Does a Viral Photo Show a Young Palestinian Girl Crying After an Israeli Strike?

The picture is from 2018.

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An image that has gone viral on social media purportedly shows a young girl crying while carrying an armful of books after an Israeli bombing. For the last week, Hamas has been firing rockets into Israel, and Israel has responded with attacks on Hamas operatives and facilities. Violence escalated over the weekend and, from The Morning Dispatch, “A series of Israeli airstrikes took out buildings the Israeli government said were related to Hamas militants and their ability to attack civilians in Israel. Meanwhile, scores of rockets fired by Hamas filled the skies over the Gaza Strip, with many intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome defense system and others landing on Israeli soil.”

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    Jason Gibson

    Well done!

    Israeli zionist military aviation was a giveaway as well

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    Victor Clairmont

    Uh huh.

    Propaganda. Twitter is a wonderful cesspool of it.

    Thanks Alec.

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      Paul Reichardt

      Man, I swore I would comment no more on this toxic subject but...here comes Victor. :)

      Do you not think there have been ample tears from Palestinian children more recently than 2018 such that this image remains a fair representation in 2021, regardless of how one feels about the hyperbolic statements of the Twitter post?

      I'd agree that the statement that "the occupation is the worst of what humanity has ever produced?" is facially absurd, not because the occupation isn't truly horrific, but because humanity has somehow managed to produce far more incomprehensively horrible things.

      And those historical events were often accelerated when observers became desensitized to the suffering of innocent children. Think of what a gut-punch the little girl with the red coat amid the colorless drab was in the movie "Schindler's List." I don't know about you, but emotionally it reduced me to rubble the first time I saw it. Would you dismiss that cinematographic trick as propaganda?

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        CP

        This is a really thoughtful objection (and here _I_ am now, being dragged into this--a little late--when I should be doing other things).

        I think part of the difficulty with pictures like this is that they work a bit like anecdotal evidence. Often they are offered in place of an argument, as if to say, "Look at how awful these people are! They made a child suffer and cry." But of course, both sides in most conflicts can play at that game. Look at some of the heart-shattering images of children and babies in the rubble of Berlin, for instance--these move us to pity, but we usually interpret them as victims of their own crazy state, as much as they were victims of American and Soviet bombing.

        Despite this, I think that you are right--we are in a scary place when we become desensitized to a suffering child. I worry, though, that using pictures that appeal to some of our strongest instincts (the need to protect children) in place of arguments often leads to precisely the sort of cynicism you're deploring. Once you are aware that people are using sad images out of context to support some cause, you sort of imagine that all sad images (that conflict with your own ideas about the world) must be propaganda. And it's perhaps a small step from that place to cutting off any inconvenient empathy, toward our "far-away" neighbors (such as the people denied refugee status under Trump), or even (especially?) towards people we see every day whom the emotion of pity might actually move us to help in some concrete way.

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      2. Richard Fulmer

        The Palestinians' own actions wrung the tears from that child. With any excuse or with no excuse, they launch unguided rockets into Israel in hopes of killing innocent civilians. Their rocket launchers are located near schools and hospitals in the hope - the hope - that Israeli retaliation will lead to children's deaths that can be exploited for sympathy and money from around the world.

        Palestinians don't care about children's lives except as propaganda tools. Their terrorists purposely target Israeli children and they name streets after suicide bombers who have slaughtered such innocents.

        They are like a man who holds a trash can upside down over his head while whining, "Look how the world is dumping on me."

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        1. Bruce Holt

          The most charitable assessment I can make of this comment is that it is born of profound ignorance. The other option is that it is born of diabolical contempt.

          As Mr. Dent related, we don’t know what immediately “wrung the tears from that child”. Here is what may be known by any who are willing to lay off the AIPAC propaganda and learn the facts about the situation. In the months before and after the declaration of the State of Israel hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were dispossessed of their land, houses, and other possessions in an ethnic cleansing campaign. In violation of international law, Israel has forbid the refugees from returning to their homes. Some Palestinian villages were destroyed through aerial bombing, some were repopulated with Jews, and some were left vacant to decay. For two decades the Palestinians who lived as citizens within Israel existed under military rule; they now live as citizens amidst rampant ethnic discrimination. After Israel attacked the countries occupying the remainder of Mandatory Palestine (whether this attack was defensible as a pre-emptive move is more debatable than recent Dispatch reporting would indicate) it seized East Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Golan Heights, and the Gaza Strip. These areas have existed under belligerent occupation since then. In the Occupied Territories, Israel has illegally constructed settlements for its civilian population; under international law these settlements constitute war crimes. Israel has seized water and other natural resources to serve its purposes and those of the settlements; this also contravenes international law regarding territory under military occupation. Since Israel’s disengagement from the Gaza Strip in which it abandoned its military bases and settlements in the strip, it has imposed a blockade, restricting the movement of both goods and people. This has had the effect of further impoverishing one of the world’s most densely populated areas. (Any assessment of the rise of Hamas—which is far from universally supported in Gaza—should incorporate the ways in which Israel’s continued occupation via the blockade has contributed to the deepening misery of residents of Gaza.) In occupied East Jerusalem, non-Jewish residents have limited civil rights, and they have suffered through decades of land expropriation, home demolitions, and inequitable resource allocation, as Israel works to Judaize the area. In the occupied West Bank non-Jewish residents have no civil rights, but rather exist entirely under military rule. There are now more than 400,000 Israeli Jews living in illegal settlements in the West Bank. Israel has constructed extensive infrastructure to serve these settlements, while providing comparatively paltry services to the Palestinian communities under its military rule. In the early 2000s Israel constructed a separation barrier that exists partially in the occupied West Bank and which has also been assessed by an ICJ advisory opinion as illegal. This wall and the checkpoints that are integral to it has exacerbated the daily complexities, stress, and humiliations of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation. While IDF soldiers have often—and sometimes fatally—shot Palestinian civilians with little repercussion, Palestinian children are routinely arrested—typically for throwing rocks and often via night raids into their homes—detained, and prosecuted in military courts that afford them no legal protection. All should bear these realities in mind before making glib and insulting comments about who cares and doesn’t care about children’s lives.

          In 2018 Israel passed the Nation State Bill, legally codifying the principle by which they had exercised their dominion over the Palestinian population under their control for seven decades: only Jews have the right to self determination in Israel.

          Palestinians have watched as billions of dollars annually are provided by the U.S. to fund these war crimes, human rights abuses, and everyday humiliations, and as effective propaganda and lobbying have left ordinary Americans unaware of this moral catastrophe and most politicians unwilling to take steps to stop it.

          We don’t know what immediately precipitated the girl’s tears. But we all have an opportunity—and in my opinion a moral obligation—to understand the brutality with which Israel has oppressed the Palestinians for nearly three quarters of a century.

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          1. Richard Fulmer

            There’s an old saying in football that the ref sees only the second punch. You’ve provided a list of second punches. You’ve left out the unprovoked attacks on Israelis from both without and from within. You cite the separation barrier while ignoring the years of assassinations and suicide bombings that led to its construction. You cite the Gaza blockade without mentioning the gun running. You talk about IDF soldiers shooting Palestinian civilians but don’t mention what the civilians were doing at the time they were shot.

            As Benjamin Franklin once said, “Half the truth is sometimes a great lie.”

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          Paul Reichardt

          “Palestinians don't care about children's lives”

          I’ve been watching this conflict from the US for as long as I’ve been alive (46 years) and have watched the horrible things done by both sides and the grief of the parents. I’m fully aware of murderous ideologies that are in play and also what human nature and ex post facto rationalization allows people to do for god, land, or the Holy Cause and what it allows people to justify when confronted with what they believe is an existential threat to them and those they love. Humans can inflict suffering on others in the name of the suffering caused to them in boundless ways.

          Once one convinces oneself that the enemy does not care about their own children then the burden of having to consider the welfare of the enemy’s children is lifted as well. Similarly, once one believes their enemy will kill their children without mercy, there is no horror they won’t aspire to inflict on their enemy in return. And on and on it goes. Both sides dehumanize themselves. Where does it end?

          There’s enough horseshit hasbara-and-hamasbara propaganda by the truckload on both sides of this debate and I try to read broadly on the subject. I welcome anything that challenges my understanding, but honestly at this point I feel like I’ve heard it all before. Don’t you? The only sources I will reject out of hand are the ones claiming a razor-thin reductionist binary narrative. That the conflict is 100% Palestinians at fault? Sorry no, that’s a radical position far outside of American historical norms and deserves to be dismissed as such.

          https://www.nytimes.com/1982/09/03/world/israel-rejects-reagan-plan-for-palestinians-self-rule-terms-it-serious-danger.html

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            Michael Berkowitz

            I challenge your understanding, sure enough, though I wouldn't go so far as to say that Palestinians don't love their children.

            You're right to be suspicious of simple binaries, but I think you're applying that suspicion at the wrong level. People, I think, seldom see themselves as the bad guys in their own stories, but bad guys some of them are. And that's very much in the American norm, and in every norm: "Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish..." The Union soldiers and the Rebels all loved their children, but their motives weren't morally equivalent. The legendary mother who, on hearing that all her sons had perished in battle, asked "Was Sparta victorious?" loved her sons too, but she had room for other emotions.

            So Hamas believers love their children, but they may love Allah, or victory, or hate Israelis more, and it's pretty clear that they're not overly concerned with *other* people's children. Support for the random killing of Israelis doesn't seem to dip below 80% in the many polls over the years, and something like blowing up a schoolbus is referred to as a "quality" strike.

            Despite all this, it's very rare to find an Israeli that wants to harm Palestinian children, or Palestinian civilians in general. Even among people who *don't* think "Oh, they're just the same as us." You'd have to look hard to find people with a "murderous ideology".

            And this is, as Mr. Fulmer said, reflected in the sides' respective actions, from the fact that the Israeli attacks come only as a consequence of Arab attacks to the fact that the Arab attacks are aimed at civilians and Israel does its best to avoid harming civilians.

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          2. Richard Fulmer

            The Palestinians have convinced themselves not only that Israeli children are expendable, but that their own children are as well. They're using their own children as shields. And you don't need to believe anyone's words, just their actions. Why would people who care about their children build military installations near their children's schools?

            Your article is a little dated. The Israelis pulled out of Gaza back in 2005. Palestinians are now living - and dying - under self-rule. And their rule has shown that they would rather kill Israelis than save their own people. Tons of building materials and millions of dollars that could have been spent repairing and expanding Gaza's sewage treatment plants have instead been used to tunnel under the Israeli border. As a result, the Mediterranean Sea around Gaza has turned into a cesspool and some nasty diseases are becoming more common in Gaza.

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        Michael Berkowitz

        For all that I appreciate the Dispatch fact-checkers, I agree that it really doesn't matter whether or not this is a recent picture. On the other hand, "horrific" isn't a word that describes The Occupation. In fact, "occupation" isn't a particularly apt term either.

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          Paul Reichardt

          Mr. Berkowitz, fact-checks are always helpful but this one seemed a bit beside the point.

          My views are basically inline with a typical left/liberal (English-language) Ha’aretz reader whose views on the occupation and settlements are basically this: https://www.amazon.com/Unmaking-Israel-Gershom-Gorenberg/dp/0061985090.

          Note I don’t consider that position to be at all ‘anti-Israel’ but because of how far the American Right has moved since the 2000’s (far to the right of Ronald Reagan as my linked article describes), that’s where I get binned these days on the Overton histogram.

          I see no reason to waste your time arguing about what “occupation” is or isn’t or whether or not it is horrific. You can probably predict word-for-word what my take will be to any of your questions as I feel like I could probably do for yours. This subject is almost always tedious, toxic, and unilluminating to discuss, even when done between parties operating in good-faith. I wish it weren’t.

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          1. Richard Fulmer

            You can play with words all you want, but "occupy" means boots on the ground. Israel has not occupied Gaza since 2005. The Palestinians in Gaza have self-rule.

            Ask yourself why all the Palestinians living in Israel aren't flocking to immigrate to Gaza or to the West Bank where they could enjoy some of that self-rule.

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        2. Anonymous

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            Michael Berkowitz

            I wouldn't claim the power to predict what you're going to say (even if I'd put good money on my chances) and I'm mildly confident that you can't predict what I'm going to say, but I'm certainly willing to let the matter rest if you've no further interest.

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          Silvertide

          I think a more accurate article would have stated if the most recent military bombing by Israel destroyed any homes and how many civilians died. I have no problem if they want to say that hostiles where also hiding in the homes but just don't pretend that innocents also didn't die during the attack.

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            Michael Berkowitz

            I'm sorry, but I don't see what that was in response to.

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About Alec Dent

Alec Dent is a former culture editor and staff writer for The Dispatch.
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