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Nahum Shahaf (Template:Lang-he) is an Israeli physicist, best known for his role in an October 2000 Israel Defense Forces (IDF) investigation surrounding the shooting of a 12-year-old Palestinian boy, Muhammad al-Durrah. Prior to the investigation, Shahaf had worked with the IDF on the design of unmanned aerial vehicles, and had been known primarily as an inventor, having received an Israeli Ministry of Science award for creativity in 1997 for his work on compressed digital video transmission.

Background

According to Israeli reporter Amnon Lord, Shahaf worked for the optical intelligence unit of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) as a physicist, and contributed to the development of unmanned air vehicles and video instrumentation. During the 1991 Gulf War, he investigated the damage done by Iraqi Scud missiles fired against Israel, and concluded that Patriot missiles contributed to the damage. He received an Israeli Ministry of Science award for creativity in 1997 for his work on compressed digital video transmission.

Shahaf describes himself as "a scientist, a physicist specialized in ballistics and the technology of filming images."

Yitzhak Rabin assassination conspiracy theories

During the late 1990s, Shahaf participated in a campaign to prove the innocence of Yigal Amir, the assassin of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. Although Amir had been arrested on the spot and had confessed to the killing, Shahaf asserted that he had photographic evidence that the wrong man was being held for the assassination. He blamed the assassination on a conspiracy headed by Shimon Peres, who took over from Rabin as Prime Minister and later became the President of Israel.

Al-Durrah investigation

Shortly after the al-Durrah shooting in September 2000, for which the Israel Defence Force had initially admitted responsibility, Shahaf approached IDF Southern Command head Major General Yom Tov Samia. Shahaf was already well known to Samia, having previously done work for the IDF. Shahaf proposed that he and Joseph Doriel, an engineer with whom Shahaf had previously collaborated during work on conspiracy theories concerning the killing of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, should undertake an investigation into the shooting on behalf of Samia. Samia agreed, and on October 23, 2000, Shahaf helped to arrange a re-enactment of the shooting on an IDF shooting range, in front of a CBS 60 Minutes camera crew. In late November 2000, at the conclusion of the inquiry, Samia presented his findings at a press conference, explaining that the findings were "based on measurements, bullet angles and evidence that the Palestinian boy was hit by a volley of gunfire while Israeli soldiers were firing only single shots."

The investigation met with a mixed response. Doriel had been dismissed by Samia during the course of the investigation and when the results were announced, it was strongly criticised by some in the Israeli media. The Israeli newspapers Haaretz and the Jerusalem Post argued that Shahaf had no ballistics experience and Haaretz described his investigation as "dubious." His previous involvement in raising doubts about the identity of Rabin's killer became the subject of controversy. Shahaf, however, pursued the case and devoted years to the matter, having "spent months painstakingly collecting, wheedling, even buying footage from reluctant cameramen, and then spliced the pieces together in rough temporal order in an attempt to make an unbroken film of the day." He has promoted a theory that al-Durrah was not killed by the IDF and may still be alive. Following Haaretz's reporting of his work on the al-Durrah case, which editor Gideon Levy criticised as an "eccentic obsession" in an October 2007 article, Shahaf filed a defamation lawsuit against the newspaper in December 2007 charging that Haaretz's coverage had "led investors to flee" from one of his inventions and demanding 400 million shekels (US $103 million) in damages.

Notes

1. ^ Fallows 2003.
2. Who Killed Muhammad Al-Dura? Blood Libel-- Model 2000 Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs Amnon Lord 15 July 2002
3. The Mohamad A-Dura affair: a gross imposture? MENA interviews Nahum Shahaf (Copy)
4. O'Loughlin, Ed (October 6, 2007). "Truth is sometimes caught in crossfire". The Sydney Morning Herald.
5. United States Congress House of Representatives Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights (2001), Authorizing Appropriation for Fiscal Years 2002 and 2003 for the Department of State and the Broadcasting Board of Governors, and for Other Purposes: Hearings and Markup Before the Committee on International Relations, House of Representatives and the Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights, One Hundred Seventh Congress, First Session, February 14, February 28, March 1, and March 7, 2001 and Markup of H.R. 1646 on May 2, 2001., vol. 8–16, US G.P.O., p. 192 {{citation}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
6. Cordesman, Anthony; Moravitz, Jennifer (2005). The Israeli-Palestinian war: escalating to nowhere. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 372. ISBN 9780275987589.
7. ^ Cygielman 2000.
8. Israel claims Palestinian gunmen may have shot boy in high-profile killing AP - November 27, 2000
9. Schwartz, Adi (2007). "In the footsteps of the al-Dura controversy", Haaretz, November 8, 2007, accessed January 24, 2010.
10. ^ Levy, Gideon. Mohammed al-Dura lives on. Haaretz, October 7, 2007, accessed October 23, 2008.
11. The other war: Israelis, Palestinians, and the struggle for media supremacy, Stephanie Gutmann, Encounter Books, 2005, p. 75.
12. Temple-Raston, Dina (March 15, 2005). "Engineer Casts Doubt on Veracity of Claims That Israelis Killed Palestinian Boy in 2000". The New York Sun.
13. "400 million lawsuit against Haaretz". NRG (in Hebrew). December 5, 2007.

References

• Cygielman, Anat (2000). "IDF keeps shooting itself in the foot", Haaretz, November 7, 2000, accessed March 22, 2010.
• Fallows, James (2003). "Who shot Mohammed al-Durra?", The Atlantic, June 2003, accessed March 21, 2010.

External websites

• Shahaf's website
• Template:Languageicon Shahaf's curriculum vitae
• Template:Languageicon Al-Dura, Nahum Shahaf investigation results

• Israeli physicists
• Living people