BANA: The Heartbreaking Story of Child Exploitation, Propaganda and Media Falsehood

‘Bana is safe now in Turkey, and my dearest wish for her is that she be able to lead a peaceful and happy life. I hope her parents can make that possible. In this piece I shall not be referring to a little Syrian girl, now 8 and settled in a new country. For her, my heart desires nothing but good things.
I shall be speaking of the internet phenomenon @AlabedBana and of the adults responsible for creating it. To speak of family members is unavoidable.
To start with a simple and very obvious fact: the @AlabedBana Twitter account was not initiated or run by a 7 year old girl from Aleppo, even if one was used as its living avatar. Anybody confused or doubtful on this point quite honestly needs to think a bit harder. I am writing for adults. I should add, though, that I am presuming no more good sense in readers than I would expect from any of the kids I know.
What was intuitively obvious before about the spuriousness of the tale – and yet resisted as ‘conspiracy theory nonsense’ in the corporate media and its penumbra of disinformationists – is now also empirically demonstrable.’
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