physicist
A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...
who specializes in ballistics and film technology.
Biography
Nahum Shahaf earned a
Master of Physics A Master of Physics honours (or MPhys (Hons)) degree is a specific master's degree for courses in the field of physics.
United Kingdom
In England and Wales, the MPhys is an undergraduate award available after pursuing a four-year course of study a ...
degree from
Bar-Ilan University
Bar-Ilan University (BIU, , ''Universitat Bar-Ilan'') is a public research university in the Tel Aviv District city of Ramat Gan, Israel. Established in 1955, Bar Ilan is Israel's second-largest academic university institution. It has 20,000 ...
in 1977. Throughout most of the 1980s, he worked on
unmanned aerial vehicles
An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) or unmanned aircraft system (UAS), commonly known as a drone, is an aircraft with no human pilot, crew, or passengers onboard, but rather is controlled remotely or is autonomous.De Gruyter Handbook of Dron ...
(UAVs) for the
Israel Defense Forces
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF; , ), alternatively referred to by the Hebrew-language acronym (), is the national military of the State of Israel. It consists of three service branches: the Israeli Ground Forces, the Israeli Air Force, and ...
(IDF), which Israeli journalist
Amnon Lord
Amnon Lord (; born 1952, Kibbutz Ein Dor, Israel), is an Israeli journalist with the daily newspaper Makor Rishon.
Lord's articles and essays about media, film, and politics have been published in ''The Jerusalem Post'', According to his
, Shahaf worked primarily on UAV optical tracking systems, before shifting his focus to missile systems and inventing over the next decade. In 1997, he received an Israeli Ministry of Science award for creativity for his work on compressed digital video transmission.
Al-Durrah investigation
Muhammad al-Durrah
On 30 September 2000, the second day of the Second Intifada, 12-year-old Muhammad al-Durrah () was killed at the Netzarim Junction in the Gaza Strip during widespread protests and riots across the Palestinian territories against Israeli ...
was a 12-year-old Palestinian boy, reported to have been shot and killed by
Israel Defense Forces
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF; , ), alternatively referred to by the Hebrew-language acronym (), is the national military of the State of Israel. It consists of three service branches: the Israeli Ground Forces, the Israeli Air Force, and ...
(IDF) gunfire on September 30, 2000. Shahaf, noticing what he considered an anomaly in the video footage of the shooting, contacted Major General Yom Tov Samia, head of the Israel's Southern Command. Shahaf proposed that he and Joseph Doriel, an engineer Shahaf had previously collaborated with on conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, should investigate the incident. Samia agreed, and on October 23, 2000, Shahaf helped arrange a re-enactment at an IDF shooting range, in front of a CBS ''
60 Minutes
''60 Minutes'' is an American television news magazine broadcast on the CBS television network. Debuting in 1968, the program was created by Don Hewitt and Bill Leonard, who distinguished it from other news programs by using a unique style o ...
'' camera crew. In late November 2000, the investigators concluded, based on the angles and rate of fire, that Israeli troops had probably not shot the boy.
Israeli newspapers ''Haaretz'' and the ''Jerusalem Post'' claimed that Shahaf had no ballistics experience and ''Haaretz'' described the investigation as "dubious." His previous involvement in raising doubts about the identity of Rabin's killer became the subject of controversy. Shahaf, however, claims he spent months painstakingly collecting footage from reluctant cameramen and splicing the pieces together in rough temporal order to create an unbroken film of the day. Shahaf believes that al-Durrah was not killed by the IDF and may still be alive.
In December 2007, following ''Haaretz's'' report on his work, which op-ed writer
Gideon Levy
Gideon Levy (, ; born 2 June 1953) is an Israeli journalist and author. Levy writes opinion pieces and a weekly column for the newspaper ''Haaretz'' that often focus on the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories. Levy has won prizes ...
described as an "eccentric obsession," Shahaf filed a
defamation
Defamation is a communication that injures a third party's reputation and causes a legally redressable injury. The precise legal definition of defamation varies from country to country. It is not necessarily restricted to making assertions ...
lawsuit against the newspaper charging that ''Haaretz's'' coverage had caused investors to back out of financing one of his inventions. He filed for 400 million
shekels
A shekel or sheqel (; , , plural , ) is an ancient Mesopotamian coin, usually of silver. A shekel was first a unit of weight—very roughly 11 grams (0.35 ozt)—and became currency in ancient Tyre, Carthage and Hasmonean Judea.
Name
The word ...