McClatchy News correspondent Sheera Frenkel has picked up on the UN worker, Khulood Badawi’s false photo tweet.
Badawi’s supporters are circling the wagons too. For example, Jeff Halper, of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions writes:
We firmly hold that Khulood has a manifested right to exercise her freedom of expression on her personal Facebook page. Calls to dismiss Khulood Badawi are nothing but a political witch hunt, and trust they will be summarily and authoritatively rejected.
Sorry, but “freedom of expression on her personal Facebook” doesn’t mitigate taking a photo of a bloodied girl from 2006 and passing it off as current for all the Twitterverse to see.
If the tweet was an inadvertent mistake on Badawi’s part, a simple retraction (such as Diana Alzeer’s, for retweeting the image) would have sufficed. Everything would’ve blown over.
But if Badawi posted the photo with the intent of spreading disinformation, that would certainly call into question the credibility of Badawi’s work for the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. A UN contact list describes Badawi as an “information and media coordinator.” Other pro-Palestinian web sites, such as Alternative News, refer to her as an OCHA field worker documenting human rights violations in the West Bank.
Those are positions that put a premium on distilling and sharing relevant information accurately and honestly.
None of that was apparent in her tweet.
Badawi clearly has some explaining to do.
But except for one tweet sharing Alzeer’s take on this uncorked volcano, Badawi’s usually expressive Facebook and Twitter activity has suddenly gone quiet.
Which leaves us with ICAHD and friends trying to change the debate while Badawi maintains radio silence.
What are we to make of that?
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