What to believe?
Something I suspected might be the case turned out to be. From www.counterpunch.org:
Least credible news footage
CNN’s videotape of Palestinians supposedly dancing in the streets of a West Bank town. CounterPuncher Marcio A.V. Carvalho at the state university of Campinas in Brazil tells us that he and his colleagues had compared this tape with one from 1991 showing Palestinian cheering, and found them to be identical.
There may be a mitigating factor here, though. Yesterday the Associated Press filed a story about a cameraman who was threatened after taking video of a Palestinian rally:
AP protests threats to cameraman
The videographer, on assignment for Associated Press Television News, was summoned to a Palestinian Authority security office and told that the material must not be aired. Calls in the name of the Tanzim militia, an armed group associated with Yasser Arafat’s Fatah group, warned him he would be held responsible and made what he interpreted as threats on his life.
Several Palestinian Authority officials spoke to AP in Jerusalem urging that the material not be broadcast. Ahmed Abdel Rahman, Arafat’s Cabinet secretary, said the Palestinian Authority “cannot guarantee the life” of the cameraman if the footage was broadcast.
Possibly the 1991 footage was similar to the censored footage from the rally. If that’s the case, it’s a fairly unethical and irresponsible decision to use it. If this story *isn’t* the reason the footage was used… well, I’d just hate to think that CNN was purposefully trying to foster resentment towards Palestinians…