On September 30, 2000, a broadcast image showed a boy and his father allegedly targeted and killed “in cold blood” by the IDF. The footage spread instantly and became one of the most consequential images of the last twenty-five years — even though by far the most convincing explanation for the footage is that the scene was staged.

It's hard to overstate how much this single image shaped the following two decades. Jihadi recruiters used it for years afterward as proof of the Western and Israeli war on innocent Muslims and Islam. At the same time, some Western commentators used the image to invert the Holocaust by claiming this single disputed video “erased and replaced” a famous photo symbolizing the deliberate murder of a million children in one of history's most documented atrocities. For them, the IDF were the “new Nazis.”

Anyone born after the 1990s grew up in a world shaped by this icon of hatred and its afterlife. This day is dedicated to understanding how a single, contested piece of footage became more powerful, more widely seen, and more consequential than the documented stories of countless real victims. As long as the news media accept this game changer, they will continue to replicate its inversion of reality — to the advantage of those who openly say they want to commit genocide.