MSNBC has “quietly deleted” a report featuring the false allegation that the Israel Defense Forces killed a Gazan boy seeking aid, the Daily Wire first reported.
MSNBC removed the report, featuring a video and caption and headlined “Whistleblower: 10-Year-Old Palestinian Boy ‘Gunned Down’ After Receiving Food Aid,” after the boy, who is actually eight, was found alive and safe with his mother, the Daily Wire‘s Kassy Akiva reported Wednesday in an X post. The Daily Wire “asked MSNBC for an explanation and they responded with: ‘no comment from the network,'” according to Akiva’s post.
The Washington Free Beacon confirmed that links to the original piece go to MSNBC’s homepage. As of publication time, a video with the same headline, featuring the false allegations, is available on MSNBC’s YouTube channel.
MSNBC was one of several mainstream media outlets that quickly reported on the allegations, which came from Tony Aguilar, a former contractor for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Aguilar repeatedly claimed that the Israeli military had shot and killed the boy, Abdul Rahim “Abood” Muhammad Hamden, in May as Hamden sought aid at one of the foundation’s sites. Aguilar described Hamden’s supposed last moments in vivid detail and said that the IDF fired a “shot to the torso” and “a shot to the leg,” killing the boy.
In its now-deleted caption, MSNBC wrote that Aguilar “describes what he saw on the ground in Gaza while trying to distribute aid to hungry Palestinians, including meeting a young 10-year-old boy,” according to an Internet Archive capture of the webpage.
“Moments later, he says Amir was ‘gunned down’ and killed,” MSNBC went on.
The boy is alive and has been safely evacuated from Gaza with his mother, according to video footage and new reports last week.
“We are overjoyed and deeply relieved that Abood is safe, and that this story ends in hope,” Gaza Humanitarian Foundation executive chairman Johnnie Moore said in a statement last week. “Too many people, including in the press and civil society, were quick to spread unverified claims without asking the most basic questions.”
The news comes as MSNBC has faced plummeting ratings and viewership for months amid mounting scrutiny over the network’s left-wing bias in its coverage. MSNBC’s parent company, Comcast, announced in November that it was cutting ties with the failing network.
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