GAZA TEEN “KILLED” BY IDF RETURNS UNHARMED BUT THE MEDIA AIRBRUSHES THE INCIDENT….
Sunday Apr 04, 2010
http://cgis.jpost.com/Blogs/greenlined/entry/an_easter_miracle_posted_byGreen-Lined: An Easter ‘miracle’
Posted by Yisrael Medad
It seems there was a miracle this Easter: Muhammad Farmawi, a 15-year-old Gazan boy, returned from the dead. But there were no miracles of media ethics, sorry to say.
The New York Times’ version of the ‘miracle’:
A 14-year-old boy thought to have been killed either by Israeli gunfire or from internal Palestinian violence last week turned up unharmed at his family’s house […] ‘It was a very big shock for us,’ Mr. Farmawi [the boy’s father] said. ‘We were told that he had been killed by Israeli fire and that his body had been left near the fence at Rafah,’ in southern Gaza.”
Told by whom?
For the answer, we need to go back a few days to March 30, when The Jerusalem Post informed us that:
A 15-year-old Palestinian boy was reportedly shot dead on Tuesday during an anti-Israel demonstration along the Gaza Strip border fence. The IDF […] said that no one was injured in the shooting. The Palestinian Ma’an news agency reported that the boy, Muhammad al-Farmawi, was shot after approaching the barrier near the Dahaniya airport […] The [IDF] statement noted that the matter was being investigated.”
By the way, if you check that Ma’an report, you’ll learn that “local sources who wished to remain anonymous said the death may have been an internal matter.”
But where did Ma’an get its information?
Al-Jazeera reported:
Gaza emergency chief Moaweya Hassanein told reporters that medical teams and [the] International Red Cross Committee (ICRC) co-ordinated with the Israeli army to collect the boy’s body.”
Now, back to the Post:
The Palestinian Ma’an news agency said Farmawi’s mother was surprised to find her son
alive four days after he was allegedly killed. His death had been confirmed by medical
professionals in the Gaza Strip […] According to the Ma’an report, Farmawi arrived in Gazan
Rafah on Friday alive and well. He was discovered to be part of a group of 17 Palestinian
youths who were arrested after trying to infiltrate Egypt via smuggling tunnels. Gaza police
facilitated the boys’ return to their homes. Farmawi’s mother had ‘wept for days at the
loss of her son,’ whom she considered a martyr, Ma’an reported.” (emphasis added)
As media consumers, we must ask ourselves several questions:
1. Who is Moaweya Hassanein, really?
2. Who are those “medical professionals”, and why would they say what they did?
3. Why would The New York Yimes, or any other news agency, ever again rely on Ma’an reports? Or any local Arab news agency, or even Al-Jazeera?
Even if we Israelis know very well the unreliable nature of Arab media and the possible consequences of other agencies depending on such reporting, we needn’t get too pessimistic.
After all, it seems miracles do happen.
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