Aletho News

When Palestinian injuries are dubbed “fake”

By Eva Karene Bartlett | August 5, 2026

I followed up on this story, because some were sceptical and didn’t believe it was real or possible, and loudly insisted it was fake. One man who fancied himself an expert because he likes to shoot a gun now or then claimed this was fake, impossible.

First, I will say that Palestinians don’t need to create fake stories, Israel is doing the impossible to them every day and has been doing so for not only the last 3 years—even when I lived in Gaza, we’d see injured Palestinians and situations that didn’t seem possible but were very real—but certainly in the last three years of Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, we’ve seen things that seemed impossible but were very, brutally, bloodily, real for Palestinians.

Second, a good friend of mine from Jabaliya told me he knew the man who filmed the video. I have no reason to believe he lied to me.

But for clarity on logistics of the situation— how this youth came to have a bullet in his hand when others said his hand would have been blown off (though I already guessed the answer)—I reached out to a couple of others I knew in Gaza. Dr. Ihab replied to me:

“This is a fallen shot, that is, it was fired from a long distance and fell. These shots caused the killing of many people: when the bullet settled in their neck and chest, it may be fatal. But in this case, it is easily removed by a short surgery. We hope that it has not caused fractures in the palm of the hand or tears in the tissues and nerves.”

He went on to say that his own friend was killed by such a stray bullet fired by an Israeli soldier, hitting the friend in his neck as he sat in a chair, killing him. “These may be from the Zionist machine gun or from drones, or the launches carried out by the army randomly.”

A journalist who had shared the initial photo also replied to me: “This child was sitting in a learning tent west of Gaza City. The bullet fell from the sky after being fired from the eastern part of Gaza City, where Israeli forces were positioned. Although it came from a considerable distance, it struck the tent and hit the child while he was seated at his school desk. Yes, it’s unbelievable, but in Gaza anything is possible.”

I refer back to Dr. Mimi Syed, who I interviewed a year ago. She went twice to Gaza as an emergency doctor, and one of the patients she was able to save, a young girl named Mira, had a bullet lodged in her head. “When I showed the CT image to the world, I was accused of fabricating it.”

Dr. Tarek Loubani, who I’ve known from Canada since before I first went to Gaza in 2008, likewise faced accusations that he had lied or forged an x-ray of one of his patients.

He didn’t lie or manipulate, of course, but people couldn’t accept that what it showed was real.

Israel has long treated Gaza as its testing ground for new weapons and technology and also for how much Israel can get away with while the world watches. If your immediate reaction at seeing an injury or seemingly impossible photo or video from Gaza is to accuse Palestinians (or non-Palestinians who managed to enter Gaza) of fabricating footage or x-rays, etc, then you are the problem. Your life experience shooting a gun in your back yard does not equip you to understand the circumstances in Gaza. Palestinians in Gaza don’t have the luxury of debating this, they’re living in truly unreal circumstances.

August 5, 2026 - Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | Israel, Palestine, Zionism