In 2005, Professor Richard Landes of Boston University produced an 18-minute online documentary video called Pallywood: According to Palestinian Sources. Landes and other pro-Israel advocates argue that the Israeli government is insufficiently robust in countering Palestinian accounts of events in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
In his video, Landes shows Arab-Israeli conflict-related footage that was taken mostly by freelance Palestinian video journalists. He argues that systematic media manipulation (which he dubs “Pallywood”) dates back to at least the 1982 Lebanon War, and argues that broadcasters are too uncritical of the veracity of Palestinian freelance footage.
He focuses in particular on the case of Muhammad al-Durrah, a 12-year-old Palestinian who was widely reported to have been killed by Israeli gunfire in the Gaza Strip on September 30, 2000 at the beginning of the Second Intifada. The shooting was filmed by a Palestinian freelance cameraman and aired on the France 2 television channel with narration by the veteran French-Israeli journalist Charles Enderlin, who was not present at the incident. It made worldwide headlines and the conduct of the Israel Defence Forces was heavily criticized internationally, severely damaging Israel’s public standing on the world stage.
Landes questions the authenticity of the footage and disputes whether al-Durrah was killed at all, arguing that the entire incident was staged by the Palestinians. An investigation by Israel after the shooting found that the boy was killed but did not determine whether he was shot by the IDF or Palestinians. Landes based his argument on an incident earlier in the day that he alleges shows that “Palestinian cameramen, especially when there are no Westerners around, engage in the systematic staging of action scenes.
