An Arab boy from the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit Hanina went missing on Friday. As it turns out, the boy slipped and fell into a massive water hole created by the heavy rains and drowned to death.
However, instead of contacting the authorities, the boy’s parents proclaimed that their son was “kidnapped” by Jewish “settlers”. This blood libel spread across East Jerusalem inspiring masses of Arabs from that neighborhood to riot at the entrance of the adjacent Jewish neighborhood of Neve Yaakov . Violent clashes with Israeli police ensued as seen in the video below.
The false accusation against the Israeli “kidnappers” was retweeted by Member of PLO Executive Committee, Hanan Ashrawi. The original tweet from a user who goes by ‘realSeifBitar’ read:
“KIDNAPPED & EXECUTED 7 year old #Palestinian child Quasi was kidnapped by a Herd of violent #Israeli settlers, assaulted & thrown in a water well was found this morning frozen to death in Beit Hanina, Jerusalem after Israeli forces assaulted search teams.”
Along with the retweet, Ashrawi added a comment saying: “the heart just shatters, the pain is unbearable, no words.”
Then, US congresswoman Rashida Tlaib retweeted Ashrawi’s tweet.
Three layers of what for now appears to be a blood libel. From a faceless activist to a Palestinian government official to a US Congresswoman to a global audience of 898,000 followers. pic.twitter.com/spGwJAp5RT
— Eylon Levy (@EylonALevy) January 25, 2020
But once the truth came out that the boy actually fell into the pool, unlike Tlaib, Ashrawi at least had the decency to apologize for spreading false information saying: “My apologies for retweeting something that’s not fully verified. It seems that the news of his being kidnapped is not certain.”
My apologies for retweeting something that’s not fully verified. It seems that the news of his being kidnapped is not certain.
— Hanan Ashrawi (@DrHananAshrawi) January 25, 2020
Tlaib has yet to apologize for doing the same.
This isn’t the first time Tlaib has deleted tweets without explanation or apology. Rep. Rashida Tlaib deleted a tweet in early December that blamed “white supremacy” for the mass shooting at a kosher supermarket in Jersey City right before it was revealed that the perpetrators were indeed Black Israelites.
