White House walks back Biden comments that he had seen pictures of beheaded Israeli children
White House walks back Biden comments that he had seen pictures of beheaded Israeli children
Biden says he has seen ‘confirmed pictures of terrorists beheading children’
The White House was forced to walk back on president Joe Biden's claim to have seen "confirmed pictures" of "terrorists beheading children" in Israel.
The Israel Defence Force previously claimed that at least 40 babies were killed in the Kfar Aza kibbutz over the weekend when the Hamas militant group launched an attack on Israel.
The army later clarified to Anadolu news agency that there was "no information confirming" allegations that "Hamas beheaded babies".
The first casualty of war is Truth. Remember to be scheduled off all information pumped from any side during war time
Like every post in lemmy at the moment.
The accusation of killing babies must be first in the list when you look up "Casus Belli" in the CIA handbook ...
Babies were definitely killed. The psychopathic terrorist supporters latched onto beheadings because that's tougher to confirm and they don't consider just murdering children in their beds to be a problem.
I agree with the first sentence. Everyone can become a victim in that kind of war and on the scale that we have seen the probability that no children and babies were killed is close to zero. However - what I was referring to was the tactic of accusing the enemy of systematic baby killing to steer the public opinion towards support of a war, like when the US had decided to invade Iraq and had Nayirah al-Ṣabaḥ lie about alleged baby killing by Iraqi soldiers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony
Your second sentence is pure framing and off topic but anyway. I honestly don´t care if the countless victims of all ages were killed by shooting, bombing or beheading. What matters is that they were killed and each death is one too much. Both sides have to stop their violence and develop a sustainable solution which both peoples can live with, instead of staying in a never ending war.
Fake news just at the right time for Israel...
Shocking!
Uh ohh Biden got caught laundering Israeli propaganda.
Seems like the media is the one twisting stuff. I've been searching for the actual quote from the White House official that said they cannot confirm the pictures. I've been looking for nearly an hour, no media website has provided a source at all. However, I found it. The official said that he was referring to Israeli media, but it seems that was because he did not realize the pictures were not public.
However:
The Israeli PM just posted some of those pictures on X(Twitter) due to claims they were lying about it.
I saw a few different sources showing it, as I don't have an account with x, but it seems the one I linked is the only one that shows multiple images rather than just one. It seems that the actual truth is that there were some beheadings, but the majority were "just" murdered.
I'm not trying to claim that Israel is in the right here, I'm just saying it seems Biden was not lying.
The US is the biggest mouthpiece of Israeli propaganda anyway. The fact that Joe Biden is just parroting their lies should be shocking news to nobody
Is it a lie if there's proof
This is literally just "theyre pulling babies out of the incubator" 2.0
Even that shit was just "the Huns are bayonetting babies" 2.0.
Yup, and also 'Saddam Has Uranium'.
I still don't understand why this became a hot button issue...
I think it’s because there’s a lot of sensitivity about misinformation, which is typical in early war situations. This story is highly emotionally triggering in all the same ways that previously debunked propaganda pieces have been. Specifically, it is reminiscent of the ‘babies getting pulled out of incubators’ story that was instrumental in fomenting popular support the first US war in Iraq. It was later discovered to be complete fiction. That is not to claim that this story is untrue, but considering all the possibilities is very emotionally draining.
Also, the word of head of state holds a certain amount of weight.
When Steve on Twitter claims such a thing, not very credible. But the president of the United States is another level, you'd expect him to have more information thatn Steve on Twitter and to carefully choose his words on critical ongoing issues. That's why this is a big deal.
And yes, the babies in incubators thing certainly casts another dark shadow on this.
One example I got to know from one of my professors during my Bachelor's where an author who published a story book about honor crimes in Jordan. Despite the setting, one proposed goal of this book published in 2003 was to make the war on Iraq more palatable for the US public.
It turned out that the entire book was a hoax. Its main goal was to make the middle east look like a terrible place for women thus justifying any invasions to "free" them. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/jul/26/books.booksnews
Because making comments by the president can have results that are unexpected.
Bush talked about Muslims and thousands got attacked or killed across the country and still do today. On top of that sheik and Indian folks got mistaken for Muslim and attacked as well.
The last thing this administration wants is mass racial or religious protests.
I think it's normal. It's a big claim to make, and the white house had to walk away from it. I'm still waiting for an official report to understand what happened (and I don't expect it to be "good")
People want to believe it was real, it fits the narrative and justifies their extreme emotions.
I saw some of the first claims, didn't see any confirmation, so I brushed it aside as possibly untrue. However I then saw some videos with reporters going through a kibbutz, they confirmed babies had been killed but not that they were beheaded, but alongside that post was a French journalist that said some other journalists had seen it first hand. That somehow stuck and convinced me, only later did I realise it wasn't enough - I can only imagine that would be worse for people who saw the President say it.
I saw the same report from what you described, and noticed the second time I watched it that no bodies were shown and the journalists specifically said "we heard them say that there were children among the casualties".
In the meantime we have pictures of real dead and confirmed children in Gaza. It's chilling for me to see how the "potential" unproven news of a Israeli children being beheaded is apparently worth (two) million times more than all the Palestinian children shot point blank in the head by Israeli soldiers which has become far too common an occurrence.
Here's some confirmed and documented numbers of what Israel does to Palestinian children:
- https://www.savethechildren.net/news/stripped-beaten-and-blindfolded-new-research-reveals-ongoing-violence-and-abuse-palestinian
- https://www.dci-palestine.org/child_fatalities_by_age_group
- https://www.dci-palestine.org/human_shields
In the past 23 years, 2293 Palestinian children were killed by Israeli forces.
And yet despite everything done by these NGOs and human rights groups, Israel did not budge and did not try to improve the conditions for these children in an open air prison
In the end I do sincerely hope that no child was injured during those attacks (but like I pointed out earlier, this is unlikely... any attack on any civilian area will leave children at huge risk given how vulnerable they are).