At this point it is rather well-known that these celebrations did take place and that in fact they involved adults and members of the Palestinian Authority. Numerous press agencies have been harrassed about showing the footage and have submitted protests to the PA. These include FPA and AP.
More on the subject:
The full video clearly shows the same group from 9/11; they are a small group of about six or seven children, one woman, and two or three young men being urged to act cheerful in front of a camera. The cameraman can be seen handing out treats. Many people are passing by in the background without giving any notice to the event, which is obviously not some sort of rally. You have to wait all the way to the end of the video to see the whole footage.
It is quite stunning that such footage would be utilized by TV channels and mainstream print media across the US, and beyond. The consequences of using this footage are clear (not implying that these consequences were planned): further dehumanization of Palestinians and Arabs and furthering xenophobia in the US.
Here is some information from the Independent Media Center
"A few days ago a Brazilian student, Marcio, claimed CNN was showing old scenes of celebrating Palestinians, claiming they were celebrating the WTC disaster. Well, the scenes were not old, but were manipulated!
"In a recent statement CNN insisted that the famous footage was shot on the day of the WTC blast. Meanwhile, German reporters of the prestigious “Panorama” TV magazine investigated how the scenes were shot. What they found out was amazing. On German TV they aired, supposedly for the first time, parts of the entire 4-minute footage not previously shown.
"It became clear that a person was animating a couple of children to cheer in front of the camera. The woman cheering was offered a candy to act cheerful. She later said she was shocked that her pictures were shown in the context of the terrorist attacks. She had no idea what they were for. A total view of the scene shows a street largely full of at best apathic people doing business as usual. Only a handful of people standing in front of the camera are celebrating.
"You can see the video online on http://www.ndrtv.de/panorama/sendung/index.html. The link is below the second picture and in German. But you can still see the pictures in the report. Forward to 7 minutes 45 seconds and watch it until the end.
"Furthermore, the highly regarded German magazine “Der Spiegel” has had an article on this. The article shows the picture of the woman getting candy and another one people showing more people in the background of the cheering kids. These people are passing by as usual.
“Read the article on: http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,158625,00.html Unfortunately, in German as well. You can still see the pictures, though.”
Here’s a little synapses of the article in Der Spiegel (titled “What is the truth?”):
Der Spiegel reports on the analysis conducted by Panorama. They point out that the pictures that went around the world only showed close-ups, never the whole street full of people celebrating. What Panorama found out, when watching the whole thing, was that there were shots of the street surrounding the cheering groups. These shots indicated that there were only a handful of people cheering while the majority of people passed by without participating (the second picture in the Spiegel article shows that).
Here is an Altavista Babelfish Translation of the above-mentioned page from the Der Speigel site:
What is the truth?
Of Lisa Erdmann
Only few hours after the assassination attempts on New York and Washington showed the television stations world-wide pictures of Palestinians, who cheered the incomprehensible act. Now it, a part of these pictures means possibly placed, the remainder is old. Hamburg - children are jubilant, a woman with black heading cloth and eyeglasses tear joyfully the levers highly, a man applaud and sign other passanten here: A road scene, filmed in Jerusalem on 11 September, on the day of the assassination attempts in New York and Washington. Pictures, which went around the world. Pictures, which shook many humans. Hunger after information and filmmaterial was unstillbar on this day - in such a way also these recordings of the TV senders transmitted, underlaid with the words, these Palestinians would again and again celebrate the impacts in the USA. But now, after the impacts, the Pool of broadcasting corporations Politmagazin " panorama " reports ten days the fact that there is possibly another truth about these pictures that the scene is perhaps even placed.
The jubilant Palestinians of two press agencies were filmed: Reuters and Associated press (AP). The viewers got few seconds of the material in the passed week only to see. Altogether however about four minutes accumulated with the TV stations. The panorama talking document urine Annette Krueger Spitta regarded the entire tapes of the two agencies more exactly. " that is finally explosive material ". It determined discrepancies.
The finished cut message films in the passed week had the impression aroused, there celebrated many humans on the road. Participated no total accommodations, which showed the whole road, but only small groups of humans. On the supplied material however very probably were total ones - they showed clearly that only one handful of Palestinians was jubilant, many different passed simply indifferently. " the woman with the heading cloth said later, she was jubilant into the camera, because one promised its cake ", so Krueger Spitta. The Palaestinenserin explained, it was frightened, when it saw, in which context their rejoicing was shown. It abhors the acts in New York and Washington. What is the truth?
Already in the passed week excited Mails swept to a similar case approximately around the globe. CNN used ten years old pictures, in order to occupy thereby the alleged rejoicing of the Palestinians. A Brazilian student, Marcio, had gepostet on Wednesday on the Website of Indymedia, an independent medium platform, a letter. It wrote, it had proofs for it that the pictures were to be seen on 11 September with the American news station, was falsified. The filmmaterial originates from the year 1991 and shows joy celebrations of Palestinian young people after the Iraqi invasion in Kuweit. One of its lecturers compared videoaufzeichnungen from at that time and it with the current reports. Result: Both pictures are identical. CNN makes tendency against the Palestinians.
Only two days later, on Friday, Marcio ruderte back. The information was only an assumption, the university teacher cannot not prove its suspicion. But it was already too late there. To today Mails with the incorrect information by the network, until today many editorships, receive also we, again and again anxious notes to spirit from readers. CNN international disclaimed the reproach opposite MIRROR ON-LINE ONE violently. Also Reuters TV, which supplied the material at CNN, hurried, to weaken the reproaches. Even on the Website of Indymedia there was doubt about the reproach. A reader explained, that could not come pictures at all from the year 1991, because on it a Ford from series from 1995 on was to be seen.
A R T I K E L | V E R S E N D E N | L E S E R | B R I E F S C H R E I B E N
© MIRROR ON-LINE ONE 2001 All rights reserve Duplication only with permission of the SPIEGELnet AG
I meant “synopsis” – sometime I hate spell-checking…
That’ll do fer me !
So, it wasn’t file footage.
Was it staged? (Which is what I had originally heard on, I think, 1010 WINS a NYC all news radio station).
Did anyone watch this footage all the way through? How reliable is this Swedish news site? Is there any truth to this? Using stock footage to show events that actually happened is pretty bad IMO, but using footage that is clearly staged is much worse.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55059-2001Sep19.html
and an excerpt:
National Review’s Jonah Goldberg is (understandably) outraged at Palestinian censorship: "On Tuesday, a spontaneous rally broke out in Nablus on the West Bank. As the Trade Center towers collapsed, killing thousands of Americans, revelers honked car horns and young men fired their guns in celebration. You may have seen similar pictures from East Jerusalem, but you didn’t see any from Nablus, because Palestinian militia members stopped photographers from taking pictures.
"One cameraman from the Associated Press did manage to film the celebration. He was ordered not to release the footage. Later, rather than apologizing for harassing the journalist, Ahmed Abdel Rahman, a high-ranking Palestinian official, called the Jerusalem AP bureau chief and told him that the cameraman’s safety could not be ensured if the footage were released. ‘[We] cannot guarantee the life’ of the cameraman, he said.
"The AP decided not to release the tape. . . .