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"The images of exuberant, cheering Palestinians - some of them children and teens - when they heard news of the tragedies angered and horrified people worldwide. As early as Tuesday afternoon, TV stations everywhere were broadcasting footage of revelers in the streets of Jerusalem and Nablus, in refugee camps and in coffee shops. Some joyously fired rifles in the air, laughed, handed out sodas and candy and made signs of victory with their fingers." (Fox news, Thursday, September 13, 2001, by Catherine Donaldson-Evans)

Islam: Truth or Myth? start page

After all the footage did not even originate with CNN, but Reuters news agency. Why would Arafat condemn those in the footage? What is amazing, is the way I first heard about this "faked footage". I was talking to a high ranking Muslim official who functions as an Imim (preacher) for a Mosque and he told me that the "Western Media" was owned by Jews and biased towards the Jewish cause. Although I immediately agreed that the Jewish cause is over represented in the media and Hollywood movies in relation to their population, I categorically rejected that the News Media could be so influenced as to do such a thing. Further, such deception would itself become a huge news story. Muslims living in the west still haven't comprehended the power of the free press.

Muslims celebrating on Sept 11,2001, when they heard the news of the WTC collapsing.

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In fact, if you look closely at the photo on this page, you can see the sun is lower in the sky because of the shadows. If the sun was high in the sky, the people would be in full sun. As you can see, only their hands up in the air are in sunlight, indicating the sun is lower in the sky. This is exactly what you would expect for 3-5 PM in the area! Muslims will believe anything, and they should be ashamed for not starting a letter writing campaign against their leaders who knowingly spread this silly rumor in order to deceive their people.

Send us a photo used in full sun!
This would prove the footage to be faked!

The original Email that started the rumor by Márcio A. V. Carvalho, a student at UNICAMP

All around the world we are subjected to 3 or 4 huge news distributors, and one of them - as you well know - is CNN. Very well, I guess all of you have been seeing (just as I've been) images from this company. In particular, one set of images called my attencion: the Palestinians celebrating the bombing, out on the streets, eating some cake and making funny faces for the camera. Well, THOSE IMAGES WERE SHOT BACK IN 1991!!! Those are images of Palestinians celebrating the invasion of Kuwait! It's simply unacceptable that a super-power of cumminications as CNN uses images which do not correspond to the reality in talking about so serious an issue. A teacher of mine, here in Brazil, has videotapes recorded in 1991, with the very same images; he's been sending emails to CNN, Globo (the major TV network in Brazil) and newspapers, denouncing what I myself classify as a crime against the public opinion. If anyone of you has access to this kind of files, serch for it. In the meanwhile, I'll try to 'put my hands' on a copy of this tape.

But now, think for a moment about the impact of such mages. Your people is hurt, emotionally fragile, and this kind broadcast have very high possibility of causing waves of anger and rage against Palestinians. It's simply irresponsible to show images such as those. Finally, I'd like to say that we all regret and condemn all that has happened in the last days; but Nikos has a point here. I really don't want to be misunderstood here, but the truth is that US government had shown no respect for other countries in the last decades. In the 60s and 70s they had halped lots of military coups throughout the world (including Brazil in 64). Later, with Reagan and Bush Father, the Washington Consensus have been demolishing the bases of our economies, making us more and more dependant (and, many of us, prehocupied with this situation).

Your current president quickly made things worse: Kioto Protocol, Star Wars, Colombia Plan, the exchange of rain forest for pieces of external debt, tha abandonment of the position of third party in negotiations between IRA and England, and between Palestinians and Israel. All those mistakes in US external politics made your country more hatred than before, and, of course, more vulnerable.

Official Statement by Universidad de Campinas-Brasil September 17, 2001

UNICAMP (Universidad Estatal de Campinas-Brasil) would like to announce that it has no knowledge of a videotape from 1991, whose images supposedly aired on CNN showing Palestinians celebrating the terrorist attacks in the U.S. The tape was supposedly from 1991, and there were rumors that the images were passed off as current.

This information was later denied, as soon as it proved false, by Márcio A. V. Carvalho, a student at UNICAMP. He approached the administration today, 17.09.2001, to clarify the following:

the information he got, verbally, was that a professor from another institution (not from UNICAMP) had the tape; he sent the information to a discussion group e-mail list; many people from this list were interested in the subject and requested more details; he again contacted the person who first gave him the information and the person denied having the tape; the student immediately sent out a note clarifying what happened to the people from his e-mail list.

The original message, however, was distributed all over the world, often with many distortions, including a falsified by-line article from the student. He affirms that a hacker attacked his domain. Several E-mails have been sent on his behalf and those dating from 15.09.2001 should be ignored.

Among the distortions is the fact that UNICAMP would be analyzing the tape, which is absolutely false. The administration considers this alert definitive and will be careful to avoid new rumors.

Reuters statement on false claim it used old video posted which was also published by CNN on September 20, 2001

Reuters rejects as utterly baseless an allegation being circulated by e-mail and the Internet claiming that it circulated 10-year-old videotape to illustrate Palestinians celebrating in the wake of the September 11 tragedies in the United States. Reuters welcomes a statement by the Universidad Estatal de Campinas-Brasil (UNICAMP), one of whose students was the author of the original e-mail, setting the record straight. The videotape in question was shot in East Jerusalem by a Reuters camera crew on September 11 in the immediate aftermath of the attacks on the United States. The footage was broadcast by CNN and other subscribers to the Reuters video news service.