Doc Propaganda: Anatomy of a Hoax

Bob Owens continues taking CNN and the propagandists to task for continuing to lie, obfuscate, and deny that there was ever anything wrong with the videos purporting to show doctors attempting to resuscitate a young Palestinian child.

The problems with the video are numerous, and I've outlined quite a few of them here. Bob has still more analysis.

There's no evidence suggesting that the boys were killed by gunfire or missile or rocket fire - depending on which version of events the CNN or Channel 4 propagandists come up with. You would expect to see cratering, pock marks, scorch marks, shrapnel, and other evidence that the area was fired upon. There's nothing to indicate that the damage and condition to the roof was caused by an attack in the current conflict at all. If anything, the rust stains and damage is consistent with poor construction and spalling of concrete over time exposing rebar. Damage to the galvanized roof panels is consistent not with a recent attack, but a much earlier incident of undetermined origin because damage to such panels do not rust overnight.

It's also interesting that there were quite a few photographers around to take photos of Dr. Mads Gilbert in multiple heroic poses (here, here, or here) - whether it was looking concerned at the bed of a young patient or waiting for patients at the hospital entrance. No one seems to have followed him around when supposedly attempting heroic measures to save the life of the victim portrayed in the propaganda video? No one questioned this self-described Maoist over his support for al Qaeda's 9/11 attacks on the US that killed nearly 3,000 people. Curious. The New York Times had reporters in the same hospital, but didn't question Gilbert about his colleague's CPR techniques. Curious.

These so-called doctors are engaging in medical malpractice if they're indeed providing care to live patients. If they aren't live patients, then engaging in doing show codes for the cameras is blatant propaganda and CNN and the networks who air the video without noting it as such should be rightfully slammed for spreading lies and propaganda.

UPDATE:
CNN responds by saying that journalists say that the video is genuine.

"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."

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. Video

Genuine? Who carries out chest compressions as the man on the right in the video does? If you tried doing that on a person, they would die from a failure to actually get blood flowing. The lack of ventilation would mean that the person would suffer irreparable brain damage from a lack of oxygen. The efforts were futile because the doctors didn't do what the video claims they were doing - attempting to save the child's life.

The same people who are administering the hospital, treating terrorists, and whose life depends on being in Hamas' good graces are not going to honestly say anything that might result in them being treated to Hamas hospitality - thrown off a roof or executed as a collaborator with Israel as so many other Palestinians have witnessed and done.

I want to see a completely unedited version of the hospital footage as the one CNN and Channel 4 has published shows clear signs of editing and that the sequence of action may have changed.

How is it that doctors who have viewed the tape scoff that Gilbert and the other "doctor" were engaging in CPR to save the person's life, while we've got journalists and the videographer's employer saying that everything was legitimate. Whose side to take on that one?

Doctors. Every time.