Gary Kasparov is not the only chess prodigy making waves these days. Natan Sharansky has a piece on today’s Wall Street Journal Opinion page about the ongoing legal battle in France over media coverage of the alleged killing of Mohammed al-Dura. Al-Dura was the 12-year-old Palestinian boy seen huddling with his father behind a barrel amid a hail of Israeli bullets in September of 2000. The horrifying footage was (understandably) inescapable around that time and became an iconic media byte, launching anti-Israel rallying cries the world over. It certainly added heat, and blood, to the second intifada.

In a clip released soon after the attacks of September 11, Osama bin Laden said:

In the epitome of his arrogance and the peak of his media campaign in which he boasts of 'enduring freedom,' Bush must not forget the image of Mohammed al-Dura and his fellow Muslims in Palestine and Iraq. If he has forgotten, then we will not forget, God willing.

But almost immediately after the al-Dura footage aired, the circumstances surrounding the incident were called into question and the legitimacy of the 59-second clip itself became a matter for some contemplation. An inquiry by the IDF concluded that it would have been nearly impossible for al-Dura to have been hit by bullets fired from the Israeli’s positions. For those who doubt the findings of such an interested party, The Atlantic, sighting sources outside of the IDF, ran a fairly exhaustive and thought-provoking breakdown of the evidence. The New Republic, Commentary, and a German documentary also weighed in with similar conclusions.

Back to Sharansky and France. France 2 had one journalist at the scene of the shooting: a Palestinian cameraman named Talal Abu Rahmeh. Here’s the legal angle. A French journalist named Philippe Karsenty has been found guilty of defamation after demanding that two French 2 Television journalists be fired for ignoring, or lying about, potential inaccuracies in reporting on the incident.

Here’s Sharansky on what I think is the most suspicious aspect of the case:

And yet France 2 refused to release Abu Rahmeh’s full 27 minutes of raw footage. It did, however, agree to let three prominent French journalists view the footage. All three concluded that it comprised blatantly staged scenes of Palestinians being shot by Israeli forces, and that France 2’s JerusalemBureau Charles Enderlin had lied to conceal that fact.

We now await the verdict on Phillipe Karsenty’s appeal. The IDF has sent a letter to France 2 demanding the release of the raw footage. Wherever one may stand on the plausibility of Israel’s guilt in the death of al-Dura, the full footage should be released. Here’s Sharansky:

Tragically, there is no way to repair the damage inflicted on Israel’s international image by the France 2 report, much less restore the Israeli and Jewish victims whose lives were exacted as vengeance. It is possible, however, to deter slanderous news reporting—and the violence that often accompanies it—by setting a precedent for media accountability via the handover of Talal Abu Rahmeh’s full 27 minutes of raw footage. Encouragingly, the judge presiding over Mr. Karsenty’s appeal has now requested the tapes. France 2 must make a full public disclosure. If there is nothing to hide, why should it refuse?