Egypt’s leader ups the political ante and kisses dead babies: but who killed Mahmoud Sadallah?
BRENDAN O’Neill writes: “If you think it is cynical of Western politicians to kiss living babies during election campaigns, look at this Egyptian politician kissing a dead baby in front of the world media’s clicking cameras. There is something grotesque about the way in which dead Palestinian children are being paraded across the Western media.”
Of course, there is also something grotesque about dead children. But is it right that a child’s life is reduced to a photo opportunity for racists and politicians?
Egyptian Prime Minister, Hesham Kandil said of the moment:
“What I saw today in the hospital, the wounded and the martyrs, the boy … whose blood is still on my hands and clothes, is something that we cannot keep silent about.”
But who killed Mahmoud Sadallah? Lebanon’s Daily Star reports:
Mahmoud’s family said the boy was in an alley close to his home when he was killed, along with a man of about 20, but no one appeared to have witnessed the strike. The area showed signs that a projectile might have exploded there, with shrapnel marks in the walls of surrounding homes and a shattered kitchen window. But neighbors said local security officials quickly took what remained of the projectile, making it impossible to verify who fired it.
The Sunday Telegraph:
But there were signs on Saturday that not all the Palestinian casualties have been the result of Israeli air strikes. The highly publicised death of four-year-old Mohammed Sadallah appeared to have been the result of a misfiring home-made rocket, not a bomb dropped by Israel.
The child’s death on Friday figured prominently in media coverage after Hisham Kandil, the Egyptian prime minister, was filmed lifting his dead body out of an ambulance. “The boy, the martyr, whose blood is still on my hands and clothes, is something that we cannot keep silent about,” he said, before promising to defend the Palestinian people.
But experts from the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights who visited the site on Saturday said they believed that the explosion was caused by a Palestinian rocket.
Senior Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh (2nd R) and Egypt’s Prime Minister Hisham Kandil (2nd L) touch the body of a Palestinian boy, who was killed in an Israeli air strike, during a visit to a hospital in Gaza City November 16, 2012. Israel’s military denied on Friday that it had carried out attacks in the Gaza Strip during a visit to the enclave by Kandil. REUTERS/Mahmud Hams/Pool (GAZA – Tags: POLITICS CIVIL UNREST TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY)
Egypt’s Prime Minister wept today as he kissed the forehead of a boy killed in an Israeli airstrike on Gaza.In other Jew child killers news, The Guardian Teacher Network stated:
Unlike targeted killings in the past, there was no collateral damage except for some minor injuries from flying glass. Israel has learnt the hard way that accidentally killing civilians carries a damaging political cost.
Posted: 19th, November 2012 | In: Reviews Comment (1) | TrackBack | Permalink
