A flurry of new stories surrounding mass starvation in the besieged Syrian town of Madaya, once a popular resort destination, have included some shocking images of starving children, and reports of people surviving on grass and tree leaves.
Even the editors here at Antiwar.com were briefly taken in, posting a story from the normally dependable al-Jazeera which used photographic “evidence” which turned out to be recycled photos from previous incidents.
Al-Jazeera’s top image of a starving child in that story, for instance, is the same child from a YouTube video in Derna, Syria, way back in May, months before the Madaya siege even began.
His isn’t the only image falsely attributed to the current crisis, with el-Akhbar identifying many of the other most high-profile pictures as having previous origins, one as far back as a 2009 picture of a refugee arriving in Europe, and a photo of a starving infant “in Madaya” dating from early 2014, and the infant shown is trapped in the ISIS-occupied Palestinian refugee camp or Yarmouk.
The shocking nature of the images makes for great press, and many are trying to parlay that into a chance to condemn the Syrian government, their Russian allies, and Hezbollah. While there are crises all over Syria and well-documented suffering that has produced millions of refugees, one would think there would not be a need to manufacture phony stories surrounding recycled pictures. For those looking to hype the crisis-du-jour, however, it seems that asking for real photos of the real situation is just too inconvenient, and it’s easier to just re-brand the first starving child you see.
Al Jazeera is owned by the dictators of Qatar, which really shows when they report on the socialist governments of South America. Their mainstream media, which means that they put out propaganda for the richest of the rich.
” the normally dependable al-Jazeera ”
The Qataris are one of the combatants, just like in Libya.
normally dependable al-Jazeera
At the outset of this bunch of crap being pushed, it was apparent this was another propoganda push by someone. Note that the Guardian got this stuff and pushed it without verifying the source. Probably came from our State Dept or one of the “think tanks” constantly pushing us into the next war. Just like the Kuwaiti incubator babies or Kurdish gas victims, it’s all about getting the Americans to intervene and kick out the bad guys. Check out what has happened in Iraq, Libya and so far in Syria because of these kind of news stories.
No its all about getting anybody to intervene so that weapons can be sold, and money made!
This article show a half side stroy. Maybe for some reasons, we found in the internet some real (fake) photos about Madaya. But There’s is a lot of videos from persons live in madaya, there’s a lot of people live outside the country which their families live in madaya and they know. Every body now. It’s strange how a web site called (anti-war) talk like this.
Liar & terrorist sympathizer.
If you, an armed insurgent group, are surrounded in a city deep in your detested enemy’s territory without any chance of being relieved by your comrades and without the means to feed the residents of that city the decent action is to ask the vile opponent to allow you and all residents of that city who want to leave with you to leave for the lines of your comrades without being arrested or killed. That is nothing new in warfare. It has been done many times in the past.
such a bullshit article there are video of syrians eating donkeys and cats out of starvation
What makes you think they are Syrians? Because the Wahhabi filth say so?
More despicable tactics from the medieval Wahabbi scum and their Western collaborators…. the truth means NOTHING to these evil people.