changed for me,' says Judt, 'was that in 1967 I went out as a volunteer at the time of the Six Day War; after the war was finished I volunteered for auxiliary military service and I ended up as a sort of informal translator for other volunteers up on the Golan Heights. And there for the first time I began to see another face of Israel that had been camouflaged from me by my enthusiasm for the idealism of the kibbutz movement.' He became, he recalls, quickly very detached from Israel.

Dear Ms Phillips - Sorry, I’m not getting your point. What were you aiming to achieve with this report? To enlighten us about reckless and ideologically-driven journalism? That’s no news. To muddy the water in an attempt to make us believe that all the victims are responsible for their own death? I got you wrong, I hope. Facts speak for themselves: http://www.btselem.org/english/statistics/Casualties.asp , 29.9.2000-31.5.2008, Palestinian minors killed by Israeli security forces: total 944! Israel claims being the only democracy in the Middle East with a commitment to human rights … so … is there any public outrage in Israel about the mass killings of Palestinian children? Strange, isn’t it? This reminds me very much of the Germans in 1945, when they all claimed being innocent and ignorant about the Holocaust. History does repeat itself. Both sides are trying hard to find apologies for their terror and YES, terror does exist on both sides, it is not exclusive to the Palestinians. A good writer, Ms Phillips, should have more than one dimension – otherwise, you’re running risk to become Pavlov’s dog.

Stefan Denis, Gideon Levy lies constantly and that is what he did in the article you brought. The "death" of Mohammed A-Dura was not filmed, as he blatantly misled you. The film only shows the boy lying on the ground, there are no signs of death whatsoever. The hoax was proved by the physicist Nahum Shahaf with scores of scientific evidences, Gideon Levy ignores them all. That is what he does every time he caught on wrong facts he published, he ignores every bit of information that doubts his reports. Gideon Levy is the only field reporter who covers Arab matters without knowing Arabic language. The PLO and Hamas send him "interpretators" that feed him with propaganda lies which he puts in the newspaper without any check. This reminds of Leon Feuchtwanger who wrote a book gloryfing the Stalin regime after the NKVD feed him stories. If you read Gideon Levy (and other "reporters" of his kind) constantly, by now you might keep in mind much information that was simply fabricated. Mohammed A-Dura's case is the outstanding case but actually only one out of scores of cases you were premeditadedly misled about.

The Gideon Levy point is that by focusing on a possible case of gross deception (I say possible because, as far as I can make out (and I am open to coorection) the judges ruled that there was room for doubt, not that the footage was fabricated) many other abuses are ignored (and killings via side-effects that pay little or no attention to proportionate overall benefits and burdens are little different, morally, from directly intended killings). Is the "room for doubt" suggestion the reason why there appears to be so little fuss about the story in Israel? As to targeting civilians versus non-targeting (Palestinians versus Israelis) see Norman Finkelstein's Beyond Chutzpah (a very thorough analysis of Human Rights groups on the question). Before making ad hominem attacks on Finkelstein - find me a SINGLE error or misrepresentation by F. on this matter. As for the same question applied to the 2006 Israeli-Lebanon conflict check Jonathan Cook's Israel and the Clash of Civilisations. Again - read it - if there is an error point it out. If not amend your views!

This may well be an even more deliberate fake than ITN's concentration camp video from Bosnia. Fortunately the French judge didn't say though it was a fake that "doesn't matter" & they should still find for the TV company as the british judge did. Makes you wonder how much of what gets reported really happened in anything.

Gideon Levi ,as usual, sidetracks the main issue: Palestinians deliberately target civilians . The Israeli Army may unintentionally kill the innocent, or intentionally kill the guilty, but it does not intentionally kill the innocent. This is well illustrated in Bret Stephans’s article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121003365007069313.html?mod=hpp_us_insid... … In May 2002, at the height of the so-called al-Aqsa Intifada, I reviewed Israeli and Palestinian casualty figures, sticking to Palestinian sources for Palestinian numbers and Israeli sources for Israeli ones. Much was then being made in the Western media of the fact that three times as many Palestinians as Israelis had been killed in the conflict – evidence, supposedly, that despite the suicide bombings, lynchings and roadside ambushes perpetrated daily against Israelis, Palestinians were the ones who really were getting it in the neck. But drilling down into the data, something interesting turned up. At the time, 1,296 Palestinians had been killed by Israelis – of whom a grand total of 37, or 2.8%, were female. By contrast, of the 496 Israelis killed by Palestinians (including 138 soldiers and policemen), there were 126 female fatalities, or 25%. To be female is a fairly reliable indicator of being a noncombatant. Females are also half the population. If Israel had been guilty of indiscriminate violence against Palestinians, the ratio of male-to-female fatalities would not have been 35-1.