…that this sort of thing is rife in the reporting of the action in Egypt right now.
Watch the video:
Someone just sent me a short video clip with some footage by AlJazeera that was taken inside the mosque yesterday that should be noted.
In the video below, you can see what is supposed to be an “victim” of the violence laying on the mosque floor either unconscious or dead. And yet when the medic lifts his bloodied shirt and mistakenly shows that the man has no injuries, the “unconscious” man quickly uses his opposite leg to knock the medic’s arm away from his shirt.
I have no idea what the Arabic writing at the end signifies. But the footage (literally: watch his foot) speaks for itself.
Over the past decade I have come to be deeply suspicious of all photography and reports that originate in Middle Eastern countries in which Islamists are engaged in promulgating news of casualties to the West. The al Durah tape controversy (and Richard Landes’ work exposing Pallywood), discussed at great length on this blog, was a big part of it. Another was the deception in Jenin and the media’s falling for it hook, line, and sinker.
Of course, this does not mean there are no casualties in Egypt now, nor does it mean that many innocent people aren’t being killed by the police. It does mean we need to know how many, who they are, and who is doing the instigating, and that we may never know because deception is endemic. Note for example this:
A few hours later the police did move in after they came under fire from inside the mosque. Three Reuters reporters were on the scene to provide a first-hand account of what exactly happened.
Amazingly, they recounted in a subsequent article that what appeared to be the the wife of the known Muslim Brotherhood leader was giving the go-ahead to gunmen inside the mosque to begin opening fire on the police below that were trying to negotiate their exit under safe conduct.
It is a time-tested technique: to set up a situation and then purposely provoke the authorities into firing back and creating casualties and provide photo-ops to claim victimhood, or even to fake wounds to the same purpose. If you don’t care how many of your people get killed in the process (and even welcome the creation of a certain number of martyrs), it’s brilliant.