They Never Learn: CNN Withdraws Apparently Faked Video of CPR Attempt on 'Dead' Palestinian Child

See Jan. 9 Follow-up -- "CNN Doubles Down: Reposts Withdrawn Video of Apparently Faked CPR Attempt on 'Dead' Palestinian Child"

Not that it ever really went away, but fake news is back in Gaza, and the worldwide media is being played.

Many readers will likely detect the fakery in the linked video pictured on the right on their own (HTs to Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs [LGF] and Bob Owens of Confederate Yankee via Instapundit).

The video purports to show the death and hasty burial of a cameraman's 12 year-old younger brother, one of two children allegedly killed on the roof of their home in rocket fire from an Israeli drone.

A seemingly pretty knowledgeable LGF commenter spotted what many inexpert readers who see the video will also catch (bolds are mine):

I’m no military expert, but I am a doctor, and this video is bullsh-t. The chest compressions that were being performed at the beginning of this video were absolutely, positively fake. The large man in the white coat was NOT performing CPR on that child. He was just sort of tapping on the child’s sternum a little bit with his fingers. You can’t make blood flow like that. Furthermore, there’s no point in doing chest compressions if you’re not also ventilating the patient somehow.

(no paragraph break in original) .... In a hospital, during a code on a ventilated patient, somebody would probably be bagging the patient during the chest compressions. And they also would have moved the bed away from the wall, so that somebody could get back there to intubate the patient and/or bag him. In short, the “resuscitation scene” at the beginning is fake, and it’s a pretty lame fake at that.

So the question is, were they re-enacting the resuscitation scene by repeating their actions on a corpse, because the child had died earlier? It’s likely that the answer is no, that child is still alive, and is just an actor pretending to be a child who was killed. Why do I say that? Because the big guy in the white coat, if he’s really a doctor, nurse, nurse’s aid, EMT, or any sort of health care provider at all would be entirely aware that tickling the boy’s sternum doesn’t really look like actual chest compressions. If the boy was dead, the man would have done a more convincing job in compressing the chest. The taps on the chest that he’s doing are the sort of thing you see in bad TV dramas .....

Here's what the video link at CNN looks like now (except that the orange box is mine). Note that the false narrative at the top right still remains:

CNN should have known better. The doctor involved in the scene, Mads Gilbert, as described with copious links by the Committe for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), is a Marxist radical with a long-standing hatred of Israel and the United States (some of the links to a Norwegian language site may not be suitable for children's viewing):

Gilbert is a radical Marxist and a member of the political Red (Rodt) party, a revolutionary socialist party in Norway. He has been a pro-Palestinian activist since the 1970's and travelled to Lebanon in support of the Palestinians during the first Lebanon war in 1982. He has long been a vocal opponent of Israel and the U.S. Gilbert has acknowledged that he cannot separate politics from medicine, stating, "there is little in medicine that is not politics." He even criticizes the group Doctors Without Borders for providing medical assistance to both sides in a conflict instead of taking a strong stance and supporting only one party. In a 2006 article in Nordlys, journalist Ivan Kristoffersen lamented the fact that Gilbert allows his humanitarian efforts to be politicized by his radical agenda.  
 
The extent of Gilbert's political agenda and animus toward Israel and the U.S. is best evidenced by his radical support for the 9/11 terrorist attacks against the U.S.  

In an interview with the Norwegian daily, Dagbladet, shortly after the attacks, Gilbert stated: "The attack on New York was not surprising, after the policy that has led the West in recent decades. I am upset over the terrorist attack, but am equally upset over the suffering which the United States has created. It is in this context that the 5000 dead people must be seen." ..... When asked by Dagbladet if he supported the terrorist attack on the U.S., he replied: "Terror is a bad weapon, but the answer is yes, within the context I have mentioned."

A Jerusalem Post editorial that appeared on January 6, the day before CNN's coverage, should have alerted the network to be skeptical towards Gilbert:

A WORD about Dr. Mads Gilbert: It turns out he's no neutral medical man, but active in "solidarity work with Palestinians" for 30 years. Responding to 9/11, Gilbert didn't rush to New York's Bellevue Hospital to offer his services. Instead, he defended the moral right of the "oppressed" to have launched that attack.

Maybe CNN, instead of having on-air news readers like Kyra Phillips taking strong umbrage at the idea of Joe the Plumber reporting from the Middle East, should put the blue-collar guy on their payroll to get more credible journalistic results.

This is just one example of Mr. Gilbert fooling the media by posing as an impartial humanitarian doctor. Gilbert also was quoted this week without question by the BBC, Canada's Globe and Mail, and ABC Online in Australia. He also speaks on camera at about the 1:00 mark in this CBS Evening news video available at YouTube.

This is just another in a long line of examples proving that when it comes to news out of the Middle East, absolutely everything coming out of Palestinian- or terrorist-controlled areas must be treated with very heavy skepticism.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.