H/T CAMERA

A photo, taken by Agence-France Presse photographer Hazem Bader, has arguably gone viral, and has been dutifully published by the Guardian recently, in a recent edition of their “24 hours in pictures” series.

The photo, which suggests that an Israeli Army driver drove a trailer over the legs of a Palestinian construction worker near Hebron on Jan. 25, has been published, and given prominence, by The International Herald Tribune, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall St. Journal, and MSNBC, all of which included a caption similar to the Guardian’s, as seen below the image.

However, CAMERA has expertly fisked the photo (and caption) and has found many inconsistencies.

First, CAMERA’s Tamar Sternthal checked Palestinian, international and Israeli sources, and found that that the “injured worker,” Mahmoud Abu Qbeita, was, in fact, not evidently actually injured at all and, further, that there “was no evidence that he was even run over” in the first place.

Sternthal noted:

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights and the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, both of which provide comprehensive reports about all West Bank injuries, made no mention of the alleged injury.

Initially, Abu Qbeita complained his left leg was injured. After an army medic’s examination found no wound, Abu Qbeita then claimed his right leg was injured. Raz said that the Palestinian Red Crescent likewise found nothing wrong with him.

Sternthal further noted that of the several photographers on site [AFP, Palestine TV, Pal Media, and Al Quds TV] who were snapping away at Abu Qbeita not one has released a single image of Abu Qbeita as he was being run over.

Sternthal reported that the AFP translated medical release document, which was strangely issued by the PA Ministry of Health and not the hospital itself, did state:

“We conducted X-RAYS on him and found fractures.”

However, Sternthal observed that while “the wire service also quotes Abu Qbeita boasting that he has ‘a medical certificate and…will show it to anyone who wants to see it.‘, he [tellingly] does not offer to show the x-rays. Nor has AFP released them.”

Sternthal asks why, if the x-rays confirm Abu Qbeita has fractures, they would conceal them?

Also, here’s a little background on the AFP Palestinian photographer, Hazem J. Bader:

If you go to his website, you see an impressive body of work, including a large percentage of the nearly 400 photos featured on his site which quite consistently portray Palestinians as victims of Israeli villainy (something of a specialty for Bader), and further demonstrates an egregious pro-Palestinian bias decidedly at odds with any pretense of objective photo-journalism.

Here’s the header on his home page, presumably of an IDF soldier.

Bader also seems to excel at images of IDF soldiers frightening innocent Palestinian children:

 

Finally, here’s the first photo on his site’s home page:

Bader pictured with Arafat

Related articles