A Few Introductory Thoughts

Before you read this article, I would like to get a few thoughts off my chest. There is a lot of talk about „Pallywood“ when discussing the war in Gaza. And yes, it is true: these scenes exist. Poorly staged sequences of injured and dead people after a bombing; red paint and suddenly moving corpses are often hard to miss on the web. Faulty AI images where children’s hands suddenly have six fingers are also examples of this.

However, the following text is not proof that the aforementioned world press photo is such a crude forgery. Hamas propagandists know their trade—and this photo is the definitive proof of it. Mohammed Salem knew exactly what he would trigger with this staging. The ground in Western media had been prepared; the media prerequisites for this had been created over years. Only in this way is it explicable to me that this image received millions of uncritical views.

This photo achieved what war strategists dream of: In public perception, perpetrators were turned into victims and victims into perpetrators. The enlightened world and Israel stood helpless in the face of this phenomenon—and to this day, no adequate response has been found. The photo symbolically depicts the painful death of a child. And at this point, I must express something that some in my own camp might not want to hear:

The thousands of children killed by bombs in the war provoked by Hamas—these innocent victims—really exist. I do not want to discuss concrete, politicized numbers here. Everyone can look at these gruesome, real images on Telegram. I had to endure this forensics for months during my research, and at times it was deeply depressing. Hamas wanted this war, and it is waging it with open eyes on the backs of its own population.

Even in my youth, I was a convinced opponent of war and active in the peace movement until the mid-1980s—at a time when the peace movement still truly deserved that name. I remain firmly convinced that wars must be prevented. But that also means: totalitarian regimes like the one in Iran or the terror construct in Gaza must not be allowed to emerge in the first place. The Gaza war was initiated by Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups with an unprecedented massacre and hostage-taking. Israel had every right to respond militarily. Nevertheless, this war must end—and without Hamas in power.

Please read my text now. It is intended as a necessary media-forensic supplement to my Dossier No. 3.

The Journey Continues

Weeks before the ceremonial awards ceremony of the World Press Photo Academy in Amsterdam, an intense debate erupted on social media regarding Mohammed Salem’s subsequent winning photo.

When I first saw this photo, it immediately occurred to me that I had already noticed this exact motif back in October 2023 while systematically scouring numerous Palestinian Telegram channels. It appeared as early as October 18, 2023, on the personal account of Palestinian journalist Muthana Al Najjar. Al Najjar is by no means just anybody in this structure. But more on that later.

The Metamorphosis of the Narrative: From Son to Niece

In March 2024, I began searching specifically for this photograph on Telegram once again—because the shot had raised fundamental questions from the very beginning. I finally found it on another influential regional channel, the Al-Maidan Media Network. The temporal and structural context of this channel is of paramount importance.

The caption there on October 18, 2023, at 12:06 PM read very specifically: „She cannot bear to part with her son who was killed in the ongoing bombings on the Gaza Strip“. Directly below this report, the official campaign hashtag „#Al-Aqsa Flood“ was placed.

A look at the feed’s chronology also shows the channel’s immediate editorial proximity to major established Arab media: Only a few minutes later, at exactly 12:14 PM, the network fed a breaking news flash directly citing an exclusive medical source from Al Jazeera. It becomes clear that the „son variant“ was generated and distributed within a professionally networked media environment close to Al Jazeera. This network framed Salem’s image content from the very beginning to align with regional narrative guidelines.

The forensic reconstruction of the events reveals a blatant, hourly contradicting narrative in Mohammed Jadallah Salem’s publications. The chronology of targeted disinformation can be proven seamlessly using timestamps:

Date / Time	The Changing Narrative
Oct 18, 2023 / 12:06 PM	Introduction as „son“. „A mother mourns her deceased son“ (Al-Maidan / Al Jazeera).
Oct 18, 2023 / 3:37 PM	No specific mention anymore. Only general: „Is there anything more expressive“.
Oct 25, 2023	Salem publishes another post and disseminates the general, fuzzier emotional narrative of a „mother with child“ story for international audiences.
Nov 02, 2023	The abrupt shift to „niece“. Reuters officially adopts the final script on this day and unquestioningly feeds the identity of five-year-old niece Saly into the global newsfeed.

How arbitrarily and coordinated these designations were exchanged is proven by another digital trace: In this exact timeline, Salem saved a follower’s reel in the background which was explicitly titled as „mother with son“. Depending on propaganda needs and emotional impact on Western viewers, the child’s identity flexibly alternated between son, niece, and general tragedy.

Was November 2nd a Reuters staging? No. It was a professionally precise execution of the Hamas propaganda machinery by actors like Salem. Reuters‘ total failure lies not in inventing the images, but in uncritical passing on: They accepted the propaganda weapon from Gaza, provided it with the seal of quality journalism from the West, and fired it unchecked into the living rooms of the free world. It is a symbiosis of local deception and global naivety.

The Anatomy of a Global Deception: Who Researched for Reuters?

The image of the woman holding the dead child went around the world and was awarded „World Press Photo of the Year“. The version distributed by Reuters stands rock solid: It is said to be the five-year-old niece Saly. But who actually independently verified this story on the ground? The answer exposes the systemic failure of modern agency journalism: Nobody.

1. The Staging (Gaza): All details, names, and family relationships originate exclusively from Mohammed Salem himself. There was no independent secondary source in Gaza. Salem acted here as the director of an emotional narrative whose core contradicted itself hourly on his private channels in the following days.
2. The Multiplication (London/Global): Reuters headquarters fed the image captions of their man on the ground unverified and without any fact-checking into the global newsfeed. They stamped an infallible seal of approval onto a local propaganda weapon.

The Shield of „Adverse Circumstances“: A Reality Check

Reuters claims today that the 14-day duration until determining the image details was due to logistical adversities in the war zone. This explanation does not withstand scrutiny. The facts tell a different story:

• No Technical Blackout: Mohammed Salem and his network were online continuously during these 14 days. They streamed, posted, and distributed high-resolution image material daily via Telegram and Instagram. Communication channels to London were operational.
• The Wandering Narrative: The two weeks were not needed for logistical research. They document the period during which the narrative mutated wildly in the photographer’s profile. Amidst this alleged verification phase (October 25), Salem invented the „mother-child story“ on his channels.

The circumstances in Gaza were not adverse; rather, the script was unclear. For two weeks, Reuters sat on the drip of a local propagandist who adjusted the child’s identity according to daily emotional impact for the West, until the final script was blindly adopted on November 2.

The Cinematic Audio Track and the Silence of the Parents

Doubts deepen when subjecting the video material published by Reuters to audio analysis. Inside the tent, the weeping woman can be heard. Her voice sounds strikingly soft, almost „squeaky,“ and breaks off at a frequency that anatomically hardly matches the heavy breathing movements shown simultaneously in the video.

As soon as the camera captures the rubble outside the tent, the acoustics change abruptly: the voice becomes noticeably harsher, deeper, and takes on a completely altered timbre. This drastic acoustic break raises the question of whether targeted audio editing or dubbing took place afterward to cinematically condense the emotional narrative for the Western market.

Besides the audio track, the dynamics of the people present are disconcerting. A small boy moves in close proximity to the scene. His body language shows no signs of the deep, instinctive emotional shock one would expect from a child who has just lost his little sister. He appears strangely detached, almost like an uninvolved extra.

Far more serious, however, is a fundamental narrative gap completely omitted by Western picture agencies: Where were five-year-old Saly’s biological parents? If the mother—as official Reuters biography claims—died alongside the child in the airstrike, why is her fate completely omitted from the video? Why does the camera’s entire narrative focus exclusively on aunt Inas Abu Maamar while any trace of the surviving father is also missing? This radical narrowing to a single, iconic mourning figure conforms to the classic patterns of visual war propaganda.

Picture Puzzle: Who is Inas Abu Maamar?

To clear up the deep contradictions surrounding the World Press Photo, we must leave the sterile staging of major news agencies. We must look where protagonists act unfiltered: on social media. Who is the woman holding the dead child in her arms, presented in the global newsfeed as an uninvolved, isolated victim? A forensic search on her private profiles leads to astonishing results.

Step 1: Digital Identity Since December 2022

The reconstruction of her digital presence begins on Facebook. A look at her official profile shows that the account is by no means new or a fleeting creation of the current conflict. She has been active here since at least December 16, 2022, as evidenced by the update of her cover photo. The profile shows a real person in a clear, everyday environment—long before the events of October 7.

🔍 Clickable image: The Facebook profile of Inas Abu Maamar documents activity dating back to December 2022.

Step 2: The Sanitized Profile – Suddenly No Content Left

Switching from the Facebook profile to her official Instagram account (@inasfadelam), one encounters a media-forensic phenomenon: The profile exists, counts 187 followers, and follows over 300 accounts itself—yet under the posts tab, there is complete emptiness. „No posts yet“ the platform reports.

This sudden digital vacuum on an otherwise actively used account is a classic pattern. It strongly indicates that a targeted sanitization of the channel took place amidst global attention to hide older content that might be compromising or endanger the desired victim narrative from Western observers.

🔍 Clickable image: The Instagram account of Inas Abu Maamar—despite active networking, all posts were deleted.

Step 3: The Connection – She Follows Hassan Eslaiah

That profile sanitization was urgently needed is shown by a look at her official following list („Following“). Despite the supposedly empty profile, Inas Abu Maamar left an unmistakable digital trace: In the list of accounts she actively follows, the name hassan_eslaih (Hassan Eslaiah) appears in a prominent position.

Eslaiah is by no means an unknown figure, but rather that notorious „activist“ and photographer who, on the morning of October 7, let himself be kissed in a familiar pose by Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and documented the atrocities of the massacre live. The fact that the protagonist of the World Press Photo follows this exact core actor of the propaganda machinery shatters the illusion of a purely accidental, unpolitical scene at the hospital. She is a direct part of this digital ecosystem.

🔍 Clickable image: The digital connection in the background. Inas Abu Maamar actively follows Hamas-affiliated actor Hassan Eslaiah.

Forensic Finding on the Picture Puzzle: The seamless digital chain from Facebook (December 2022) through the hastily scrubbed Instagram profile to the direct connection with Hassan Eslaiah proves: Inas Abu Maamar is not a statistical bystander in the chaos. She moves within the inner circle of those writing the media script in Gaza. The total failure of Reuters and the World Press Photo jury lies in completely ignoring these obvious network structures checkable with three clicks.

The Journalistic Ecosystem: Salem’s Network

The production of internationally awarded image content in the Gaza Strip does not take place in a neutral space. It is embedded in a close-knit local network of photographers, fixers, and media activists who support each other, share channels, and pass content back and forth. A precise look at Mohammed Salem’s direct contacts shows what this environment is like.

Case Study 1: Hassan Eslaiah – The Sinwar Photo

The notorious photo showing freelance journalist Hassan Eslaiah in a familiar pose with Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar circulated through the media after October 7. But while the image was omnipresent, the associated original caption was systematically concealed in the West.

It read: „A photo just taken by our beloved Abu Ibrahim [Sinwar].“ This description provides the crucial source text that turns the pure visual suggestion into a completely different light. It documents the official framing of the moment withheld from Western viewers.

Case Study 2: Muthana Al Najjar – The Documented Abduction

Muthana Al Najjar is the direct personal bridge to the World Press Photo, as he was the first to spread Inas Abu Maamar’s image in the regional sphere on October 18. His activities on October 7 are irrefutably proven by his own live feeds:

He crossed the border without journalistic protective gear and reported live in a triumphant tone directly from the burning Israeli kibbutz Nir Oz. He filmed up close how Israeli civilians—including the Bibas family with their toddlers—were forcibly dragged onto pick-up trucks and abducted. His footage served as primary propaganda material in the first hours.

These examples show a recurring pattern: The actors supplying the Western media market with images were not passive observers on October 7. They were partly actors, partly celebrating documentarians of the atrocities. The fact that Mohammed Salem follows these individuals on platforms like Instagram and that Muthana Al Najjar publicly congratulates him on the World Press Photo proves that professional distance was not maintained here. The Western audience receives images from the hands of a network that actively participated in or legitimized the most severe terrorist attack in recent history.

Spatial Reconstruction: The Infrastructure Pattern

The controlled space runs like a thread through the visual language from October 7 to the World Press Photo:

• The enclosed setting on October 7: The shot of an abducted hostage directly from an interior, tiled special room of Nasser Hospital documents the existence of isolated zones controlled by armed forces from hour one.
• The identical aesthetics in the awarded motif: Despite the mass chaos in the rest of the clinic complex, the later Reuters photograph shows the same hermetic isolation and structural characteristics (bare walls, clinical tile structures, absence of any logistical factors like official markings on the body bag). Both shots completely blend out the real, overflowing chaos of the rest of hospital operations.

The Propaganda Headquarters Al-Shifa

It is no coincidence that after October 7, almost all journalists and camera crews—even those from the south like Khan Yunis—gathered at Al-Shifa Hospital. On this day, October 17, Al-Shifa was no longer a pure hospital, but the organized propaganda headquarters for the entire Gaza Strip.

This concentration had a method: Only in this way could image production be bundled in one place, controlled, and steered in Hamas’s interest. This also explains why the various shots (like Ashi’s drone footage and Abduljawad’s ground footage) interlock so perfectly. From other major clinics, such as Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, there were virtually no reports at this time. Journalists were not where suffering was greatest, but where they were needed as a camera pool to stage the transport of hostages.

The Salem Photo – An Artistic Indictment Instead of Documentation

With this knowledge in mind, we must also view Mohammed Salem’s world-famous photo. Looking at the mood and theatrical composition of the picture—a grieving woman holding a shroud like in a classical sculpture—much suggests this photo was not created spontaneously in chaos. It was fabricated on the morning of October 18.

It was the direct, „artistic“ response to the events of the previous evening. On October 17, Al-Ahli Arab Hospital was at the center of attention. Hamas immediately reported 500 deaths from an Israeli airstrike—news that went around the world unchecked. Photos and analyses from the next morning quickly showed the truth: The cause was a crashed rocket of Islamic Jihad, and the casualty figure was well below 100.

As this narrative began to crumble, the propaganda machinery urgently needed a new emotional symbol on the morning of October 18 to keep worldwide outrage going. The Salem photo delivered exactly that. It catered to the media’s yearning for a pure victim narrative. The fact that the World Press Photo jury awarded such a work without questioning its origin context in the propaganda headquarters demonstrates the total failure of editorial review.

Conclusion

In the end, a double, systemic failure of editorial due diligence becomes apparent. A global news agency like Reuters no longer verifies physical conditions on the ground itself, but relies blindly on local staff whose material is adopted without Western cross-checking or independent control. Leading Western media outlets adopt these finished image motifs completely uncritically. Instead of questioning obvious visual contradictions in sources, the material is passed right through. Because the emotionalized narrative fits the broadcast schedule perfectly, the mass audience is ultimately served not with verified journalistic facts, but with the unverified image direction of local actors.