'Baby Bomber' in family album leads to propaganda war

The image, of a Palestinian baby dressed as a suicide bomber, pathetically wide-eyed and innocent in miniature explosive and bullet belts and a tiny red bandanna with Hamas slogans, will become as emblematic of the intifada as television footage of the last moments of a 12-year-old Palestinian boy, Mohammed al-Durah, huddling to his father's side in a hail of bullets at the conflict's start in October 2000.

The world was disgusted anew yesterday by the family snap, plastered across newspapers and TV screens, that is already so infamous it will be known for ever as "The Baby Bomber". Suspicions appear misplaced over the authenticity of the picture.

The Israeli military and the Palestinians have produced wildly falsified propaganda in this conflict, as all societies do in war, but the child's relatives in the West Bank town of Hebron did not dispute that the photograph was genuine.

Most refused to talk to reporters, but an unnamed uncle said the picture of the one-year-old boy was taken as a joke six months ago at a party attended by students.

The Israeli armed forces said they found the picture in a family photograph album in a raid on the Hebron home of a wanted Hamas militant, who is still at large.

The Israel government pounced on the photograph as proof that the Palestinians are brainwashing their young. It has long been trying to convince the outside world that the real reason Palestinian suicide bombers are murdering Israeli civilians is not primarily because of Israel's actions – occupation, settlement building, curfews, assassinations, the killing of hundreds of civilians, and the destruction of property or farmland – but because of the wickedly manipulative techniques of fanatical Palestinian militias.

Dore Gold, an Israeli government spokesman, spelt this out yesterday. The photograph was part of a "deliberate policy of incitement ... which involves the brainwashing of an entire people. This yields enormous hate and a future generation of terrorists down the road."

The killing of six Palestinian children, several as young as six, in a week by Israeli forces might have had some bearing on the timing of the Baby Bomber photo's release.

It was issued while Israel is riding high. The right wing in the government of Ariel Sharon is congratulating itself on President George Bush's Middle East policy speech, which set preconditions for Palestinian statehood that few believe can be realised, allowing Israel to block the process indefinitely.

The worldwide disgust generated by the latest Palestinian suicide bombings has allowed Israel this week to reoccupy almost all the West Bank without substantial international criticism.

Having reoccupied land handed to Palestinians by the Oslo accords, and won over the White House, Israel is taking on its next target, UNRWA, the UN organisation that helps Palestinian refugees. A publicity campaign is being launched in America, source of a third of UNRWA's funding, to undermine it for not weeding out "terrorism" in refugee camps.

All this has fuelled a dangerous mood of despair among Palestinians. Many do not deny they admire the suicide bombers. They make little apology for the many pictures of tiny Arab children in paramilitary uniforms, carrying toy Kalashnikovs, and wearing Hamas headbands. They no longer care what the West thinks.