Pallywood: Leading Media Outlets Reportedly Used Staged Photos From Gaza
“In southern Gaza, Hamas controls 100 percent of image production.”
Since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, Gaza-based activists, posing as journalists, have continued to flood international media with fake and staged images. The German newspapers Bild-Zeitung and Süddeutsche Zeitung exposed one such ‘photojournalist,’ whose work has been picked up by leading German and Western news outlets, including The Times magazine and CNN.
Anas Zayed Fteiha, a freelance “journalist” commissioned by Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency, has been spreading ‘Hamas propaganda’ by taking ‘staged’ photographs depicting supposed misery and suffering in Gaza, Germany’s most-read daily Bild-Zeitung reported this week.
Media outlets across the world have been publishing his staged and orchestrated images, holding them up as proof that people in Gaza are facing a dire humanitarian crisis due to Israel’s military operation to liberate hostages and eliminate Hamas’ terrorist fighting force.
One such staged photograph by Fteiha landed on the Time magazine’s cover, accompanied by a story titled ‘The Gaza Tragedy.”
One photo was staged. The other debunked it.
While @BILD revealed how Hamas photographers engineer scenes for propaganda, Time Magazine plays into the propaganda.
This is how Pallywood works:
Manufactured emotion. Media complicity. Truth discarded. @TIME Where is your… pic.twitter.com/2chhDX28Ek— Israel Foreign Ministry (@IsraelMFA) August 6, 2025
The Bild-Zeitung reported Tuesday:
Emaciated children, desperate mothers, and people with empty bowls begging for food: These photos from Gaza are circulating the world. They emote millions—and influence global politics.
But an investigation by the Süddeutsche Zeitung is now questioning the veracity of these images: Were some of the photos from Gaza intentionally staged – and are part of a propaganda strategy by Hamas terrorists?
The hunger is (almost always) real – but the pictures are not. A photograph circulated widely in recent [days] showed desperate people on a truck in front of a food distribution center. Opposite them: photographer Anas Zayed Fteiha, a freelance “journalist” commissoned by the Turkish news agency Anadolu. (…)
His photos—published by [German magazine] Stern and The New York Magazine, CNN and the BBC, [Germany’s state-run broadcaster] Deutschlandfunk, [German daily] Junge Welt, and even the Bild Zeitung—prefer to depict chaos and destruction. And above all, children, mothers, and suffering in close-ups, and with perfect lighting.
Indeed, the suffering of civilians in Gaza is great. Many have been killed in Hamas’s war against Israel, and many are starving. However, the staging of this misery often benefits Hamas and its propaganda.
(…) “journalist” Fteiha seems to have a mission: “Free Palestine.” This is what it says on a grotesque painting [self-portrait] he posted on his Instagram account—in combat gear with the proud inscription “Press.” The “artist” who created the image for Fteiha is an avowed Jew-hater.
Another video is captioned “F**k Israel.” No wonder, since Fteiha is also active in “europe.palestine.network”, a “pro-Palestinian Collective” for “Global Action in Europe” – which not only documents the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza but also promotes international “resistance” against Israel.
An activist, masquerading as a photographer and video joirnalist, on behalf of a news agency that reports directly to the Turkish President and Israel-hater Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (…), who in turn has promoted, financed, and sheldered Hamas terrorists for years.
The only question is: Why do German and international agencies use the photos by such baised agitator, even though many of the images are obviously one-sidedly selected or staged?
Bild Zeitung contacted photo agencies. The German Press Agency and Agence France Press stated that they would not cooperate with the “journalist” Fteiha and that they would carefully review the images of other photojournalists and their reputations before publication. (…)
(…) In Gaza, Palestinian photographers are now taking photographs almost exclusively – many of them links to Hamas. Historian and photography expert Gerhard Paul told the Süddeutsche Zeitung: “In southern Gaza, Hamas controls 100 percent of image production.” The aim is to generate sympathy in the West and stir up anger against Israel.
And it works! Hardly anyone is more adept at propaganda than Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups (…).
The problem is not limited to a few rogue Hamas-linked journalists. Palestinians have an entire industry dedicated to fabricating and disseminating fake statistics, imagery, and news. These Pallywood lies travel halfway around the world before the truth even has a chance to put on its proverbial shoes.
The Hamas ‘Health Ministry,’ which otherwise specializes in sheltering terrorists and hoarding weapons in hospitals, has been issuing inflated casualty numbers, which are published by the mainstream media as credible figures.
After the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation began distributing food directly to Gaza residents, pushing Hamas out of the billion-dollar United Nations-led ‘aid business,’ the mainstream media has been flooded with false claims of famine and scarcity in the enclave. A recently published investigative report shows how mainstream media have been peddling Hamas’ narrative, peppering their reports with sources linked to Palestinian terrorist groups.
Even the data compiled by the UN shows that famine and misery in Gaza are of Hamas’s own making. Since mid-May, Palestinian terrorists have looted or hijacked close to 90 percent of all aid trucks entering Gaza, recent UN figures disclose.
Hamas is deliberately creating a food crisis in areas under its control. “There is some hunger in Gaza, and it exists only in places Hamas is pursuing it, not in other areas,” Professor Eytan Gilboa (Reichman University, Herzliya) told Israeli news agency TPS recently.
[Excerpts from German media reports translated by the author]
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Comments
Izvestia on the Hudson will report that the photograph of the staging was itself staged, so nothing to see here.
He should receive the best staged photographer of the year award.
Oh wait. He’s not a photographer. He’s an activist, masquerading as a photographer. He works directly for Turkish Pres Erdoğan. Well then, give him a political achievement medal.
He takes photos for a living. Therefore he is a photographer. The fact that he is also a propagandist doesn’t change that.
“An activist, masquerading as a photographer” is a quote from the article. I am commenting on what is written. You are making corrections to my comments which are nothing more than a the quote from the article. If you disagree with the article you should say so, not go around commenting on everyone’s comments.
He has press credentials which used to hold people to a higher standard of objectivity and dedication to the truth.
It is just to call this creature out.
Just once could you restrain yourself from your obsessive need to correct everything people write? Especially when she was QUOTING THE ARTICLE?
I think you mean he makes his living peddling propaganda. The fact that the propagandist likes to take photos doesn’t change that.
Associated Press (AP) affiliate Hamas claims that these are legitimate journalism images.
It directly competes with animal rescue videos on YouTube.
Did anyone actually expect honesty? Because I know I didn’t
I am about as shocked by this story as I was to learn the Earth is round.
If Israel wants to avoid pariah state status it has TWO options
1. Enough lying GO TAKE OVER GAZA AND OCCUPY NOW!!!!!!!!!! Not in a month, not in a year, not in a decade NOW
2. Surrender, ban all Israeli citizens who had any connection to IDF operations in Gaza from entering Europe, Africa, Asia, Central or South America or Canada and work hard to achieve parity with Russia among the Western Public and hope some day that sentiment will rise to that of a place like Mali
There is no third option.
The media is what it is.
Prolonging the war is not compatible with Israel surviving.
The options are militarily winning at the risk the IDF orders to rescue hostages will result in failure and 20 hostages will be dead or withdraw to pre-October 7th borders and pray some day Israel will once again be connected to the world.
Most people have minimum engagement so the media offensive is working. The only solution is discrediting them with an Israeli occupation that can’t be spun as starvation, or ending the war with the western public convinced Israel lost.
Continuing indefinitely with the only goal being hostages is not compatible with survival.
If Netanyahu was an American president doing this he would be the first president thrown out of office by impeachment.
Israel’s existential threat is BDS and BDS is having more success as a result of the war than in the 40 years of total mega embarrassing humiliation marathons it had prior to that.
Sorry the truth hurts but media is still shaping western public opinion, and Israel has a binary for ending the war either in victory with an occupation or with defeat but knowing the hostages may some day be paid for with a few trillion dollars and hundred thousands Hamas personnel. Longer war goes on weaker Israel gets.
of the media is in control
they decide when they want to release info
what info will be released etc
damn the good people
so the under 18 criminals get a break while the innocent public remain the sitting ducks to the lefty children of violence
israel is no different
they are prevented from having a peaceful existence for the same reason america caves into lefty
FEAR
so either fear the street criminals or fear the pr criminals
obviously, fear of the msm continues to give those thugs the power
while the street thugs maim lives in their own way
correction: of course the media is in control
I largely agree with that. I also have some sympathy for the idea that “we can’t let media dictate….” however like it or not any government that does not live in reality will hurt their nation as Netanyahu is doing by prolonging a war he could either end in victory or defeat today.
He isn’t just hurting Israel in Europe he is hurting it in America to.
If he will not issue orders to bring it to a successful conclusion he has no justification not unilaterally ending it altogether.
Netanyahu could learn a lot from Donald Trump.
Yes. Netanyahu could have ended this within a week of the initial attack, but he was weak. He has always been weak. Anyone who has followed his career since he first entered politics knows that. He has always talked a good talk, said all the right things, and he has always, always, caved in to pressure and done nothing like his talk. He’s a disgrace to his father, father-in-law, and brother.
He’s actually been better in the last two years than he was before, but better is not good enough.
I’m sorry, people here seem to think he’s a Tom Cotton or something like that, but he has always been more like Lindsay Graham.
He is the better alternative to Ganz. But he isn’t perfect
Almost anyone is a better alternative than Ganz. Ganz, like the entire Israeli left, harbors sympathies for the enemy. Deep in his heart he believes the enemy is right. And that will always undermine any attempt to do the right thing.
But Netanyahu since the beginning of his political career has been spineless, always talking tough but giving in, and putting his personal advancement ahead of his principles. And what we’ve seen lately is better than he usually has been.
Well, that seems just a bit harsh.
When you lead a country surrounded by enemies, the most distant of which is a scant fifty miles from the center of your country, who have have sworn continuously, publicly to kill you, that have attempted to do so several times in the past fifty years, and have ‘allies’ led by the likes of Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden one treads lightly. Add in the workings of a substantial and powerful internal political opposition in an open society as another distraction. That said who among other contemporary leaders in Israel would have / could have done better?
There are many who could do better than him, but he has made a practice of destroying any potential rivals. I used to think a lot of Gid’on Sa’ar, but hiring the Lincoln Project a few elections back soured me a bit on him. It could be that he didn’t know who they really were, but it made me reconsider the extent of my support for him.
I think the world of Moshe Feiglin, but he has no experience, and the size of his political crash in the first of the series of elections a few years ago leads me to believe that unfortunately he may be unelectable.
Years ago I thought Natan Sharansky would have made a far better prime minister than anyone else available, but now he seems too old. Netanyahu is no spring chicken any more, and Sharansky is almost two years older (though he’s two years younger than Trump).
Naftali Bennett had a chance and blew it. I don’t think he can make a comeback.
Yuli Edelstein may be someone to watch. He’s a very capable man.
I’m not even getting into the women who could be good prime ministers.
“There are many who could do better than him”
You name the many, and then go on to explain why the “many” who would be better “in principle” are not actually better in the cold harsh light of reality.
“I’m not even getting into the women who could be good prime ministers.”
Sure. Golda Meir, and … and …
Neither Tom Cotton. nor Lindsay Graham is the executive leader of anything; they are members of a gigantic committee. With all due respect to both men, the platoon leader of a deployed Army or Marine combat platoon has more leadership responsibility than either of them in the circumstances. I suspect both would agree with me.
My one issue with that is weakness earlier in Netanyahu’s career when frankly Israel was not threatened meant nothing, which is why going back to research what Netanyahu was like in the past means nothing to me.
Whatever the risks of occupation BDS will destroy Israel in short order of the war continues.
The BINARY he deludes himself doesn’t exist is victory NOW or defeat NOW.
If his only concern is the hostages victory is impossible and it is time for trying to reach the status of Russia in European eyes now before president J.D. Vance agrees to join Tucker Carlson’s crusade against the Jews (Vance Tucker ties are deep Israel will need to be safe from the end of the U.S. Israel Alliance when Trump leaves office).
Netanyahu lives on another planet. European perceptions of Israel will not shift to positive when the war ends even the most absurd estimate for how long it would take to reach RUSSIA status in Europe in the case of Israel not discrediting the media with a Gaza occupation would be years.
Netanyahu is a disgrace. Israel at best has tunnel vision, the reason nations have executive leaders is for someone capable of being out of a political echo chamber caused tunnel who could make tough decisions.
This time next year we will be hearing how Netanyahu is considering an occupation of Gaza for the umpteenth time and the Czech government will be threatened with a weapons embargo by the rest of Europe for standing by Israel, and if Orban is re-elected Hungary will face the same embargo.
In light of that I wouldn’t compare Netanyahu to Graham. I am sure Lindsay Graham would if given a binary involving the end of America if he didn’t pick an option would be capable of picking one or two. I have had more than my share of disagreements with Graham, I do not think he is delusional.
“Netanyahu could have ended this within a week of the initial attack …”
Exactly how could he have done that? That’s not even hyperbole. Listen to yourself.
Just like Russia hoax, most in the press know but push the deception anyway. The journalistic search for “truth.”
It’s not like Hamas has to work all that hard for a willing and complicit audience though is it.
Why “reportedly used staged photos?” This is Theresienstadt in reverse: falsely depicting brave Gazans defending themselves from Jews rather than falsely depicting the housing of Jews in a safe, clean village. Only the setting has changed. Further, the same suckers – international ‘humanitarian’ organizations and the press – are buying it. Disgraceful.
Do we really have to give Germany the benefit of the doubt on lapping up anti-Jew propaganda?
I bet there are Gazan actors that make a good living posing for photos and videos. I think Gallywood is a better descriptor for the vibrant propaganda film industry there.
Staged photography is as old as photography.
Okay, so his first name is “Anas”. Don’t know the pronunciation on it, per se, however if it is anything like “an a$$”, it is quite appropriate.