A landmark ruling about the death of the boy Mohammed al-Dura is about to be handed down by a French court. If many are unaware of this, it is no accident. Recent developments regarding the accuracy of that story have received no coverage by any of the major networks. The growing suspicions about the official, tragic version - that the boy was shot by Israeli soldiers - have been reported almost exclusively by the Jewish media. The global news networks were eager consumers and purveyors of the iconic image of that child when it emerged in 2000. But they are studiously avoiding the matter now that it is looking more and more like a hoax. Expressing mea culpa is probably not something they relish.

Of course, their correspondents could have followed Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy's example. A noted apologist for the Palestinians, he has conceded that al-Dura may not have been killed by Israelis after all, yet wrote in November, 2007: The "question of who killed al-Dura is not important" and the quest for the truth about it is "an eccentric obsession."

But there are some Israelis to whom the truth does still matter. For them, the shameful role of one of the key players in the affair is probably not well known: that of their own government. Israel's role in perpetuating the al-Dura myth has been baffling...