The “Palestinian” Victimhood Factory

Israelly Cool reported Wednesday that a supporter of the “Palestinian” jihad against Israel, Sarah Hassan, recently posted a photo on Twitter of a boy crouched beneath a cart, surrounded by snow, trying to keep warm. “Gaza…poverty…cold!” wrote Hassan, but IsraellyCool noted that “never got lower than 6 degrees Celcius [sic] in Gaza over that time period” – that is, 43 degrees Fahrenheit, so there couldn’t have been snow piled up everywhere. What’s more, the photo doesn’t really come from Gaza at all; it was taken in Afghanistan in 2006. It was all in a day’s work for the “Palestinian” victimhood factory.

A cornerstone of the “Palestinian” cause in the court of world opinion is projection and deception on a massive scale. Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, declared: “War is deceit.” (Bukhari, vol. 4, book 56, no. 3030) He also elucidated the conditions under which deceit was permissible: “It is not lawful to lie except in three cases: Something the man tells his wife to please her, to lie during war, and to lie in order to bring peace between the people.”

“Palestinian” leaders have refined lying during war into a fine art. “Palestinian” spokesmen set out to portray Israel as an outrageously repressive regime, routinely committing atrocities against the “Palestinian” people, who deserved aid from the international community as much as the Israelis warranted condemnation.

This initiative, too, has been wildly successful. The United Nations condemns Israel far more often than any other nation; many of these condemnations have been based on reports about Israeli atrocities that were entirely fabricated. World opinion has largely turned against Israel as well, as it has an international reputation today of being one of the world’s most unjust and repressive regimes.

Chicanery with photos akin to the freezing kid from Gaza photo is quite common. Abdullah Alsaafin, who described himself on Twitter as a “journalist and media trainer,” on August 9, 2018 tweeted a photo of a cute, smiling toddler, with this explanation: “This baby, Bayan abu khamash, 2 years old, was killed last night along with her pregnant mother when an Israeli rocket hit their house in Gaza Strip town of Der elbalah.” The photo, however, was not of Bayan abu Khamash at all, but of an American girl named Elle Lively McBroom. Alsaafin, or his source, picked up the little girl’s photo from Instagram, apparently at random, in order to present the world with another Israeli atrocity. There is no certainty that Bayan abu Khamash was killed by Israelis, or killed at all, or even that she really ever existed.

The international media often accepted “Palestinian” claims uncritically and spread them throughout the world. The Gaza border protests of Summer 2018 offered a superabundance of examples of this. Reuters reported on June 1, 2018 that “Israeli forces killed a Palestinian nurse on Friday as she tried to help a wounded protester at the Gaza border, according to health officials and a witness, while Israel said militants had attacked its troops with gunfire and a grenade.” Razan Al-Najar, just 21 years old, “was shot as she ran toward the fortified border fence, east of the south Gaza city of Khan Younis, in a bid to reach a casualty, a witness said.”

The shooting appeared to be a clear case of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) deliberately targeting and murdering a civilian. Reuters continued: “Wearing a white uniform, ‘she raised her hands high in a clear way, but Israeli soldiers fired and she was hit in the chest,’ the witness, who requested anonymity, told Reuters.”

Dr. Iyad Yaghi, a senior health official in Gaza, urged the world to make Razan al-Najar a symbol of Israeli crimes: “It is the first time the Israeli side have killed a paramedic, she is a female. They are targeting more than 245 paramedics. We are asking here, protesting here, asking the international community to put more pressure on Israel. It is time not to keep silent.”

However, several days later a video interview of Razan al-Najar emerged in which she said: “I act as a human shield and rescuer for the injured on the front lines.” A 2015 report from the United Nations, which has been an inveterate enemy of Israel for years, criticized Hamas for using civilians as human shields – that is, mounting attacks against Israel from densely populated civilian areas so that Israel’s retaliatory fire would kill civilians, whose deaths could then be exploited for propaganda purposes.

An Israeli investigation also found that Razan al-Najar had not been hit intentionally; running toward, rather than away from, gunfire was just the sort of thing a self-designated human shield would do, so as to divert gunfire away from those who were trying to breach Israel’s security fence. IDF spokesman Ofir Gendelman said: “Razan Najjar was not an angel, like they made her out to be. Hamas puts her in front of the cameras, and she boasts of serving as a human shield for those who exploit even medical personnel to serve Hamas’s terrorist purposes.”

Razan al-Najar was not the only person Hamas exploited. The jihad group also paid 8,000 shekels (approximately $2,200) to the family of an eight-month-old baby, Layla al-Ghandour, in return for their claim that the little girl had been killed by Israeli tear gas during the Gaza border riots of June 2018. This was, as far as Hamas was concerned, money well spent: the girl’s death made international headlines, and a chorus of new condemnations of Israel. Seham Al Ghandour, Layla’s mother, played her part to the hilt, telling reporters: “I went looking for my daughter and they told me she was taken to the hospital. I went to the hospital and I knew she was dead.” Little Layla’s aunt, Fatma Al Ghandour, pointed the finger: “They did not have mercy on a girl, they threw gas bombs at her, they killed her with tear gas. They did not have mercy on the children or anyone else. What is she guilty of to die like this?” EuroNews intoned solemnly: “Traditionally, May 15th is the day Palestinians mark the ‘Nakba’ or ‘Catastrophe’. But this year, they have even more reasons to grieve.”

But in reality, Layla al-Ghandour suffered from a heart defect known as patent ductus arteriosus (PDA), which is more commonly known as a hole in the heart. That was what killed her, not the tear gas.

Hamas was so anxious to have “Palestinian” civilian casualties that it could parade before the world in order to gain propaganda victories that in April 2018, as protests raged at the Gaza border, the terror group offered $500 to “Palestinians” for getting shot and wounded at the border, and $3,000 to the families of those who got themselves killed during the protests. This was too much for Mahmoud Al-Habbash, Mahmoud Abbas’ Advisor on Islamic Affairs and Supreme Sharia Judge, who denounced Hamas on official Palestinian Authority TV: “The Palestinian people…doesn’t care about those [Hamas] with ‘the emotional stories of heroism,’ those with the slogans of heroism – slogans that when you hear them, you think that the people saying them are inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque after they liberated it. And afterwards you discover that they’re only selling illusions, trading in suffering and blood, trading in victims, [saying]: ‘You Palestinians, our people, go and die so that we’ll go to the TV and media with strong declarations.’ These [Hamas] acts of ‘heroism’ don’t fool anyone anymore. The Palestinian people…sides with the PLO.”

Whether it did or not, and there was considerable evidence that it did not, that Hamas was sending “Palestinians” to die in order to manipulate world opinion against Israel was certain.

This is a propaganda success that Josef Goebbels and the editors of Pravda would have envied, and it became the foundation for more. Having established the “Palestinians” as a tiny indigenous people whose land was stolen by rapacious, well-heeled, and oppressive foreigners, it was time to return to the negotiating table – not in order to achieve any genuine accord with Israel, but to exploit the victimhood status of the new tiny people they had invented in order to win valuable concessions from the Israelis.

And it worked.

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 19 books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book is The Palestinian Delusion: The Catastrophic History of the Middle East Peace Process. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.

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Michelle

4 years ago

Palywood inc. Only the Left and the MSM take any real notice of their pathetic lying productions.
Remember the big lie about the child hiding from Israeli weapon fire that the western MSM lapped up?

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caliroxanne

4 years ago

Reply to  Michelle

How could Pallywood Inc. be anything other than a lie factory since the entire premise upon which it is built is a lie? The so-called “Palestinians” don’t exist, and they never have. Fake people, fake history and fake propaganda. Check out Robert Spencer’s new book, The Palestinian Delusion. You can also find online great interviews he’s done about the book.

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patd

4 years ago

the muslims got to lie if their lips are moving. Can’t help it as all are parasitic feral animal inbred goat rapers and camel humpers.

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Suresh

4 years ago

Reply to  patd

And the Left/Liberal nuts want to bring in more illegals/jihadis who rape, assault, murder women !

They are aided by the dumb , ignorant Left/Liberal loons coming out of colleges/schools run by pro-jihadi left/liberal loons

And by the time they realise their stupidity they get assaulted , gang raped or murdered like this couple its too late for them http://offtrade.net/cnmnews/libs-say-evil-is-myth/

Problem is they enable evil while not able to see evil thanks to pro-jihadi left/liberal indoctrination in schools/colleges where real history of islam and America is no longer taught.

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MuhamMUDTheFakeProphet

4 years ago

Q: What’s the difference between nazis and muslums?

A: better propaganda and a different menu

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Ziggy46

4 years ago

The victim card continues, one hates to admit, being advantageous to the mock-Palestinians, and any Muslim on this planet. The vilification of the State of Israel as the great oppressor, the great Satan, captivates the Leftists of all nations, specifically the Middle East and the Nazified West.

The likes of Bernie Sanders, his shallow, Hollywood disciples, academia, not to dismiss the Democrats, nor the MSM are the public relations/propagandist enterprise for the insidious mock-Palestinians.

The vilification of the State of Israel and the U.S. since under the Presidency of Trump has no bounds. The so-called faux-Democratic West loathes the President but, more so, want Trump and Israel to disappear.

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@MadJewessWoman

4 years ago

I have zero sympathy for p$lestinians. There are hundreds, if not thousands of fake and staged photos they have submitted to the media.

Look at their support system: Communists and Nazis. Puke.

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TD

4 years ago

What is the DICTIONARY definition of a Palestinian?

Palestinian: A pedo-cidal and anti-semitc terrorist organization which has received legitimacy status as a community by Democrats. (See Pedo-Jihadism).

Pedo-Jihadism: A form of Islamist terrorism that focuses on the use of children and infants as human shields or combatants to advance religious and political agendas. (See Pedocide)

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jerrys

4 years ago

Suppose at this very moment a number of moslem jihadis are having themselves infected with the corona virus and plan to attend the Superbowl where they will be very friendly with the Americans and also visit many areas that they can touch and infect. Since it takes ten days for the symptoms to appear they will also be able to enjoy visits to malls and concerts . Why what a wonderful way to fight for islam and get their virgins in heaven and they can have fun while doing it. No need for noisy, messy suicide vests!

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NITZAKHON

4 years ago

And it works, in large part, because the uber-educated Left can’t believe “uneducated” brown-skinned Arabs could be so sophisticated as to pull the wool over their eyes.
#leftistracism

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Pantalones

4 years ago

It snows in Palestine?

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