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Shattering Image — Newsday A boy was killed, and nine papers called it crossfireCrossfire in nine of sixteen, an actor in three · 1 to 6 October 2000
Shattering Image — Newsday
Newsday · 2 October 2000 · “Shattering Image”

1 to 6 October 2000

A boy was killed, and nine papers called it crossfire

Muhammad al-Durrah was twelve years old. He was killed in Gaza on 30 September 2000, sheltering against a wall beside his father, and a French television crew was filming. Sixteen clippings in this archive, from fifteen American newspapers, carry the story over the six days that followed. This is what those papers did with it.

Nine of the sixteen use the word crossfire. Thirteen of the sixteen name Israeli soldiers or Israeli troops somewhere in the story. In three does any sentence put Israeli fire as the thing that caused a death.

So the soldiers are almost always on the page. They are almost never in the sentence where the boy dies. Crossfire is the word that does that work: it describes a place rather than an act, and a child who dies in it has been killed by a geometry instead of by anybody.

This archive counts that habit across a century. 150 headlines here report the death of a Palestinian and 82 name somebody doing it → What the first week of October 2000 shows is the same habit at close range, in six days, on one child.

2 Oct 2000 · Newsday

“Shattering Image”

Page A7. The line under the headline is Family mourns boy, 12, killed in the crossfire. This is the only clipping in the run where a reporter went to the family’s house, and the only one where his mother is quoted at length. Even here, in the piece that comes closest to him, the word in the subheading is the same one the other eight used.

CP-2000-028
1 Oct 2000 · Lakeland, Florida

“Child Perishes In Cross-Fire”

Page A13, the day after. Four words, and the only actor in the sentence is the cross-fire. The boy does not die; he perishes, which is a thing that happens to people in weather.

CP-2000-026
1 Oct 2000 · Hilo, Hawaii

“Worst violence in four years erupts in Gaza”

The line beneath is 12-year-old boy killed in Palestinian-Israeli cross fire, and the violence erupts, as though from the ground. This is also one of the three clippings whose body text does eventually put Israeli fire and a death in the same sentence. The headline does not.

CP-2000-022

The whole week, as it was printed

Every clipping in this archive from those six days, in date order. Fifteen papers, from Hawaii to Long Island.

Most sections here compare across decades, because most habits of the press only show up at that distance. This one covers six days, and the habit is already visible: the word that removes the actor was reached for by nine papers in a week, on a story where the actor was on camera.

One more thing the week holds. Across the six days his family name is printed four ways — al-Durrah, al-Durra, al-Durah, Aldura — and his given name three: eight papers say Mohammed, three say Rami, one says Muhammad.

The next time a headline says a child was killed in crossfire, the question worth asking is the one these sixteen clippings mostly leave alone: whose fire, and who was holding it.

This is one section of Covering Palestine, an archive of 1513 newspaper clippings about Palestinians printed in 592 papers between 1799 and 2023. Researched and assembled by Maria Robles. Nothing here was printed after 6 October 2023.

Read it on the site, with the reel and the search → · Full text of every clipping · How this was built