Elle Griffiths of The Mirror has published the scoop of a lifetime (hat tip: Jonah Balfour).
‘Where did you take my brother?’ Powerful footage shows young Palestinian girl confronting Israeli soldier
A video has emerged online showing a fiery young Palestinian girl confronting a soldier, demanding to know where the Israeli defense Forces have taken her brother.
The clip shows the fair-haired 10-year-old raising her fist in anger at the heavily-armed soldier as she repeats the question in Arabic over and over.
The young IDF soldier brushes off the young girl’s anger and even seems amused as she swings at him while he walks away towards a tank.
It is not known if or why the girl’s brother had been detained by the IDF.
The clip was shared by Australian journalist and author CJ Werleman, a vocal opponent of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
It was quickly re-tweeted and commented on by other users- from both sides of the divide.
Emerged online? Hardly! This “scoop” related to an event which is 3 years old – and is none other than the “incident” staged by the Tamimis, which really put Shirley Temper on the map.
Here is what seems to have happened: A pathological Israel hater named CJ Werleman tweeted this on October 22:
Because Israel haters love recycling (in addition to lying and fabricating).
Journalist Elle Griffiths saw this and thought she had the makings of a great story: a real-life, modern day “David and Goliath” story. So she rushed to get it published, without doing the minimum of due diligence.
Like a simple Google search for ‘palestinian girl israeli soldier’. Or a reverse image search.
Heck, Shirley (and her brother) was all over the news recently. How could a journalist miss that?
Why is it that an unpaid blogger like me does such due diligence for everything I publish, yet this journalist does not bother?
I should point out that I could not find any anti Israel postings from Griffiths on her social media – neither Facebook nor Twitter. So I will stop short of accusing her of furthering an anti Israel agenda – although referring to a non-existent occupation of Gaza (we left in 2005, remember) would seem to indicate such bias.
At the very least, this is unforgivably sloppy journalism which can serve to increase anti Israel sentiment.
Update: Commenter Bob claims to have found some of her anti-Israel and antisemitic comments on Google Plus.
More here.
Her father Graham has commented on this blog before, and it looks like the apple does not fall far from the tree.
So to summarize: it looks like she was driven by an anti-Israel agenda.
