On Sept. 30, 2000, the news agency Agence France Presse had a cameraman filming during an exchange of gunfire between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian gunmen/rioters. The cameraman focused in tightly on a father and son who were trapped behind a piece of concrete and the camera caught the gunshots which eventually killed the boy and wounded the father.

This film has been shown over and over again and used as a demonstration of the heartlessness and cruelty of the Israeli soldiers who were said to have fired the killing shots. But neither Agence France Presse nor any other news agency or medium has bothered to explain or show the context in which that shooting took place. So an enterprising person who isn’t as automatically anti-Israel as Agence France Presse appears to be (not to mention all the other news outlets — both television and print — which showed this event without any explanation or context), obtained a broader view of the scene of that shooting and has made it available to anyone whose mind isn’t already closed. It’s attached to this email and bears a close look.

If you do that what you’ll see is that the scene is a highway junction in the middle of wide open fields, near a Jewish town which was the target of a band of Palestinians, and an Israeli military outpost stationed on that road — in the lower right hand corner of the picture. Directly to the north and south of the Israelis are two Palestinian locations from which shots were being fired at the Israelis, and diagonally across the intersection from the Israelis is another Palestinian position from which shots were fired at the Israelis.

In other words, the Israeli position, designed to guard the road into the Jewish town, was surrounded and being fired upon from three sides by Palestinian gunmen. For reasons which none of the media has thought worth exploring, the unfortunate father and son are caught in the line of fire between the Israelis and the Palestinians across the intersection. However, the Israelis cannot see the father and son because they’re crouched behind the concrete protection right alongside the Palestinian firing position.

Once you’ve absorbed the physical situation, a couple of questions have to be asked:

1) Since there are no Palestinian homes or towns in the area, what were the father and son doing there to begin with? There are no stores there. No playgrounds. Nothing.

2) Why didn’t the Palestinian gunmen, who were right next to the father and son and who had to be aware of their presence, do anything to protect them or at least signal to the Israelis that there were innocent civilians caught in the crossfire?

The answers to these questions are frightening. The Palestinian father and son were undoubtedly there as part of the original confrontation with the Israelis. The Palestinians use children routinely because a) the Israelis are reluctant to shoot when they know kids are there and if the kids get killed, it makes fabulous anti-Israel propaganda — witness the use to which this incident has been put already. To give you an idea of what I mean, read this short article from the Jerusalem Post of October 6, 2000:

IDF: Palestinians offer $2,000 for ‘martyrs’ By Margot Dudkevitch

HEBRON (October 6) – The IDF Hebron area commander Col. Noam Tivon suggested yesterday that the Palestinian Authority is encouraging children to participate in clashes with the IDF by offering their families $300 per injury and $2,000 for anyone killed.

The main goal of the Tanzim, or Fatah militia activists, is to continue perpetrating attacks, to kill soldiers and settlers, he said.

He noted the cynical use by Palestinians of their children, who are pushed to the forefront of the clashes.

Senior IDF commanders met with Palestinians security officials on Wednesday night and yesterday morning in an attempt to quell the violence.

Tivon also met with his Palestinian counterpart yesterday morning. He said that “the meeting took place after a night of severe, intense fighting, with armed Tanzim later joined by armed Palestinian policemen who perpetrated scores of shooting attacks, firing at the buildings of the Jewish community and IDF soldiers. It is about time that the public understand that the Tanzim are directly linked to PA Chairman Yasser Arafat – he is the only one that can control the situation.”

Tivon said it was up to Arafat to issue clearcut orders to his security forces and armed Fatah activists.

From the numerous meetings with Palestinian preventive security officials he has conducted in the past week, it is clear they have no control over the situation and the Tanzim, Tivon said.

“It’s a game – one hand operates the Tanzim, the bad guys, and the other hand the security services. But both hands are held up by the same body and head. The Palestinian security officials are fully aware that they have no control and are facing a difficult situation, but without a doubt everything is orchestrated by Arafat.”

He said the soldiers have acted with the utmost restraint and have not initiated any shooting attacks or violence.

So that’s the context in which you have to understand not only the death of this child, but the participation of all of the kids you see in the news every day.

These kids are taught in school that the best thing that can happen to them is to die as martyrs for the Palestinian cause while killing or attacking Jews. The hatred is so deep and pathological that the possibility of a real peace process with these people right now will one day in the future be thought by historians and psychologists to have been an interesting case of mass self-delusion.

Sadly, there are still many Jews, and a whole lot of others in the media (whose motives may be neither delusional or objective), who continue to insist on the need to run after the Arabs and beg them to sit down, talk and make peace. Their continuing blindness or anti-Israel hostility (take your pick) will surely result in even more deaths and disaster as the Arabs milk this cynical tactic for all it’s worth while their politically correct and anti-Israel friends and allies cheer them on and attack the Israelis for defending themselves. Watch it with this in mind and I’ll bet it will all look different to you from now on.

The writer, a senior IDF research official, is a senior research fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy Policy Studies.