The "martyrdom" death of 12-year-old Palestinian Mohammed al-Dura at the hands of Israeli soldiers – which received widespread international news coverage and spurred on the current intifada, inspiring countless "suicide bombers" to attack Israel – was actually a "staged" piece of street theater, according to an in-depth report in the current issue of WND's monthly magazine, Whistleblower.

The entire world was transfixed as news broadcasts played the sensational video footage of the 12-year-old Palestinian boy and his father, pinned down in crossfire between Arab snipers and Israeli Defense Forces in Gaza's remote Netzarim junction on Sept. 30, 2000. The image of the boy crouching in terror behind his father, both of them struggling in vain to protect themselves from Israeli gunfire, only to be shot – the boy apparently dying in his father's arms – became immortalized in posters that were later plastered up and down the streets of the West Bank and Gaza.

Although the Israeli military initially assumed responsibility for the incident, it soon became apparent that the IDF could not have shot the boy, due to a large barrier between the Israeli military outpost across the remote junction and the location of the boy and his father.

Now, a just-completed, long-term journalistic investigation conducted in France concludes that the Mohammed al-Dura affair was actually a piece of Palestinian theater – similar to the dramatic Palestinian funeral processions last April after the Israeli incursion into the Jenin refugee camp. During that public spectacle, a martyred "corpse" twice fell off the stretcher, only to hop back up and retake his place in the procession. The Palestinians had claimed 3,000 deaths in Jenin – the actual toll was 52.

The groundbreaking investigation and its conclusions are spelled out in "Contre-expertise d’une mise en scène" published by Éditions Raphaël, and translated into English for Whistleblower by Nidra Poller. In the book, Gérard Huber, a psychoanalyst and permanent Paris correspondent of the Israel-based Metula News Agency, reports on the investigation conducted by a team of journalists, including Huber and Stéphane Juffa, Metula's editor in chief.

"What really happened at Netzarim junction?" asks Huber. "One thing is certain: Given the position of the protagonists during the firefight it is impossible that the child was hit by Israeli bullets. Mohamed al-Dura was not killed by Israelis. And the bigger question remains: Was Mohammed really killed?"