L: Gaza. R: Mosul
Syrian-born American Sami Sharbek wanted to educate the world about the fate of Ghouta by posting terrible images of war on his Twitter account. He achieved his goal: over 128,000 people retweeted his photos. Omitting this little detail: these photographs were taken in Gaza and Mosul.
We note: Not a movie, and not Syria, either!
This Cleveland resident had chosen two photos: images of bombardments of buildings and a father running, his child in his arms in a ruined street, screaming in fear and pain. Sami Sharbek accompanied the poignant images with the commentary: "It's not a movie. This is Syria." While his account is usually very little used, these photos really stirred Twitter users, who "liked" it 156,000 times.
But other users quickly discovered the deception: the photograph of the bombings was taken in Gaza. John Mangun, a Business Mirror reporter, tweeted a link to the source, the 2014 article the photo came from, referring to an Israeli raid in Palestine. Then he revealed that the second image was taken during the siege of Mosul, and the father running with his daughter was fleeing an ISIS-controlled area to the Iraqi Special Forces soldiers.
Shortly after, Sami Sharbek acknowledged that his post was a fake, and apologized for his mistake. "I did not know that the images had been taken in Gaza and Mosul. My only intention was to raise awareness of what is happening in my country," he wrote in a commentary.
He did, however, encourage people to donate to an NGO, the Syrian American Medicl Society.
Then he hastened to repost photos, certainly of Syria, but still not Ghouta, the three images having been taken at different times of the Syrian conflict in Aleppo, the first in 2013, the second in 2015, and the last, notorious, the boy covered with debris in shock in Aleppo, in 2016.
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