Hold the presses! An Arab girl tripped and fell! Jews to blame!

The most read story in English at Ma'an comes from last Tuesday, with the headline "7-year-old chased by notorious Israeli settler in Hebron."

A Palestinian father living in Hebron’s Old City told Ma’an that his 7-year-old daughter was injured while being chased by notorious Israeli extremist Baruch Marzel on Monday.

Raed Abu Irmeileh said that he had to take his daughter, Dana, to the Hebron Governmental Hospital “after she had fallen to the ground while being chased by Baruch Marzel near the Ibrahimi mosque.”

Irmeileh told Ma’an that Israeli forces present in the area did not stop Marzel from chasing his children, and assaulted his 10-year-old son Hutasem as well as two brothers Nabil, 14, and Farhat Nader al-Rajabi, 10.

An Israeli army spokesperson did not have immediate information on the incidents.

Ma'an Arabic had a follow up on the horrible details of the story. Dana and her sister were shopping when Marzel allegedly screamed at them. Dana, frightened, ran away and tripped and fell. Her father Raed heard her screams and ran out of his house to see her on the ground, her lip bloodied, surrounded by Israeli soldiers and Marzel.

The father took the girl to an ambulance which whisked her to the hospital, where her injuries are detailed:

Dr. Khalil Pope, specialist in Ear Nose and Throat surgery, described the status of the girl child as moderate and said that the wound caused by the assault led to a simple cut between the her upper gum and upper lip. The area needs to be treated for a period of ten days and there should be follow-up visits for the next two months.

The followup story does not mention anything about her brothers who were supposedly "assaulted" by Marzel.

If Marzel was chasing her, why didn't he do anything once he caught her?

So, here is what seems to have really happened: A girl fell down in Hebron and hurt her mouth. Soldiers and one Jew went over to see why she was screaming.  Her father (or maybe she) made up a story about being chased by the scary Jew. The father, knowing that there are ambulances every few meters in Hebron just waiting to whisk away any injured Palestinian, grabs her and sends her to the hospital for an injury that school nurses handle thousands of times every day.

And this is an international incident because it happened in Hebron..

Here are Dana's  injuries immediately after the incident:

Here is the girl getting lots of attention for the incident:

And here she is, several hours later, with her sister who witnessed the traumatic event but didn't run:

Ma'an isn't the only news outlet to cover this important story. Tanzim news agency also had an exclusive picture of the girl in the ambulance:

A Norwegian newspaper featured the article. Mondoweiss did, too.

Americans for Peace Now were so moved by this story  that they published it in their daily news bulletin.

Now Dana has learned a lesson:  If you hurt yourself, nothing fun happens. But if you blame Jews for getting a small cut, you get rewarded with international attention and newspaper articles written about you. Photographers ask you to pose for photos and you become famous.

This isn't a story about Jewish abuses in Hebron. It is a story about how anything that can be blamed on Jews will be magnified and distorted beyond recognition in pursuit of the narrative of Palestinian victimhood.

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