Augean Stables

According to a list published in Al Jazeera, Mahmoud Mashharawi died on January 1, 2009. But the now infamous CNN footage of January 8, 2009 was allegedly about January 7. Vilhjalmur Örn Vilhjalmsson of Denmark noted this discrepancy, put it on his blog under the title Do children die twice in Gaza? and got a lot of hate speech. (By comparison, this blog is almost entirely troll-free.)

Does anyone have any suggestions about the discrepancy.

In a message he’s probably posted on any blog that’s treating this, the key Western player in the Mashharawi affair defends his position. Feel free to analyze the response before I get a chance.

WORLD NEWS & FEATURES, which has been operating in zones of conflict since 2001, is responsible for the supply of video material to a number of major television stations during this Gaza conflict, and we are very careful to ensure we work only with people we know and trust in the Gaza Strip. Ashraf Mashharawi is probably the most respected independent producer in the Gaza Strip. We have worked with him, and with his late brother Ahmed, an excellent cameraman, on and off there for at least five years, and throughout the Mashharawis have been fair and accurate. We would expect even the most objective Western journalist to be somewhat upset when he has to carry his own 12-year-old brother to hospital, fatally wounded by a rocket while playing on the roof of his own home. No-one in their right mind would suggest that any person would allow doctors to play games with a dying or dead younger brother. The idea is bizarre and deeply insulting, and actually damages the credibility of your blogger’s scrutiny of TV output in general - a scrutiny which in principle we would strongly applaud.

The tape, filmed by Ashraf’s cameraman, was fed to London and used by several outlets, without WNF itself actually having the facility to watch it beforehand. But having now done so we continue to stand by the complete genuineness of the footage. What is shown is just the very final stage of doctors’ failed efforts to save Mahmoud. I suppose the reason their effort as shown is so gentle is that they have already in effect concluded that it is futile. And I think your blogger’s understanding of TV is somewhat flawed in this respect: no-one would need to ‘dramatize’ any such death, gently or vigorously. The death itself and the fact that Ashraf’s cameraman had filmed all the PREVIOUS events, and the subsequent return to the home with the body, and the funeral, would have been dramatic enough… in fact the hospital post-death concluding effort by the doctor(s) in no way enhanced the power of the filming - if anything it weakened it… just a body lying there and Ashraf mourning over his dead brother’s lifeless corpse would have been more powerful.

So there is no logical reason to suspect that this doctor was playing to the camera (if so he would have bacted much more dramatically, of course) - let alone that Ashraf would have asked him to do so. The hospital has confirmed that Mahmoud Mashharawi, aged 12, was brought in still breathing but subsequently was pronounced dead. There is therefore not the slightest indication of any faking.

I think a decent apology to Ashraf might be in order.

I might also add that trying to suggest Ashraf has some political agenda is also a false trail. He does not. He was (but is no longer) employed by a company that produced the .ps suffix, and just as anyone can sign up for a .com or a .info or a.tv suffix on payment of a small fee, so can anyone buy a .ps suffix - even Little Green Footballs. All Palestinians like the .ps suffix so anyone can sign up, including affiliates of Hamas. So what WNF has also used this company’s services, because it has a big US-based server that can contain a lot of video, and it is quite cheap! We are happy with this web hosting service - which has no influence at all on our editorial output - we can switch to any commercial provider whenever we wish. The fact that we have had both a personal and a commercial relationship with Ashraf Mashharawi is one good reason why we are relying ONLY on his services during this current conflict while I myself and our other people cannot enter Gaza itself. We have other Palestinians offering to work for us there but have turned all of them down so we can rely only on someone about whose integrity we have certainty.

Finally, an attempt was made by one of your bloggers to show that one of the doctors wanted to make a film with Ashraf. His brother, who died in a car crash, was hosted by a family in Norway and that is probably how he came to know about Ashraf’s production services. The idea that this somehow resulted in this same doctor and Ashraf acting out some faked scene over his dying or dead youngest brother is ludicrous and sickening. Ashraf’s father, who is a medical doctor too by the way, deserves better than to have the death of his child portrayed in any way other than the truth - Mahmoud died because a rocket hit him while he was playing on the roof of his apartment. It is a legitimate story for the media to cover.

I would however suggest that it is vital for the media also to cover why such events occur, and to give balanced and fair overall coverage. Some filmed reports may show one aspect of the complex events, while another should show another side. For example, WNF is investigating (and has also asked the IDF) whether unmanned drones have cameras which produce only fuzzy pictures and therefore cannot or did not distinguish whether figures moving on a roof are fighter or just kids. That may well be the case. WNF is proud to be a very independent producer of news and current affairs from ALL sides of a conflict. Presently I am in Israel filming with the Israeli medical teams who go to the sites of rocket attacks, for example.

Finally, we welcome and encourage and salute scrutiny of the media, but we urge bloggers first to think before they leap to the keyboard, and then to be moderate and considerate, especially when alleging things that will be deeply hurtful to other human beings. Anyone with further queries (or apologies) is welcome to contact me.

Oh yes, by the way when the war is over and I can get into Gaza myself, I will get thea full video of the original filmed tape, and make it available to all on our website. We would then welcome honest analysis.

Blogpost from Scandanavia about Mads Gilbert. More for the CNN Controversy Dossier.

According to an Icelandic contact, Mads Gilbert is the culture hero of the hate crowd. The author of this blog, Dr. Vilhjalmur Örn Vilhjálmsson from Iceland writes the following here:

Icelandic State Television (RUV) interviewed the Norwegian doctor Mads Gilbert on the evening of 7. January that is the same day that the brother of the Gaza cameraman is supposed to have been killed by an Israeli drone.

Mads Gilberts describes two 14 year old boys, who during the truce were brought to the hospital he was working in. According to the Norwegian Media today, Mr. Gilbert is no longer in Gaza.

From Gilbert’s description in the Icelandic Television, (which is In Norwegian), of the two 14 year old boys, which Gilbert said he attended on 7 January, the boy in the CNN feature cannot be one of these boys. Gilbert describes great head injuries on the two 14 year old boys he received at his hospital on 7 January. However, there are no head wounds on the boy in the CNN feature.

Listening to Gilbert on Icelandic Television made me question the CNN feature even more, and put a question mark to the CNN feature. I even contacted the CNN/Michael Holmes and informed him about the discrepancies between the information in the CNN feature and in the Icelandic TV news program called Kastljos. The day after the feature was broadcast on CNN, it was no longer available on the CNN website.

Today, I read this blog and saw that other people have been wandering about the authenticity of the feature on CNN. On my blog in Icelandic (with an English translation) you can see the CNN feature and listen to the phone interview with Gilbert in Norwegian.

This is what the Norwegian doctor had to say about the alleged attack during the truce, when the Icelandic reporter interviewed him after work on 7 January 2009:

Reporter: “How was it during the truce?”

Gilbert: “Yes, there was a three hour truce today and there was sunshine and we all hurried out. It was wonderful to be free to hear the bombs but we heard some bombs though. But there were much fewer bombs. We received two patients then, “aargh” or more, they [the Israeli] didn’t actually respect the truce. One of the boys, a 14 years old, lost both eyes and had his entire face crushed. We do not know whether he will survive. He has been operated. The other boy got bomb shrapnel through the scull and the brain and is operated and is in a respirator, they are both in a respirator.”

Norwegian readers of this blog, please listen to Dr. Gilbert on the Icelandic TV and let me know what you think.

The CNN footage from the Gaza Hospital is still hotly contested. Follow the multiple postings at LGF and an update at Powerline. Here below, I deal with CNN’s defense of the footage in detail because it so resembles the kinds of arguments that Charles Enderlin made about his own monumental gaffe with Talal abu Rahmeh and his “Al Durah” story.

January 9, 2009 — Updated 0034 GMT (0834 HKT)

Gaza video genuine, journalists say

You wouldn’t know it from the title, but there’s only one “journalist” whose opinion is cited in the article (unless Mashharawi the cameraman under suspicion is also considered a journalist).

(CNN) — There’s no truth to accusations by bloggers that a Palestinian camera crew staged a video showing the death of the videographer’s brother after an Israeli rocket attack, said the team’s employer.

In the video, camerman Ashraf Mashharawi is seen holding his brother.

“It’s absolute nonsense,” Paul Martin, co-owner of World News and Features, said of accusations leveled by bloggers at videographer Ashraf Mashharawi.

“He’s a man of enormous integrity and would never get involved with any sort of manipulation of images, let alone when the person dying is his own brother,” Martin said. “I know the whole family. I know them very well. … [Mashharawi] is upset and angry that anyone would think of him having done anything like this. … This is ridiculous. He’s independent.”

I don’t know much about Paul Martin, but it’s clear he spends lots of time in Gaza, and manages to have considerable access to Hamas “militants” whose narrative he seems to feel the world needs to understand. In any case this remark is nothing short of breathtaking. Mashharawi’s about as “independent” as Diana Buttu. The idea that a cameraman working in Gaza is not a militant for the Palestinian cause (perhaps not Hamas, but even that’s unlikely in the last years), is close to preposterous. No genuine independent could survive there for any period of time.

But the rhetoric is crucial here. Just like Charles Enderlin defending Talal, the ploy here is to present Palestinian cameramen as living up to the highest Western standards of journalism. And of course, this is only for public consumption. As Charles told me off the record when I pointed out that Talal’s rushes were full of staged scenes, “Oh sure, they do this all the time.” But on the record, “Talal is a top journalist.”

As for the “I know the whole family…” that’s just what Charles told me that Talal would never lie to him because their families had shared meals together. The credulity of these Western journalists who think that because they’ve sat down with their Palestinian colleagues and broken bread that means that their newfound friends would break ranks with their people’s struggle, is somewhat breathtaking.

Raafat Hamdouna, administrative director at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, said Friday that “Mahmoud Khalil Mashharawi, a 12-year-old, was brought to the hospital, and he was breathing, but he was hit in the head and all over his body by shrapnel. He died later in the hospital. He was treated by the Norwegian team. When he was brought in, he was breathing. The team did their best to save him. I am not really sure if they even tried to rush him to the surgery room, because he was badly hurt.”

Mashharawi’s video footage originally appeared on British television’s Channel 4 and later on CNN. It showed futile attempts by doctors to resuscitate Mashharawi’s 12-year-old brother, Mahmoud, after he and his 14-year-old cousin, Ahmed, had been wounded in what the family said was a rocket attack from a remote-controlled drone Sunday.

Ahmed also was taken to the hospital, but he had been fatally struck in the head and chest by shrapnel and had lost a foot, Hamdouna said. Hamdouna said the hospital records reported Ahmed’s age as 16, not 14, as the family said.

At the time of the attack, the family said, the two boys were playing on the rooftop of the family’s three-story house. The video showed a blood-splattered area where an explosion had taken place and where shrapnel had pierced the roof.

Mashharawi has regularly worked with World News and Features since 2004, Martin said. His multimedia company serves television, radio and newspapers.

Martin said accusations that Mashharawi owns a company that hosts Hamas Web sites were falsely based on Mashharawi having worked at a company that created the PS suffix to allow anyone of any political persuasion to create Palestinian Web sites.

The video footage appeared on CNN television networks and on CNN.com for 24 hours before CNN removed the material in the belief that it had no further right to use it. CNN, standing by the video, has since reposted it. Some bloggers had cited its removal as evidence that CNN did not stand by its reporting.

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.

This is rich. Note that CNN did not consult a doctor on this one, but Martin’s experience in Gaza. I’ve consulted a doctor and a number of people with experience in CPR have commented both at my article at PJMedia and at LGF. But here it’s Martin’s long experience in Gaza that comes into play. There are two ways to explain this remark, neither of them working in the way Martin would like.

• 1) Doctors in Gaza are so incompetent that what appears to Western experts as a joke, really is their best effort. The incompetence is doubled by Martin’s qualifying remark: as commenters have noted, if the patient is dying, the CPR should be more vigorous.
• 2) Doctors “often go through such efforts even with little hope that a patient can be saved” as long as the cameras are rolling. Maybe Martin wasn’t paying attention to that detail.

In the video of the incident, the boy appears lifeless when brought to into the hospital.

In a brief conversation with CNN, Mashharawi said that doctors tried everything they could to save his brother and that he rejected suggestions that any of his work was inauthentic.

Before bloggers made their accusations, Mashharawi told CNN, “I believed at that moment if I didn’t record that nobody will believe what’s happened to my brother. Because it is unbelievable. Until now, I can’t believe what’s happened.”

It’s not clear what’s “unbelievable. That a child would be hit by rockets in a war zone and die in a hospital is hardly unbelievable. That one needed to film it for the sake of “proof” strikes me as pretty unconvincing. That he filmed it to arouse anger against Israel with the pathos of the scene, strikes me as more likely; and as I argued in the Gaza Beach tragedy documentary I made, this is “exploiting grief.”

To get a sense of the difference in cultures here, no Israeli cameraman would film the death of a family member (or anyone else) and then give it to Western media to show the world the plight of the Israelis. None.

What’s most appalling about this article — but will eventually, I suspect, redound to CNN’s discredit — is that they ran this article based on the denial of two already committed sources. CNN made no effort to corroborate any of this. It’s just “he said, she said.”

What we need is the rushes that Ahraf Mashharawi shot that day, that we see in edited form. Like the rushes of Talal, we’ll be able to judge better what was going on that day if we could see them. And unlike Talal’s rushes, let’s see them uncensored. I suspect we won’t, because when it comes to the clash between Palestinian journalism, channeled through advocacy journalists, the clash between narrative and evidence is so great, they cannot afford to let us see.

I may be wrong. This may be genuine footage. I am open to being convinced so. But let us see the evidence.

This morning CNN ran a heartrending story:

(CNN) — At a Gaza hospital, doctors tried to revive a 12-year-old victim of the violence, but their efforts were in vain. Mahmoud died.

Recording the tragedy at the hospital was his brother, freelance cameraman Ashraf Mashharawi.

Just a short time earlier, Mashharawi had been filming other, less personal images of the war– scenes like incoming missiles and the damage they do. Then, he got a phone call. Mashharawi was told the family home had been hit by a rocket.

His brother, Mahmoud and his 14-year-old cousin Ahmad, had been allowed to play on the roof after days of being cooped up inside as Israel continued its assault on Gaza.

Both boys died after the rocket hit.

The family had believed their house — now pockmarked by shrapnel and splattered with blood — was safe from the conflict. The family says the rocket was fired by a pilotless Israeli drone.

Mashharawi filmed the doctors’ efforts to save his brother’s life at the hospital; he also captured images of relatives cradling the boy wrapped in a white sheet after his death. Why? Because he said his family wanted the world to see the human toll of the conflict.

Just hours after play turned to death, Mahmoud was laid to rest.

Israel says it does not target civilians and it does all it can to avoid civilian casualties. Israel says it is unaware of the incident in this report.

With it, they ran an even more heartrending video of the cameraman’s footage.

Except, the footage seems to be a fake. A medical doctor commented at the indispensible Little Green Footballs:

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 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.

CNN has now taken down the video, but left the story up. England’s Channel 4 has a similar story, also emphasizing the pathos of the affair:

Despite his own family tragedy Ashraf Mashharawi managed to send us the images surrounding his brother’s death and the impact on his family.

The family were keen that the story of what happened to them today should be told.

This incident deserves close attention. Like the Gaza Beach tragedy which the Palestinians turned into a Pallywood extravaganza, blaming Israel for a Palestinian “mistake,” this one has many of the usual suspects:

• The Palestinian child who plays a part in the tragedy “for the camera,”
• The Palestinian cameraman who, “with his little camera has a humanitarian message for the whole world” — his excuse for exploiting grief, for making propaganda out of tragedy.
• The Western “volunteer” there to help the beleaguered Palestinian people. Then it was “military expert Mark Garlasco,” here it’s Norwegian radical and occasional doctor, Mads Gilbert, a radical Marxist (there still are some!) who thinks the US deserved 9-11 and who has spent many hours telling reporters what a disgusting people the Israelis are.
• The Western media, ever eager to have their heart-rending story of Israeli cruelty and Palestinian suffering, who, when caught making an error, quietly remove the problem without admitting the error. (In a section entitled “From the blogs: Commentary, Controversy, Debate, none of the three that appear mention the problem.)

If indeed this is a false story, it tells us, above all, about how radically unreliable our information from Gaza. Here we have a European doctor engaged in staging a scene for the camera. As with the scenes from Netzarim Junction on September 30, 2000, we’re dealing with a public secret: staging is permissable.

All of our statistics and stories about what’s happening in Gaza come from Palestinian sources and NGO’s/UN personnel. Many who might discount Palestinian sources nonetheless credit the UN spokespeople and NGOs. In my viewing of the coverage, I’m struck by the Pallywood-style editing we are presented: no long shots, almost every sequence is less than 3 seconds, and it’s impossible to see whether the person is genuinely injured (e.g., many with no sign of blood). I am not denying that there are dead and wounded, but it may be that the numbers are significantly less that we are told, in particular the percentage of civilians, which, with every day, has become increasingly inflated.

Some have argued that it’s a good thing that the MSM has not made it into Gaza. I’m not so sure. Although I think the Western media is exceptionally badly behaved — an Augean Stables of bad habits — it’s not as wretched as the full-bodied weaponized mode of the Palestinian and Arab media. There is a difference between dupes and demopaths. I think had they been there, it’s very likely that a fair amount of the open faking that goes on might not happen so openly. Who knows, among the swarm of Western reporters, maybe somone would have the courage to say, “this is loony.”

And loony it is: the Western news media serve as the major battalion for Hamas in their battle with an Israel they cannot hope to defeat militarily. Alas, they serve a master who desires their destruction every bit as much as they desire the destruction of the Jews.

PS. I’m going to have to start giving out Most Valuable Idiot of the Hour awards at this rate.