Gaza Hospital Scene Staged For Propaganda
On 8th January CNN aired a video claiming to be film shot by a Gazan of his dead brother, who was allegedly killed by an armed Israeli unmanned drone. A hospital in Gaza attempted to revive him, but to no avail.
CNN pulled the video later that day with no explanation. However, many people around the world had discovered problems with the video.
First, the video in question. This version is an edited (shortened version). The original version can be viewed on the CNN site.
Problems were found in the film immediately. One Doctor with an on-line name of Last Mohican had this to say:
I’m no military expert, but I am a doctor, and this video is bullsh-t. The chest compressions that were being performed at the beginning of this video were absolutely, positively fake. The large man in the white coat was NOT performing CPR on that child. He was just sort of tapping on the child’s sternum a little bit with his fingers. You can’t make blood flow like that. Furthermore, there’s no point in doing chest compressions if you’re not also ventilating the patient somehow. In this video, I can’t tell for sure if the patient has an endotracheal tube in place, but you can see that there is nobody bag-ventilating him (a bag is actually hanging by the head of the bed), and there is no ventilator attached to the patient. In a hospital, during a code on a ventilated patient, somebody would probably be bagging the patient during the chest compressions. And they also would have moved the bed away from the wall, so that somebody could get back there to intubate the patient and/or bag him. In short, the “resuscitation scene” at the beginning is fake, and it’s a pretty lame fake at that.
So the question is, were they re-enacting the resuscitation scene by repeating their actions on a corpse, because the child had died earlier? It’s likely that the answer is no, that child is still alive, and is just an actor pretending to be a child who was killed. Why do I say that? Because the big guy in the white coat, if he’s really a doctor, nurse, nurse’s aid, EMT, or any sort of health care provider at all would be entirely aware that tickling the boy’s sternum doesn't’t really look like actual chest compressions. If the boy was dead, the man would have done a more convincing job in compressing the chest. The taps on the chest that he’s doing are the sort of thing you see in bad TV dramas, when you don’t want to make the poor actor playing the victim uncomfortable by really pushing on his chest. I think the man in the white coat knows this child is actually alive, and is making the simulated chest compressions gentle so as not to hurt the child. My guess is that he assumed the videographer, like those on better TV shows, would have been smart enough not to film as far down as the man’s hands on the chest.
Many other medical personnel from around the blogosphere added their comments and observations. Military experts chipped in with their expert opinions regarding the roof top scene of the "explosion". I would have to add my two cents worth here by stating it certainly looks like there had been no blast of any nature on that roof top. My opinion was perhaps an explosion occurred next door and a large chunk of rubble impacted the roof. That would explain the appearance of the roof, rubble, lack of destruction of personal effects and lack of charring, flame damage, or even an explosion. Most of the pock marking seems to be of small arms fire.
Criticism has extended to the camera man who was the victims brother. Instead of helping the victim, he runs for a camera to film the scene? And continues filming? The medical staff apparently have no problem with this. The brother, Ashraf Mashharawi, also runs a business in Gaza called Nepras For Media & IT, which hosts websites. And according to Internet Haganah, in 2004 they were listed as the operator of at least two websites for ... Hamas. According to Internet Haganah’s database of terror website hosts, in 2004 nepras.net, which lists Mashharawi as general manager, was the operator of the main Hamas website and the website of Hamas’ radio station Voice of Al Aqsa.
The primary physician, Mads Gilbert, is not unknown. According to Camera (Committee for Accuracy in Middle Eastern Reporting in America) Gilbert is a radical Marxist and a member of the political Red (Rodt) party, a revolutionary socialist party in Norway. He has been a pro-Palestinian activist since the 1970's and traveled to Lebanon in support of the Palestinians during the first Lebanon war in 1982. He has long been a vocal opponent of Israel and the U.S. Gilbert has acknowledged that he cannot separate politics from medicine, stating, "there is little in medicine that is not politics." He even criticizes the group Doctors Without Borders for providing medical assistance to both sides in a conflict instead of taking a strong stance and supporting only one party. In a 2006 article in Nordlys, journalist Ivan Kristoffersen lamented the fact that Gilbert allows his humanitarian efforts to be politicized by his radical agenda.
photo courtesy LGF
On the 9th January, CNN put the video back on line with the statement:
Responding to accusations that the resuscitation efforts of Mashharawi’s brother appeared inauthentic, Martin said that, based on his years of reporting from Gaza, doctors often go through such efforts even with little hope that a patient can be saved.
So, we are left with two choices. The boy was already dead when brought in and the doctors staged the whole show with the boys corpse for propaganda purposes. Or, the boy was still alive when brought in and incompetent doctors were working on him.
I'm also kind of curious as to why all the medical personnel were speaking English if not for our consumption.
I invite any medically trained personnel out there to take a good view and give me your opinion.
Thanks to Little Green Footballs
I can be E-mailed at outrider@ohnoanotherconservativeblog.com if you have suggestions, questions, or would like to see a particular story written
There is another reason why you don't perform CPR properly on a dead patient - it becomes messy if the stomach contents are forced out of the mouth; on a live patient it is a necessary risk given the alternative.
You still might go through the motions of CPR for another reason: the family is expecting you to or even demanding that you do so (as
CNNs defense seems to be). If you have let the family into the treatment room, they may be demanding that every effort is done to treat their family member. Through watching TV medical shows, it is possible that people are expecting the full code treatment, even if the patient will/did not survive even though they have some residual autonomous behaviour such as transient heartbeat and breathing.
In this story broadcast, there seems to be an large untreated cut on the lower left leg of the patient, that is not bleeding, possibly an indication that the patient is already dead at the time the video was shot in the treatment room.
The reason why this story has gained so much attention is that there was a strong suspicion in the blogging world that this video was made for propaganda reasons. Personally, after reviewing the video, I have no doubt that Ashraf's brother Mahmoud did die. It's the question of whether his death is being used for propaganda purposes.
The video makes serious claims that Israel has committed war crimes. Such accusations should be investigated, and we are trying to do as much as we can to look at the case using the only thing evidence we have: the video that was broadcast.
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And the video itself provides pretty compelling evidence that a) the entire affair was staged between the cameraman and the doctor. b) a corpse was desecrated for the purposes of attempting a propaganda story c) had such contempt for the viewing audiences they made no real effort to even make it look authentic or get the details right.
Each day that goes by produces more evidence of collusion between the hospital staff and the camera man as well as a growing number of medical professionals detailing the technical inaccuracies shown in the video. Inattention to detail in a propaganda film or sheer incompetence in the Gaza medical system and its Norwegian Doctor?
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