The last week or so, anti-Israel social media accounts have posted this video, allegedly of an elderly palestinian Arab reacting over the bombing of his home:
“Where should we go after the house was bombed?”
— V PALESTINE 🇵🇸 (@V_Palestine20) May 12, 2023
An elderly Palestinian man reacts over the bombing of his home in the northern of Gaza Strip. pic.twitter.com/COHrH9QsCW
Amazing that cameras happened to be there to capture his “spontaneous” reaction, wouldn’t you say. And the sad music is a nice touch.
Besides the obvious Pallywood, Quds News Network then came along and increased the pathos, adding that the elderly man was a “Nakba” survivor, having “lost his family house in a destroyed Palestinian village during 1948.”
But apparently fellow anti-Israel propaganda site Middle East Eye did not get the memo.
Shehdeh Taha, 85, has experienced two Nakbas – catastrophes in Arabic – in his lifetime.
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“Before the Nakba, we lived contented lives, mostly engaged in agriculture. People led simple and carefree lifestyles,” he recounted, speaking to Middle East Eye from in front of his destroyed home.
Originally from Beit Lahiya village in northern Gaza, Taha witnessed how Palestinians were forced to flee to the Gaza Strip by the armed Zionists without any of their belongings.
In other words, he lived in a Gaza village at the time and his family did not lose their home. Rather, he claims to have witnessed others who did and fled to where he was.
Meanwhile, the same Middle East Eye report contradicts the previous assertion that the man’s house was bombed:
On 12 May, an adjoining home to Taha’s was bombed by Israel, resulting in extensive damage to his house and rendering it uninhabitable.
And it would seem this adjoining house was inhabited by an actual terrorist, since it was deliberately targeted by the IDF, who also warned the man’s family to evacuate their house.
On 11 May, the Israeli army contacted Taha’s son, Ahmed, instructing him to evacuate their house and notify their neighbours to do the same, as they intended to bomb an adjoining house.
“After informing my neighbours, the Israeli army contacted me again, stating that they no longer intended to bomb the house for the safety of our children and women,” explained Ahmed, who is 42 years old.
“However, the following day, I received another call, demanding that we evacuate our house within 10 minutes. There were 53 of us living in our house. We sought refuge in a nearby UNRWA school to protect ourselves,” Ahmed told Middle East Eye, sitting alongside his displaced father.
Note how the son claims 53 people lived in the house, yet in the very same report, the elderly man says:
“When I saw the rubble of my house, I was overwhelmed with deep sadness and cried. It was our sanctuary, where all 20 of us lived.”
This story just doesn’t add up. And it contains even more things that don’t make any sense.
In the early 1980s, while driving his taxi in Rishon Letsiyon, a city near Tel Aviv, he and a passenger in his car were shot by Israeli soldiers. Shehada suffered injuries to his feet, while tragically, the passenger lost their life.
“I quickly left the car and took cover among the nearby trees,” he said. “The soldiers searched for me for a while but couldn’t find me. Once they left, I managed to get back into the car to escape, but I ended up fainting. When I regained consciousness, I found myself in an Israeli hospital. Thankfully, I was eventually permitted to return to Gaza,” he recounted.
“I still don’t understand why they shot at me without any reason. It was just a routine drive. A year later, they approached me and asked me to collaborate with them. I refused. Despite considerable pressure they put on me, I remained steadfast in my refusal.”
I am willing to bet none of this actually happened. What was a Gazan doing driving a taxi in Israel? Why would soldiers shoot at the taxi for no reason? Why would they then look for him? And if they were looking for him, why did they not detain him after he was transferred to the Israeli hospital? And why would they then just let him return to Gaza?
I am guessing he is not a guy with bad luck. He is a guy with bad acting skills.
