CNN Duped By Sad Story Of Dead Palestinian Child 'Killed By Israel'?

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On Saturday, CNN's Sara Sidner reported on the sad story of a four-year-old Palestinian boy reportedly killed by an Israeli airstrike on Gaza. The boy had become a martyr of sorts, with the Egyptian prime minister Hisham Kandil and Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh showing the corpse to the press and taking the opportunity to condemn Israel's military strikes.

However, whether or not the child was actually killed by Israel has become a subject of controversy: it seems as though CNN may have been duped by a false story in which four-year-old Mahmoud Sadallah was killed by a rocket, but an errant Palestinian one ' not an Israeli one.

In her report, Sidner said that the 'small child became a symbol of civilian casualties' of Israel's strikes, 'a child of Gaza, another victim of an airstrike.' She noted that within five hours of the child's death, 'we saw no evidence here of military activity,' suggesting that the child was a victim of a sloppy bombing on Israel's part.

But many have expressed skepticism that the rocket that killed the boy came from the Israeli Defense Force. Pro-Israel blogger Elder of Ziyon wrote:

'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.

Conservative sites like Breitbart, NewsBusters, and HonestReporting all picked up on the possibility of CNN being duped by a 'martyred' child, accusing CNN of giving a 'PR gift for Hamas, [who are] eager to portray the IDF as vicious child killers.'

But there is a healthy dose of skepticism over Sadallah's killer even in more mainstream press outlets, as the pro-Israel bloggers pointed out.

The Associated Press posted this image with a subtly skeptical caption:

The Egyptian and Hamas prime ministers 'claim' the boy was killed by Israeli rockets, the AP reported, noting that Israel's prime minister 'vociferously denied carrying any form of an attack in the area since the previous night.' The AP report also noted that 'no one appeared to have witnessed the strike' and 'the area showed signs that a projectile might have exploded there, with shrapnel marks in the walls of surrounding homes and a shattered kitchen window.'

Those complications to the story were extended in the Sunday Telegraph's reporting (emphasis added):

But there were signs on Saturday that not all the Palestinian casualties have been the result of Israeli air strikes. The highly publicised death of four-year-old Mohammed Sadallah appeared to have been the result of a misfiring home-made rocket, not a bomb dropped by Israel.

The child's death on Friday figured prominently in media coverage after Hisham Kandil, the Egyptian prime minister, was filmed lifting his dead body out of an ambulance. 'The boy, the martyr, whose blood is still on my hands and clothes, is something that we cannot keep silent about,' he said, before promising to defend the Palestinian people.

But experts from the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights who visited the site on Saturday said they believed that the explosion was caused by a Palestinian rocket.

Indeed, the PCHR, which keeps track of casualties within Palestine, did not list Sadallah as a victim of an Israeli military attack.

Adding more fuel to the flames of skepticism was the New York Times report on the child's death:

It is unclear who was responsible for the strike on Annazla: the damage was nowhere near severe enough to have come from an Israeli F-16, raising the possibility that an errant missile fired by Palestinian militants was responsible for the deaths. What seems clear is that expectations for a pause in the fighting, for at least one family, were tragically misplaced.

Naturally, the conservative sites have called upon CNN to issue a correction or retraction ' neither of which has yet to come. And as of press time, CNN hasn't responded to our request for comment.

In a battle that seemingly has no end in sight, and plays out mostly in heavily crowded urban spaces like Gaza City, we are likely to see more of these complicated controversies arise.

Watch the original CNN report below:

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• 'Damn that Jew Owned Media!' as Rupert Murdoch said.

• Whether or not it was an Israeli missile, and neither side has definitive proof, it was most certainly caused by Israel's stepped up aggression against the people of Gaza. Israel has created a prison camp of 1.7 million people in the Gaza. Israel has been offered recognition and peace but have walked away because of their hardline government.

• CNN doesn't know the capital of Israel.

• It won't be the first time CNN has become the propaganda arm of the Muslim world.

• ''Conservative sites like Breitbart, NewsBusters, and HonestReporting all picked up on the possibility''

  Couldn't you write this first so I could stop reading and start laughing?

  Those are the same sites that pushed the crazy over-sampling polling theory that Andrew and Noah latched onto.

  Some people never learn.

• There are lots of good points against Bibi, and the extreme-right he represents.
  But it is stupid to ignore the terrorist organizations active in the Palestinian communities, who actually care very little for them.

  So, getting Bibi out is only half the problem.
  Hamas and Jihad are fundamentalists, just like GOP nutcases.

  Their way, or the highway.

• There was a time when Palestinians were able to travel into Israel to work, they chose to try and kill Israelites instead, so travel was restricted.

• Every time Palestine and Isreal have a major fighting going on with rockets and bombings we have these stories of tragic innocent deaths that are later proven to be fabricated, sometimes even staged directly by the photographers themselves. This is the second time since Friday (that I've heard of) that CNN was duped by propaganda. You'd think at some point they'd learn to take statements by the Palestinians with a grain of salt.

• that ignores of course that Israel illegally took their land on the West Bank and they were having to go through checkpoints to get to their homes. Isreal has plenty of blood on their hands too, no one is innocent here. Question is why is the US supporting a regime that kills innocents?

• In case you didn't read the full post, I pointed out that Breitbart et al latched onto the story' but there was also MAINSTREAM skepticism.

  Personally, I don't read Breitbart and I find most of their writing to be blindly partisan and ugly at times. But the NYT, AP, Telegraph, (and apparently WaPo and Guardian), have all written skeptical statements about this story.

  So before you assume things'

• Also: since when did I EVER 'latch onto' the 'crazy over-sampling theory'??? Do you even read this website? I wrote a column declaring, before the election, that Nate Silver was likely the most accurate predictor of the outcome. Also: when right-wing sites started reporting that over-sampling thing, I didn't write a single post about it. And when Dick Morris spoke, I mocked. So umm' what site do you read exactly? Because it sounds like it exists in some trippy alternate universe'

• What makes anyone think CNN wouldn't correct the story once facts show otherwise? I mean, it's not like they are Fox News or breitbart.com or anything.

• Here's some deaths you won't read about at Breitbart or NewsRetards, except when accompanied by cheering and gloating:

  'Jamal and two of his siblings were lowered vertically into a one-square-yard hole that the men covered with a concrete slab, and then dirt. The baby, 1-year-old Ibrahim, was buried with his mother.'

  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/20/world/middleeast/gazans-mourn-dalu-family-killed-by-israeli-bomb.html?hp

• Or how about this???

  WHO CARES who did it?

  While breitbart and the likes are making people like you bitch about CNN, the fact remains A CHILD DIED.

  Why is this story about CNN?

  Its all crap.

• No no no you dont understand'. Israel does not kill innocent.. if it happens (which is all the times) it is a mistake and they are unhappy about it'

  Bomb a building housing Journalist and then claim, We were targeting the Antennas' as if the bomb knows how to distinguish the roof top from the top floor'

  Bomb a house full of children.. and then say no no we were targeting HAMAS Operative who lives in the hood'..

  It is a conscious decision to target civilians period'why else would they bomb police building and ministries of health and journalist building' their justification is pathetic'

• ugly at times

  Sounds like a good name for their rag.

  The Ugly at TIMES

• And Breitbart was also right about Anthony Weiner's dick!

• Good response, Andrew'you seem to actually try to be even-handed most of the time, while leaving the extreme polemics to TC and NR'keep up the good work.

• Are you saying breitbart knew a thing or 2 about d!cks?

• U.S. tax dollars are the capital of Israel.

• Even IF the boy may have been killed by a Palestinian rocket; I think it's very likely when one considers the Gaza strip to be heavily populated for such a small piece of land, Israel may end up doing more collateral damage to kill Hamas.
  This is why I personally don't support either side of the long conflict, both are very much power hungry.

• I think the problem is that you should have put the section with the PCHR and Telegraph first, then followed that with the Right Wing sites. When you start with Breitbart & co. (if it is even necessary to mention these folks) it has the effect of immediately turning off a large part of the readership. You did a good piece and solid reporting, just the order of the piece would be my only complaint.

• Now CNN is demonstrating pro-Palestinian bias'again? I really don't just want to watch FOX all the time but if you all think it is ok to send rockets indiscriminately into Israel then you are an arm of the terrorists and not a news company any longer. Yes, the Palestinians do not care if there is collateral damage which is why they work out of dense areas. They shoot rockets off into an Israeli city and then cry 'foul' when Israel finally gets disgusted. Talk some about the post traumatic stress experienced for years by the Israelis why don't you. Bottom line, if you bomb my house I just might bomb yours.

• He employed many of them in his time.

• 'Who cares'? In other words, what does facts and context have to do with anything? When a mother and child die in a car accident who care's who's at fault? If your child dies from ingesting a food product, who cares who made that food product? Who cares if casualties are self inflicted or staged? Who cares if the White House lied about Benghazi? Who cares if Iraq had weapons of mass destruction? My hope is everyone who either chooses or needs to pay attention would care.

• Why do liberals hate Jews so much?

• Anyone who doesn't consistently parrot the MediaMatters/DailyKos talking points is mocked as a right wing idiot. By now you should know that.

• Talking about the past, you sound just like a religious nutcase.

  Much more needs to be done, especially since the mostly right-wing powers of the US, Israel, and the Palestinians have done little to seriously promote peace.

  But honestly, you would speak differently if neighbors living a 1 hour drive away from you were shooting rockets at you for months at a time.

  Also, the Arab world couldn't give less of a sht about the Palestinians.
  Historically, they have used them as an excuse against Israel.
  They give them weapons instead of economic aid.

  When all is quiet, where is everyone trying to actually help them?
  Oh yeah, they sadly don't exist.

• Well he did have a picture of Weiner's weiner on his cell phone'

• Goof riddance.

• 'What else is new, The BBC,CNN AP, Reuters, one can go on and on, have frequently begrudgingly had to apologise for gross misinformation,staged photo's and outright lies and Bias against Israel. The Racism/Anti Semitism of the extreme Right was always there, today they are being surpassed by the 'enlightened 'Liberals of the Left!

• Then why link to the discredited websites that pushed that crazy bullcrap?

  Next you'll be telling us what Rasmussen is polling about the dead Palestinian child!

  But for being specifically wrong about you latching on to the theory I apologize.