MK backtracks after using picture of child slain by Hamas to claim IDF kills kids

Hadash-Ta’al MK Ahmad Tibi has responded to criticism after he included a picture of a 5-year-old Israeli boy killed in a mortar strike from Gaza in a tweet that claimed to show children killed by Israeli shelling.

Shani Avigal, the mother of Ido Avigal, who was killed in 2021, had tweeted at Tibi asking him to remove the picture.

“It’s totally fine to take a bunch of kids, stick them in one picture and tell the world the IDF killed them, but is there a chance you’d take down the picture of my child? I’m pretty sure Hamas murdered him, injured my daughter and my in-laws, and me,” she tweeted at him, joining a chorus of condemnation against the opposition lawmaker.

In response, Tibi erases the tweet and replaces it with one showing a front page of the Haaretz broadsheet from May 2021 with the pictures of 67 children killed during fighting in Gaza. Both the original and the second tweet had come in response to Israel Hayom reporter Yehuda Shlezinger, who had claimed on X that the IDF does not bomb houses with kids inside.

חוץ מאלה שכן..
( מחקתי את התמונה הראשונה מתוך כבוד לבקשת אמא שכולה , אמו של עידו ז״ל שהזכרתי אותו כמה פעמים בשנים האחרונות.)

ילד הוא ילד הוא ילד . הרג ילדים הוא נורא . פלסטינים וישראלים. זה עדיין לא משנה את העובדה שהצבא ירה והרג מאות ילדים פלסטינים בשנים האחרונות. יש טייסת קרב… https://t.co/rtqAvRcWmN pic.twitter.com/EFunobED8I

— Ahmad Tibi (@Ahmad_tibi) September 19, 2023

“A kid is a kid is a kid,” Tibi writes, noting that he erased the picture of Ido. “Killing children is terrible. Palestinians and Israelis. It still won’t change the fact that the army has shot and killed hundreds of Palestinian kids in the past years. There’s a fighter pilot who admitted to it. I have empathy for the pain and sorrow of every mother.”