Green helmet red flag for propaganda in Gaza

Arab singer Ahmed Hamdy has no problems with “Green Helmet Guy” using his voice in the background for a YouTube that promotes Hamas. In fact, Hamdy sent an email to Canada Free Press (CFP) yesterday, listing the url of the CFP January 2, 2009 cover story “Green Helmet Guy now working for Hamas?” “Save Ghazah (sic) Frome (sic) Israail (sic). We Want Peace,” was the singer’s message. In a YouTube entitled “Ahmed Hamdy Singing for Ghazah, here CFP noticed that Green Helmet Guy was holding up the corpse of the same child he held up two years ago in Lebanon, in photos published by mainstream media. The pictures from two years ago and today are a perfect match.

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Playing a prominent role in proven bogus pictures in the aftermath of the July 30, 2006 raid on Qana, where he seemed to be on the payroll of Hezbollah, the corpse-bearing photo of “Green Helmet Guy”, aka “Mr. Green Helmet” is now being used to disseminate Hamas propaganda. Green Helmet won’t be too pleased if he comes across the same photo of himself bearing the same corpse, illustrating Monday’s San Francisco Sentinel story, “Hamas Declares It Will Kill Israeli Children Anywhere”, particularly because the caption of the photo now reads: “Israeli child previously killed by Islamic terror.” Graphic photos of Palestinian victims, many of them dead or mortally wounded children, appear in the YouTube video with Hamdy’s voice singing in the background. The YouTube, which includes messages written in Arabic, was put together by Mohamed Ibrahim. After going viral in 2006, Green Helmet Guy was caught red-handed when bloggers spotted him in the aftermath of the raid on Qana as a “rescue worker” who seemed to parade around with the corpse of the same child for protracted periods of time. His gig was up when [url=http://www.zombietime.com]http://www.zombietime.com[/url] wrote “many bloggers speculated that he is, in fact, a Hezbollah “set designer” and media relations officer whose job it is to milk maximum propaganda value from each photo opportunity.” During the Qana aftermath, the blog EUReferendum had the most complete photo series compilation, showing that each image individually might be accepted as an unopposed authentic news photo, but that when one considers all the photos taken that day by Reuters, AP and Agence France Presse, it becomes obvious that the entire scene was some kind of gruesome theatre performance, apparently with actors posing as rescue workers parading around with a few corpses, seemingly posing for the cameras instead of evacuating the bodies as humanely and efficiently as possible. “However, on August 9, the ruse was completely unmasked by the TV newsmagazine “Zapp” on the German NDR television network, which aired video of Green Helmet Guy acting as a movie director and staging propaganda photos and videos while pretending to be a rescue worker. After the video was posted online, most leading bloggers (such as Little Green Footballs) felt the evidence was not absolutely conclusive that Hezbollah was staging most of the imagery coming out of Lebanon. “The German news site Bild uncovered pictures of Green Helmet Guy staging similar gruesome propaganda shots in 1996. as the Jawa Report noted, proving he’s been at this business for quite some time.” “Incredibly, in response to the initial response about the Qana pictures, Reuters issued a statement that completely denied any of its photos were staged, stating, “Reuters and other news organisations reviewed those images and have all rejected allegations that the photographs were staged.” But their denial has fallen on deaf ears in the blogosphere, as more and more seemingly staged photos are discovered every day.” You’d think by now a green helmet would be a red flag for spotting propaganda. Meanwhile, it will be interesting to see how many “news organisations” run the picture of Green Helmet Guy carrying the corpses of Palestinian children in Gaza.