As the world’s attention continues to be focused on the war between Israel and Hamas, mainstream media have relied on people on the ground in both Israel and Gaza as vital sources of information or eyewitness accounts.
Dunia Abu Rahma, a 22-year-old architecture student from Gaza, has appeared in recent days on both CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 and NBC News to tell her story.
Abu Rahma told the veteran CNN reporter Anderson Cooper, “All I want them to know that there are civilians, people who wish to live a normal, peaceful life, to feel safe, because we are human, and all we want is to have our rights and live peacefully. As a woman and as a girl, all I want in this life [is] to educate and to graduate and have a job and have a family.”
However, behind her sympathetic public appearance, HonestReporting has discovered that Abu Rahma’s social media features posts that celebrate the October 7 massacre, demonize Jews, and promote the destruction of Israel.
22-year-old Dunia Aburahma, an architecture student in Gaza, spoke with Anderson Cooper on CNN and described the terrifying experience of being forced to flee her home, her longing to be safe, and the people of Gaza's hope for basic human rights.
— IMEU (@theIMEU) October 18, 2023
Supporting Hamas’ Atrocities: Dunia Abu Rahma’s October 7 Tweets
Throughout Hamas’ October 7 slaughter, Dunia Abu Rahma both tweeted and reposted several tweets supporting the massacres.
Soon after the Hamas assault began in the early morning, Abu Rahma tweeted “Good morning. I wanted them to loot and liberate the country in my graduation year.”
A couple of hours later, she posted two tweets in succession. One read: “He really freed the prisoners!” This is presumably a reference to the hordes of Hamas terrorists and local Gazans who were rampaging through Israeli communities at the time.
The second post was a quote tweet of a video of a brutal lynching of an Israeli soldier on the streets of Gaza with the caption: “On my own, I go down and beat him with them.”
Later, she tweeted happily about the border with Israel being overrun, saying in one tweet that she was planning on transferring from her university in Gaza to Bir Zeit (a university in the West Bank) and tweeting later that “In this case, we will pray at Al-Aqsa [in Jerusalem] next Friday.”
On October 7, Dunia Abu Rahma also reposted several tweets by other accounts celebrating the carnage.
One read: “It looks like a blessed Saturday, people of Palestine, good morning” while another mentioned that “One’s heart flutters with joy with every missile that comes out.”
She also reposted an image allegedly of Hamas taking IDF captives captioned “Blessed October” as well as an image of a bloodied Israeli female teenager being manhandled by terrorists with a caption justifying the vicious treatment of Israeli women by Hamas.
‘May God Forgive You, Hitler’: Dunia Abu Rahma’s Posts About Jews & Israel
Since the war began, Dunia Abu Rahma has also shared some antisemitic posts on social media.
In one tweet, Abu Rahma posts “May God forgive you, Hitler. I wish you had finished with this group of people who went astray.”
In another, she writes, “Oh God, the Jews have transgressed in the country and increased corruption in it, so pour upon them, O Lord, a scourge of torment.”
However, it’s not only during the war that Dunia Abu Rahma has shared antisemitic posts.
In December 2021, she shared a video of a soccer game between Algeria and Tunisia and captioned it “The house of the Jews will be destroyed.”
Along with her antisemitic posts, Dunia Abu Rahma has also called for the destruction of Israel.
Following a tweet that said, “We want a truce,” Abu Rahma commented “We want to get rid of it,” referring to Israel.
She also reposted a tweet that shows the entire land as “Palestine” and is captioned “This is how it was and this is how it will be.”
While it is the norm for international journalists to interview civilians on the ground in war zones, organizations like CNN and NBC News should do a better job of vetting who gets airtime. Would Anderson Cooper have been so sympathetic if he’d known that the Gazan student talking about peace had actually celebrated the Hamas terror attack and spread antisemitism online?
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