The videos show a real baby of five months old who died during an Israeli bombing, and the deceased child’s mother and grandfather are mourning his death.
Since the Israel-Hamas war began on 7 October, the official death toll in Gaza has surpassed 15,000 people. More than 6,000 children have been killed in Gaza. In this scenario, some social media users, including influencers, have uploaded images mocking victims in Gaza and claiming that Palestinians are deploying activists and faking injuries and deaths to gain sympathy from the world. A set of two videos of an infant covered in a white sheet are going viral on social media, with the assertion that they reveal a doll rather than a genuine baby. One video shows a lady sobbing while cradling the infant. The other video shows an elderly man carrying the baby and addressing other individuals surrounding him.
The Jerusalem Post spread the claim initially that the baby was a doll with an article it published on 1 Dec with a headline, “Al Jazeera posts blurred doll, claims it to be a dead Palestinian baby.” The news site later deleted the article and issued a statement on twitter the following day saying the article had “faulty sourcing:” “The article in question did not meet our editorial standards and was thus removed,” the statement said.
Users shared the two videos with the caption, “That’s a plastic/toy baby. Heights of propaganda” and “Why do they use dolls”?
https://twitter.com/RadioGenoa/status/1730576529271189899
Fact Check
When we carefully examined the viral video, we noticed an overlaid text crediting the account ‘Omar_aldirawi’ in a few of the visuals of the baby shared on social media. Keeping this in mind, we checked Omar Aldirawi’s Instagram page. According to the Instagram bio, Aldirawi is a Palestinian photojournalist from Gaza. He posted the video of the woman holding the baby on 1December with a caption “A mother bid farewell to her martyr child, who was no more than 5 months old and was one of the targets of the occupation. This morning, after it violated the truce.”
In the next post, he shared a video of the same older man from the viral video holding the baby and wrote, “One of the occupation targets bank is a child not older than 5 months old.”
In further search, we found a post by another photojournalist, Ali Jadallah, shared on 1December .The post showed the face of the same baby from the viral video. The accompanying caption read: “Dead body of a 5-month-old Palestinian baby named Muhammad Hani Al-Zahar, is brought to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital by his mother Asmahan Attia Al-Zahar and grandfather Attia Abu Amra after the Israeli airstrikes at the end of the humanitarian pause in Deir Al-Balah, Gaza on December 1, 2023. 32 Palestinians were killed within 3 hours of the end of the humanitarian pause in Gaza.”
We found many similar images on the Getty Images website, showing the deceased child being mourned by his mother and grandfather.
Stock image website Alamy also carried images of the dead child. The images were attributed to Omar Ashtawy, a photojournalist working for APA Images. These photos also identified the baby as a 5-month-old Palestinian baby named Muhammad Hani Al-Zahar.
Palestinian journalist Hani Abu rezeq also posted video of the infant on Instagram with the caption, “This infant was born in the midst of this war and tragically lost his life, he is not more than a month and a half old. He was martyred in the arms of his mother after their home was bombed in Al-Maghraga area.”
Instagram page @translating Gaza added English captions to Aburezeq’s video. The man in the viral video says, “…My daughter was breastfeeding her son, and there was nothing wrong with him. Suddenly, we were bombarded with artillery and tanks. We took the child, fled, and while on the way, we looked and found the child lifeless. We took him and rushed to Al-Awda hospital. From Al-Awda hospital, they told us this boy is deceased; go take him to Al-Aqsa Hospital. Then we brought him to Al-Aqsa Hospital. There, as you can see, this is Netanyahu, Netanyahu is bombing generations. He launches missiles fired from the nuclear reactor Dimona and Robin. Goes and gets them, and strikes them on Israel. This is the person launching missiles. Netanyahu, if you have a free and true army, then you can comfort the resistance. Don’t attack children, women and the elderly”.
As reported by the AP citing the Hamas-controlled Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 178 people died across the Gaza Strip on December 1, 2023, when the cease-fire ended.
Conclusion-
Fact Crescendo found the claim made along with the image to be False. Videos of a real baby of five months old who died during an Israeli bombing are being shared with a claim that they depict a doll and that Palestinians faked the death of an infant. The videos show the deceased child’s mother and grandfather mourning his death.
Title:Videos of baby killed in Gaza falsely shared as Palestinians faking infant’s death with a doll
Written By: Usha ManojResult: False
