{{short description|Israeli physicist}} '''Nahum Shahaf''' ({{langx|he|נחום שחף}}) is an Israeli physicist who specializes in ballistics and film technology.<ref name="Guysen"/>
==Biography== Nahum Shahaf earned a Master of Physics degree from Bar-Ilan University in 1977. Throughout most of the 1980s, he worked on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), which Israeli journalist Amnon Lord described as placing Shahaf "among the leading developers" of the technology.<ref name="Lord"/> According to his curriculum vitae, Shahaf worked primarily on UAV optical tracking systems, before shifting his focus to missile systems and inventing over the next decade.<ref name="cv"/> In 1997, he received an Israeli Ministry of Science award for creativity for his work on compressed digital video transmission.<ref name=Fallows />
==Al-Durrah investigation== Muhammad al-Durrah was a 12-year-old Palestinian boy, reported to have been shot and killed by Israel Defense Forces (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.<ref name="CordesmanMoravitz"/> 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.<ref name="Cygielman"/> 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'' 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.<ref name="CNN"/>
Israeli newspapers ''Haaretz'' and the ''Jerusalem Post'' claimed that Shahaf had no ballistics experience and ''Haaretz'' described the investigation as "dubious."<ref name="Cygielman"/> His previous involvement in raising doubts about the identity of Rabin's killer became the subject of controversy.<ref name="Schwartz"/> 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.<ref name="Gutmann"/> Shahaf believes that al-Durrah was not killed by the IDF and may still be alive.<ref name="TempleRaston"/>
==References== <references>
<ref name=Fallows>[https://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200306/fallows Fallows 2003].</ref>
<ref name="Lord">[http://www.jcpa.org/jl/vp482.htm Who Killed Muhammad Al-Dura? Blood Libel-- Model 2000 Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs Amnon Lord 15 July 2002]</ref>
<ref name="cv">{{in lang|he}}<!--Hebrew--> [http://www.a-dura.com/a38843-cv נחום שחף - קורות חיים]</ref>
<ref name="CordesmanMoravitz">{{cite book|last1=Cordesman|first1=Anthony|last2=Moravitz|first2=Jennifer|title=The Israeli-Palestinian war: escalating to nowhere|page=372|publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group|year=2005|isbn=978-0-275-98758-9}}</ref>
<ref name="Cygielman">[https://web.archive.org/web/20080719131233/http://www.ajds.org.au/intifada/netzarim.htm Cygielman 2000].</ref>
<ref name="CNN">[http://archives.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/meast/11/27/israel.boys.death.ap/ Israel claims Palestinian gunmen may have shot boy in high-profile killing] AP - November 27, 2000 {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080215034538/http://archives.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/meast/11/27/israel.boys.death.ap/ |date=February 15, 2008 }}</ref>
<ref name="Schwartz">Schwartz, Adi (2007). "[https://web.archive.org/web/20071104101554/http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/919557.html In the footsteps of the al-Dura controversy]", ''Haaretz'', November 8, 2007, accessed January 24, 2010.</ref>
<ref name="Gutmann">''The other war: Israelis, Palestinians, and the struggle for media supremacy'', Stephanie Gutmann, Encounter Books, 2005, p. 75.</ref>
<ref name="TempleRaston">{{cite news|last=Temple-Raston|first=Dina|title=Engineer Casts Doubt on Veracity of Claims That Israelis Killed Palestinian Boy in 2000|url=http://www.nysun.com/foreign/engineer-casts-doubt-on-veracity-of-claims-that/10581/|work=The New York Sun|date=March 15, 2005}}</ref>
<ref name="Guysen">[http://webarchive.loc.gov/all/20050408231501/http://www.guysen.com/mena.php?sid=352 The Mohamad A-Dura affair: a gross imposture?] MENA interviews Nahum Shahaf ([http://spme.net/cgi-bin/facultyforum.cgi?ID=601 Copy] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120224030627/http://spme.net/cgi-bin/facultyforum.cgi?ID=601 |date=2012-02-24 }})</ref>
</references>
===Bibliography=== *Cygielman, Anat (2000). [https://web.archive.org/web/20080719131233/http://www.ajds.org.au/intifada/netzarim.htm "IDF keeps shooting itself in the foot"], ''Haaretz'', November 7, 2000, accessed March 22, 2010. *Fallows, James (2003). [https://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200306/fallows "Who shot Mohammed al-Durra?"], ''The Atlantic'', June 2003, accessed March 21, 2010.
==External links== *[http://www.a-dura.com/?l=en Shahaf's website] *[http://www.i2i.org.il/?l=he&a=38843 Shahaf's curriculum vitae] {{in lang|he}}<!--Hebrew--> *[http://www.i2i.org.il/?l=he&a=37134 Al-Dura, Nahum Shahaf investigation results] {{in lang|he}}<!--Hebrew-->
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Shahaf, Nahum}} Category:Israeli physicists Category:Living people Category:Jewish physicists Category:Year of birth missing (living people)