Posted on 11/19/2012 5:14:02 PM PST by SeekAndFind
A video at CNN with reporting by Sara Sidner from Gaza tells us "how a small child became a symbol of civilian casualties." Some of her narrative: A scene no parent should ever have to endure" "Four year-old Mahmoud Sadallah lies dead in the arms of a neighbor, a child of Gaza, another victim of an airstrike" "we saw no evidence here of military activity." There's even a scene where Ms. Sidner reports having to flee where she is currently reporting because "there are airstrikes" and "rockets" Since Hamas doesn't have an air force, we're supposed to assume that Israel's military is responsible for Mahmoud's death.
Except, as Joel Pollak at Breitbart noted this morning, others have shown that Sidner wants us to believe isn't the truth (bolds are mine throughout this post; links are in originals presented):
Hamas has once again apparently been caught faking an image of a dead Palestinian child--this time using a child likely killed by its own rocket fire and claiming that an Israeli attack was responsible. CNN's Sara Sidner ran a full report on the child's death, strongly implying that an Israeli bomb had been responsible.
The dead child was paraded before the cameras during the visit of Egyptian prime minister Hisham Kandil, who kissed the dead child in the presence of Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh. But even the New York Times was suspicious.
Bloggers such as Elder of Ziyon quickly pieced together the evidence of Hamas fakery:
... the fact that Hamas and other terror groups were firing rockets throughout Friday morning while the IDF did not, plus the fact that over 100 rockets have fallen short in Gaza (both using past performance and IDF statistics as proof), and the fact that the shrapnel in the video matches almost exactly the shrapnel damage we have seen from rocket fire into Israel, and it is very clear: this child was killed by Gaza rocket fire, not by Israel.
Not every civilian death in Gaza is faked, of course. But almost every civilian death can be attributed to Hamas, which deliberately fires rockets from civilian areas and hides its weapons caches in mosques and homes.
Update: According to the office of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, 60 of the 703 rockets fired by Hamas and other terror groups since the start of the conflict have fallen on Palestinian civilians. The Israel Defense Force says that 99 rockets in total that were fired at Israel have hit Gaza itself in four days of conflict.
Update 2: Several sources now report that the child was, in fact, killed by a Hamas rocket, not Israel. Those sources include the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. Will CNN issue a correction to its earlier false report?
If CNN has issued a correction, I wasn't able to find it.
The truth about this incident reveals a horrifying aspect of Hamas's conduct of which I daresay even most relatively informed followers of the news aren't aware, as explained by Richard Landes at PJ Media:
... the head of Hamas, whose boys systematically fire from the midst of civilians — in order to create civilian casualties they can then blame on Israeli counter-strikes — exploiting a death directly caused by his men, in order to appeal to western sympathy. It would be hard to imagine a more stunning portrait of the most depraved hypocrisy (and contempt for viewers who believe this display of compassion).... It is hard to imagine a more grotesque expression of a mutual corruption: trying to demonize your enemy before an outside audience whom you expect to side with you in the name of empathy for the very children you victimize. How disordered the emotional and moral world of the masterminds of this kind of manipulation must be.
... In other words, Hamas engages in the exceptionally rare wartime act of actively victimizing one’s own civilian population –specifically a war crime – in order to win a victory in cognitive war.
And they can only do so if a corrupt media on the scene (including NGOs and UN agencies), rather than expose their criminal strategies, play along and present the images of dead babies in the framework of the Palestinian narrative of Israeli victimization.
Even if others don't play along (Pollak notes that the Associated Press as well the New York Times reported reasons to be skeptical), the damage is done, as millions of viewers of CNN, especially overseas where alternative media is often not as strong as in the U.S. (not that it's strong enough in the U.S. yet), will never see or hear the truth about Hamas's barbarity. That sad reality makes me wonder if Sara Sidner was really "fooled" at all.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
Its a known fact that Hamas will take women and children out of their homes and put them with the rockets so that when Israel destroys the rockets, the women and children die so they can be used as a propaganda tool. Its what Hamas has been doing for years and the media falls for it every single time
CNN wasn’t fooled. They were part of the propaganda. If they were fooled they’d be saying so around the clock.
The low life scum known as the MSM media calls them “props”.
bkmk
That’s why no one watches CNN in Israel. I was there in June for my sister’s wedding, Fox News is the #1 news station in Israel(Other than Israeli news of course)
CNN and other media groups should leave there soon. Not going to be many survivors.
Exactly right. CNN knows the game. They are willing participants in this sham.
They could club pali children like baby seals and I could care less.
Could this lead to that last ‘all-out’ war against Israel not that far off in time?
Sara Sidner ; let me guess , a nice Jewish American girl ....
“Fooled” or willing propaganda participant?
“They could club pali children like baby seals and I could care less.
“
==
Please tell me you don’t really mean that.
.
I was in Europe back in the 90s when CNN broke the fake story about Tailwind. On the international CNN feed at the time, it was absolutely non-stop, but I understand they apologized rather quickly in the US and fired a bunch of people including that old Aussie communist anchor-man with the bad comb over (can't recall his name right now) who "broke" the story. The International feed didn't see so much in the way of apologies, for their "reporting mishap"(i.e. ideologically driven lies.)
Lies go around the world ten times before the truth even gets out of bed.
They don’t care about their children. They intentionally put them in harms way. They are indoctrinated in hate. Yes. I really mean that.
Wasn’t there a Pali video a number of years ago of a “funeral” procession of several mourners carrying a casket? I believe they dropped the casket, ran away and the “body” inside miraculously got up, and also scattered away from the camera.
CNN . . . ripe to receive a Goebbels award.
Let us not forget the famous Baby Milk Factory incident.
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